Somehow I’m the Otome Game Villain 8:

Somehow I’m the Otome Game Villain 8:

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by LordMarksman

…

“Alright, status report.”

“Hmph. I have finished scanning for remaining human positions in Holfort. I have located an old facility with power on an island occupied by Elves.”

“Send a scout it, get a feel for their culture, and investigate the ruins. We’ll get what we can without pissing anyone off… if we can.”

“They are the creations of true humanity, so they shall be spared from the trials to come.”

“No trials.”

“…at least, a little hellfire to shatter the miscreant’s pitiful peace?”

“No.”

“I abhor you.”

I turned over the Luxion while Ideal glared at me. My office was looking more and more high-tech by the day. My staff didn’t ask any questions about my new furniture, which looked straight out of sci-fi and clashed horribly with all the wood and books of the study, but it helped the AI do their job. That made up for the design issue.

“Alright, how’s building up a fleet going?”

“With access to New Humanity’s resources, at least that of your house, it is going more quickly than expected. Raw material acquisition seems to be within New Humanity’s ability.”

“No turning all of New Humanity into thralls for labor.”

“Hm, you’re quite astute when it comes to potential threats.”

“Ideal can be pretty sneaky. It’s just shy around you and Marie.” Ideal’s glare got stronger, and its blue eye started to light up, so I changed the subject. Not interested in being zapped! “So, what’s the estimate? Are we going to be in time for the endgame for this first game?”

“Plenty. With the estimate of the war occurring and the ‘final’ boss arriving on your fourth year, we will have three fully-armed warships. Not a transport or expeditionary ship, such as Ideal and myself.” I pumped my hands up and gave a silent cheer at that. It was the best news I’d heard in a long time. In fact, the news was so great that Ideal nodded appreciatively and Luxion hovered a little higher at the secondary praise. It was that good. “Indeed, I suppose that it is correct to say that we have handled the coming apocalypse. Only five or so more to go.”

“I’ll take it.” I sighed in relief and let myself relax behind my desk, before putting down screen of my laptop and stretching. “Let’s celebrate! Only a half-day of work today! You two can go back to your hobbies!”

Some would say that providing time-off for AI constructs with immense powers and no physical needs was stupid.

When, in fact, they’re the ones that are stupid.

If you have someone with those traits under your command, you treat them better than everyone else, or at least as good as everyone else.

Good employee treatment as a standard prevents death when dealing with such powerful employees! That’s how a Gacha game MCs always manage to stay alive, despite being surrounded by crazy-powerful people, you know!?

“Then, I will be in the garage.”

“Oh, you were serious about taking on the Air Bike industry?”

“They are weak and complacent now, but they produced a decent product.”

“Ah, I understand. With a proper foe, they can innovate and create far better pieces of machinery for us to utilize.”

“It is exactly as you say, Luxion.”

The two AI turned out to be Air Bike fans, and I was more than happy to help them out with their industry-shakeup hobby. It was better than them breaking into the warship industry, putting in secret AI underlings in every new ship in the market, and turning the tables on humanity. Yeah, them breaking the racing industry over their non-existent knees is a much better alternative.

I was ready to get up and leave when my last employee decided to speak up.

“Oi, don’t pretend like I’m not useful!” Marie fumed and pushed up the glasses she’d been wearing. We’d noticed her squinting at the screen and zooming in to a ridiculous degree. She’d insisted her eyesight was fine, until we got some glasses on her. Although the undernourished reincarnate grumbled about feeling old again, she accepted the reading glasses, until she could get some contacts. “I’ve been gathering info, too!”

“Alright, alright. Hit me with it while we’re grabbing dinner. Doing all this during midterms is tough, right?” Marie took a moment, but nodded and followed after me. We made our way through the small manse quickly and got to the kitchen. “Chef, the usual dinner, please! Give Marie twice whatever she wants!”

“Yes, my lord! Good evening, Lady Marie!”

“Paul, don’t you dare give me twice what I ask for! I’ll get fat!”

