Somehow, I’m the Otome Game Villain 19:

Somehow, I’m the Otome Game Villain 19:

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by LordMarksman

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One man with an overpowered Cash Shop item against a whole fleet of the final enemy faction by the end of the game.

If the game developers were decent people, I would lose.

Thankfully, they’re money-hungry hacks who know how hard they’ve made their games, so that they could sell their cash shop items in a full-priced game.

Thank you, hyper-capitalism, for making my new life easier.

“Status report, Ideal?”

“Their pathetic mimicry of True Humanity’s control over the skies has been destroyed. Ptui.” Ideal took a long look at the fleet of the Principality of Fanoss and decided that the fact it existed was an insult to him. It probably had something to do with the lack of sailing-ship aesthetic that they had. They were modernish, armored, completely black, and with modernish-bridge towers. More WW2 battleship than ship-of-the-line that can fly. Ideal took offense to that. “They are also enjoying mercy from their betters by being allowed to live. Of course, if they perished to circumstances outside my control, that is their own pitiful fault.”

Ideal had done as I’d asked and immobilized and disarmed the enemy fleet and its massive swarm of monsters.

Heat rays raked the cannon turrets on each ship. The smaller ones burst apart into molten slag after getting hit. The larger ones glowed white, then the shells inside exploded, taking out the ammunition stores within before melting the weapons. Concentrated beams lanced through the propeller-engines of the ships, leaving them simply floating as they were kept solely aloft by the Float Stones within their hull. If Ideal aimed that same beam at those stones, it would have sent the whole fleet to their demise to the endless ocean below.

That was the fate of the vanguard.

The main cannon took care of the main body of the enemy fleet, while the backline was dismantled by salvoes of rockets launching nigh-endlessly from the back of the ship.

The main cannon was a ‘spinal’ weapon, and in the game using it would entail dragging a line across the enemy formation, since its piercing capability was that ludicrous. Ideal used it to line up multiple ships and take out their engines with full-charged shots that crackled with energy and surrounded the shells it fired with some sort of magnetic force that dragged metals it passed through after it. The main gun shots left twisting, massive holes like a drill through multiple enemy ships. The uncharged shots were for precision work and it used it to smash weapon systems with ludicrous speed.

Then, somehow, Ideal made the missiles the very worst by making them incendiary. They shot up high into the sky, then descended from above each targeted ship, and bathed them in compounds that set metal aflame and forced crews to abandon ship. Those ships were starting to melt already.

So, the vanguard was dead in the water and blocking the way.

The main body of the fleet was trapped while Ideal took potshots at them that killed at least two ships each time.

Then, the rear line was burning.

Yeah.

Ideal made hell.

It had done it with precision, power, and speed… and killed a lot of people in the process.

Well, if no one died, my ‘honor’ would be put into question, so I accepted those deaths at my command.

I’ll puke in the bathroom later, but for now I had peace to broker from a position of strength.

“You should puke first and take a moment to rest. There are still monsters that need to be killed.” Ideal probably realized that I wasn’t dealing with the situation well, so it decided to be nice. I could only hope that I didn’t look weak in front of it, and that I actually looked like ‘True Humanity’ with my weakness. “Go rest, so that this can be completed perfectly.”

“Right.” I grunted and got up from the command chair of the bridge. My hands were clammy and I was slick with sweat. At the very least, I knew that I had to watch and look at what was happening by my command. That was the least that I could do. “I’ll do that.”

My legs were a bit shaky, but after a deep breath and a quick slap to my own face, I recovered and nodded.

This is part of my new life.

I was prepared for this, even just a little, by my father’s teachings.

In this world, not taking the lives of others was considered a grave weakness. Not only that, but it made the New Humans more brazen and willing to attack. Ideal might be a maniac, but it was right about New Humanity being willing to go through more extremes because of their magic. These people would see someone who spared their foes as weak-willed and incapable of killing, and target their loved ones in turn.

I didn’t want to kill, but if I didn’t these people would just get back up, dust themselves off, and go back to war the next day after squeezing more out of the people that they ruled.

I had to resist demonizing them, and thinking of them like monsters.

They’re still people.

I swallowed thickly as I neared the door that led to my quarters, before giving the order that I knew that I had to give.

“Hey, Ideal.”

“Yes, Leon?”

“Put all their commanders and captains and officers in one ship… and prepare my Armor.”

“Very well.”

I can afford to spare the vast majority of the rank-and-file, but people with connections, influence, and fame in the Principality had to go.

If I didn’t, they’d just muster another fleet for the sake of their own, personal vendettas.

I didn’t want to do this again, especially when I did what I had to do.

…

Interlude: Hertrude

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Fear.

It was a feeling that I believed I was familiar with.

Then, in the course of an hour, I watched the pride of the Principality, meant to strike at the despicable Holfort Kingdom at their weakest to draw blood… was destroyed over the course of an hour.

The fastest of our battleships, crewed by our best, went forth to fight when we called upon them. These were not conscripts, but our finest soldiers who pledged their lives to our cause. Our knights were all loyal and true, leaving their houses behind even without sons, so that they could join us in our battle against those who harmed our people so much. Our best captains joined us with their best crews, all volunteers for the task, and with full intentions to do all that they could to show the world entire that the Holfort was weak from without as well as within.

I watched as they all died to a single ship.

Beams of baleful power raked across our vanguard. Our ships exploded one after the other, and I saw bodies fly out of them. Some crew manning smaller guns on the outside were simply turned to ash, as the metal they stood upon melted in an instant. Their lives are lost forever without so much as ash to be buried.

