After 2 months of the Plaza Entertainment System being out, their customers were beginning to demand for more games to play. After all, though the Plaza's selection of games were good and many of them were very replayable, people wanted something new.
So, on November 30th, The Plaza announced that they would be releasing a new lineup of games on December 1st. And with that, came a new flagship game, as they called it. Essentially the game that gets the most attention every time they announce a batch of games coming out.
Denarius, a vampire sinner, had recently gotten his hands on a PES and played through Overlord Tycoon. He heard from his fellow co-workers that the Plaza's flagship games would be $30 instead of the regular $45 in order to drive up sales. And since Denarius was already in debt from gambling, the extra $15 he would save from just buying flagship games would be pretty handy for him.
Well, some would say that $15 isn't that much to save when he's already $400 in debt… But hey, it'll probably be fine. After all, what's a drop of water in the ocean?
And so, one irresponsible purchase later, Denarius ended up with a copy of Herta's Space Station. From the cover, it looks like that this was one of the first games that wasn't made only from Plaze himself.
Though, why would Herta name the game after herself? That was a bit odd.
At the very least, the cover art was very hot as there were two women on it, one of them being probably Herta herself and some angelic woman.
Either way, if Plaze thought it was good enough to be his flagship game this cycle, then he would trust that it was a good game.
From the back of the case, it sounded like a puzzle game. He has no idea what a puzzle game would look like, but he was willing to give it a try.
Booting up Herta's Space Station on his DreamScreen TV, a few title flashes appeared on the screen. First was the stylized purple title, "HERTA'S SPACE STATION," then the bold green text of, "THE PLAZA," and finally, "CREATED BY HERTA. DIRECTED BY PLAZE, THE GAMING OVERLORD."
Denarius thought that having it mention Plaze made him look a bit insecure. But Denarius didn't really care about it for much longer as the game started.
The game started out in a sci-fi-esque room, simply facing the door with a small table and chair in the center.
A simplified version of Herta suddenly appeared on screen, sitting in the chair, her voice coming out of the screen, "Hm? Oh, you're the new worker, huh? Welcome to my space station."
Her face was blank, likely due to it not having any other sprites, but she continued onward, "Don't bother giving me your name, I don't need it. Anyhow, you're here because I've been stolen from. My collection of items and artifacts I spent my entire life collecting, what I call curios, were all taken away from me! Well, not all of them, but you get the point."
A portrait of someone appears on the screen. To Denarius it looked like a young female human angel. Though, not an exterminator.
"Here's our culprit, some angel brat from Heaven named Memoria, decided she could walk in here and take what she wants," Herta coldly said, obviously not very happy about the whole situation, "Obviously, she doesn't think that us sinners can go into Heaven, but I've got a little trick for that."
The portrait for Memoria disappeared as a golden key appeared on screen, "Last extermination, an exterminator dropped something and I got my hands on one of these. A little handy object that'll allow us to create a portal to heaven."
Denarius was fairly confident in saying that such a convenient object didn't actually exist. But he never actually tried to go and collect things after an extermination so, who knows, maybe it was a real thing.
Either way, Denarius thinks he knew what was coming next.
Lightly chuckling, Herta enjoys what she has to say next, "So, I'm having you infiltrate heaven to get my curios back. How about it?"
Denarius thinks he's going to enjoy this game. No self-respecting sinner would ever turn down a power fantasy about outsmarting the angels in heaven.
Smiling, Denarius eagerly pressed the "Yes" option when it came up.
The early game had the simplest puzzles, obviously. But now that Denarius progressed through to what he would assume to be the middle part of the game, he was struggling.
The issue was that all of the puzzles were mostly entirely different from each other. The very first puzzle in the game was finding the missing parts of a picture and putting them together. But halfway through the game, Denarius now needed to start deciphering actual codes to create a word.
Fortunately, Herta, the game developer, was nice enough to implement a fail-safe in case people like Denarius couldn't solve any of the puzzles. Denarius could trade in a curio for hints, but his score at the end of the level and game would be lower.
Unfortunately, Denarius, the idiot, really wanted to maximize his score, and so he didn't take any of those opportunities.
So, he pulled out the best thing he could. A page of paper and a pencil, and got to work decoding.
The clues he was given were somewhat simple. All he really needed to do was convert numbers into letters. But then the formula for what numbers go where were dependent on some math.
Denarius's one good subject in school was math, luckily, so he was confident he would get it easily. Though it wasn't really necessary as all it took was some simple addition and subtraction plus some basic problem solving.
That being said, it still took a solid 3 minutes of writing everything down for him to finally figure out the code. Mostly because the code was a full sentence.
