Plaze still couldn't get used to Hell being in the form of a modern city instead of a place of inferno and pitchforks. Though, considering what he's doing right now, he supposed he would be the one holding the pitchfork.

Plaze once saw in a research article that said that some hundred thousand people die each day. If even half of those were sent to hell, that meant that 50,000 would be sent to hell every day.

And, since that number doesn't decrease until extermination day where the angels quell the number of sinners, that's millions of people entering hell every year that Plaze could exploit for his own gain.

Of course, he doesn't have any benefits of signing on with him yet. He's not even an Overlord yet. However, he can still get some new idiots to make a bad deal with him to lend him some power, so that he can become Overlord.

Extending his antennae out of the top of his head, he searched Hell for "Just Entered Hell," causing a good deal of signals to appear.

Some of them were like words from before, erratic and hard to follow. The others were arrows, pointing him in the direction where a new sinner laid.

It seemed as though his singular soul was already putting in work. That was very good, and considering the noticeable jump in ease of following arrows rather than words, each single soul seemed to mean a significant boost in his power. At least, starting off.

It might end up leveling out later, but that's something for future Plaze to find out.

Either way, that soul he got from Mehira was definitely worth it. At least for now.

Following an arrow all the way to a new sinner, he finds a…

Plaze had to hold a laugh. The sinner he found was a doormat demon. He seemed to be freaking out that he was a flat object with only the bare minimum of an arm and a leg.

It looks like there were people less lucky than Plaze with their bodies. That gave Plaze a good feeling inside of him to see someone suffer worse.

Plaze put on his brightest smile and walked up to the new sinner, "Heya buddy! Just landed?"

"Wuh-wuh-wuh," The new sinner stammered, not used to using his mouth as he stumbled his way into looking at Plaze, "Who are you? Help me!"

Plaze gave a sympathetic look, "I'm afraid that this is your new form, don't worry, you're supposed to hate it."

Plaze could see the tears appear in the new sinner's eyes, "I-I don't want to be like this! Why- where am I?!"

"You're in Hell," Plaze said, shocking the new sinner, "So, what's your name, by the way? I'm Plaze."

"I'm in…" The new sinner laughed, "Hahaha! That's so stupid! Why am I here?! I-I- I'm Chalda…"

Chalda? That is barely an English name. Maybe he's from another country? But then why would he be speaking English?

Though, Chalda did have some sort of an accent…

Maybe Hell gave everyone a freebie, and everyone understands each other. That would make the most sense in Plaze's mind.

"Well, Chalda," Plaze put an arm around the doormat demon, "Why don't I help you? I can help you learn everything I know about Hell, all I need is your soul!"

"My what?" Chalda was briefly knocked out of his stupor, "My soul?"

"Equivalent exchange and all that," Plaze lied, "I know a lot about hell, so only your soul can pay for it. Don't worry though, it's not that bad."

"I…" Chalda hesitated, "Really?"

Plaze nodded and lied, "Yeah, my soul has been owned before, but it was temporary. Trust me, it's not that bad. Now, everything I know about Hell for your soul?"

Chalda fell for his trick of mentioning that a soul could be temporarily owned. Something which absolutely did not apply to Chalda's situation.

Chalda reached out for Plaze's hand, "I accept."

"Then it's a deal," Plaze shook Chalda's hand, causing a burst of energy to spring out from the both of them as the environment slightly shifted with green electricity, cogs, and controllers, signifying that Plaze had made a deal in his favor.

Instantly, information flowed into Chalda's brain as his soul went into Plaze's possession.

At that moment, with the information Chalda now knew, Chalda realized he was tricked.

Plaze smiled, "Anyways, I have other souls I need to take, so I'm going to bid you farewell. Good luck in hell, though!"

All Chalda could do was scream as the man who now permanently owned his soul left him forever.

Man, this was like taking candy from a baby.

Because, well, it literally was taking candy from babies. Except the candies were souls and the babies were full grown adults who just entered Hell with no idea what to do.

Each new sinner was always a fairly long distance away from each other, so in the past 3 hours, he was only able to get 7 new souls. However, that is a lot more than he thought he could get.

It was heavily boosted by his radar ability, which allowed him to find new souls very easily. In fact, the distance between new sinners was probably the reason why every new sinner wasn't immediately swarmed by Overlords the moment they spawned in. Without an ability to search for them specifically, they were kind of hard to find.

Speaking of, during this trip, Plaze discovered that the Pride Ring of Hell was massive. If Plaze had to guess, the Pride Ring was probably the size of a European country.

