I Can Easily Defeat SSS Ranks... This World Is Already Mine

ReunionThe dust had settled.

My new forward operating base, a glorious monument to my own magnificent impatience, was secure.

It was a fortress built on a knife's edge, a tiny island of demonic power in a vast, angry ocean of humanity.

"This is a problem," I announced to the assembled commanders, my voice a low, dangerous purr that echoed in the pre-dawn gloom.

The problem, of course, was not the twenty-eight thousand angry humans who wanted to turn me into a fine red paste.

That was just Tuesday.

The problem was what to do next.

Pixia, my tiny, flying encyclopedia of all things statistical and annoying, zipped anxiously around my head.

"My Lord, a frontal assault on the human city of Suzu is statistically inadvisable!" she squeaked. "My projections indicate a 99.3% probability of catastrophic failure and a 100% probability of you getting very, very grumpy!"

"Your projections are obvious, Pixia," I retorted, slumping into a hastily conjured throne of black stone.

"We can't break his walls. We can't get past their one-man apocalypse of a grandfather.

We are, to use a technical term from my old world, completely and utterly screwed."

The silence in the makeshift command tent stretched, thick and heavy with the weight of our impending doom.

My commanders, a dysfunctional family of legends, looked at me, waiting for a miracle.

Grak the Unbreakable was trying to eat a small, decorative rock from a nearby zen garden.

Sarah, my former Demon Queen, was filing her nails with a shard of obsidian, looking bored.

This was my brain trust.

It was in this moment of profound, strategic despair that Isabelle stepped forward.

She looked… different. The usual cold, professional mask was gone, replaced by a raw, human vulnerability I had not seen since the day she had knelt before me, broken and betrayed.

"My Lord," she began, her voice a quiet, trembling whisper. "I… I must speak with you. Alone."

My heart, which was currently on its lunch break, still managed to perform a spectacular, panicked plummet into my stomach.

Oh, hell. This was it.

The "define the relationship" talk.

After all the conquest, all the violence, all the glorious, world-ending battles, this was how I was going to die.

Trapped in an awkward, emotionally charged conversation with a woman who could punch through concrete.

I glanced over at Chloe, who was standing in the shadows, her arms crossed.

Her amethyst eyes narrowed into slits of pure, undiluted suspicion. She knew. She could smell the impending emotional bullshit from a mile away.

"Of course, Commander," I said, my voice a smooth, confident baritone that I did not, in any way, feel. "Let us… confer."

I led her to a corner of the tent, a respectable, professional distance away from the others.

"So," I began, trying to project an aura of kingly authority and not one of a man who was about to be emotionally vivisected.

"What seems to be the… issue?"

She took a deep breath. She looked at the ground. She looked at the distant, imposing walls of her hometown.

"My Lord," she said, her voice cracking with an emotion so raw it was almost a physical thing. "I… I think I am in love with you."

My brain shut down.

It was a complete and utter system failure. Blue screen of death.

Pixia, who had been quietly monitoring the situation, zipped to my shoulder.

"My Lord!" she squeaked, her voice a high-pitched buzz of pure, statistical panic.

"Probability of a successful long-term romantic pairing resulting in a stable and productive partnership is a mere 17.4%! The potential for catastrophic emotional fallout leading to a full-scale civil war within the command structure is… well, it's very high! I advise immediate strategic withdrawal!"

"Not now, Pixia," I hissed through gritted teeth.

Isabelle looked up at me, her divine eyes swimming with a sea of unshed tears.

"I know this is inappropriate," she stammered.

"I know I am just your subordinate. Your tool. But I cannot deny it any longer. My heart… it is yours."

She took another deep, shuddering breath.

"And that is why," she continued, her voice gaining a new, strange resolve, "I must ask for your hand in marriage! So that I may stand by your side, not just as your sword, but as your queen!"

The world seemed to tilt on its axis.

Marriage?

Queen?

I was a Vampire Lord. A tyrant. A big-dicked bastard Overlord. I didn't do marriage. I did vigorous, stress-relieving hate-fucking in my giant, moon-themed bed.

Chloe, from across the tent, let out a sound that was less a gasp and more the sound of a predator's soul being torn in half.

"What she means to say, my Lord," a new voice, calm and full of a weary resignation, cut through the chaos, "is that the Sword King is her grandfather.

It was Kevin. My chuunibyou intern. For once in his stupid, dramatic life, he had actually said something useful.

Isabelle stared at him, then at me, her face a mask of pure, horrified confusion.

"No, I… I mean, yes, he is my grandfather, but that's not…"

"Wait," I said, holding up a hand. The fog of my romantic-comedy-induced panic was finally starting to clear.

"The Sword King. Sayama Kotetsu. Is your grandfather."

"Yes, my Lord," she whispered, the confession a quiet, broken thing.

I stared at her.

My mind, which had been preparing for a battle of the sexes, now switched back to its default setting: a high-stakes, multi-dimensional chess match.

"Well," I said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across my face. "That complicates things. In a very, very interesting way."

The strategic implications hit me with the force of a physical blow.

This wasn't a weakness. It wasn't a liability.

It was a weapon.

A key.

A perfect, beautiful, and exquisitely cruel way to get exactly what I wanted without firing a single shot.

"Commander," I said, my voice now a blade of ice. "Your previous order is rescinded."

I looked at her, at the raw, human pain on her face. And I saw my path to victory.

"You have a new mission," I declared. "A diplomatic mission."

"You are going to walk up to that gate. You are going to call out your grandfather. And you are going to convince him to surrender his entire city to me."

She stared at me, her face a mask of pure, dawning horror.

"I… I can't, my Lord," she whispered. "He would never listen to me. Not now. Not like this."

"He will listen," I countered, my voice a low, confident purr. "Because you are going to give him a choice. He can surrender peacefully, and live to see his only remaining family member again. Or, he can resist, and I will personally force you to be the one to strike the killing blow."

It was a monstrous thing to say. A cruel, manipulative, and deeply, profoundly evil order.

It was also perfect.

"You are my sword, Isabelle," I said, my voice a soft, final whisper. "And I am pointing you at his heart. Do not fail me."

I turned and walked away, leaving her there, a broken goddess in the ruins of her own past.

The game had changed.

The rules were different.

And I had a terrible, wonderful feeling that I was about to win.

But as I walked, a new, unsettling thought pricked at my mind.

Chloe was still in the tent.

And she had heard everything.

The look in her eyes as I passed was a new, fresh, and exquisitely painful kind of hell.

It was the look of a woman who had just realized that her lover, her god, and her entire world, was about to put another woman's name on the throne.

And it was a look that promised a reckoning.