Anyhow, the code was as follows, "Let Heaven's Glow Last For Eternity."
A very egotistical code, but Denarius couldn't imagine Heaven being not arrogant in some regards. Plus, it was also just a cool code.
Unlocking the safe, Denarius gained his 17th curio out of 28.
This one was called the "Galactic Baseball Bat."
The little description to go along with it was "This was a baseball bat Herta obtained from winning a bet against an Overlord. There's nothing very special about it."
Having all of the curios be named and getting a small description to go along with them was a very good idea, in Denarius's opinion. In fact, it might be half the reason why he didn't quit on the first hard level he got to.
Personally, his favorite curio was the "Cup of God's Blood," because the idea of God being able to bleed was very cool to him. Plus, he's a vampire sinner.
And then the funniest curio was without a doubt the "Lucifer's Toenail."
It's literally just his toenail. But considering that Lucifer is, you know, LUCIFER, he fully understands why that's considered a curio.
Shame that there's a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen whenever any curio pops up that they're all just fictional items.
Hm, maybe there'll be toys of the curios at some point…
Either way, Denarius exited the level and continued on to the next puzzle. There were still 11 more levels to go, after all!
Laughing goodheartedly, Zilla replied to Hammer, "Hahaha! Sure! I can help you fend off Carmine for a while! Don't expect me to win, though!"
While Hammer may have rudely called her while she was watching one of her matches, Zilla has been good friends with Hammer since they first met each other. So, of course, Zilla wasn't that miffed when her attention was taken off the field.
Besides, it looks like Lucifer's Sluts were going to win this round against the Pentagram Warriors. It was a slight upset, but not by much. The Pentagram Warriors weren't having a very good football season at the moment.
Either way, Zilla had to rebuild her arenas so often that she was both a Sports Overlord and a Construction Overlord. So Hammer was one of her most valued customers because she usually blows stuff up and they can get money from rebuilding it all.
Of course, Hammer was the most valued customer for basically every construction company in the Pentagram, but that's beside the point.
Hammer's opponent was Carmilla Carmine, but Hammer didn't really have the capabilities to actually fight her. So, she wanted Zilla to handle Carmine for her.
While Zilla was very strong, she wasn't actually sure she could beat Carmilla in a one-on-one. Even so, she was friends with Carmilla too. So Zilla was fairly confident in saying that Carmilla wouldn't kill her.
So, Sergeant Hammer breathed a sigh of relief from the other sigh of the phone, "Oh! Thank ya, Zilla! I would be a goner without you!"
Slightly chuckling, Zilla turned her sight to the match again. Looks like the Pentagram Warriors were staging a comeback.
Humming, Zilla told Hammer, "Hey, I'll be there! But I gotta go now. Good hearing from you!"
"Alright, see you later!" Hammer said as she hung up the phone.
A long silence permeated the private booth, leading all the way to the end until the Pentagram Warriors handedly won their match against the opposing team.
One of Zilla's workers who was in the room with her questioned, "Ma'am, are we going to war for Hammer?"
Zilla sighed, picking up a letter she received from Vox, waving it to show it off, "Nah, Hammer is done for. I'm better off planning for her funeral. I'll go alone to make it look like I care."
While Zilla would be sad for a few days, she's lost friends before. Hammer won't be any different.
Sitting on his couch holding a newspaper, one of the many Construction Overlords in Pentagram city, Castello, held a deep frown as he read the headline.
"SERGEANT HAMMER TO GO TO WAR WITH CARMILLA CARMINE ON DECEMBER 30TH!"
The Golem Sinner calmly deliberated what his course of action should be. Straightening his beige suit as he asked his aids, "Gentlemen, it appears our largest partner is nearing her end. How are the projections faring if she falls?"
Another sharply dressed sinner, a toy robot, read off a report, "Hammer currently makes up 19% of our yearly revenue, sir. If we were to include parts of Pentagram City that she destroys but other people pay us to fix, it would be closer to 45%, sir."
A catastrophic overreliance. Castello would've loved to not be in this position, but there were multiple construction companies in Hell, much less construction Overlords. It was a very competitive market and Hammer just so happened to be the biggest customer.
Castello knows that there are other construction Overlords who basically cannot function without the money from Hammer. Some of them have up to 80% of their entire existence owed to the Tank Overlord.
So, Castello was doing just fine in comparison. However, Hammer was still a very valuable asset to his company.
So the question was, should he intervene?
Castello wasn't a very strong Overlord, only having close to 1,500 souls. Still, it put him comfortably in the "Respectable" zone. Even so, he was still easily pushed around by bigger Overlords and Hammer wasn't much different.
