There was one other theory aside from being part of some prank with way too much effort put into it. Going by the satanic aesthetic of the room, I could have been abducted by some lunatic cultists about to be used in a ritual sacrifice like in horror movies. I wasn’t sure how that could happen considering I was seemingly teleported there without realizing it, but maybe I was drugged and losing time was one of the drug’s effects.
That meant I might be up against either horror movie cultists or elites and politicians behind a sex cult.
The latter was the more realistic option between the two of them.
I would have preferred horror movie cultists. They were less evil.
The only door to the room then opened up in front of me, revealing a pale woman in a business suit… with patches of scales on her skin, a ruby embedded in her forehead, and four horns sticking out from the sides of her head.
“A-ah! You’re awake!” the girl said, looking more surprised at me than I was at her. “Um, hello! I—I… oh, I didn’t think you would be awake. They told me to check on you and now I feel like I’m making a bad first impression and… okay. Wait. Let’s start over. Pretend you didn’t hear anything I just said, please.” She gave her face a couple of soft slaps before clearing her throat. “Good morning! I am glad to see that you are—”
She coughed, following it up with an expression of looking dead inside as she dropped the clipboard she was holding.
If she was the one who abducted me, she was the least intimidating kidnapper in history. I actually felt bad for her. That was why I asked her, “Want to try again? Third time’s the charm.”
The woman looked ready to cry and I didn’t know if it was because of embarrassment or relief.
It took a few minutes before she was ready to try again. But first, she looked at me with a proud smile and nodded. “Alright! I wrote down a script to follow. I won’t mess up this time.”
I took it upon myself to look and walk around the room while waiting for her. I doubted somebody like her could be any real danger, and she gave me the same vibe as a new employee at work on her first day trying her hardest, so I didn’t have it in me to try and escape even if she was part of a politician’s sex cult that drugged and kidnapped me. “Take it slow this time. Here, let me get back on the slab first so it’s more authentic.”
“Thank you!”
I nodded and hopped back up onto the slab.
The woman got started as soon as I was in position. “Good morning, mortal! I am glad to see that you are awake and in one piece. The summoning ritual was a success! Now, I am sure,” she paused for a moment to find her place on the clipboard after losing it, “that you have many questions, and I will be glad to answer them. Wait for questions after this… ah, I wasn’t supposed to say that part.”
I hit her with a question before she could beat herself up over that last mistake. “Are you a cultist or a politician?”
“Ah… er… ex-excuse me? I am neither? I am only an assistant to Sarazia, thirty-fourth daughter of our Dark Lord, Lucifer.”
“An assistant? So then you’re working for somebody. A Hollywood producer? A senator? A social media CEO?”
“Um… I… I’m not sure how I am supposed to answer that. Sarazia is the thirty-fourth daughter of our Dark Lord, Lucifer, as I said before. That is all she is, and I am her assistant.”
“If this Lucifer guy has thirty-four daughters then I’m guessing this is some sort of sex cult. Let me guess, rich old guy living in a compound in the middle of nowhere with fifty different wives, half of which don’t look as old as they claim to be?”
“Not… not quite. Lucifer is the Dark Lord who rules over the ascended realm of Hell. And he does not take wives.”
“That must be a lot of child support he’s paying.”
The woman raised a hand over her mouth to hide a small laugh before shaking her head. “It does not work that way.”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s your name?”
“Ah, my name? It—it doesn’t matter.”
“You said you’d be glad to answer my questions. I just asked you a question. What’s your name?”
“That… that is true. Alright. My name is Ennath.”
“Ennath. I’ll shorten that to Enna. You mind?”
“En-Enna? Nobody has called me that before.”
“What, you’ve never had a nickname? I would’ve thought that’d be an obvious one.”
“Well… I’ve had nicknames… but none that were… ne-never mind. Do you have any other questions?”
“Yeah. Why’d you abduct me?”
“I didn’t. You were summoned here, and I was not the one to perform the ritual. That would be Sarazia, thirty-fourth daughter of our Dark Lor—”
“You don’t have to say her title every time.”
“I—I do! It is the formal thing to do!”
“Don’t worry, I’m not a snitch. Had a neighbor for a few years who would drill an extra hole into his 80% lowers. Never reported him. Didn’t want the ATF to shoot his dog.”
Enna tilted her head to the side. “Excuse me?”
“You know what they say. Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms should be a fun weekend, not a government agency that shoots dogs.”
“Ri-right… anyways, did you have any other questions?”
“Well, I’m curious about what you’re going to do to me. Fuck me and then serve me for dinner? Serve me for dinner and then fuck me? Are you a cannibal sex cult, or just a normal sex cult? Also, I know we might have a little back-and-forth going on right now, but I won’t hesitate to kill you if you try to stop me during my escape. Just a warning since you still seem pretty new here.”
Enna looked confused up until that last part. As soon as she heard me say she seemed new, she slouched her shoulders and sighed. “I… I know. I’m so out of my element with all of this. I don’t even know how I got this job, and now they have me doing something as important as this…”
“Listen, it’s not too late. Help me get out of here and I’ll tell the police you didn’t do anything.”
“I—”
Another woman came into the room, but not the normal way that a person normally would by walking on their own two feet. Instead, she flew into the room using the wings sticking out from her back.
And her outfit made it extremely obvious what was going on.
“There’s no way this isn’t a sex cult. A sex cult hosting an out-of-season costume party. Halloween is still a few months away. Go put on some more clothes,” I told the new woman who was dressed up like some sort of stereotypical succubus.