“But, you’re all skin and bones, my lady!”

Marie grumbled, but took a seat. We were in a small dining area attached to the kitchen. We had a dining room, but it was pointless to use for just one or two people. Maybe if my family came over, but I certainly wasn’t about to eat at the end of a massive table by myself. It was depressing.

“So, what’s going on in the Academy?” With my reputation as a thug, I didn’t get much traction around the Academy. People who approached me were mostly fringe nobility I’d befriended with Marie’s help early on. Everyone else avoided my path. Well, sometimes, Atlee would bump into me and we’d make small talk. Redgrave popped up sometimes, too. “How’s the Saintess doing?”

The din of the kitchen was a good way of keeping eavesdroppers from hearing us, but I was more confident in the great salaries and benefits I gave my employees. Oh, and the fact that I had two futuristic AI looking out for any information leaks. That helped too.

“She’s going through all the events pretty quickly, and they’re happening a lot faster than I thought.”

“That sounds bad.”

“She seems like she’s going to hit maximum relationships with them already.”

“In the first semester!? That shouldn’t be possible!” I know it’s not possible, because I tried. The amount of stamina you have for every day was limited. Even if you grinded like crazy in the Dungeon to pad relationship points every day, and bought all of the items that the boys liked and gifted them, you’ll get 25% of the relationship points available for each male character! You only need 20% to get them all to work together in the denouncement of the villainess scene and start the harem route! There was only one possibility that came to mind as to how this MC was that much more powerful. “Did the game turn 18+ or something!?”

“Idiot! No! She’s not even kissing them or anything… it’s… it’s more like she’s some sort of older woman with a young woman’s body, or something! She knows how to get boys to wrap around her and chase her like a pro!” Marie hissed and I blinked as she bit her thumb. I was about to ask why she found that so troubling, but she answered before I could ask. “She’s totally manipulating them for something, but I don’t know what. She’s already a Saintess and has the Kingdom’s support, but something feels wrong. She’s reminding me of my bastard exes in my last life, the ones that go ‘lol’ whenever you complain, and borrow money against your relationship, you know!?”

“Never had a girlfriend before I died, so I wouldn’t.”

“Ah, sorry.”

“It’s fine, this life’s way better for it anyway.”

“Give me back my apology!”

Marie fumed, but cooled down as we were served by the chef. Since I had the opportunity to get a good body by doing all the right things, I took it. Exercise and balanced meals from the moment that I could, which was why I was having a salad and a whole, roasted fish.  It paid off and I didn’t even have the little bit of fat I’d worried about once I was stuck in the office.

Also… abs.

Everything’s a lot easier when you know how to do everything right from that start and all that.

Oh, and if you had the money to do everything right.

Marie hadn’t.

“Augh, I feel full just looking at it.” Lots of protein and vegetables, with a bit of fat, in the form of whole grain bread and beef stew. Her bowl of soup was three-quarters full and as large as my bowl of salad and the loaf of bread was as long as her forearm. For someone barely reaching my sternum, it was a massive meal, even if most people in the manse could stomach it all without issue. “But, thanks for the meal, Paul!”

“You got it, my lady!”

We ate for a bit, respecting the food, but once she slowed down we resumed our conversation.

“So… what do you think the Saintess is up to?”

“Nothing good! She’s the kind of person I planned to be, but she’s got more on her mind than just living it up with a bunch of hotties. If she was, she’d be all over them, but she’s not!” You know what, I’m going to take this opportunist’s word for the situation. She gets nothing for lying to me, and she gets to tear someone down by telling me the truth. I’m pretty sure that this is currently the best job ever for her. “Girls like her string men along with promises as long as they can, and the guys from the game are all raised to be noble knights, so they’ll never think to call her out or force her to do anything in return. They’re basically living ATMs for her to get whatever she wants, but the problem is that she’s now withdrawing a dime even while they’re stacking up debt!”

“She’s got something big planned?”

