"Hey, I was a scalper in life too you know," Plaze casually mentioned, holding up the neck of what his first game would likely categorize as a Petty Overlord, "Here's a bit of advice for you. See, scalping isn't illegal, after all, after you buy the product, it's yours."

Tightening his hold on the shrimp sinner, Plaze good-heartedly informed the defeated man, "But selling it under our name, thus making it look like we were raising prices for no good reason is bad, you know? It decreases our reputation, and I can't have that. I'm sure you understand."

He had gotten a report about someone masquerading as official Plaza employees, selling their products at marked up prices. Obviously, he wouldn't have really cared that much if they were just scalping, but the pretense of being from the Plaza ticked him off enough to deal with this personally.

The culprit was just another turf war Overlord. The ones who fight in the few sections of the pentagram that weren't currently owned by a bigger Overlord. It was usually because those empty areas attracted a lot of the fighters in Hell, so it kept them away from the actually productive parts of Pentagram City.

Bringing him closer, Plaze gave him an offer, "I have a small soft spot for my fellow scalpers. So all I need is for you to sign over your soul to mine, and you can keep doing what you were already doing."

The part of having a soft spot for scalpers was a lie, of course. As a scalper, he knew that it was really just a boring job of buying a whole bunch of things early, and selling them back right across the street when everything had sold out. It was nothing worth having any sympathy for.

But the Petty Overlord surprised Plaze as he stubbornly gasped out, "N…No…"

Ah yes. For the average Overlord, that was the end of the road for them. After all, you can't force somebody into a soul deal that they didn't accept. So nothing else could be done except call it quits and just kill the person denying you, or maybe offer something more to their liking.

However, "I have an angelic weapon. So will it be your life, or your pride?"

It was a simple choice, really. Plaze didn't even have his angelic weapon on him, but they both knew that he was with Carmine's faction currently, so it was obvious Plaze could have one.

What other choice could the defeated have made?

"...Okay."

Lightening the grasp on his neck, Plaze immediately used his free arm to shake one of his hands.

As the usual light show came to an end, Plaze was the new master of 100 souls. Putting him around 1,500 souls. Just in time for December 1st.

Though, given how the battle was likely going to end at the end of December, just so the extermination can come and go without interrupting anything, he might have enough time to get to 2,000 souls for the actual battle.

Dropping his new servant, Plaze turned around to leave the scene. There was nothing else to do here.

Mehira let Plaze drive her car back to his headquarters, which was currently in Carmilla's territory. He was going to move himself to where Hammer currently was in the northern side of the Pentagram after his takeover, but he wouldn't refuse Carmilla's help to house him somewhere.

Pentagram City was fairly large, so there was enough time to have a full conversation on the way back.

"So, I haven't figured out that whole making myself bigger and stronger thing," Plaze said with a low amount of concern in his voice, leaning back into the chair, trying to make his body more comfortable despite the giant slab he had in the upper chest, "Should I be worried about it, or is it not necessary?"

Personally, he wanted the ability just because it seemed like the dividing line between named Overlords and actual Overlords. On his VoxTech TV, he saw one of the three TV Overlords, Bendy, go into that full demonic transformation to clean up against the minions of another TV Overlord, whose name escaped Plaze's head. But it definitely wasn't Vox, so he knew it was the weakest of the three TV Overlords.

Seriously though, what was his name…

The name didn't come to him as Mehira answered his question, "It's not really necessary, especially in scenarios where angelic weapons might be in play. It makes you a bigger target, after all."

Thinning his lips, Plaze questioned, "Does Hammer have angelic weapons?"

Because while Plaze could survive the explosion of a tank blast if it wasn't a direct hit, he sure as hell wasn't surviving an angelic explosion if that was even possible.

To that, Mehira simply shrugged and gave her best answer, "No clue. While Hammer may have been an Overlord for 50 years at this point, she might not have bothered to get an angelic rifle from Carmine. She might have an angelic spear, though. It's better to ask Carmilla about it, though even then, there are ways to get angelic guns of inferior quality away from her gaze."

"So she does have one."

"She probably has one."

Plaze sighed. That was going to be a pain to deal with. He really didn't want to find out whether or not an angelic weapon could pierce through his considerable defense by now.

To attempt to comfort him, Mehira put her arm over his shoulder, "Don't feel too worried. I've yet to see an angelic explosion before, so it probably doesn't exist. Though, an angelic tank shell coming out of the barrel of Hammer's tank probably does. Just dodge that one."

"Wow, comforting words," Plaze deadpanned, still feeling mildly better at the chances of not seeing an angelic explosion launched directly at him.

Over the past few months where Plaze was slowly coming into his own element, his relationship was becoming less formal and "Mehira please help me." To becoming more of a casual thing.

He wasn't sure how that ended up happening. It seemed more like just the natural evolution of friendship, but hey, he'll put it under the "good things" cabinet in his head.

Mehira assuredly patted his back, "Don't worry, I'll just cover you with my angelic sniper rifle. Carmilla told us to not kill Hammer in the battle so we could make a public execution out of her, but an accident is fine, right?"

Apparently, in order to create distance between Carmilla and Plaze, she wanted him to be the one to take down Hammer in a one-on-one. How she expected Plaze to do that was currently beyond him, but hey, trust in the experienced Overlord.

Not only that, but because Hammer was generally just an annoyance to the average citizen in Hell, Carmilla wanted Hammer to be publicly executed by the extermination. Which was why the attack date was dated to be on the early morning of the 30th of December, as the extermination begins on December 31st.