The new woman smirked as she looked me over. “I’ll give you a pass since you don’t know who I am, but watch your tongue in the future.”
“You think I’m going to stick it out of my mouth all the time to watch it?”
Enna chuckled, but a glare from the new woman silenced her before she looked back at me. “Do you think you are funny?”
“Extremely. So, I take it that you’re one of the higher ups of the sex cult.”
“Of the… sex cult?”
Enna spoke up next. “A-ah, he seems to believe that we are—”
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
Enna immediately silenced herself.
Even if Enna was working for whoever kidnapped me, I wasn’t going to stand for seeing her treated like that. “Is that how you treat your members here? I’ve seen fast food chains with better managers. Apologize to her.”
The new woman reeled back with laughter. “Apologize? To her? Maybe you do have a sense of humor after all. Anyways, we have already wasted enough time. My father wants to see you before you leave.”
“I haven’t heard an apology.”
The woman stopped laughing. “Don’t tell me you actually expect me to apologize to her.”
“I do.”
“Are you lying to try and be funny?”
“Only Europeans and politicians tell lies.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not going to waste my time entertaining you. Follow me.”
“No.”
“You—did you say no? Maybe it is because you don’t know who you are speaking to you. Listen, human. I am Sarazia, thirty-fourth daughter of my father, the Dark Lord himself, Lucifer. Do you understand what that means? My father is the ruler over the realm of Hell. To disobey me is to disobey him, and you do not disobey my father. Especially within his own domain.”
“I wouldn’t be an American if I didn’t practice disobedience to authority. Especially when that authority is a bunch of cultists roleplaying as slutty demons.” I looked at Enna. “You excluded. I’m talking about the slutty cosplayer over here.”
“Enough!” Sarazia, or as I was going to call her, Sara, shouted. At the same time, I felt some sort of… energy wash over my body and force me onto my knees. “Ah… there. That’s a much better look for you. On your knees where you belong in my presence.”
She might have forced my body to drop to its knees, but I still had control of my head. That meant I could spit on her.
So I did.
Sara floated there in shock as she stared down at her thigh with my spit on it. “You… you lesser being. You—!”
“Sarazia!” a booming voice sounded from beyond the room with such intensity that it made my eardrums feel like they were going to rupture. The voice was so loud that it could be felt through my entire body.
“I—I’m coming, father!” Sarazia shouted back. She glared back at me, moved her hand which caused me to stand back up, and made another motion with her hand that forced me to follow her.
Too bad she made sure to stop me from opening my mouth.
Given that she could somehow control my body against my will, I was starting to think maybe she was more than just some slutty cosplayer sex cultist.
I was led through countless hallways which made the intensity of that booming voice from before all the more impressive. That aside, I realized they might have been serious about the whole “Hell” thing once I was taken into a hallway lined with windows that looked out over the city outside.
There were no clouds in the sky. Instead, there was only what looked like a whirlpool of crimson energy taking up the entire sky as a sprawling city reached out in all directions below it. The city looked pretty human when it came to the general architecture of it, but there was a lot more black and red thrown in as if they were purposely trying to make the city look stereotypically evil. Or maybe they were just really edgy.
More surprising than that were all the different demons I could see flying around outside. Rather than travel with vehicles, it looked like they simply flew wherever they needed to go. The demons with wings, anyways. I wasn’t able to see the streets down below as we must have been incredibly high up in some sort of tower. There were, however, demons standing guard in the halls that lacked wings. They were also several times my size with forearms that looked thicker with muscles than my entire body. Not to mention their red skin, hair-covered bodies, and elongated heads with curling horns.
The “Hell” thing made a lot of sense, but I had to admit that it also looked a lot more modern and industrialized than I would have thought. There weren’t any pits of lava and imps holding tridents to poke suffering sinners with as far as I could tell. Things actually looked pretty normal… just with lots of red.
Finally, we made it to a pair of grand looking doors that Sara stopped in front of to look at me. “You will treat my father with respect,” she told me. “Do you understand?”
I understood her, so I nodded my head. After all, she sounded like she was speaking fluent English. Of course I was going to understand my native language.
Sara let out a sigh of relief before opening the door and forcing me to follow her inside still.
That was when I saw who I could only assume was the big Lucifer himself. Big as in literally big. At the end of the room was a grand throne with what looked like a half-man, half-goat sitting atop it, and he was larger than a suburban house. Just one of his three eyes alone was bigger than my entire body.
Suddenly, his voice being so loud made a lot of sense.
“Why have you used magic on him?” Lucifer asked Sara.
“He was being uncooperative,” Sara answered.
“Well… humans always have been exceptionally stubborn.” Lucifer waved his hand which dispelled the magic forcing my body to obey Sara. “Tell me, human. Do you understand your position?”
“Sure,” I answered. “My position is that I’m standing in a room with a slutty cosplayer and her dad who looks like somebody who only got half his fursuit.”
Sara and Enna were both speechless. As for Lucifer, he simply stared at me for a few moments before saying, “This is why I like you humans. Defiant and disrespectful even in the face of a being beyond your comprehension.”
“That’s called being American.”
He ignored my comment. “There isn’t much time, so I will get to the point. My daughter has been studying you humans for some time now. She is the one who influenced the men of your world to create a game similar to the one you will be competing in, and you have risen to the top as a master of the game. The time you have invested into it has all been in preparation for what is to come. The sole reason that game ever existed was to find the most suitable human for the upcoming match.”
“I knew it was too good to be true.”