Plaze never went to Europe, and was barely even familiar with the countries of Europe, but that's what he guessed.

So, some 50,000 souls a day, all dropped every few minutes across the entirety of hell. That was actually harder to find and corner than Plaze initially gave credit for.

That also meant that his radar was an immense boon that allowed him to gain the souls of new sinners faster than anyone else.

And unless those new sinners die by angelic weaponry, nobody else could get their souls because Plaze owned them.

Plaze smiled as he walked by some other Overlord's territory named the "Fulster's Pyramid," which was a bit of Hell that was transformed into a desert. From what he heard from the residents here, it sounds like Fulster was an Egyptian Overlord who specialized in making sure things disappeared.

He was also pretty weak, because any Overlord can do that with relative ease. Fulster just allows for his services to be public. But since he owned territory, he was technically an Overlord.

They really do need a ranking system. It's kind of insulting to call Fulster an Overlord on the same level of, say, Hammer.

Plaze decided that such a weak Overlord's territory, far away from Hammer's territory, was a good testing ground for trying to use the souls in his arsenal to modify his body.

And by that, he just means he wants to be able to blink again.

Focusing his attention on his eyes, Plaze tries as hard as possible to make anything happen that would allow him to close his eyes.

But nothing happened.

Plaze clicked his metallic tongue in annoyance as he was unable to make anything happen.

Maybe he needed to work his way up into being able to transfigure his body.

With that in mind, Plaze lifted his hand. Maybe he could change the colors of his fingers to not be so… gay.

Trying to shift power into his fingers, a small flame erupts from his pointer finger.

Plaze did not scream. He absolutely did not. And if he did, it was most certainly not a girlish squeal of pure shock and surprise.

Either way, with a (panicked) wave of his hand, the flame was lifted off of Plaze's finger and harmlessly hit the sand below.

Plaze took a moment to catch his breath.

Okay, he can shoot fire out of his fingers.

The gay fingers can stay gay.

With that in mind, Plaze figures that he probably didn't have enough souls to actually change his body yet.

So, his goal for today was to gain enough souls to be able to close his eyes.

That should be possible, right?

"Mehira, you're brooding again,'' one of Mehira's coworkers, Kaitlyn, said as she was hauling a crate of drugs into a truck.

Mehira hummed, taking her sweet time answering her fellow succubus.

Plaze had some sort of tracking ability and it allowed him to track basically anything he could think of. That's interesting.

Very, very, interesting.

Mehira's entire business was built upon preying on new souls and taking advantage of their status as a new sinner who missed home. Yet, it was hard to find those kinds of souls. After all, hell is a big place. Even after almost two decades of doing this, she hasn't even reached a thousand souls under her belt. There were days and weeks where she just couldn't come across someone vulnerable.

And now, someone with the ability to just track those people down has come into her lap…

And she's practically squandered it with the soul deal she just made with him.

Mehira would hate to have her soul owned by someone else. She knows that Plaze is the type of person to hate such a thing as well. After all, Plaze was petty enough to, once denied once, declare himself an Overlord just to overthrow the person who denied him.

There's absolutely no chance that Mehira was going to be on Plaze's good side after he goes through what it feels to have his soul taken.

Mehira needed to change the deal before Plaze's soul was even touched by her. There was no option for her continued success if Plaze wasn't firmly on her side.

She won't have her dreams of becoming Overlord disappear so easily.

Mehira exited the truck. She was the driver, but she knows that the other succubi could handle themselves here on Earth.

"An… Emergency presented itself in Hell for me," Mehira explained as she opened a portal back to Hell, "I'll leave this one to you."

Another one of her coworkers, Safiya, scoffed, "You're still trying to become an Overlord? C'mon babe, it's not happening."

Mehira didn't even give her a response as she made her way to Plaze's location.

Someone is following Plaze.

Plaze has been a criminal for the past 2 decades of his life, he knows quite well the feeling of being followed. He can also tell that whoever is following him most definitely has malicious intentions for him.

In fact, it was probably the whole satellite and picking up new souls thing he was doing. After all, it probably was a bit suspicious to an outsider to find someone being able to consistently find new souls to scam into being his.

Speaking of which, 13 souls still can't close his goddamn eyes.

Maybe he should ask Mehira for more help. He really just wants to feel the sensation of sleep again…

The next new soul was quite a distance away, and Plaze was in a fairly populated area. While he wouldn't put it past a sinner to start a fight in the middle of a crowd, it equally wouldn't be surprising if he did.

