Mehira leads Plaze to a fairly isolated street. Plaze was a bit surprised there were still places in Hell that would let you be alone, considering that the human population who died and was sent to hell must've been massive.

But considering angels come down to kill some 10% of the population every year, Plaze supposed that it makes sense that Hell would have some blind spots.

Mehira stopped and turned around, "Alright, this is a decent spot. All the cameras here are dead."

Plaze looked warily at the cameras on the walls. They still had their red blinkers on, "Are you sure? That doesn't look dead."

Mehira rolled her eyes, "If it helps you sleep at night…"

Mehira snaps her fingers, and all of the cameras nearby fall to the floor, their necks being cut.

Plaze asked, "Alright, how did you do that?"

"A magical spell I made," Mehira said, "We hellborn demons have a more versatile kit than sinners. That spell in particular just cuts through identical inanimate objects. So, I cut one neck of a camera, it cuts all cameras nearby."

Plaze warily looked at Mehira. That spell sounded disastrous if it were to activate on his consoles. Could anyone use that spell?

Mehira saw the look on Plaze's face and assured him, "Don't worry. Most hellborn can't replicate something like that. I could only do it because I have hundreds of souls at my beck and call, and I'm very talented in using souls."

"What about the some hellborn that can do that?" Plaze asked, "Will I ever end up in conflict with them?"

"The only relevant hellborn are the 7 Deadly Sins and the 72 Ars Goetia," Mehira explained, "The 7 Deadly Sins are all busy ruling over the 7 rings, and the Ars Goetia have better things to do than to meddle in petty Overlord politics."

So basically, they were ants in comparison. And elephants had no need to step on ants to prove their strength.

Well, wasn't that just comforting.

Plaze sighed, "Fine. What are the chances I get to learn magical spells?"

Mehira looked at him for a moment before responding, "Very little. Most sinners are stuck to using things that are relevant to how they appear. For minor sinners, these are the one or two unique things that they have about them. For Overlords, if you have a fairly human-like appearance like, say, Carmilla Carmine, you won't have much to develop. Though other human-like sinners like Alastor are lucky and get additional benefits, as Alastor is intertwined with the radio and some random eldritch tentacles nobody is quite sure how he has."

Plaze hummed as he digested the information, "So, someone like, say, Vox, would have a bunch of electrical manipulation stuff and be able to control TVs?"

Mehira nods, "Exactly. For you? You have that odd radio thing on top of your head-"

"It's a weird looking satellite dish," Plaze clarifies.

"Never seen or heard one before," Mehira said, unbothered, "And you do look like an action figure. Perhaps you'll be able to imitate the things you create in your games."

Then, Mehira seemed to remember something, "Ah, that reminds me. Sinners often take on traits from their previous life, which influence how they look. Though, not for the better, obviously. Would you like to confess why exactly you have an ability to look for things with precision?"

Plaze shrugged, "Beats me. I'm just a scalper and drug dealer. I guess the satellite thing is because I was pretty good at deciphering codes and all of the weird shit that people told me to tell me they wanted to buy my stuff? And I was also pretty good at finding people whenever my bosses told me to go look for people."

Mehira amusedly looked at the eye on top of his head which made up his satellite dish, "I see. You must've been quite good at it if it manifested in your body. Though, I have to say, you do look quite silly with it."

And there goes Plaze's good mood.

Plaze sported a deep frown as he bitterly said, "Shut up. Do you want me to fight you?"

Mehira raised her hands in surrender, "I was just pushing your buttons to see what ticked you off, just so we both know. It would be awful for you to find out that you hate to be made fun of because of how you look in the middle of a fight instead of with me right here."

Mehira was technically correct. Plaze wasn't actually sure that he hated to be made fun of for his looks until now. And yes, it was better to find out now than in the middle of an important fight.

But it still sucks to hear.

Plaze crossed his arms and grumbled, "Tch, fine. I'll make note of that. Just teach me how to fight…"

Mehira got into a fighting position, "Alright then, why don't you try to take me down? It'll let me know how competent you are."

Plaze was absolutely not prepared for this.

Plaze, flat on the ground after a solid 2 hours of practicing fighting, announced to Mehira, "I don't think I'm made for this, Mehira."

Mehira was barely uninjured as she agreed, "After 2 hours, most people would have some understanding of this, however… Yeah, you're better off getting other people to fight for you."

It was as though Plaze's brain was physically telling him that he didn't have the talent to fight. No matter how Mehira tried to tell him how to take a punch, throw a bunch, dodge, his body just wouldn't move like he wanted to.