Lucifer cracked an amused smile with his goat head before continuing. “Win the game and I vow to treat humanity fairly. That will be your reward for ensuring that he does not win. Yahweh. Or as your kind know him these days, God. Guarantee his loss and I will leave your species to develop on their own.”
“So, me, a human, is being recruited by the devil to make sure that God loses in some sort of game. Am I understanding that correctly?”
“Yes.”
“And all of humanity is at stake here. If I lose, somebody else, maybe God, is going to be in control of them. If I win, you’re going to have legal ownership of us, but you promise to leave us alone.”
“That is correct.”
I doubted I had a real say in the matter, so I figured I could play along for the time being. “Alright. I’ll help you out on one condition.”
“You would make a demand of me?”
“You think I care who you are? If you want me to cooperate, make your daughter there apologize to Enna for earlier. Also, I want Enna to come with me.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
Lucifer leaned back in his chair, silently staring down at all of us.
Sara, on the other hand, was anything but silent as she flew in front of me to shout, “Who do you think you are?! You can’t make a demand of my father and—”
“Apologize,” Lucifer ordered.
“Fa-father?”
“Do not make me repeat myself. I believe in this human’s ability to defeat him. His request is nothing compared to that.”
“But—but she’s just a—”
Lucifer narrowed his eyes at Sara, causing several pulses of energy to fly through the room and almost knock us over.
I wrapped an arm around Enna to keep her from getting knocked away.
Once the room calmed down, Sara lowered herself to hover in front of Enna and said, “I… apologize for earlier.” She looked at me next. “There. Are you satisfied?”
I looked at Enna. “Are you?”
Enna, looking more nervous than anything, nodded.
“It wasn’t a Canadian apology, but it was enough,” I said. Canadians might not have been Americans, but they were damn good at apologizing. I wasn’t so biased that I couldn’t admit they were better than us in that one specific field. It helped that they had so much more to apologize for than us. For example, they got to apologize every day just for existing. Of course they were going to be better than us at apologizing.
Sara rolled her eyes again and put some distance between us before saying, “I’ll be accompanying you. I am the one responsible for you even being chosen, and I plan on proving my value to the Divine Pantheon as a daughter of the Dark Lord.”
I looked past her at Lucifer. “Can I add making her stay behind to the deal?”
“No,” Lucifer answered.
“Damn. Well, is there anything else I should know?”
“Only that your species may be doomed if you fail.”
“Right. That doesn’t sound good.”
“A fate infinitely worse than death may await them depending on who wins. I would treat them as if they do not even exist, but there are others who would take joy in rending apart their souls.”
“So. Best case scenario, I win and all of our souls basically belong to the devil who promises to ignore us. Worst case scenario, I lose and all of humanity falls under control to somebody or something that wants to tear apart their souls.”
Lucifer nodded. “My deal is the best one you humans are going to get, so make sure to win.”
“One more question, Lucy.”
“Call me that again and I will burn you where you stand.”
“Couldn’t you have given your demons access to the game to find somebody to lead for you?”
“Yes, but I know it will enrage him even more if a mere human leads my forces to defeat him instead of a demon.”
So, I’m being used by Satan to troll God in part of a game where if I win, our souls belong to the devil and, if I lose, our souls might belong to somebody who wants to torture our souls.
That was a lot to accept all at once, but I was in a position where I didn’t have a say in the matter. Not a meaningful one at least.
Was I nervous? Of course I was. Afraid? Who wouldn’t be?
But losing meant a fate potentially worse than death for all of humanity.
Not to mention that, apparently, the “game” we were going to play was just like my favorite 4X game. That alone gave me some confidence. It wasn’t like I was being thrown into a game that I knew nothing about. They chose me because I was humanity’s best at the game.
I wasn’t sure what my competition would be like, but I had no intention of letting them win.
Lucy then leaned forward in his throne and said, “It’s beginning.” He then narrowed his eyes at me. "I may like you humans, but I will not tolerate continued disrespect. Understand your place if you wish for me to honor my end of the deal."
The next moment, a glowing pillar of light surrounded me, Sara, and Enna.
Sara looked up at Lucy and shouted, “Wa-watch me, father! I’ll do my best to make you proud!”
Lucy didn’t even acknowledge her before the three of us were teleported into an empty space of nothingness.
| Dominion Expansion |
| Leader summoning process… complete. Randomizing spawn locations… complete. Starting army summoning… complete. Technology tree building… complete. All preparations complete. Welcome to the seventy-fourth Dominion Expansion game! |
Ace_Arriande
All the actual 4X-system-related stuff starts next chapter!
Anyways, here's a little FAQ of sorts for the story that has more information on what to expect as well as addressing a concern that some folk might have given my history with LitRPGs.
SpoilerQuestion: But Ace, you've written 3 LitRPGs before and dropped all of them! Why should I expect this one to be any different?
Answer: My first LitRPG, EDE, was dropped because I used a half-assed system made by a friend of mine that didn't match the story at all. It was tedious to work with, didn't allow me to do the things I wanted to do since I was strictly sticking to it to keep things consistent, and I was also a less experienced writer at the time who wrote myself into a corner and lost the vision of the story. My second LitRPG, TQH, used a system that was more or less entirely made up on the spot. It was my biggest, most successful story I ever wrote and was previously the most popular story here on SH before I deleted it. Unfortunately, I ended up making the system too complex for myself due to bullshitting it all on the spot. A lot of people really liked the system which was surprising since 100% of it was made up on the spot and the numbers didn't actually mean anything. The third LitRPG I dropped was CORE, which wasn't dropped due to the system, it was dropped due to me randomly writing it as part of a spontaneous contest between authors that began on the RR server. I went into it with absolutely zero planning story-wise, which is something I don't normally do for good reason.
