The Hundred Reigns 259: King of Spiders (1) (Patreon)

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Velvet smiled ear to ear as she sat on her ruined castle’s battlements. “You want us to pull a coup?”

“I’m offering you both a partnership,” Simon replied, the three of them standing atop on their wall for a private discussion away from Valravn’s ears. There were no Attic doors nearby through which he could potentially eavesdrop, and Eole was safely waiting at the Golden Butterfly parlor under his Party System. “The Cobweb has resources that I want and need, particularly the Attic. Together, we can assume control of the organization and turn it into something bigger than a glorified demon cult.” 

“What’s in it for us?”

“Valravn delivered to you on a platter for you to torment as you see fit, for a start,” Simon offered them. Velvet’s grin only widened in response. “Wealth, power… the Cobweb, once I’m done with it, and the title of Prince of Spiders in truth. The two of you will be able to rule your organization as you see fit rather than play pretend.”

“What resources do you want?” Silk asked suspiciously.

“I’ll need to borrow the Attic for a time—” Until he could develop his own teleportation network at the very least. “—and I’ll require your help to rob certain places; namely the Crafter’s Tower.” 

“In short, you want the same things Valravn does.” Silk snorted. “Same deal as the old one.”

“Except I have no intention of delivering this planet to a coterie of archdemons,” Simon pointed out. “I intend to neutralize all the Zodiac Fiends I can find, or at the very least ensure there’s a world left after the Second Doom. You’ll actually get to enjoy your wealth and station if you ally with me.”

Silk remained skeptical. “I don’t understand. You’re the new Overlord, and yet you clearly wield immense power and foreknowledge. Why ask for our help rather than just take it?”

“Oh, I will take everything from the likes of Bert and Valravn.” Renal and Borsch could expect little mercy from him either. “But taking by force breeds mistrust and treachery, whereas I require loyal and dedicated allies among the Noble Class users to deal with Valravn’s kind. I assume he told you everything about the Maiden and this so-called ‘divine power’?” 

“He did,” Velvet confirmed. “We’ve been searching for Pharis’ reincarnation in order to prevent Valravn from getting them first.”

“I have a plan to put an end to his mad ambitions.” Simon crossed his arms. “So? Are you in?”

“I think our interests align,” Velvet said with enthusiasm. Simon had learned from previous reigns she was always on the lookout for a way to betray her master, and she lacked her sister’s prudence. “What do you think, Sister? Can he pull it off?”

“I can’t tell.” Silk assessed Simon warily. “He’s clearly strong and informed, but he only inherited the Class a few days ago. It could be all bluster—”

“Bluster?” Simon chuckled and summoned his dracozombie into the castle’s courtyard, the appearance of the gigantic creature causing both sisters to draw their swords. “I have inherited my predecessor’s strength. I could bring this entire castle to ruin in a single sentence.”

“If you’re so mighty, then why come to us?” Silk pointed out. “Why not rule Endymion openly?”

“Because while my father loved the spotlight, I very much prefer the shadows.” It was a lie—Simon loved the power and prestige of being Endymion’s emperor—but it should appeal to the Rogue’s sensibilities. “I will return to rule my empire in due time, once I have dealt with other troublesome elements.”

“You’re gathering strength and allies to purge daddy’s loyalists from your ranks,” Velvet guessed, licking her lips. “Smart boy.”

“You can’t possibly take him at his word,” Silk argued.

“If you demand proof of my word, all you have to do is arrange a meeting with Bert,” Simon said. “He’s the key to leash Valravn. Once he’s dealt with, the others will either die or fall in line.”

“What about Chrom Cruak?” Silk asked. “Or Voltobauta?” 

“I have something Voltobauta desperately wants.” Or rather, someone. “Chrom Cruak will be the main source of concern, though. How loyal is he to Valravn?”

“Loyal is a big word,” Velvet said. “I’ve never gotten the impression he even likes Bert and Verney. I’m not sure what the demon bastard promised him, but I bet that dusty mummy is mostly in it for the promise of killing elves.”

“We can’t be sure,” Silk replied, her arms crossing. “But Chrom Cruak is no fool. He won’t fight a losing battle.”

“Then it is settled,” Simon said. He had a few elf-related levers he could promise Chrom Cruak he intended to pull for free anyway, and it should give him plenty of opportunities to investigate the old mummy king. “Do we have a deal?”

Velvet nodded and then looked at her sister, who once again tried to drive a hard bargain. “We need confirmation you’re not offering empty promises,” Silk said. “You spoke of the Zodiac crystals. Give us one to prove you’re sincere.”

