CHAPTER 81: TOUCHING GRASS IS OVERRATED

I, Ragnar Vhagar, the Vampire Lord of Aethelburg, the Tyrant of the North, the Scourge of Annoying Crystal Queens, was existentially, soul-crushingly bored.

My entire afterlife had been a frantic, exhilarating scramble for survival and conquest.

Now, with my rivals either dead, absorbed, or cowering in their basements, a profound and terrible quiet had descended upon my kingdom.

"This is unacceptable," I announced to the Crystal Spire’s throne room.

My voice, now a smooth baritone that was excellent for brooding monologues, echoed pleasingly off the walls.

"My bloodlust has dwindled to a mild sanguinary curiosity.

I almost complemented a goblin on his choice of skull-based centerpiece yesterday. This cannot stand."

Pixia, my tiny, flying spreadsheet, zipped over to my shoulder.

"My Lord, may I suggest this is a perfect time for you to engage in some personal growth?

A new hobby, perhaps? I have several manuals on macramé and the historical significance of artisanal cheese-making."

I gave her a look so cold that her tiny glasses frosted over for a second.

"I have a new hobby in mind, Pixia," I said, a slow, predatory grin spreading across my face.

"It’s called ’hostile corporate takeovers’. On a national scale."

I pushed myself up from my crystal throne, my long coat swishing dramatically around my ankles.

I was getting very, very good at the swish. It was all in the hips.

"It’s time I stepped outside. It’s time I saw this new world for myself. And it’s time I reminded any remaining upstarts why they call me a tyrant."

But leaving my Domain, my fortress of power, was a problem. It was my heart, my armory, my pantry. I couldn’t just leave the keys under the mat.

"Pixia," I said, my tone shifting to one of absolute command.

"I am activating the ’Regent Protocol.’ I’m giving you temporary command of the home defenses.

The ability is called [Separation]. It will cost me a small amount of my core energy, but it will grant you limited authority over all patrols and automated traps.

If a single hero so much as sneezes on my front door, I want you to drop a hundred Orcs on their head. Am I clear?"

"Crystal, my Lord!" she squeaked, looking both terrified and immensely proud. "I will protect your dust bunnies with my life!"

With my home base secured under the command of a hyper-competent and slightly neurotic pixie, I assembled a small, elite team for my first expedition.

Chloe, my ever-loyal shadow, and Isabelle, my former-hero commander.

It was a reconnaissance-in-force, a polite way of saying we were going to go kick over someone else’s sandcastle.

We strode to the main entrance of my dungeon. I took a deep, theatrical breath.

This was it. My first steps into the outside world as a free Demon King, an untethered lord of the night.

The moment I crossed the invisible threshold, two things happened at once.

First, the distant, weak sun, filtered through the thick, perpetually gray clouds of Aethelburg, felt like a physical punch.

It was a searing, unpleasant heat on my pale skin, a constant, low-level pain that made my new, impressive fangs ache. It was like being forced to listen to bad pop music at a slightly-too-loud volume.

Second, I felt a connection snap. It was a profound and terrible silence falling over a part of my mind I hadn’t even known was there.

The constant, thrumming hum of my Domain’s power was gone.

I pulled up my System menu on my phone.

The [Creation] and [Alchemy] tabs, my two greatest assets, were grayed out.

A tooltip, dripping with smug, unhelpful clarity, appeared: [Core Abilities are linked to your Domain’s ambient energy.

These functions are unavailable while outside your territory. Have a nice day!]

"Well, that’s just fantastic," I grumbled, my good mood evaporating.

"I’m a god inside my house, but the second I step outside, I’m just a really pale guy with a fancy coat and a crippling sun allergy. This changes things."

"My Lord?" Isabelle asked, her hand already resting on the hilt of her dark sword, Dáinsleif.

Her senses were sharp; she had felt the shift in my power.

"It means we travel light," I said, my mind already recalibrating my plans.

"No reinforcements. No on-the-fly equipment upgrades. What we have is what we get. Which means we need to be very, very efficient."

Our first target was a minor Demon King who, according to Isabelle’s intel, had been making a nuisance of himself on the western border.

He called himself the "Prince of Eternal Night and Sorrows," a chuunibyou with a flair for the dramatic and an unfortunate love of writing bad, brooding poetry which he posted on the hero forums, of all places.

He was the perfect warm-up.

His domain was a masterpiece of embarrassing, low-budget evil.

It was supposed to be a haunted castle, but it looked more like a Halloween store that had been hit by a tornado.

Fake gargoyles made of cheap plastic were glued to the walls.

The skeletons looked suspiciously like they were from a high school biology class.

And a faint, tinny organ music was being piped in from somewhere, sounding suspiciously like a cellphone ringtone on a loop.

"This is just an aesthetic crime scene," I muttered as we walked through the front gate, which wasn’t even guarded.

The "monsters" inside were a handful of slow, clumsy ghouls that looked more confused than menacing, and a few dozen giant bats that were all hanging upside down, fast asleep.

Chloe and Isabelle dealt with them in under a minute, a silent, efficient symphony of steel and shadow that was frankly overkill.

We found the Demon King in his throne room.

He was a young man with floppy black hair, far too much eyeliner, and a cape that was very clearly a modified velvet curtain.

He was sitting on a throne made of spray-painted cardboard boxes.

"Fools!" he shrieked, leaping to his feet and striking a pose that probably looked very cool in his head.

"You have trespassed upon the sacred sanctum of Lord Valerius the Void-Sworn!

Now, you shall face the eternal despair of my ultimate darkness!"

He charged.

He was fast, I’ll give him that. B-Rank Body, at least.

But he moved with the predictable, telegraphed motions of someone who had learned how to fight exclusively from watching cartoons.

BOOM!

The wind shrieked as he swung his ridiculously oversized scythe in a wide, flashy, and completely impractical arc that left him wide open.

I didn’t even bother to dodge. I just took a single, contemptuous step inside his guard.

BOOM!

My fist, moving with the cold, brutal efficiency of my new A-Rank power, connected with his stomach.

The impact was a dull, wet thud, but a visible shockwave of force exploded from the point of contact.

The air cracked around us, and the force ran through his bones, making his entire body shudder.

The self-proclaimed Prince of Eternal Night made a sound like a deflating accordion, his eyes bugging out in a way that was both comical and slightly horrifying.

He crumpled to the floor, gasping for air and clutching his stomach.

"The funny thing about ’ultimate darkness’," I said, crouching down and patting his cheek condescendingly, "is that it’s really not that impressive when someone turns on the lights.

Or, in this case, punches you really, really hard in the solar plexus."

I leaned in close, my voice a low, threatening purr.

"Now, you have two choices. You can surrender your Domain and your life to me, and live to write more terrible poetry under a new, less embarrassing name.

Or, I can have my friend here," I gestured to Chloe, who was now calmly sharpening one of her dark blades on a nearby fake gargoyle, "practice her vivisection skills on you. Your choice."

"I... I surrender!" he wheezed, tears streaming through his eyeliner. "Please don’t hurt me! My real name is Kevin!"

I stood up, a feeling of deep, profound, and slightly petty satisfaction washing over me. I had just conquered my first territory as a free man.

And I had a new, deeply embarrassing subordinate named Kevin.

World domination was going even better than I could have ever dreamed.