Now, with this LitRPG: one, I've custom built this system myself over the last few months using input from my Discord server to help me make a system that works. The system is built for the story and the story is designed to use the system. Instead of forcing a story to work around a system, the story and system have both been built to mutually benefit each other. Two, the system is a "hard" system. The old LitRPGs I wrote and most LitRPGs in general are what I would call "soft" LitRPGs, meaning that a lot of stuff is made up on the spot and modifications are made to the system for plot convenience as the story goes. You know, like a hero suddenly learning a skill that was in no way planned before the idea popped up in the middle of the chapter. Now, by a hard system, I mean the system has strict rules that the story has to abide by. There is no randomly adding stuff, everything is already worked out (including a pre-built tech tree with hundreds of techs and an entire homemade dice-based map generation system), and there is no room for the system to contradict itself. And three, I actually know what I'm doing this time. I already have plans for several major plot arcs, the story's themes, I know how it's going to end, and I have a bunch of other factions already planned out.
All of that aside, I've never been a huge RPG person. But you know what I have been? A huge 4X fan. I've been playing 4X games since I was 12 years old, so for almost sixteen years now. I know my 4X games. Am I completely confident in myself to write a normal RPG-LitRPG? Not really. But am I completely confident in myself to write a 4X LitRPG? You damn well know it.
Question: REEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAREM TAG???GT?E?GRQ??
I like harems. I have, and i'm not exaggerating, basically an infinite amount of ideas for waifus. I will die thousands of years before I'm able to write all of them. If I wrote every single waifu idea I have to be the sole waifu of a story, I would barely get to go through all the waifus I want to write. Not only that, but I don't even write real harems. I write poly relationships that just so happen to consist of one guy and multiple women. I don't just write a bunch of girls who all love a guy for no reason and are fine with sharing him. In all the harems I write, the girls are happy and enjoy each other's company as much as they enjoy the male lead's. Furthermore, I'm a character writer first and foremost. All of my oldest readers will tell you that. I will never be one of the best action or plot writers there is, but characters and relationships? I'm damn good at those. I could write a story with 50 waifus in the "harem" and I would still be giving them all unique personalities, voices, backgrounds, and never forget about any while giving them fair amounts of screentime.
I might write harem garbage, but I write good harem garbage. Also, the harem will very much be a subplot here to help fill out chapters that take place on days/turns where nothing is really happening. Outside of those, they'll mostly be getting treated as just... you know, normal characters doing normal characters things and existing for more than to just love the MC.
Question: Why are you posting weebshit on my glorious Chinese cultivation platform? (this question was mainly for Royal Road readers)
Answer: Listen. I love the Chinese aesthetic. I think the ideas of xianxia and wuxia are cool. But I have absolutely no interest in actual Chinese culture nor the tropes of its writing. I know that RR has taken a major swing back toward Chinaboo tropes instead of weeaboo tropes in the last couple of years, but I still like weeb shit. That being said, I apply a more mature, Western spin to said tropes. You won't find any characters in this story going "uwu onii-chan" or acting tsundere and being physically abusive for no reason. The only major tsundere character I've ever written for anything, she was a "tsundere" because she had shitty ex-boyfriends and an overly controlling police officer father. And you know what happened? She was never abusive, she acknowledged that she had issues, worked to get past them, and dropped the tsun stuff because she knew that it was unhealthy for the relationship. Sure, she still fit the tsundere trope to start with, but I actually work with my weeb tropes to try and make them better instead of just lazily throwing them in to check off a list of required tropes. But that takes time. If you expect immediate character development, you won't get that.
On that note, you also won't be getting the "bad" weeb tropes from me. No stupid misunderstands. No abusive tsunderes. No main characters denser than a black hole. No main character who refuses to do anything with girls who obviously love him and are thirsty for him. Nobody talking using honorifcs. None of the edge. No power of friendship. I just like demon girls and dog girls and waifus who act cute, alright? Honestly, my stories aren't even that weeby. They're definitely nowhere near as hardcore about weeb stuff as most xianxia/wuxia stories are about Chinaboo stuff.
Question: What's your favorite 4X game?
Answer: Endless Legend. Stellaris is in 2nd place.
Question: Why is the MC so shit?
Answer: I fully intend on the MC being the most divisive element of this story. I also expect to get people complaining about him being like some American nationalist, which is true to some degree. But as you'll find in the story, and this is a very minor spoiler that I would like to clear up, the main character is very much not a nationalist for modern America. What he loves are the American ideals that the country was built off of. Now, there is some meme-y stuff about loving burgers, guns, and hating taxes, but keep in mind that whenever he is talking about how great America is and all that, he's talking about an idealistic American spirit. He's the kind of guy who believes any true American from the Revolutionary War would hate what America has become on both sides. So, just keep that in mind since I already know that I'm going to get reviews from people who misunderstand his character and go "wow he's a racist trumptard who thinks america is the best but uhm ackshually did u know that america is bad and this story is bad?"
And yes. He likes to make fun of non-American countries. It's all lighthearted. He is not actually racist toward anybody. He might hate another country's government, but he doesn't hate its people.
I think that's probably all for now. If you actually bothered reading all of that, you're pretty awesome. I'll give you a cookie if I ever meet you.