“Yep. Definitely, but I don’t know what. It could be some weird attempt to use her harem to get five royal houses under her control, but that seems too tame from what I’ve seen.” Marie paused and crossed her arms, before putting both her fingers to her temple. Are you trying to pick up a signal or something? What’s the station called? Gold-digger times? How to manipulate young men easy? “She’s making contact with some nobility, too. The faction that scooped up all of the nobility that left Redgrave’s alliance… I think it was Frampton?”

“Why does she need a noble house in her pocket, if she’s already got the Church and the Crown Prince, and all the other houses?” That seemed like overkill, even to me. Didn’t this girl know that ‘good enough’ was usually all you needed to win? I mean, my view of good enough was having +1 end-game cheat items for every endgame boss, but that’s just being serious about saving as many people as possible. “Hm, I’ll get Luxion to start looking into her then. It makes sense that she can get past the relationship hard cap, but everything seems to be moving too fast. This might upset the event order, and it might make things go faster.”

“Yeah, that’ll be a problem. Lux said that the ships will be ready a year before the fourth year, right?”

I felt a shiver go down my spine.

“…Yeah, why will that be problem?”

“Umm, you remember that the third game technically happens when Julius’s younger brother enters the Academy, right?  Well… the third game is after the first.”

I put two and two together and put down my utensils, while a headache started forming on the front of my skull. A dull, aching pounding that promised to rid me of sleep.

“Oh for fuck’s sake… they retroactively fucked with the timeline just for their setting! We’ve only got a year! Not three!”

I wanted to cry and one look at Marie told me that she felt the same way.

This whole setting wasn’t just garbage.

It was garbage that got rewritten for easy development and sales!

…

“Um, you see more tired than usual, Rault-san.” Atlee sure was a nice girl. She noticed that I hadn’t gotten much sleep last night the instant we crossed paths. The red-haired young woman was looking better nowadays, though less… prim? She had hair down and didn’t wear her tie. Going for a more free look, I suppose? I couldn’t call her out. I didn’t wear a tie everyday, either. “Is something wrong?”

“Just have a lot on my plate. Stumbled on a new research site that I want to check out.” I didn’t exactly lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth, either. Hello, I’m here to try and stop an apocalypse from spilling over from your country to mine using AI that hate your people. That didn’t really roll off the tongue. “Do you know about Elves?”

That question, for some reason, made Atlee pause.

“Rault-san… did you want an Elf instead of an air-bike?”

I blinked at the words and the hint of sadness in Atlee’s voice, even as I answered.

“Want an Elf? As a slave? That’s illegal in the Republic, you know? I was asking because I think their land might have a dig site and I need to contact them.” The Kingdom practiced slavery. Well, a form of slavery that didn’t make the female players feel bad. It’s more like indentured, willing servitude. Long term hosts for ‘love’ while girls married to follow social norms. Like men with courtesans and formal marriages, but with the target audience, that was looked down upon. “Please, don’t give me a gift like that. It’ll be a headache. The air-bike is fine. Better, even.”

Atlee brightened up significantly at that. I suppose that she thought that she gave me the wrong gift. Holfort was weird as hell when it came to relationships and gifts. Noble girls can seriously buy their male friends female Elves as gifts?

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that you loved my gift, Rault-san.” Atlee giggled and nudged me in the side with her elbow. She was getting a bit more free and cheerful nowadays. She was even doing the thing where she carried her bag over her shoulder. Wait, a minute. Why was I letting a girl carry her bag? “Oh? What are you reaching for?”

“We’re heading the same way, so I can hold your bag for a bit.”

“How gentlemanly!”

“Oi, I’m plenty noble when I want to be.”

Atlee giggled, but impishly handed me her bag with both hands. I was tempted to make a scene and accept it nobly with a bow, but I decided against it and just picked it up from her hands without missing a beat.

Her smile was pretty big while I walked alongside her to her classroom.

Mhmm, it sucked being over here and not back home, but at least I could help a nice girl like Atlee out.