“You’ll find the Scales of Emptiness on top of Mount Perun,” Simon replied, having expected such a counteroffer. “The archfiend Exodeos has been gathering mana for centuries in anticipation of his escape, so I wouldn’t disturb him unless you wish to die, but you can check for yourself.”

“I shall.” Silk exchanged a glance with her sister. “If I confirm he’s telling the truth—”

“I’ll lure Bert into a trap,” Velvet said confidently. Her sister’s frown suggested she would rather stall for time. “This is our chance, sister. We’ve got to seize it now.”

“You’re too hasty,” Silk argued. “We’ve been deceived before.”

“And your caution has allowed the faceless dick to put many of his men in power. It’s only a matter of time before he gets rid of us. Or would you rather wait for him to find the reincarnation and take the divine power for himself?” Velvet motioned at Simon with her chin. “He hates that outcome as much as we do, so we’re in the same boat.”

“True enough,” Simon replied. Removing Valravn from the board would ensure Anna’s safety and put a hold on Helel’s escape plans. “Time is of the essence. Your employer has trap doors in many places, and he might learn of our plans at any time.”

“I won’t be long,” Silk said as she took her leave. “Keep an eye on him until then. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Sure, sure.” Velvet turned to observe Simon the moment her sister vanished into the shadows. “Simon, is it? How did you learn so much about us?”

“My Class transfers some of my predecessor’s memories and power to its inheritor,” Simon lied. “You could say I am the sum of my parts.”

“Such a dreadful ability to have. Every new Overlord is worse than the last.” Velvet chuckled to herself as she waved her hand at Gorre Castle’s ruined towers. “I would gladly lend Your Majesty this keep, but the upkeep cost is horrifying.”

“That’s nothing a good team of workers can’t solve.” Though Simon had another place in mind to establish his Dungeon once he had the Attic under control. “I admit I’m more interested in this city’s forges.”

“We have enough of them to equip an army,” Velvet boasted. “Though raising one would cost us a lot. Sellswords do not come cheap.”

“You would be surprised where you can find unlikely manpower,” Simon replied as he looked over the battlements at the city beyond. “Do you happen to own any pastures nearby?”

—----------

True to her word, Silk returned by dusk from her trip to Mount Perun. While not as useful as the Adventurer’s Fast Travel, the Attic worked wonders to shorten journeys.

Simon had used the time to finally test out his new Voyeur title. He spent a few hours watching through Shabram’s and Belzemine’s eyes as the former issued reports to her spies and the latter studied Balzam’s corpse for the official investigation. While it worked as advertised and might prove rather useful in the future, Simon had noticed a few flaws.

First of all, the process required closing his own eyes and putting him into a light torpor similar to his Lord of the Demon Castle Perk, which made him vulnerable; second, he could only see through one target at once; and third, it only allowed him to see through his target’s eyes, with all the other senses locked away. 

However, his minions couldn’t sense when he activated the Title, and he hadn’t yet checked if it could work through barriers that stopped his telepathy. If it did, then infiltrating Illusea might become possible…

Simon put those questions on the back burner when Silk returned, looking both cautious and maybe a tiny bit hopeful. “He told us the truth,” she informed her sister. “We can proceed.”

“Finally.” Velvet didn’t hide her enthusiasm. “Bert?”

“Bert,” Simon confirmed.  

Reaching the Puppeteer proved to be incredibly easy with the sisters on his side. The two had near-full access to the Attic, and enjoyed exclusive routes to each of the Weavers’ bases to relay orders from the ‘Prince of Spiders.’ They took him through a few turns, and then they stepped out into Bert’s office in Muse. 

They found the man working there in his human disguise, utterly unprepared for the threat at hand. “What is it?” he asked upon raising his eyes from his report, horror creeping onto his borrowed skin when he spotted Simon in his Overlord armor. “What—”

Simon reached out for him with Devil’s Arm, grabbed him by the throat, and branded him on the spot. He crushed his feeble mind in an instant just as he did in the previous reign, with the psychic backlash casting Bert onto the floor. 

“What…” Bert rasped in pain, shock, and anger as the Brand of Pride took hold of his body and soul. “You… traitors!”

“Please confiscate his crestone,” Simon asked the sisters as he opened his Inventory and summoned his newest toy: an enormous, mechanical contraption composed of a pedestal, a ring of rune-blessed iron, and multiple mechanical arms meant to quarter a person inside. A cable-linked to spiked metal helmet hung from its top, waiting for a skull to attach itself to. “He shouldn’t be able to break out of this, but let’s not take any chances.”

“What’s this thing?” Velvet inquired as her sister stole Bert’s Crestone. 

