Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 19 - Chapter 4.5

Interlude: An Overlord’s Domain

About the Overlords

The created dungeons built by Red King and other control AIs came in three forms.

First, there was the Tomb Labyrinth—a dungeon built to seal away something left behind by the previous observers and judges of this world.

Second, there was the created dungeon in the gaol. Designed as a means to let the imprisoned Masters still enjoy the game, it didn’t have an official name, but it was filled with many of the same features as other dungeons.

Third, there were the created dungeons of the Overlords. The control AI had built them on top of the Overlord job-change dungeons that were already in existence before they assumed control of this world. Since both the previous as well as the current observers had a hand in designing them, they were extremely difficult to complete, but it was said that the reward for doing so was access to a Superior Job from the Overlord series.

While Special Superior Jobs required special bloodlines or talents, the Overlord jobs were the direct opposite of that—they did not need any latent abilities or qualities as prerequisites, unlike other Superior Jobs. They did maintain the limit of one holder at a time, but anyone could acquire them as long as they cleared a relevant dungeon.

However, the amount of people who’d cleared any of these dungeons and became Overlords was extremely small.

There had once been an Overlord Ira who’d lived before The Era of the Peerless Three and was ultimately defeated by The Hero of that time, but besides a select few such notable examples, they almost never appeared—or they came and went without anyone ever finding out.

But that had changed when Masters began growing in number—after Infinite Dendrogram was released.

It was said that there were seven Overlord dungeons.

Tenchi had the Naraka of Strife, Caldina had the Grave of Unwealth, Dryfe had the Palace of Licentiousness, while the Skycastle of Supremacy had an uncertain location.

The remaining Mountains of Hunger, Depths of Jealousy, and the Exile of Peace were all within Legendaria.

The control AI couldn’t have done anything about this unbalanced placement. The dungeons had been in Legendaria to begin with, so they would still be there even if they added on to them. The only way to discover the reason for this placement was to ask the very beings who had originally set up everything related to the Overlord jobs—the previous observers.

In any case, the fact that Legendaria boasted three Overlord dungeons in their territory had never been a big problem. Created dungeons had always been things that were just there. They were in remote areas of the country as well, and unlike with natural dungeons, the monsters inside these created ones never left to cause mayhem in their surroundings. Some confident and skilled individuals would sometimes delve into these dungeons in an attempt to become Overlords, but none of them had ever returned.

That was the only significance the dungeons had, and since they were so difficult to conquer, there had been no recorded cases of anyone in Legendaria becoming an Overlord.

And so, their presence in Legendaria would mean nothing as long as everyone there simply let these sleeping dogs lie.

However, that had changed in recent years.

Two things had happened that were catastrophic to Legendaria. First, there was the increase in Masters. The nature of their existence had greatly changed the difficulty of the dungeons. The previous observers had stuffed the dungeons with features that could kill an explorer before they even realized it, making it impossible for all but a few people in history to reach the end of them. However, since Masters only received death penalties instead of permanent death, they were capable of coming back and trying again using the information they’d learned from their previous attempt. Through this, the three created dungeons that had previously been unconquerable by pure power alone had been laid bare.

Second, there were the few who had actually overcome the dungeons. Once information had been gathered, the dungeons could now be conquered by simply being strong enough.

That didn’t mean it was necessarily easy. They weren’t created dungeons for nothing—their difficulty was so high that simply trying over and over again wouldn’t be enough to clear them. Additionally, perhaps due to the dungeons’ function in bestowing the Overlord job, their difficulty grew exponentially when multiple humanoids tried to conquer them in parties, basically making it necessary to conquer them solo. This meant that prospective dungeon delvers needed not only information, but also a lot of power as a single unit. Unfortunately, Legendaria didn’t have many Masters—Superior or otherwise—who had enough direct combat ability for this task.

That only applied to those who belonged to the country, though.

By now all three of Legendaria’s Overlord dungeons had been conquered, and it had been done by Masters who were in Legendaria but did not belong to the country—in other words, Legendaria’s wanted.

The three Overlords were all major criminals as well as Superiors.

They hadn’t conspired to make this result. Each of them, completely separately, simply headed out into the dungeons and conquered them. Legendaria was the country with the most first-wave players, and thus also had the greatest number of wanted Masters. It even had more wanted Superiors than Superiors that actually served it—enough that there were still some left after three of their number had become Overlords.

The dungeons that had remained unbeaten for so long had finally been brought down. The monstrous Masters who lived in Legendaria had taken all three of the Overlord thrones in the country.

Having become Overlords, the three went on to live as they wished. They obeyed their desires, consuming, playing, and sleeping—in various different meanings of those words—to their heart’s content. They had even found tribes that obeyed them and created domains where they reigned supreme.

Their actions were primal and animalistic, making them seem more like wild monsters than Overlords.