But at the very least, Hammer boosted his business. The Overlord looking to take over Hammer's place, Plaze, was not.
Destruction aided the construction industry and Plaze was anything but destructive. Over the past month, he's been taking down minor gang leaders and petty Overlords, gaining hundreds of souls in the process. And due to his power being electricity based, there wasn't much destruction caused in that process.
A Hell without destruction would not be beneficial to Castello.
His decision was made. Standing up, he announced his decision to his inner circle.
"We will be aiding Hammer in her war against Carmine and Plaze."
It was a gamble, as Castello knew he wouldn't be of much aid to Hammer. However, whether it will pay off or not was completely out of Castello's hand.
But as they say, when the risks are higher than ever, the rewards will be even better.
Looking at the sales, Plaze had to admit that Herta's Space Station did much better than expected. Even with the lackluster title and what Plaze believed to be rather unfun gameplay, it still netted an impressive amount of sales.
24,000 copies were sold, netting a good $720,000. Add on about $300,000 from the other games, and that's a million dollars.
Of course, about half of that goes to Carmine so they're left with $500,000. Plus, he has to pay his employees so… $400,000. And then he has to pay all of the other expenses so that would be, say, $250,000.
Damn, he really should just consider paying his employees less. Or start not paying people.
Plaze turned his sight to Mehira, who popped in not that long ago, to ask her a simple question, "So, another month to go until we fight Hammer, yeah? How are you feeling about it?"
Personally, Plaze wasn't too worried. He was sitting at about 1,000 souls at the moment, a major milestone. Even if it passed by without him even noticing it for a while.
Sitting on his desk, what Plaze figured to be a natural instinct of succubi to show off their legs, Mehira leaned backward to have her head be level with his, "Oh, I'm just fine. I'm more concerned for you, who doesn't have even nearly enough souls to take on Hammer. She has around 5,000, you know?"
Slightly frowning, Plaze chewed on her words before responding.
It was right that, if Plaze were to guess that one soul is still equal to one soul, that Hammer would be five times stronger than he was currently. However, Plaze was yet to fully experiment with his abilities just yet. After all, he hit 1,000 souls, that should be a major achievement. And he hasn't really been pushed to his limits just yet, so his growth has been stunted.
Heck, he hasn't even gotten his "Full demon form" that everyone likes to talk about yet. And his only special abilities are his radar and electricity, despite conventional wisdom saying that he was more likely to be more magically attuned than physically.
He has a month left. If he can just master what he has now, he should be able to give Hammer a good fight. And if not that, then his durability will stall for time.
So, Plaze responded, "In a month, I'll figure out the rest of what I can do. Then I'll have maybe another 500 souls under my control. I'm confident I have enough in my toolkit to fight an opponent five times my power."
Mehira looked a bit surprised as she tilted her neck, curiously saying, "You're actually confident in that assessment. That sure is something. You do know stronger Overlords than you thought the same thing and lost everything for it, right?"
Lightly pushing Mehira back so she didn't fall completely flat on her back, and also to get Mehira's witch-claw-hat out of his face, Plaze reassured her, "Well, they weren't me, were they?"
All Mehira did was lightly laugh, as if she found his confidence amusing.
And finding that a bit insulting, Plaze asked, "What, am I wrong for believing in myself?"
Actually sitting in the chair in front of him, as his office was built to accommodate, Mehira shook her head, "Oh, no. Of course not. I'm just very interested in seeing if that confidence will be well placed or not," Somehow getting a fully filled cup from somewhere, Mehira toasted to herself, "But that's enough business for today, yes? Why don't we talk about something more pointless?"
Mentally checking his schedule, nothing important was happening today, so…
Plaze leans back in his chair, "Sure, why not? Have any interesting gossip from the lower rings?"
Lightly tapping her chin, Mehira thought of something, "Hm… Ah, I hear that Asmodeus, the Sin of Lust, is clamping down on roofies."
"...Really?" Somehow, Plaze didn't believe that. He's heard all of the 7 Sins of Hell in passing, and they sound as though they're the embodiment of their sin. So, lust not being lusty?
Shrugging, Mehira answered, "Asmodeus is more forgiving and benevolent than most would expect. And he's quite protective of the members of his own ring."
Well, Plaze wasn't expecting that. And that sure was pointless because Plaze probably won't ever get to use that information in any useful scenario.
Thinking of his own useless gossip, Plaze said, "Hm… Well, moving to my own thing, I heard that there's a group named the Scholars of The First Sin, and I thought that was a really cool name. I heard they're a bunch of historians so they're not that important, but do you know anything about them?"