Apparently, it was also because Hammer dying in such a public manner will warn others not to mess with Plaze… But he still thinks it's mostly because Hammer had a habit of being really loud and annoying and it ticked off Carmilla a lot.

So, Plaze shook his head, "No, just stick to the plan Carmilla gave us. Quite honestly, I'm more concerned by the possibility of her trying to replace me than Hammer beating me in a fight."

Personally, he didn't think it was a very high chance of happening, but it wasn't an impossibility that it might happen. This was still Hell, no matter how good the life Plaze was living right now.

"If that happens, an angelic weapon will tear through Carmilla's defense," Mehira said reassuringly, "There is a reason why angelic weapons are kept on a tight leash in Hell, after all. They're deadly to even the greatest of Overlords."

Thinning his lips, Plaze simply reminded her, "I know. You told me this."

His line clearly took the wind out of her sails as she crossed her arms and pouted, "Well of course. I was just saying…"

The one thing Plaze did learn about Mehira though, is that she sure did have an issue with over-explaining things he already knew. Though, he thinks that at this point she was trying to be a bit dramatic to fit her witch theme.

Though, he understands it somewhat. From what he knows about Mehira's status as a minor Overlord, she mainly preys on newer souls. So she has to explain a lot of things over and over again.

In fact, Plaze would probably just call it PTSD or something to make fun of her.

Either way, Plaze was the most successful of Mehira's attempts at trying to raise someone into a prominent position. If Mehira were a more shady person, then Plaze would probably be more worried about being stabbed in the back. But so far, Mehira has been very reasonable to him, so he wasn't too worried about it.

Besides, with him closing towards 2,000 souls, much of the advantage Mehira had over him was slowly fading away as the playing field became more even. Plaze has never heard Mehira's name come out of another sinner's mouth unprompted, so it was likely that whatever Mehira was doing, it was under the utmost secrecy and couldn't have been that big.

Mehira couldn't kill him either with any angelic weapon, simply because then she would quite literally just erase all of her progress she's made with him.

Since Plaze was pretty happy with where he's at with Mehira, there was no urgency on Mehira's end to try and do anything. This was a partnership that would likely last for the entirety of Plaze's reign.

But also to be entirely honest, Mehira was hot. 2 big and great reasons why Mehira was sticking around.

Plaze kicked himself out of his thoughts with a neutral shrug, "Eh, do what you want. I'm just messing with you."

"It wasn't that serious," Mehira waves it off easily, nonchalantly leaning back into her seat.

With that minor seal patched up, they began anew with Plaze asking, "By the way, I'm surprised I forgot to ask you this, but why a witch outfit?"

Incredibly subtly, Mehira's demeanor lightly closes off. With that, Plaze instantly knew to drop the topic, "Ah, if you don't want to share it, don't."

He has no idea how the reasoning behind wearing a witch's costume as her signature outfit was a sensitive spot for her. But he sure as hell is never mentioning it again.

"It's fine," Mehira unconvincingly said, lightly holding onto her witch's hat whose claw on the end of its tip reached out to her own hand, "I just inherited the hat. It was from… Someone."

How descriptive. But it looks like that's all he'll ever know because if Mehira is describing them as "someone" then he's fairly certain that he'll never hear of the story.

"I see," He answered as neutrally as possible, "Then… Well, we're here anyway."

Plaze wasn't quite sure who to thank for the little traffic and relatively quick car ride. Lucifer? Satan? The unnamed hero who works on building these roads toll free? Either way, that's one person that Plaze wasn't going to mess with during his time as Overlord.

Still, Plaze needed to save this conversation's ending, at the very least, so he mentions, "Alright, that topic pushed aside, ah, you're going to be in the lower rings for a few days, yeah? If there's an opportunity to buy a souvenir from down there, get me a plushie or something."

Gracefully accepting the change in conversation, Mehira asked for clarification, "Of what kind animal? There's a lot of plushies down in the Greed Ring. I wouldn't want to disappoint you by getting an animal you don't like."

"Get me a dragon," Plaze answered immediately, "Dragons are fucking awesome, and there's no way you guys don't have dragon plushies down in the Greed Ring."

"Do you want one that shoots fire?"

"Your plushies shoot fire?! Hell yeah I want that!"

A few days later, Plaze gets his fire spitting dragon plushie.

It promptly burns down a building not long after and it was one of Carmilla's buildings. He had to pay to rebuild it.

In his honest opinion, the fact that some buildings in HELL aren't fireproof is dumb as fuck, but hey, fire breathing dragon!

Of course it was absolutely worth it! The only thing that could've been better was if he found a real dragon in Hell that he could keep as a pet.

Once he gets through over to 1987, he's definitely going to figure out where he could find a dragon animal in Hell.

But first things first, he needs to figure out how the hell he was going to fight Hammer on equal standing despite their soul counts not being very close to each other.

So, it was time to do a little bit of research to see if there was something he could exploit.

AN:

A small announcement, after this chapter I'm not gonna upload anything until this Sgt. Hammer battle arc is concluded.

For 2 reasons, mostly.

One, it rebuilds some semblance of a backlog.

Two, it gives me an excuse to shift my attention to the various other minor WIPs I have that I wanted to finish or dig my teeth into.

Since the battle arc is likely only 3 or 4 chapters long, I expect to be back to uploading this sometime in October after I spend most of September writing for my other stuff.

But if I write the post-arc stuff and include it into this minor backlog building, I'll end up with 6 or 7 chapters to build up, which would put us into November.

Whichever path I take, I'll drop the finished chapters in my discord channel, though there probably won't be one until late September.

Anyways, point is, I'll see ya in a month while I go write other stuff.