“A cursed construct I crafted on my way to Rosanne,” Simon said as he stuffed the shocked Bert inside. The device’s mechanical arms quickly restrained and quartered the Puppeteer, while the metal helmet attached itself to his head. “I call it the Damnation Engine.”

“Nice name. I have toys like this in my larder.” Velvet studied the device closely, before pulling back when she received a jolt of electricity from it. “What does it do?”

“It hurts,” Simon replied as he pressed his hand on a now terrified Bert’s chest. “I assure you that as much as you revile me, what I’m about to do isn’t personal. I would rather have avoided resorting to such crude methods. So please, bear it with dignity. It hopefully won’t last long.” 

“Wait, wait—”

Simon put on the Crown of Pain and cast Bert into the demiplane of torment. The jaws of hell appeared to devour him while the Damnation Engine lit up with lightning bolts. The startled sisters stepped back as they watched the captive Weaver get dragged screaming into the worst kind of torment. 

“What now?” Silk asked cautiously.

“Now we wait,” Simon said as he looked at the closed Attic doorway. “It shouldn’t take long before he shows up.”

The door opened up again less than a minute later, with Valravn struggling to stand on the threshold. 

He had abandoned his Verney guise for his true demonic form, yet he had never looked so feeble and weak. His pale skin was strained with bulging black veins that seemed within an inch of bursting, his faceless visage was twisted into a shadow of a scream. His fingers trembled and shook so much he struggled to hold on to the sword he brought with him. 

“Bert, what… what’s going on… it hurts… hurts so much…” Valravn nearly tripped when he spotted Simon and the sisters. “Y-you…”

“Hello, Valravn,” Simon greeted him with confidence, his hands folded behind his back. “Come to take a swing at me?”

He tried and failed. In fact, Valravn couldn’t even stand. He collapsed to the ground when he tried to raise his sword and wriggled on the floor in pain, twisting like a broken doll with smashed joints, screeching and wailing with a hundred voices. 

“You… Mardok…” Valravn tried to raise a hand at Simon with all of the strength his spite and hatred provided, yet the pain wracking his body proved too much for him. He instead began to convulse on the floor. “Ahhargh!”

“What’s happening to him?” Silk asked with cold curiosity, while Velvet smirked in gleeful satisfaction. 

“Valravn bound half his borrowed soul to Bert, and the Damnation Engine enhances and amplifies their sympathetic link. This results in direct spiritual torture channeled through the proxy to the target, like a witch’s doll.” Simon looked down on Valravn. “Imagine all the fury of Hell crawling beneath your skin, burning your bones and filling your heart and soul with needles. Imagine the worst pain you’ve ever felt, magnified forever.”

Valravn answered with screams of pain. He couldn’t even muster the willpower or concentration needed to use his abilities. Velvet smiled ear to ear in pleasure, while Silk watched with cold apathy. 

“That’s right, you don’t have to imagine.” Simon pressed his boot on Valravn’s head to make the chain of command clear for everyone present. “If you want a picture of your future, imagine a wail echoing into infinity.”

Although he knew Valravn had no way of recovering Bert from his demiplane nor fight back with the debilitating pain, Simon decided not to take any chances and put him under the Brand of Pride. His mind stretched out of his body to enslave the Twins to his will, only for his iron hand to grasp at shadows. 

You cannot brand a Zodiac Fiend. 

Frustrating. It wasn’t that Valravn had the willpower and levels to resist his ability. It simply failed outright. I can brand his host’s soul though, since Verney’s remnants inside Bert bend to my will. 

Oh well. His anti-Valravn weapon had done the job anyway. 

“There is only one way for you to escape your suffering, Valravn,” Simon said as he opened his Inventory and revealed the second item he had crafted on his way to Valne: a black puzzle box cube of interwoven seals and curses, with a slot in the center to house a fist-sized crystal. “Abandon your host, and move into your new home. You’ll be well-cared for.”

“No… no… can’t… do this…” Valravn wriggled in atrocious suffering, and when his pleas fell on Simon’s deaf ears, he pointed at the sisters. “I… made you! Created…”

“And that gives you power over us?” Silk sneered. “We weren’t born to play the dutiful daughters.”

“Did you think we wouldn’t notice the way you leered at us?” Velvet kicked Valravn in the chest for good measure, the Zodiac Fiend utterly powerless to resist. “How you looked at us like clothes you could put on whenever your current ones grew old?”

“Can… share…” Valravn hissed, a surge of agony causing his back to wrack and spasm. “Together… win… stronger…”

“We don’t bet on the losing side,” Silk replied contemptuously. “You had your chance.”