With an affirmative nod, Mehira said, "Ah, the scholars. They're a bit of an eccentric bunch of historians who want to record all of the history in Hell. They're really harmless, but if you need to know about any of the history in Hell, they're your best bet. Granted, they're a bit weaker today because they accidentally got mixed up in the Scramble for Hell, but most of the important bits of information weren't lost."
Yeah, that makes sense.
"...Say, would it be mean to suggest to make stuff up about ourselves to make them record false information?" Plaze blurted out his inner thoughts, not able to hold it in.
Simply smiling, she replied, "There's actually a group called the Enigmata whose sole purpose is to make fun of the Scholars by making fake history and purposely obfuscating what actually happens in Hell."
"Pfft," Plaze couldn't stop the grin on his face from forming, "That's so funny."
Snapping her fingers, Mehira readily agreed, "I know, right?! They get so angry about it too!"
And that was the moment they both collectively realized that they both liked seeing people in worse positions than they're in.
Bonus Story (Non-Canon)
3 Year Anniversary.
Looking at the random bit of paper that suddenly appeared in his hand, Plaze read through the words on the page.
"Dear Plaze, I, the Writer of Liberation, Skryb, formally invite you to my 3rd birthday?" He confusedly repeated, not knowing who the hell Skryb was.
But his 3rd birthday… Do sinners start from age 0 when they fall into Hell? Maybe that's another question he should ask Mehira.
Looking back at the invitation, apparently, the time to come along was…
Right now?
Quite literally not even a second later, Plaze was no longer in his office in Hell, but rather…
Another very corporate looking office. But bigger.
Looking to his right, he saw Mehira standing next to him.
They both replied at the same time.
"I have no idea what's happening."
"Don't ask me."
They found some solace in the fact that neither of them have any idea what's going on. But they're also mildly panicked about the fact that neither of them are appropriately panicked at what's going on.
"Ah, the new unfortunates," A male voice called out from their left.
Sitting at a table were two beings. One, a dark-red with gray and emerald accented birdman. And another, quite literally just a gray slime.
It was basically indecipherable to the two of them who actually called out to them.
That being said, there were two free seats at that table, so Plaze and Mehira casually walked over there anyway.
As they sat down, the birdman greeted them, "Hello, you two. I can see that you're not quite the regular players from our corporation, yes? You must've been marked early."
Crossing his arms, Plaze flatly responded, "Yeah, we have no idea what that means."
The slime suddenly started vibrating, letting out a chuckle, "Heheh, it basically means you're one of us. But you don't know it yet. The emotion you should feel right now is terror or depression. It's not that great here."
"And who are you two again?" Mehira asked an actually important question. Plaze would like to know their names as well.
"Oh! My name is Doviro!" The slime introduced himself, sending a tentacle to put on the birdman's shoulder, "And this is Moroes! Nice to meet the fellow gamers!"
Plaze was about to question what Doviro meant by that, but he was cut off.
Moroes sighed, "They are not yet at that level. And either way, not every being in our verse has a system."
Somehow managing to look inquisitive despite being just a blob of slime, Doviro asked, "Ah, but they have the misfortune of being born in our universe though, right?"
"That is true," He conceded, as he looked to the two Overlords, "My apologies."
Shifting in his seat, Plaze suspiciously asked, "Why are you apologizing for us existing?"
Putting a hand on her cheek, Mehira answered the question for them, "Ah, That Skryb fellow isn't the greatest person to be around then."
"That is the gist of it," Moroes agreed, conjuring four cups of their preferred drink out of nowhere, "But it's not that important. We're stuck here for a few hours as we celebrate some inane anniversary that never falls on the same day. Let us enjoy ourselves, hm?"
They all slowly toasted, as they engaged in conversation with Fair and Balanced Incorporated.
And by the end of it all, they decided that Moroes and Doviro were right when they said that they had gotten unlucky with what universe they were born in.
AN:
This chapter is to be published on my 3 year anniversary of fic writing, which is why that bonus story is there at the bottom.
I doubt any of you know who Moroes or Doviro are, but I do, and all I write is self-indulgence.
Ah, but the fics where they're the MCs in are Aura Liberation Gamer and Replacement / PvP Shorts: Glump (Evil).
I would not recommend reading any of those aside from maybe the PvP short since it's a one-shot. Beloved old works of mine, but still old.
Anyhow, we'll circle back to Plaze figuring out how to not get his ass kicked next chapter.
Will it actually be on Saturday? Probably not, honestly. So expect no uploads on Saturday. Probably a better shot the week after, though.
If you would like to complain about my procrastination that led me to having to write 5 chapters in 6 days, thus leaving them all undercooked, feel free to leave a comment about it.