Our main force was pierced through with flashes of a weapon at the ship’s prow. With every flash a ship suddenly broke inward, twisting and turning into itself, and throwing men, munitions, and armor outward with each shot… into the next ship. The munition carried pieces of our own ship and its crew into the other, killing that as well, before stopping once expended.

Then, at our back, hell was unleashed, and men boiled alive within ship hulls as our vessels were set with flames that we could not put out. Dreadful projectiles, seemingly with wills of their own, shot up from the ship into the sky and reigned fire upon our ships. I watched bridges melt, cannons turn into explosives, and so many people die.

Finally, then, there was the most terrifying thing of all.

At the start of the battle, there had been a proclamation.

“All ships of the Principality of Fanoss. Retreat now and return to your homes. If you do not, I will not stop fighting against you until every ship can only float and has had all its weapons destroyed. Leave and do not return.”

We had laughed at the singular ship, jeered at it, and moved to destroy as it repeated those words again and again.

Then, when the first shot fired and bounced off a barrier of the ship, our hell began with those words being replaced by cold, dark silence.

A silence that persisted from the first surrender that we offered, to the cries of despair and madness that followed, and finally the whispered begging for succor from hundreds of ships.

“We surrender! By the gods we surrender!”

“Madman! Psychopath! You will burn in hell for what you are doing—”

“We’ll kill you! Destroy your whole lineage! We know not who you are but everything you hold dear will be destroyed—"

“Stop! We surrender! We give up! What are you doing!? We surrender! Please, no—

All answered those words reached everyone on the still-open line, the ship connecting us all with another somehow, and we listened to its silence… as it silenced ship after ship again and again.

Until there was nothing but a chorus of silent, more subdued channels surrounding the singular, primary silence that started it all.

Then, strange constructs came forth from the ship. Metal statues without legs, with conical torsos, which flew through the air. Their arms were bulky and large, while their skulls had single, blue glowing eyes. They took control of one our ship, then brought it to the survivors. I had thought that they were some sort of golem, which were going to start saving people, but I was wrong.

They were dragging out the officers and captains of each ship, all those with authority, and placing them into on hulk as we all watched without the ability to do anything.

Vandal tried to stop them from reaching my room, breaking through the hallways with his armor and with his prized blade in hand, while those he trained fought alongside him.

The constructs were felled, but each one was replaced swiftly soon after, and his resistance drew the attention of the main ship.

Then, in an instant, it was over and where he sat in his armor there was instead a molten hole into which the upper half of his vehicle crumbled into. His armor crashed and broke against the floor, and the scent of molten metal and burnt flesh filled my lungs.

The same fate befell his finest students.

The rest were brought low by the constant surge of the metal creatures, as they used their metal hands to rip through plate and access the pilots within.

And, now, those constructs were ready to kill me, or so I had believed.

It hovered over me like a titan, completely silent and implacable, and I wondered if I would be placed on the same ship as all the officers.

Then, it spoke with hands covered in blood and bone, and my fear deepened to depths I never knew it could reach.

It can speak, therefore it can think, and it did all of this in complete silence.

“Princess Hertrude of the Principality of Fanoss. You are being taken hostage. Do not resist.”

My trembling legs collapsed from under me at the singular thought and the magical flute of my people clattered onto the ground.

“Why? Why did you do this? We surrendered.” I spoke to it, while it loomed over me like a monolith. In the corner of my vision, I watched the ship they took all the others to float past us. An Armor unit came forth from the ship, covered in weapons from head to toe, and sporting a massive cannon that dwarfed it. No ornamentation. It was a vehicle to carry weapons and only that. “This is… you could’ve traded our lives back for a fortune.”

“And, that would not have stopped your people from returning. In fact, my estimates show that your people will return anyway. Your sister will lead them next. And, we will do the same to them.” Vengeance will fill the hearts of the Principality. They will call for war, and they will use up the treasury to pull all our ships to conflict. But they will be filled with lesser knights, only average officers, and conscripts. We were destroyed. They will be massacred. “The fortune that you offer would have meaningless. Our aim is to destroy your nation’s ability to wage war. This is the best course of action.”

In the creature’s words, I had no answer, even as it reached for the magical flute… and turned it into dust with a crackling power that also rid its hands of blood.

It could have killed those pilots with the same power, yet it chose to kill them with bare hands and left their blood dripping on its appendages.

Only one question reigned in my mind, as the pilot of the Knight Armor in the distance hefted a massive cannon and fired a singular shot through the ship containing the fleet’s admiral, the finest of our officers, and our captains. It went through the bridge and into the float stone containing the ship, like a spear of light coming from the sky and skewering straight through the ship. It began to fall into the endless sea, filled with monsters and death, where it and the people it held would never be found.

I asked the creature the singular question that took hold of me.

“What did we do to make you hate us so? How have we wronged you?” I will soon be held hostage. My people will discard me, but I will find a way to warn them of this creature. Someway, somehow, I will save as many people in the coming assault from this beast. “Please, tell me. Why—

“Your existence is disgusting. Were it my decision. None of you would be spared here. The more of you that die the better the world is. I truly hope that my estimates are correct, and that your people come forth despite this showing. I’ll be allowed to kill them all.” Malice, spite, and hate. All three filled the voice of the metal creature, as it picked me up in one hand and held my close its blue eye. “You search me for weakness, for something to say to your sister and the army at her back. So, tell her this: if they come here, I’ll kill them all and I’ll savor every moment of it.”

This creature was a true demon.