Plaze blames it on his body. From the past 2 hours, they learnt that Plaze was very durable. That was probably where all his fighting talent went.

It was actually genuinely surprising how easily Plaze learnt all of the minor technical details involved in creating video games and consoles, and how hard it was for him to learn basic fighting.

Plaze groaned as he decided, "I'm just gonna overpower my enemies just by being physically stronger."

Mehira sighed, "You probably won't be as physically strong as you want to be. That being said, with this amount of incompetency in fighting, you might be more gifted in the abilities you have. Especially considering your body."

"What abilities can I even get?" Plaze asked, "Do I come up with them on my own or do I just wake up with them one day?"

"You usually wake up with them one day," Mehira said, helping Plaze off the floor, "Though, you usually have to put effort into thinking of what abilities you could use, after which you wake up with them one day."

"Is that the same for you?" Plaze asked.

Mehira shook her head, "No, I can make spells because I'm different."

Ah, right. Mehira is just "naturally talented" at using human souls. Maybe it was something innate from being a hellborn demon, but Plaze's only reference was Mehira, so he had no idea if everyone born in hell was as good as Mehira.

Plaze wanted an easy path to learning how to fight, but it seems as though his journey was going to be tougher than most, considering he's in the bottom 50% of fighters.

So, he's just going to focus on gaining souls, and using them to fuel his raw power and gain new abilities that could hopefully help him in a fight.

Plaze sighed as he told Mehira, "I'm gonna go create more games. Maybe make something of my own design. We're aiming to release the console in October."

Mehira shrugged, not caring about the details of his company, "Good for you. Just make sure you keep your souls to at least 100. The souls are almost back in my hand, and you still need to introduce me to Carmilla Carmine."

"Yeah, of course. I'll bring you with me whenever I make a visit to the factories where my consoles are being made," Plaze agreed, "But I'll probably spend the rest of my day-"

Plaze looked up.

It was basically night.

Plaze clicked his tongue as he corrected, "I'll spend the rest of the night gaining souls. I have enough money from my job to buy a day's worth of food. So I'll probably just quit and hope that I get enough sales from my console to replace my job."

He didn't like spending 12 hours carrying around junk anyways. And from the looks of it, Mehira didn't care that she hooked him up with a job that didn't even last a full week.

"There is no such thing as long term employment in Hell," Mehira casually said, "They won't mind if you stopped appearing one day."

Yeah, that tracks.

"Alright, see you, then," Plaze said, leaving the area.

Mehira took no issue with this as she simply reminded, "Don't forget to work on your fighting."

Plaze frowned, "Yeah, yeah…"

Anyhow, after a few days of just gaining more souls to fuel his power, it will be time to recreate (steal) games he had stored in his memory!

Plaze ended up creating 8 more games out of memory, and made 1 game on his own.

The list of stolen games were all the most simple games that were basically just arcade games ported to the console so you could play it at home. However, Plaze did make a copy of the Legend of Zelda, which was released a week before Plaze died, and Plaze played to completion a day before he died.

And his very first Plaze patented original game, Overlord Tycoon!

Being an Overlord was hard, and no doubt there were thousands, perhaps even millions of sinners in Hell that wanted to become an Overlord, but can't.

That was a prime audience to sell the delusion of becoming an Overlord themselves!

While watching TV while doing his tinkering, Plaze saw a TV documentary on how Vox became an Overlord. There was no genuine useful information in it, of course. But Plaze did have an inkling of envy that Vox was an Overlord already, and he wasn't.

So, Plaze made a game based on becoming an Overlord. A tycoon game. They weren't very popular back home, nor were they actually that fun to play through. However, it was the perfect format to get someone locked in a room for a year as they played his game trying to get the highest score possible.

And because Plaze was so nice (And very proud of his original work) every PES would come with a free copy of Overlord Tycoon.

And with that, the PES would be sold at $199.99, making its debut on September 27th, 1986.

Games sold separately at $45, of course.

AN:

Next chapter is kind of an interlude chapter where the chapter is a game of Overlord Tycoon being played for the first time.

Then some reactions of that.

Very excited for it, and that type of chapter will probably repeat itself as Plaze releases new games.

[Also, the real NES made its nationwide debut on the same day that the PES released. There's also a considerable half a month timeskip involved, so Plaze will be decently more powerful the next time we see him in chapter 11.]

Written 6/4/2024

[Yeah next chapter is when we run out of backlog. Luckily, I just finished all my other writing duties so I think I can make a miracle happen for this.]

[Rereading this chapter, sentence variation or whatever goes to die but oh well at this point that's just my style.]