These three also never had any conflicts among them, nor had they ever cooperated. Along with the other wanted Superiors of Legendaria, they had formed a kind of nonaggression pact.

They were not a clan with a united goal, but a cartel with the single rule of mutual nonintervention. As they each expanded their own domains, they were careful not to encroach on the domains of the others. The Overlords were essentially carving up Legendaria from the shadows.

This was the origin of the criminal cartel known as “Desire.”

The criminals weren’t hostile to each other, while noncriminal Masters were entirely unable to defeat them. Legendaria’s nature as a coalition of tribes, as well as the landscape with extremely varied areas that favored the tribes living in them—including the ones serving the Overlords—made overcoming them difficult.

Legendaria’s wanted also had no interest in anything outside Legendaria, so when La Crima had invited them to IF, none of them had even wanted to hear them out.

This isolated fairyland was home to a group of monstrous Masters who were more than a match for IF.

Was it pure chance that the country that was the most fantastical ironically ended up being the one that cast the darkest shadow, or was there some reason that it grew to harbor such evil? Regardless, Legendaria had become a chaotic mix between the main country, led by Titania the Fairy Queen, and several rebellious minor states. It was rumored that the recent assassination of the prime minister was related to these conflicts, as well.

The sole silver lining on this cloud was the fact that despite all the chaos in Legendaria, none of the major cities with save points in them had been conquered by the criminals, Overlord or otherwise.

If that ever happened, the chaos of Legendaria would certainly become the chaos of the entire world—and that remained a distinct threat that loomed over the future.

Despite their lack of involvement with Legendaria’s wanted, IF’s escape from the gaol did have an effect on the situation there, if only by chance.

The domain of one of the three, Overlord Acedia, was located to the very north of Legendaria—right next to the UBM-dominated area that had once served as a buffer zone.

Sechs and his group had broken out of their prison right on the Overlord’s doorstep, and they had achieved the feat through the extended use of Downfall Screamer—the skill of a Superior Embryo.

Overlord Acedia’s reaction to this was...

◆◆◆

Overlord Acedia

The depression. The melancholy.

It was a nice, sunny day, and I’d been getting some good shut-eye when I heard something on the horizon that sounded like Dis consuming the sky itself.

I loved this costume for sleeping, but I hated that it didn’t block outside sounds for safety reasons.

That meant that this noise was a danger, which just made me more depressed.

“Ugh...what a paiiin...” I was now awake anyway, so I went ahead and sent out some recon Thralls.

It turned out that it wasn’t Dis this time—it was a group of four that I kinda recognized and kinda didn’t, and I could sense what seemed like two Superiors there.

There were probably three, though. The messed-up-looking one must’ve been a Superior too—and the one in maid clothing wasn’t even human. Thanks to Dis, Benetnasch, and all those other pains in the neck, I could now tell things like that whether I liked it or not.

“Such a paiiin...” Even thinking of how to deal with these bozos was getting on my nerves, and now there was another one. Ugh...he was flying for some reason, but he looked like a real baddie.

Not even G the Bottomless looked like that, and she was the actually Overlord-ish one among us...

Anyway, these four plus the new one were...well, yep. Enemies.

All of them were enemies. Hostiles. They were annoying, they were being a pain, they’d woken me up, and they’d be a danger if they came here, so I’d just have to beat them before that happened. Knock ’em down, you know?

“Uhh...oh yeah...I woke up, so...”

I figured I should ask the maids for dinner. I called one of the sheepkin maids by ringing the bell next to my bed.

After a bit...no, a lot...of thinking, I asked for omurice.

Then, without doing much more thinking, I picked some forces to send out. It turned out that Leprechaun B had made a whole lotta mithril Thralls, so I’d just send them and Cardinal A. Go go gooo! I’d based Cardinal A on Benetnasch’s Aragorn, but this’d be my first time actually using him. Test, test.

Well, the new face wouldn’t change anything. I’d just throw them into Dreamland and get rid of their bodies like always. Kill ’em all.

Anyway, thinking about what I wanted for dinner had forced me to use my brain, so I was getting sleepy again...drowsy.

It was high time I was off to Dreamland too.

And the ones who’d woken me up...would die. Death penalty to all.

“Anyway, good night... Zzz...”

◆◆◆

That was the situation.

The interlopers were noisy, dangerous, hard to ignore, annoying, and wouldn’t let him sleep in peace. For him, that was enough reason to kill them.

He was part of the Desire criminal cartel—Overlord Acedia, ZZZ the Hypersomnia—and he recognized every single person at the site of the escape as enemies.

Ray was in no way involved in the noisy prison break, but that didn’t matter to him. It didn’t matter whom he was up against, or even if they were all Superiors.

Acedia had set up a domain here instead of the gaol exactly because he had never been defeated.

Thus, Overlord Acedia had decided to kill them all.