Epilogue

There’s a lot I could say about what came after, but you’re here for a story and not a history lesson, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

The party… went back as heroes. Well, Jake was still the only [Hero], but you get what I mean. They’d saved the world from a demon invasion, and I don’t think anyone had any clue how terrifying that actually was.

However, there was good news and bad news in store for the party.

I’ll give you the good news first since most of it did end up coming before the bad.

As for Jake and Emilia, they decided to get married. It was, surprisingly, one of the first adventurer weddings that happened in Placeholder, and it ended up being a colossal affair. I’m talking hundreds of guests, literal tons of food, and even [King] Vir ended up attending.

And yes, Emilia was the one that was responsible for most of that happening. I’m sure Jake would have been fine with a small, private wedding.

Speaking of Emilia, she put her idea to work and started the “Smith Trading Company,” which was the first trading company by adventurers and for adventurers.

It became a near-monopoly almost overnight. It turns out that adventurers were ecstatic to pay the lower prices they could get from another adventurer. That also led to an increase in the quality of gear they could have, which led to them earning more money, which led to... You get the picture.

As for Sam and Garrett… Well, it took some time before she worked up the nerve, but she did end up dating him a bit before the “half your age plus 7 rule” would have suggested. Though, to be fair, they did wait to marry until after that age. Not that I think Garrett would have cared either way.

Tim also finally picked his subclass and became a [Magic Researcher]. There honestly wasn’t that much to say about that, but I figured it counted as the last bit of good news for the party since that was his dream and all.

For Doom Fury… Yes, I’ll go ahead and give them the respect that they deserve just this one time.

Richard solidified himself as the head of the adventurers guild while the rest of his team branched out. As the one to discover the [Duelist] class, he also became the only person in the world that could go toe-to-toe with Jake in a sparring match. However, the discovery that people born and raised in Placeholder could become adventurers also made him rather busy with administration and paperwork.

Ethan started up and became headmaster of a college for adventuring mages and became increasingly glad that he hadn’t specced into [Ice Wizard]. Having the ability to teach and learn spells outside of that school ended up being vital.

Samuel made inroads with the church to begin training the next generations of [Clerics]. He also was largely responsible for establishing the church’s stance on the undead. (AKA. Kill it with holy fire).

Nick established a completely above-the-board guild for [Rogues]. Who definitely didn’t take illegal jobs or condone their members taking the [Steal] skill. Nope.

If this sounds like a happy ever after… Well, unfortunately, those are hard to come by.

Remember that prophecy about disaster for the party? Yeah. It was sketchy and inaccurate for its own reasons, but that didn’t mean it was completely wrong.

One, to turn back from adventuring. Garrett. His was actually a mixed blessing because he hung up his great axe to become a [Retired Adventurer], which sealed off his [Rage] skill. The reason that wasn’t all positive? Well… I’ll get to that later.

One, to sojourn in solitude. Lindsey. After they made it back to inhabited lands, she struck off on her own. She barely even said goodbye to Sam.

… I think my death meant a lot more to her than I could have ever realized.

One, to value profit over love. I hardly need to say this. Emilia. Though, I think the prophecy’s wording gives her a bit of a raw deal. I honestly think that Jake was a bit too busy being a [Hero] to be a husband. So, when the time came for her to choose between her husband and her company, I don’t really blame her that much for her choice.

Placeholder surprisingly didn’t have much of a provision for divorce, so they ended up separated, and she kept her husband’s last name. The cynical part of me thinks that was just because having “Smith” in her company name was just good branding with it being the name of the [Hero] of the world and all.

One, to fall to grief and one to be lost to madness. Andrew and Tim. They had a huge falling out because it turns out that smothering your now 18-year-old son like he’s still the 10-year-old he should be is a recipe for disaster. Tim cut Andrew out of his life for years, which turned out to be too much for Andrew.

Andrew died of old age at the minimum possible age of 50. Or at least, that was the earliest recorded death Placeholder had at that point that was of “natural causes.”

The next records of Tim were of the church calling a manhunt for him attempting to learn and use “forbidden magic.” While that isn’t enough to claim madness right away… I think you can read between the lines a bit.

That leaves the final two lines of the prophecy. Betrayal and death. Those were already covered by me and Megan. Just in case you somehow didn’t make that connection. Though technically, I both betrayed the party and died, I guess the System was more concerned with petty poetry and making sure there were exactly 7 lines than with accuracy.

Otherwise, they would have also included Sam.

Or maybe it didn’t include her because nothing spectacularly bad happened to her. She mostly lost touch with her best friend, and had to deal with judgment towards her and Garrett, but that wasn’t much in comparison.

Oh. I didn’t explain why she and Garrett would face judgment. And I guess this ties in with Jake’s part of the prophecy and the other prophecies he’d been warned about.

The ones about attacks from the north, south, and east.

You see… I may have accidentally caused the fall of Besti, the beastborn empire.

I know, right? After all my hard work to not take over the world.

The attack from the east, well, that was the fire dungeon. You know how I claimed that, and Doom Fury didn’t have a thing they could do about it? Well, I don’t know if the elves and beastborn dropped the ball, or if the humans didn’t communicate the fact that someone needed to keep the zones in check, but they were allowed to be in combat mode for months without any resistance. By the time Jake could get over to try to deactivate the fire dungeon, the eastern side of Placeholder was a mess of Demon Lord faction zones that were all in combat mode.

The reason for that when Jake’s claim in DeepMine had only claimed one other zone? My zones were always in combat mode. Everyone else’ defaulted to training mode unless someone specifically went to the obelisk to change it.