So, Plaze turned around, facing a sinner that looked like a football player, but just very hairy.

Actually, he's pretty sure it's just called fur at that point. But he won't point it out just to be polite.

Plaze tilted his head at his follower, "So, who are you?"

The other guy chuckled, friendly introducing himself, "My name is Bull."

Oh, wow, a football player calling himself Bull, how surprising.

Bul continued, keeping his upbeat tone, "I've been seeing the way that you've been finding new guys and stealing their souls pretty easily. You have a special ability that lets you do that, right? I think you would make a great fit in my gang-"

"No," Plaze flatly interrupted, "I would not."

There wasn't any reason to let him continue his pointless dribble. Plaze was going to refuse it anyways. After all, only the top position would've satisfied him.

Bull's face immediately fell, becoming more akin to his origins, "You seem to think that was an offer."

Plaze sighed. He even talks like a stereotypical cartoon villain. Is this really how his first fight in Hell is going to go?

"I don't want to be stuck with people who'll be bottom feeders their entire lives," Plaze calmly explained, stretching his body to get ready to fight, "My apologies."

Bull stared at Plaze for a moment before shrugging, "Eh, that's fine. I'll just kill you instead."

Bull pulls out a fucking shotgun from his back, and Plaze is struck with the sense that he may have underestimated the level of technology down in hell.

Plaze knows how to fight against guns; Run the fuck away. So the moment he realized that Bull was holding a gun, he quickly ran towards the nearest crowd, pushing people behind him to take any bullets Bull might fire.

Which was immediately vindicated as Bull shouted out, "GET HIM, BOYS!" as he fired into the crowd.

Some of the sinners screamed and immediately got the hell out of there. Others were pissed that their day was being interrupted and immediately started fighting against Bull.

Which was when Bull's gang came out of the woodwork, beginning to fire into the crowd as well.

Meanwhile, Plaze was trying to find the nearest alleyway possible to make an escape from the area. However, whoever designed the buildings nearby deserved their spot in hell because there was no alleyway to speak of.

Plaze was, essentially, the fish in the barrel.

Bull's gang brought the guns, so they easily gunned down all of the sinners who were fighting back with no casualties. Which left Plaze alone in a singular street where he would be gunned down far too easily if he tried to run.

Luckily, Bull was sadistic enough to stop firing as soon as Plaze stopped running. He seemed to want to make it dramatic.

"Alright buddy," Bull grinned as he slowly made his way towards Plaze, "Any last words?"

Plaze felt a familiar presence nearby.

Plaze nearly sighed in relief as he asked, "Do you?"

"Those are terrible last-"

Bull didn't even get to finish his sentence as a bullet made its way into Bull's eye, killing him instantly.

One of Bull's subordinates avenged his master by firing at Plaze, managing to hit his arms as he was curling to defend himself. But the subordinates all also died to sniper fire.

Plaze snarled as he dealt with the pain of being shot. It was numbed, likely due to his new biology, but it still hurt like hell. Was the regeneration supposed to kick in now? The bullets made a full piercing, will he bleed out?

Those questions had to stop, however, as Mehira showed up next to him out of nowhere, carrying a sniper rifle.

"I hate guns," Mehira said without being prompted, "They make killing too easy, don't you think?"

Plaze clicked his tongue in frustration as he was still reeling from being shot, "Absolutely."

Mehira sighed, "Your wounds will heal on their own, since you're a sinner. Fair warning though, it's going to hurt. A lot."

Yeah, that's going to suck.

"I hate Hell," Plaze announced to nobody in particular, "Ugh, and I was on such a roll too…"

"How many souls did you get again?" Mehira questioned Plaze, completely ignoring his pain.

Plaze just accepted the fact that there was no empathy to be found in Hell as he answered, "13. I should've asked for more souls from you if getting souls was this easy…"

Mehira chuckled, putting the sniper rifle on her back, "Yeah, you should've. Speaking of our deal, I'm willing to drop the clause where I own your soul. I'm also willing to give you all 20 souls straight up, though I still want them back at the end of your 20 days."

Plaze paused, his mind computing what Mehira's words were.

"What?" Plaze looked suspiciously at Mehira, "You weren't this nice yesterday."

Seriously, he gave Mehira practically the best deal he could've given her, and suddenly she wants to give it up? She must've seen something in him today while she was spying on him…

Plaze makes the connection, "Is it my radar ability? And you want to stay on my good side to be able to use it?"

Mehira shamelessly nodded, "You're more useful than I gave you credit for initially. Having your soul be owned is a terrible feeling, and I don't need to foster that kind of hostility against me. Especially when you've been willing to work with me since we've met."

