Third Person POV
Several men sat around a crackling campfire, their laughter rough and careless. Swords, worn cloaks, and filthy rags lay scattered nearby, while dried blood stained their clothes. One look was enough to identify them.
Bandits.
Having just finished their usual "work," they were completely relaxed, guards down, minds dull from exhaustion and drink.
They never noticed the presence watching them from beyond the treeline.
Hidden among the shadows stood a cloaked figure, his gaze calm as it swept over the camp.
"It seems the Plot Changer worked," the person muttered quietly. "There's no sign of Cid."
The voice belonged to Zanac.
He was no longer in his palace room, nor even in the same world. The distance between where he had been and where he now stood was so vast that no conventional means could ever bridge it.
This was the world of The Eminence in Shadow.
And yet… there was no Shadow here.
There never would be.
Zanac had deliberately altered the setting, using the Plot Changer to arrive in a version of this world where Minoru Kageno was never reincarnated.
No Minoru meant no Cid. And no Cid meant no Shadow Garden, at least not in its original form.
Since the option had been given to him, Zanac intended to use it to its fullest.
He had thought long and hard about what this world could offer him.
Magic? No, that was what the Overlord world was for.
Wealth? He was already a prince; gold was hardly an issue.
So if it wasn't power or money… then what?
The answer he arrived at was simple.
Loyalty.
At first, he had considered entering the original timeline, approaching Cid directly, and recruiting him, perhaps in exchange for knowledge or magic. But the more Zanac thought about it, the less appealing the idea became.
With the templates he already possessed, and with proper training, he didn't actually need Cid.
And then another thought struck him.
Instead of working through Shadow Garden as mercenaries… wouldn't it be better to build them from the ground up?
To have Shadow Garden exist for him.
That way, their loyalty wouldn't belong to some self-proclaimed "Eminence in Shadow."
It would belong to him alone.
"Let's see if I can understand them," Zanac muttered.
He pulled out a magic scroll.
The moment he activated it, the parchment disintegrated into particles of light. In the next second, two white rabbit ears sprouted from the top of his head.
The Rabbit's Ear Scroll, a scroll imbued with a 1st-tier spell, Rabbit's Ear.
It enhanced the user's sense of hearing to an abnormal degree, allowing even faint sounds to be picked up clearly.
The rabbit ears twitched.
Zanac frowned.
"…I can hear them clearly," he muttered. "But I can't understand a word."
That much, at least, was expected.
This was an entirely different world. Unlike the New World of Overlord, there was no convenient auto-translation at work here.
"But at least I've found my target," Zanac muttered, his gaze settling on a particular sack placed beside the bandits.
"Let's prepare before making a move."
With that, he pulled out several magic scrolls.
Some had already been used as precautions.
Odorless, a first-tier spell that erased his scent completely.
Camouflage, another first-tier spell that altered his skin colour, allowing him to blend into the surroundings and making detection far more difficult.
Silence a second-tier spell that swallowed all sound within its area of effect.
One by one, the scrolls crumbled into faint motes of light as their magic activated.
Thin streaks of light tore through the air.
The first volley hit without warning.
Magic Arrows pierced bodies cleanly, dropping several bandits before they even understood they were under attack. A split second later, Acid Arrows followed, bursting on impact. Armour sizzled, flesh burned, and screams were swallowed whole by the field of Silence.
The camp descended into chaos.
A few reacted on pure instinct. Years of living by the blade kicked in as they rolled aside or stumbled back, narrowly avoiding death. Others bolted blindly into the trees, abandoning weapons and comrades alike.
Several chose a different response.
Shouting curses Zanac couldn't understand, they charged straight toward the source of the attack, blades raised, faces twisted with rage and desperation.
Zanac didn't flinch.
Another scroll disintegrated in his hand.
A distorted ripple surged forward, an invisible Shock Wave that warped the air itself. The charging bandits were caught mid-stride, bodies snapping backward as if struck by a giant hammer. Bones shattered. Weapons flew from numb fingers. They hit the ground hard and didn't rise again.
The clearing fell silent.
"…Efficient," Zanac muttered, already considering the idea of buying more scrolls after witnessing their effectiveness firsthand.
Still, he didn't delude himself.
The men lying before him were nothing special, ordinary bandits. They possessed no supernatural abilities, no magic, no mana-enhanced physiques. Just years of rough living and crude experience, nothing more. Against prepared magic, especially an ambush, they never stood a chance.
This wasn't proof of overwhelming strength.
It was proof that preparation mattered.
Zanac exhaled slowly, steadying himself. This was his first real kill. Strangely, there was no nausea, no shaking hands, only a distant heaviness in his chest that he quietly acknowledged and pushed aside.
Am I feeling excited?
Is this… thrill?
Have I really become someone who doesn't care about life?
The questions surfaced one after another and he crushed them before they could take root. Now wasn't the time to hesitate.
Stepping over torn bodies and broken limbs, he walked through the aftermath of the slaughter. His boots pressed against blood-soaked ground and lifeless flesh without pause.
He stopped in front of a large sack tied tightly with rope.
Kneeling down, Zanac untied it and pulled the covering away.
Inside was a cage.
Within the bars trembled a bulbous creature, vaguely humanoid in shape, yet warped and grotesque, like a mass of cancerous growth given form. Its surface pulsed faintly, uneven and wrong, and a single exposed eye stared back at him.
That eye was filled with unmistakable emotion.
Fear.
Panic.
Terror.
"Let's see if I can save you."
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Some Pokémon rank in overlord suggestions