"Behold my absolute power!" A bold declaration accompanied the release of a spell of apocalyptic, god-like power the likes of which the world hasn't seen for two hundred years.
The assembled soldiers in knightly full-plate armor could only shiver in terror and awe, even though the spell wasn't aimed at them- Rather, the wave of darkness that was released from the spell was aimed at the half-a-million strong army that was charging towards them.
The spell hit… And a hundred thousand men died.
And then the spell's true effect was unleashed.
"Applause for me! Applaud my supreme power!" A skeletal figure opened his arms and spoke with booming voice that overpowered the screams of dying soldiers and splattering sounds that came from the 'battlefield', or rather a slaughterfield where a group of towering, tentacled goat-sounding horrors splattered panicked, terrified and utterly broken formations of peasant-soldiers en masse.
The soldiers of Empire could only clap, slowly at first, and then at increasing fervor that was not born out of respect or joy, but terror and fear.
Ainz Ooal Gown laughed as he kept his arms open, looking at the slaughter that he had unleashed, the hundreds of thousands he'd slain in mere moments. "Hahahaha- ah."
The Emotion Suppression, a in-build ability of the Undead that forcibly regulated emotions, triggered and caused him to return to calmness. 'Six Black Goats! Six! I must be the first person to be able to summon six Goats with a single cast of [Iä, Shub-Niggurath]... Ahh, I'm so happy…'
'U-umu, I hope I didn't come across as too enthusiastic or cringy with that announcement… I was just too excited… E-embarrassing…' Ainz resisted the urge to cover his face with his hands as he realized how chuuni he had acted just now, and instead kept up his 'kingly' appearance by turning around with a swish of his cloak and heading back to his tent, from where he'd return to Nazarick with [Gate]- He had planned on going to loot the possible magic items from the battlefield but he figured that it'd be better to just send the Death Knights to scrounge up the items.
The decision was not at all affected by how embarrassed Ainz felt, or how much he wanted to be out of the public eye so that he could come to terms with his chuuni outburst.
The hundreds of thousands of dead humans, the countless families and ancestral lines broken, the famines that would result from the massed deaths of drafted peasants, and the hundreds of thousands of orphans that he had caused with the single spell didn't even register in Ainz's mind as his experiment with the Super-Tier Spell was successful.
"Mare, Aura, with me. We're done here."
"Amazing, Lord Ainz!"
"S-s-superb, Lord Ainz!"
"Umu."
And so ended the yearly tradition of light skirmishes between the Re-Estize Kingdom and Empire during the peak harvesting season- In a gigantic massacre beyond all sensible proportions.
[This is our protagonist, by the way]
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"...I am…" The shadowy creature lifted it's blade, wreathed in mana-flare and power.
"I- Impossible!" The kidnapper lifted his blade. "This has to be trick! No human can harness that sort of power- Unless… It's- You are one of Them!"
"...ATOMIC!"
The power released.
And in the capital city of Argaland Republic, north of Re-Estize Kingdom, night turned to day for a brief moment.
A flare of energy released as a blast of light that turned the very air to plasma, burning everything in it's radius to cinder and blasting the rest away to create a mile-wide crater at the heart of Argeland's capital, potentially killing hundreds of sleeping residents with a single blow… And definitely killing its target, a single man who had stood against the monster clad in midnight-black cloth and shadows that took a human form.
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A shadow-covered man stood on top of a tall building overlooking the crater that he had left with the release of his power. Or rather, with the release of a rather tiny shred of his true power.
"Hu… Kukukuku… Kuhaahaaha!" The shadowy figure leaned back and laughed with maniacal cheer, further amplified by the myriad of auras and magical effects that surrounded him and changed his voice. "Behold, for there is no limit to the power of the Eminence in Shadow!"
[This is our protagonist as well]
"Very good, master Shadow." A woman clapped politely behind him. "We have learned valuable information from the Enemy and his infiltration of Argeland. Rest assured, we shall purge the remaining bases soon."
The Shadow nodded his head and turned to watch the crater, where a red-headed captain lunged at a white-haired girl in prisoner rags, and the red-head almost hugged the soul out of the white-haired girl.
"Very good, Alpha. Proceed." The Shadow instructed the elf woman with brilliant blonde hair, black mask and tight midnight blue body-suit.
"For the Shadow Garden!" The elf bowed, causing her considerable breasts to jiggle a bit before she meld back to the shadows, leaving the Shadow to look at his handiwork like some sort of end-game boss- An image that the Shadow kept and cultivated with care not unlike that of a herbalist growing it's precious crop.