[collapse]
There was one other theory aside from being part of some prank with way too much effort put into it. Going by the satanic aesthetic of the room, I could have been abducted by some lunatic cultists about to be used in a ritual sacrifice like in horror movies. I wasn’t sure how that could happen considering I was seemingly teleported there without realizing it, but maybe I was drugged and losing time was one of the drug’s effects.
That meant I might be up against either horror movie cultists or elites and politicians behind a sex cult.
The latter was the more realistic option between the two of them.
I would have preferred horror movie cultists. They were less evil.
The only door to the room then opened up in front of me, revealing a pale woman in a business suit… with patches of scales on her skin, a ruby embedded in her forehead, and four horns sticking out from the sides of her head.
“A-ah! You’re awake!” the girl said, looking more surprised at me than I was at her. “Um, hello! I—I… oh, I didn’t think you would be awake. They told me to check on you and now I feel like I’m making a bad first impression and… okay. Wait. Let’s start over. Pretend you didn’t hear anything I just said, please.” She gave her face a couple of soft slaps before clearing her throat. “Good morning! I am glad to see that you are—”
She coughed, following it up with an expression of looking dead inside as she dropped the clipboard she was holding.
If she was the one who abducted me, she was the least intimidating kidnapper in history. I actually felt bad for her. That was why I asked her, “Want to try again? Third time’s the charm.”
The woman looked ready to cry and I didn’t know if it was because of embarrassment or relief.
It took a few minutes before she was ready to try again. But first, she looked at me with a proud smile and nodded. “Alright! I wrote down a script to follow. I won’t mess up this time.”
I took it upon myself to look and walk around the room while waiting for her. I doubted somebody like her could be any real danger, and she gave me the same vibe as a new employee at work on her first day trying her hardest, so I didn’t have it in me to try and escape even if she was part of a politician’s sex cult that drugged and kidnapped me. “Take it slow this time. Here, let me get back on the slab first so it’s more authentic.”
“Thank you!”
I nodded and hopped back up onto the slab.
The woman got started as soon as I was in position. “Good morning, mortal! I am glad to see that you are awake and in one piece. The summoning ritual was a success! Now, I am sure,” she paused for a moment to find her place on the clipboard after losing it, “that you have many questions, and I will be glad to answer them. Wait for questions after this… ah, I wasn’t supposed to say that part.”
I hit her with a question before she could beat herself up over that last mistake. “Are you a cultist or a politician?”
“Ah… er… ex-excuse me? I am neither? I am only an assistant to Sarazia, thirty-fourth daughter of our Dark Lord, Lucifer.”
“An assistant? So then you’re working for somebody. A Hollywood producer? A senator? A social media CEO?”
“Um… I… I’m not sure how I am supposed to answer that. Sarazia is the thirty-fourth daughter of our Dark Lord, Lucifer, as I said before. That is all she is, and I am her assistant.”
“If this Lucifer guy has thirty-four daughters then I’m guessing this is some sort of sex cult. Let me guess, rich old guy living in a compound in the middle of nowhere with fifty different wives, half of which don’t look as old as they claim to be?”
“Not… not quite. Lucifer is the Dark Lord who rules over the ascended realm of Hell. And he does not take wives.”
“That must be a lot of child support he’s paying.”
The woman raised a hand over her mouth to hide a small laugh before shaking her head. “It does not work that way.”
“Doesn’t matter. What’s your name?”
“Ah, my name? It—it doesn’t matter.”
“You said you’d be glad to answer my questions. I just asked you a question. What’s your name?”
“That… that is true. Alright. My name is Ennath.”
“Ennath. I’ll shorten that to Enna. You mind?”
“En-Enna? Nobody has called me that before.”
“What, you’ve never had a nickname? I would’ve thought that’d be an obvious one.”
“Well… I’ve had nicknames… but none that were… ne-never mind. Do you have any other questions?”
“Yeah. Why’d you abduct me?”
“I didn’t. You were summoned here, and I was not the one to perform the ritual. That would be Sarazia, thirty-fourth daughter of our Dark Lor—”
“You don’t have to say her title every time.”
“I—I do! It is the formal thing to do!”
“Don’t worry, I’m not a snitch. Had a neighbor for a few years who would drill an extra hole into his 80% lowers. Never reported him. Didn’t want the ATF to shoot his dog.”
Enna tilted her head to the side. “Excuse me?”
“You know what they say. Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms should be a fun weekend, not a government agency that shoots dogs.”
“Ri-right… anyways, did you have any other questions?”
“Well, I’m curious about what you’re going to do to me. Fuck me and then serve me for dinner? Serve me for dinner and then fuck me? Are you a cannibal sex cult, or just a normal sex cult? Also, I know we might have a little back-and-forth going on right now, but I won’t hesitate to kill you if you try to stop me during my escape. Just a warning since you still seem pretty new here.”
Enna looked confused up until that last part. As soon as she heard me say she seemed new, she slouched her shoulders and sighed. “I… I know. I’m so out of my element with all of this. I don’t even know how I got this job, and now they have me doing something as important as this…”
“Listen, it’s not too late. Help me get out of here and I’ll tell the police you didn’t do anything.”
“I—”
Another woman came into the room, but not the normal way that a person normally would by walking on their own two feet. Instead, she flew into the room using the wings sticking out from her back.
And her outfit made it extremely obvious what was going on.
“There’s no way this isn’t a sex cult. A sex cult hosting an out-of-season costume party. Halloween is still a few months away. Go put on some more clothes,” I told the new woman who was dressed up like some sort of stereotypical succubus.