“Look at my crown, Valravn,” Simon said, the Zodiac Fiend gazing up at the burning embers of his brother Nodens’ power. His fear cut sharper than his spiritual anguish. “I can do far worse than stuff you in a box or torture you every single waking moment of your life. You don’t want to know all the ideas I inherited from Mardok.”

“Curse… you… little…” A desperate Valravn’s hand reached out for the crystal in his chest, trembling with anger and spite. “When Abraxas… Helel… destroy you… destroy…”

“Yes, yes,” Simon replied dismissively. “She’ll have her turn too.”

Valravn tore out his own crystal to escape his torment and placed it into the box, severing the possession that bound him to his human vessel. A cloud of miasma enveloped his body and restored it into Count Verney’s heartless corpse. 

The puzzle box enveloped the Twins’ crystal and shifted its faces. Their surface changed to mazes of corridors and doorways assembled in a nightmarishly complex fashion. 

“That…” Velvet hesitated. “That was much easier than I expected.”

“The box will stabilize the Attic,” Simon told the sisters. It was a modified variant of the same magitechnology that created Lotan’s book-prison, whose blueprints he had developed during the last reign when studying Bert’s connection to his master. His reign in Lampwick had made him a better crafter than ever before. “I won’t be able to create new doors or fetches yet with it, but I can close and open the existing ones at will.”

“So we have control over the entire Attic.” Silk shook her head as she looked on at Verney’s corpse. “An archdemon dispatched so easily… there has to be a trick.”

“I dispatched him like nothing because he was nothing,” Simon replied, his hand holding the box above his head. “Why do you think that cockroach worked so hard to keep his identity hidden from Endymion? Or why a so-called archdemon would lower himself to serving another of its kind, like Helel?”

Velvet raised an eyebrow. “Because he knew your daddy would crush him?”

“He knew fighting the Overlord could only end in his demise,” Simon confirmed. “Valravn was a shadow of Helel and Mardok alike.”

“Then I’m glad we’ve bet on the right horse.” Velvet pointed at Verney’s flesh. “What about the body?”

“I have a new occupant in mind for this body.” Simon briefly summoned an imp, then immediately shoved him into the demiplane of torture the moment he reappeared. Bert and the Damnation Engine materialized once more, the puppet only having tattered remnants of his fake skin. “Now, do you want to get back in there?”

“N-no…” Bert showed laceration marks all over his body, and his sinister button-eyes were bulging out. Something must have tried to rip them out. “Please, anything but that…”

“Then I suggest you learn your place and never try to upstage us, lest you find your way there again.” Simon waved his hand and caused the Damnation Engine to release Bert. “But serve us well, and you will have your revenge on your creator.”

Bert was too shaken from the torture to appreciate Simon’s offer, which was fine. The next step would be to seize his toyhouse as his Dungeon and new base of operations. Muse would remain his focus for the next few months. 

“With the Attic under our control, we can summon the Weavers and lock the doors behind them,” Velvet suggested. “They’ll be trapped inside.”

“But how do we announce our new management?” Silk wondered. “I would rather avoid a fight if we can.”

“I have a suggestion for that,” Simon said as he touched his puzzle box to open certain pathways. “I think you’ll both love it.”

—-------------------

The Prince of Spiders summoned the Weavers to a council, and they all showed up like lambs lining up to the slaughter.  

Voltobauta, Lord Albert of Magvolia, Borsh, Granny Radhag, Chrom Cruak, Renal… all of them arrived and took their seats. A cowed Bert joined them too, while Silk disguised herself as Verney with a mix of her Rogue Perks and Simon’s items. 

This would have seemed like any other gathering to most of them… until all doors into the room shut down except for one, and Simon walked out of it in his Overlord armor. His miasma erupted from him in a wave that instantly put everyone on edge. Lord Albert froze in fear like the stooge he was, Silk feigned surprise, Borsh and Granny both bolted out of their seats, and both Renal and Voltobauta reached for their weapons. Chrom Cruak alone remained still in his seat, his baleful red eyes peering through his helmet with cold calculation. 

“Thank you all for coming,” Simon said as he stepped forward, with Velvet closing the door behind them. “With my predecessor’s recent death, I thought it was finally time to end this charade and meet all of you face to face.”

“It can’t be…” Borsh muttered to himself in shock. “The Overlord?”

“What are you doing here, Magnos?” Voltobauta inquired, his pistol raised at Simon. 

“Isn’t it obvious, Voltobauta?” Simon confidently took the seat behind which the spider statue loomed, with Velvet standing at his side. “I’m the Prince of Spiders.”

Always had been. 

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