'Man, it's really cool that Alpha and the others play along with me and my whacky stories… They're really cool like that. Although, that whole 'great slumbering enemy' story I fed them was just something I made up on the spot to sound cool… I bet they figured it out that I was just yanking their chain but were kind enough to go along with me. They really are good girls…' The Shadow sighed with happiness internally. 'Moreover if I keep myself to slaughtering thugs and criminals then I can strengthen myself and test my abilities without pesky moral concerns or criminal allegations… Kukuku, it's a win-win situation…'
The Shadow, or rather, Cid Kagenou was just turning sixteen and was, truth to be told, he was a massive chuunibyou.
But he knew it. He was not just a regular chuunibyou.
He was Special Chuunibyou, because he actually had hidden secret powers while he just acted like a regular mob guy on the day-to-day so that no-one figured him out.
He had trained since childbirth (literally).
He was talented (technically)
He was intelligent (According to himself and the elves that he had saved from various 'bad end's)
He was magnificent (His mirror showed him so)
And most importantly: He could do magic.
Indeed, he had been just another average mob guy in Japan, until he realized he had a problem: If he wanted to become the Eminence in Shadow, he had to be strong.
He had trained his body. His mind. His reflexes.
He had boxed. He had trained jujitsu. Martial arts. Weapons. He had gotten Piano lessons (because what sort of Eminence would not be able to play the classics if the situation presented itself?!)
But nuclear weapons… He could not do anything about them.
No matter how hard he trained his body in Japan, he couldn't just punch a nuke and make it go away, or tank it if someone launched a nuke at him. After all, he was a human.
In other words, he had to… go even beyond!
And so… He had studied the forbidden texts, and had gained a huge concussion by repeatedly whacking his head against a rock in order to force it to think harder.
And he had realized the perfect solution: He needed magic. But since there was no magic in Japan- He had to go elsewhere.
The solution had been simple: He had jumped in front of a passing-by truck while wearing literally nothing.
…And the next moment he realized that he was a baby in some sort of late medieval world. But most importantly, he could do magic.
"Kuku… Kukukuku…" The Shadow covered his face with his hand for a moment before swinging his head back and tossed his hair back with his hand, in concert with his well-practiced 'The Shadow Realizes Something Grand#2' pose. "Everything is going perfectly."
[...Well, for now]
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Platinum Dragon Lord sweated a bit as the massive silver-coloured dragon looked through an ancient mirror-like relic, which showed the real-time image of his pet project.
And the current catastrophe that he had caused.
Although, luckily enough (or rather, fortunately enough) the dragon had been observing the happenings of the town and managed to shield the residents of the capital from the magical explosion by utilizing Wild Magic to generate a mana-shield around each of the living beings, even if doing so sapped his strength. '...Either way, that is not going to look good when the other Councilors hear about Cid's latest stunt…'
The boy was a pet project which the Platinum Dragon Lord had pulled through Wild Magic to the world some fifteen years ago- It had been nearly two hundred years since the last invasion by Players, and ever since the Incident, the 'Players' had been appearing in the world every two hundred years so he timed the pull so that the 'Weapon' would be prime age when the next wave came.
Platinum Dragon Lord knew that the nations of the world were ill-prepared for another Eight Greed Kings, or Twelve Demon Lords, or Six Calamity Angels, or any of the other 'Player' 'Guilds' that had come before.
They needed a champion- But it was clear that the local humans and other races were woefully underpowered compared to 'Players' and their magic. The only option, as far as Platinum Dragon Lord was concerned… was to either re-teach them Wild Magic (out of the question), or to try to fight the 'Players' with something of their own caliber.
Platinum Dragon Lord had thought that it would be easiest to pull a something from the aethermatic direction of the 'Players' into the body of a human baby, since such a pull would require the least amount of sacrifice, would guarantee that the proto-Player would have some attachment to the world due to spending childhood in it, and if the worst came to worst, a baby would be relatively easy to put down if something unfortunate happened.
Platinum had been watching over his investment from both afar via spells and from closer via golems, even if he had been forced to flee in order to avoid confrontation multiple times- Not that he'd lose, but he didn't want to come to blows with the kid that seemed to be trying to make enemies out of suspicious characters to test his strength.
Not that Platinum Dragon Lord had needed to interfere- It looked like the kid had almost intrinsic knowledge of the coming enemy, and was determined to form a cult inside Argaland to specifically prepare to fight them.
It had taken some convincing of the other Dragon Lords to allow such an organization to form without direct oversight from the Republic, but in the end all of them agreed as they knew the danger 'Players' posed to them and the world.
"Indeed… It looks like my choice was the correct one. Cid Kagerou… No, Your Eminence in Shadow, leader of Shadow Garden." The dragon nodded his snout a bit, and then turned his attention elsewhere- To south, where the Players had arrived. Or, where he assumed the Players had arrived, if the news of the sudden surge of powerful undead was anything to go by '...Cid. I hope you'll win. For all of us.'
[This is our villain]
"Hey! I resent that, shitty author!"