Right, so Mehira is just covering for herself here. She thinks he's going to be useful, so she wants to not piss him off so she can continue using him.

It's not as though Plaze is upset about it though. It's actually relieving to see that Mehira is smart enough to recognize basic human emotions, and can act accordingly. In fact, this is doing the exact thing Mehira wants, encouraging Plaze to continue working with her.

Plaze hummed, pleased about Mehira's decision, "Well, considering that it's still, what, the second day of our deal? No harm, no foul. I'll accept that. And considering how considerate you are, I'll gladly continue to work with you in the future. It's better to ally with smarter people than dumbasses, right?"

Mehira smiled as she held out her hand, "Good to see that you're not stupid either. It's a deal, then?"

Plaze nodded as he shook her hand, "It's a deal, then."

Unlike the deals he made with the newer sinners where it was Plaze's symbols lighting up the area, Mehira's symbols overpowered Plaze, as purple cauldrons, hands, skulls, and other typical witchcraft symbols lit up the area, signifying that Mehira was the primary beneficiary of the deal.

His body was sent into a shock as 18 more souls entered his body. He only had 11 of his own before, so he wasn't fully prepared to take it all on his own.

His body shakes as it tries to get used to the increased amount of power within him. It didn't hurt, but it was absolutely uncomfortable for the few seconds Plaze had to go through it.

Then, after it all ended, Plaze blinked.

Plaze blinked.

Plaze immediately shot up, "I blinked!"

Plaze closes his eyes, and-

No, that wasn't eyelids closing his eyes…

Plaze cautiously put his hand on his eyes as he opened and closed them.

Or, rather, turning them on and off.

His eyes were like a light, and he could turn them on and off. That was his version of blinking.

It was unnatural. It felt wrong. He absolutely hated it.

"I can see the look on your face," Mehira said, "You hate your body again?"

Plaze slowly stood up, "Yeah, it fucking sucks…"

Mehira rolled her eyes, flexing on the inflexibility of Plaze's eyes unintentionally, "Want to go grab something to eat? I have the money."

"I need a fucking job," Plaze practically ignored Mehira's words as he bemoaned his lack of income, "I'm poor as shit, smooching off of everyone else's money."

Mehira sighed, finally just deciding, "Here, I'll hook you up with something tomorrow. I know some smugglers, and that's your previous profession, right? Until then, I know a good sandwich place."

Sandwiches…

The only thing he's had since coming into Hell were fucking sandwiches.

As Plaze followed Mehira, accepting her offer to eat, Mehira asked, "By the way, what are your plans now that you found out that souls are a cheap resource to find for you?"

Plaze groaned as he spoke through the pain of the gunshot wounds and the pain of slowly regenerating, "Ugh, I'm going to just find Jessie's recommendation once I hit day 14 or something."

Roughly 2 weeks should be enough to gain, say, a hundred souls and a decent prototype of the console Plaze wants to debut with. That way, he won't look like an underprepared idiot when he walks up to Carmilla Carmine with the request to make him an Overlord.

Mehira knew it, so she began walking as she asked, "Oh? Who were you recommended?"

"Carmilla Carmine," Plaze answered.

Mehira was a bit surprised, "Carmilla Carmine? She's a bit far from where Sergeant Hammer is… But she's also big enough to be able to afford to have split territories. I suppose the hardest thing would be just getting a meeting face to face with her without getting shot immediately."

"Can't you come with me?" Plaze asked. It would be easier to have someone a bit more powerful on his side than to just go alone.

Mehira shook her head, "It'll look like I'm trying to set up a new Overlord from the shadows. It'll attract too much attention to me, and I'm still trying to stay on the down low. Which is why I don't have any territory."

Plaze sighed, "Ugh, fine. I'll go alone…"

This sandwich better be good. And the sandwich Overlord better be sleeping with one eye opened because Plaze wants literally anything other than a sandwich at this point.

AN:

It's going to be a running gag at this point lol.

I dunno why I'm noticing the prose being simple after a whole year of "I'm gonna ignore prose because I don't have the desire to improve, but the desire to write," but it's kind of bothering me. Curse you, eyes of mine.

The backlog is still at chapter 10, and to be honest, my writing speed has slown down in the past week, and I have to write 3 chapters for another fic within the month, and I have to finish out a 10-15k monster for another fic.

The backlog might get to chapter 11 or 12, but that's probably where the backlog will end and this will be updated whenever I have time for it.