The new woman smirked as she looked me over. “I’ll give you a pass since you don’t know who I am, but watch your tongue in the future.”
“You think I’m going to stick it out of my mouth all the time to watch it?”
Enna chuckled, but a glare from the new woman silenced her before she looked back at me. “Do you think you are funny?”
“Extremely. So, I take it that you’re one of the higher ups of the sex cult.”
“Of the… sex cult?”
Enna spoke up next. “A-ah, he seems to believe that we are—”
“Did I give you permission to speak?”
Enna immediately silenced herself.
Even if Enna was working for whoever kidnapped me, I wasn’t going to stand for seeing her treated like that. “Is that how you treat your members here? I’ve seen fast food chains with better managers. Apologize to her.”
The new woman reeled back with laughter. “Apologize? To her? Maybe you do have a sense of humor after all. Anyways, we have already wasted enough time. My father wants to see you before you leave.”
“I haven’t heard an apology.”
The woman stopped laughing. “Don’t tell me you actually expect me to apologize to her.”
“I do.”
“Are you lying to try and be funny?”
“Only Europeans and politicians tell lies.”
She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not going to waste my time entertaining you. Follow me.”
“No.”
“You—did you say no? Maybe it is because you don’t know who you are speaking to you. Listen, human. I am Sarazia, thirty-fourth daughter of my father, the Dark Lord himself, Lucifer. Do you understand what that means? My father is the ruler over the realm of Hell. To disobey me is to disobey him, and you do not disobey my father. Especially within his own domain.”
“I wouldn’t be an American if I didn’t practice disobedience to authority. Especially when that authority is a bunch of cultists roleplaying as slutty demons.” I looked at Enna. “You excluded. I’m talking about the slutty cosplayer over here.”
“Enough!” Sarazia, or as I was going to call her, Sara, shouted. At the same time, I felt some sort of… energy wash over my body and force me onto my knees. “Ah… there. That’s a much better look for you. On your knees where you belong in my presence.”
She might have forced my body to drop to its knees, but I still had control of my head. That meant I could spit on her.
So I did.
Sara floated there in shock as she stared down at her thigh with my spit on it. “You… you lesser being. You—!”
“Sarazia!” a booming voice sounded from beyond the room with such intensity that it made my eardrums feel like they were going to rupture. The voice was so loud that it could be felt through my entire body.
“I—I’m coming, father!” Sarazia shouted back. She glared back at me, moved her hand which caused me to stand back up, and made another motion with her hand that forced me to follow her.
Too bad she made sure to stop me from opening my mouth.
Given that she could somehow control my body against my will, I was starting to think maybe she was more than just some slutty cosplayer sex cultist.
I was led through countless hallways which made the intensity of that booming voice from before all the more impressive. That aside, I realized they might have been serious about the whole “Hell” thing once I was taken into a hallway lined with windows that looked out over the city outside.
There were no clouds in the sky. Instead, there was only what looked like a whirlpool of crimson energy taking up the entire sky as a sprawling city reached out in all directions below it. The city looked pretty human when it came to the general architecture of it, but there was a lot more black and red thrown in as if they were purposely trying to make the city look stereotypically evil. Or maybe they were just really edgy.
More surprising than that were all the different demons I could see flying around outside. Rather than travel with vehicles, it looked like they simply flew wherever they needed to go. The demons with wings, anyways. I wasn’t able to see the streets down below as we must have been incredibly high up in some sort of tower. There were, however, demons standing guard in the halls that lacked wings. They were also several times my size with forearms that looked thicker with muscles than my entire body. Not to mention their red skin, hair-covered bodies, and elongated heads with curling horns.
The “Hell” thing made a lot of sense, but I had to admit that it also looked a lot more modern and industrialized than I would have thought. There weren’t any pits of lava and imps holding tridents to poke suffering sinners with as far as I could tell. Things actually looked pretty normal… just with lots of red.
Finally, we made it to a pair of grand looking doors that Sara stopped in front of to look at me. “You will treat my father with respect,” she told me. “Do you understand?”
I understood her, so I nodded my head. After all, she sounded like she was speaking fluent English. Of course I was going to understand my native language.
Sara let out a sigh of relief before opening the door and forcing me to follow her inside still.
That was when I saw who I could only assume was the big Lucifer himself. Big as in literally big. At the end of the room was a grand throne with what looked like a half-man, half-goat sitting atop it, and he was larger than a suburban house. Just one of his three eyes alone was bigger than my entire body.
Suddenly, his voice being so loud made a lot of sense.
“Why have you used magic on him?” Lucifer asked Sara.
“He was being uncooperative,” Sara answered.
“Well… humans always have been exceptionally stubborn.” Lucifer waved his hand which dispelled the magic forcing my body to obey Sara. “Tell me, human. Do you understand your position?”
“Sure,” I answered. “My position is that I’m standing in a room with a slutty cosplayer and her dad who looks like somebody who only got half his fursuit.”
Sara and Enna were both speechless. As for Lucifer, he simply stared at me for a few moments before saying, “This is why I like you humans. Defiant and disrespectful even in the face of a being beyond your comprehension.”
“That’s called being American.”
He ignored my comment. “There isn’t much time, so I will get to the point. My daughter has been studying you humans for some time now. She is the one who influenced the men of your world to create a game similar to the one you will be competing in, and you have risen to the top as a master of the game. The time you have invested into it has all been in preparation for what is to come. The sole reason that game ever existed was to find the most suitable human for the upcoming match.”
“I knew it was too good to be true.”
Lucifer cracked an amused smile with his goat head before continuing. “Win the game and I vow to treat humanity fairly. That will be your reward for ensuring that he does not win. Yahweh. Or as your kind know him these days, God. Guarantee his loss and I will leave your species to develop on their own.”
“So, me, a human, is being recruited by the devil to make sure that God loses in some sort of game. Am I understanding that correctly?”
“Yes.”
“And all of humanity is at stake here. If I lose, somebody else, maybe God, is going to be in control of them. If I win, you’re going to have legal ownership of us, but you promise to leave us alone.”
“That is correct.”
I doubted I had a real say in the matter, so I figured I could play along for the time being. “Alright. I’ll help you out on one condition.”
“You would make a demand of me?”
“You think I care who you are? If you want me to cooperate, make your daughter there apologize to Enna for earlier. Also, I want Enna to come with me.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
Lucifer leaned back in his chair, silently staring down at all of us.
Sara, on the other hand, was anything but silent as she flew in front of me to shout, “Who do you think you are?! You can’t make a demand of my father and—”
“Apologize,” Lucifer ordered.
“Fa-father?”
“Do not make me repeat myself. I believe in this human’s ability to defeat him. His request is nothing compared to that.”
“But—but she’s just a—”
Lucifer narrowed his eyes at Sara, causing several pulses of energy to fly through the room and almost knock us over.
I wrapped an arm around Enna to keep her from getting knocked away.
Once the room calmed down, Sara lowered herself to hover in front of Enna and said, “I… apologize for earlier.” She looked at me next. “There. Are you satisfied?”
I looked at Enna. “Are you?”
Enna, looking more nervous than anything, nodded.
“It wasn’t a Canadian apology, but it was enough,” I said. Canadians might not have been Americans, but they were damn good at apologizing. I wasn’t so biased that I couldn’t admit they were better than us in that one specific field. It helped that they had so much more to apologize for than us. For example, they got to apologize every day just for existing. Of course they were going to be better than us at apologizing.
Sara rolled her eyes again and put some distance between us before saying, “I’ll be accompanying you. I am the one responsible for you even being chosen, and I plan on proving my value to the Divine Pantheon as a daughter of the Dark Lord.”
I looked past her at Lucifer. “Can I add making her stay behind to the deal?”
“No,” Lucifer answered.
“Damn. Well, is there anything else I should know?”
“Only that your species may be doomed if you fail.”
“Right. That doesn’t sound good.”
“A fate infinitely worse than death may await them depending on who wins. I would treat them as if they do not even exist, but there are others who would take joy in rending apart their souls.”
“So. Best case scenario, I win and all of our souls basically belong to the devil who promises to ignore us. Worst case scenario, I lose and all of humanity falls under control to somebody or something that wants to tear apart their souls.”
Lucifer nodded. “My deal is the best one you humans are going to get, so make sure to win.”
“One more question, Lucy.”
“Call me that again and I will burn you where you stand.”
“Couldn’t you have given your demons access to the game to find somebody to lead for you?”
“Yes, but I know it will enrage him even more if a mere human leads my forces to defeat him instead of a demon.”
So, I’m being used by Satan to troll God in part of a game where if I win, our souls belong to the devil and, if I lose, our souls might belong to somebody who wants to torture our souls.
That was a lot to accept all at once, but I was in a position where I didn’t have a say in the matter. Not a meaningful one at least.
Was I nervous? Of course I was. Afraid? Who wouldn’t be?
But losing meant a fate potentially worse than death for all of humanity.
Not to mention that, apparently, the “game” we were going to play was just like my favorite 4X game. That alone gave me some confidence. It wasn’t like I was being thrown into a game that I knew nothing about. They chose me because I was humanity’s best at the game.
I wasn’t sure what my competition would be like, but I had no intention of letting them win.
Lucy then leaned forward in his throne and said, “It’s beginning.” He then narrowed his eyes at me. "I may like you humans, but I will not tolerate continued disrespect. Understand your place if you wish for me to honor my end of the deal."
The next moment, a glowing pillar of light surrounded me, Sara, and Enna.
Sara looked up at Lucy and shouted, “Wa-watch me, father! I’ll do my best to make you proud!”
Lucy didn’t even acknowledge her before the three of us were teleported into an empty space of nothingness.
| Dominion Expansion |
| Leader summoning process… complete. Randomizing spawn locations… complete. Starting army summoning… complete. Technology tree building… complete. All preparations complete. Welcome to the seventy-fourth Dominion Expansion game! |
Ace_Arriande
All the actual 4X-system-related stuff starts next chapter!
Anyways, here's a little FAQ of sorts for the story that has more information on what to expect as well as addressing a concern that some folk might have given my history with LitRPGs.
SpoilerQuestion: But Ace, you've written 3 LitRPGs before and dropped all of them! Why should I expect this one to be any different?
Answer: My first LitRPG, EDE, was dropped because I used a half-assed system made by a friend of mine that didn't match the story at all. It was tedious to work with, didn't allow me to do the things I wanted to do since I was strictly sticking to it to keep things consistent, and I was also a less experienced writer at the time who wrote myself into a corner and lost the vision of the story. My second LitRPG, TQH, used a system that was more or less entirely made up on the spot. It was my biggest, most successful story I ever wrote and was previously the most popular story here on SH before I deleted it. Unfortunately, I ended up making the system too complex for myself due to bullshitting it all on the spot. A lot of people really liked the system which was surprising since 100% of it was made up on the spot and the numbers didn't actually mean anything. The third LitRPG I dropped was CORE, which wasn't dropped due to the system, it was dropped due to me randomly writing it as part of a spontaneous contest between authors that began on the RR server. I went into it with absolutely zero planning story-wise, which is something I don't normally do for good reason.
Now, with this LitRPG: one, I've custom built this system myself over the last few months using input from my Discord server to help me make a system that works. The system is built for the story and the story is designed to use the system. Instead of forcing a story to work around a system, the story and system have both been built to mutually benefit each other. Two, the system is a "hard" system. The old LitRPGs I wrote and most LitRPGs in general are what I would call "soft" LitRPGs, meaning that a lot of stuff is made up on the spot and modifications are made to the system for plot convenience as the story goes. You know, like a hero suddenly learning a skill that was in no way planned before the idea popped up in the middle of the chapter. Now, by a hard system, I mean the system has strict rules that the story has to abide by. There is no randomly adding stuff, everything is already worked out (including a pre-built tech tree with hundreds of techs and an entire homemade dice-based map generation system), and there is no room for the system to contradict itself. And three, I actually know what I'm doing this time. I already have plans for several major plot arcs, the story's themes, I know how it's going to end, and I have a bunch of other factions already planned out.
All of that aside, I've never been a huge RPG person. But you know what I have been? A huge 4X fan. I've been playing 4X games since I was 12 years old, so for almost sixteen years now. I know my 4X games. Am I completely confident in myself to write a normal RPG-LitRPG? Not really. But am I completely confident in myself to write a 4X LitRPG? You damn well know it.
Question: REEEEEEEEEEEEEE HAREM TAG???GT?E?GRQ??
I like harems. I have, and i'm not exaggerating, basically an infinite amount of ideas for waifus. I will die thousands of years before I'm able to write all of them. If I wrote every single waifu idea I have to be the sole waifu of a story, I would barely get to go through all the waifus I want to write. Not only that, but I don't even write real harems. I write poly relationships that just so happen to consist of one guy and multiple women. I don't just write a bunch of girls who all love a guy for no reason and are fine with sharing him. In all the harems I write, the girls are happy and enjoy each other's company as much as they enjoy the male lead's. Furthermore, I'm a character writer first and foremost. All of my oldest readers will tell you that. I will never be one of the best action or plot writers there is, but characters and relationships? I'm damn good at those. I could write a story with 50 waifus in the "harem" and I would still be giving them all unique personalities, voices, backgrounds, and never forget about any while giving them fair amounts of screentime.
I might write harem garbage, but I write good harem garbage. Also, the harem will very much be a subplot here to help fill out chapters that take place on days/turns where nothing is really happening. Outside of those, they'll mostly be getting treated as just... you know, normal characters doing normal characters things and existing for more than to just love the MC.
Question: Why are you posting weebshit on my glorious Chinese cultivation platform? (this question was mainly for Royal Road readers)
Answer: Listen. I love the Chinese aesthetic. I think the ideas of xianxia and wuxia are cool. But I have absolutely no interest in actual Chinese culture nor the tropes of its writing. I know that RR has taken a major swing back toward Chinaboo tropes instead of weeaboo tropes in the last couple of years, but I still like weeb shit. That being said, I apply a more mature, Western spin to said tropes. You won't find any characters in this story going "uwu onii-chan" or acting tsundere and being physically abusive for no reason. The only major tsundere character I've ever written for anything, she was a "tsundere" because she had shitty ex-boyfriends and an overly controlling police officer father. And you know what happened? She was never abusive, she acknowledged that she had issues, worked to get past them, and dropped the tsun stuff because she knew that it was unhealthy for the relationship. Sure, she still fit the tsundere trope to start with, but I actually work with my weeb tropes to try and make them better instead of just lazily throwing them in to check off a list of required tropes. But that takes time. If you expect immediate character development, you won't get that.
On that note, you also won't be getting the "bad" weeb tropes from me. No stupid misunderstands. No abusive tsunderes. No main characters denser than a black hole. No main character who refuses to do anything with girls who obviously love him and are thirsty for him. Nobody talking using honorifcs. None of the edge. No power of friendship. I just like demon girls and dog girls and waifus who act cute, alright? Honestly, my stories aren't even that weeby. They're definitely nowhere near as hardcore about weeb stuff as most xianxia/wuxia stories are about Chinaboo stuff.
Question: What's your favorite 4X game?
Answer: Endless Legend. Stellaris is in 2nd place.
Question: Why is the MC so shit?
Answer: I fully intend on the MC being the most divisive element of this story. I also expect to get people complaining about him being like some American nationalist, which is true to some degree. But as you'll find in the story, and this is a very minor spoiler that I would like to clear up, the main character is very much not a nationalist for modern America. What he loves are the American ideals that the country was built off of. Now, there is some meme-y stuff about loving burgers, guns, and hating taxes, but keep in mind that whenever he is talking about how great America is and all that, he's talking about an idealistic American spirit. He's the kind of guy who believes any true American from the Revolutionary War would hate what America has become on both sides. So, just keep that in mind since I already know that I'm going to get reviews from people who misunderstand his character and go "wow he's a racist trumptard who thinks america is the best but uhm ackshually did u know that america is bad and this story is bad?"
And yes. He likes to make fun of non-American countries. It's all lighthearted. He is not actually racist toward anybody. He might hate another country's government, but he doesn't hate its people.
I think that's probably all for now. If you actually bothered reading all of that, you're pretty awesome. I'll give you a cookie if I ever meet you.
[collapse]