Yet another case where my class and faction were overpowered where I didn’t want them to be.

Anyway, that’s how it spread enough that both Besti and Dryadal, the elf kingdom, came under siege from monsters.

Besti asked for aid from Vir, and Dryadal asked for aid from Pumil, the dwarf kingdom. Both kingdoms, somewhat reluctantly, sent help. I suppose “if I go down, you’re the next target” tends to make that a bit easier to swing diplomatically.

And that’s where the attacks from the north and the south came in.

From the north… [Berserkers].

How is that one my fault? Well, they probably wouldn’t have thought to cross the sea if I hadn’t confirmed there was land across it. Also, they wouldn’t have had a reason to raid and pillage Pumil and Besti if I hadn’t inadvertently caused the destruction of their main hunting ground.

Yup, it turns out if an undead heart reaches an active obelisk that it can take over the entire area for the “undead” faction, which completely ruins it and spawns only undead. To make matters worse, the obelisk can then only be destroyed and not reclaimed. In other words, the Gert Ice Plains, where they had done the majority of their hunting, had its zone completely destroyed.

The extra pressure from the [Berserkers] on Pumil and Dryadal meant that Pumil stopped sending aid and that Dryadal’s forces had to be split. Eventually, Dryadal hammered out a treaty with the [Berserkers] where they ceded some land and got the [Berserkers] to help against the monster attacks from the east.

What about the attack from the south? Well, that was even more undead, which I was directly responsible for.

You remember all those daves that I left scattered around the Great Southern Swamp? Yeah. It took years for enough death energy to coalesce because the daves only killed the crocs when they came after them and not the stranglevines. To make matters worse, the energy was also spread out enough that when two hearts were created, they didn’t combine.

One made its way northwest up into Vir and the other northeast into Besti.

Vir came out of it relatively unharmed because Faroff was the first place it attacked… and it had become an official training ground for adventurers due to the ease that its dungeon could be cleared. That bought them time for Vir to send reinforcements, that had been promised to Besti, and for the undead to be pushed back.

Besti wasn’t so lucky. Faced with two different hordes of monsters that it couldn’t negotiate with and caught completely off-guard by the attack from the south, the undead swept through Besti like a wildfire.

Soon, the capital city itself was destroyed by the undead. Fortunately, after taking over basically all of Besti, the heart stopped its rampage and didn’t go any further. Whether that was because it didn’t think to cross the rivers, or it didn’t sense any other obelisks in range of its new capital it’s hard to be sure.

Fortunately, I wasn’t responsible for the complete genocide of the beastborn. Refugees managed to escape newly named “Besti deathlands” into Vir and Dryadal, and even some brave ones into the desert in the east.

So, how does that relate to Sam and Garrett? Well, needless to say, the Besti refugees were not happy with Vir abandoning their country in their time of need. And Vir had the uncomfortable position of Besti being 100% right about that.

The answer? Propaganda. Which is the answer to a surprising range of political problems.

Convincing the people that it was because of the “weakness of those flea-bitten mongrels” that they had to send their “brave sons and daughters” off to fight in their war was the tact that they ended up taking.

So, Garrett and Sam got to face some discrimination because Sam was one of those “flea-bitten mongrels” and Garrett was both a “mongrel-lover” and a coward because of his retirement.

Oh yeah, and I promised I would tell you about Jake. Jake was still the [Hero]. That didn’t change after my death. And that meant that he pretty much tried to be everywhere to help with all of the disasters.

He led the charge against the zones in the east, took a break from that to help with the [Berserkers] (and sit in on the treaty the elves signed with them), and even failed to push back the undead in Besti. Which is actually surprising. I didn’t think it was possible for him to truly fail at something like that.

However, basically every [Historian] only has glowing words for Jake. Which makes sense. He made a good [Hero]. Though, I’m sure that he frustrated quite a few of them by refusing to talk about our final confrontation. Either it was too painful, or he didn’t want to have to admit that “yeah, I only won because he let me kill him right at the end, and I unlocked another BS skill.”

That led to a lot of “poetic license” being taken with our final fight, but that’s not important.

What is important… Is how the heck I’m here to tell you all of this when I clearly died, right?

Well, did you seriously think a little thing like death would be enough to end the story of a [Demon Lord]?

---- Right after the final battle ----

Where… Am I? I asked myself. None of my senses were working. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, and I felt like I was floating.

Oh. Right. I died. That put a bit of a downer on my mood, but I tried not to focus on it.

Frickin [Limit Break]. Leave it to a [Hero] to pull another new skill out of his butt at the last second. I tried to shake my head, but I don’t know if I succeeded. Or if I even had one.

I floated there in peace for a few minutes before I continued my internal monologue.

I guess I expected a lot more fire and torture. This isn’t that bad, though I guess I might die again from boredom.

System : You do realize this isn’t Hell, right?

Oh. There we go. Here’s the torture. I paused for a second and wondered why the heck I could still see messages when I couldn’t see anything else, but then I remembered something more important. Wait. We had a deal! You can’t message me!

System : The deal was until the day you die, remember?

Frick. Never trust an admin quest. I grumbled. It was quiet for a few moments before I finally asked. So, I’m a bit busy with my eternal rest. What do you want?

System : It’s not eternal, and I contacted you one last time to help the time pass.

Great. A whole minute out of-

System : [Sleep]

I’m immune. You really think… that will… My thoughts turned sluggish, and it was hard to focus.

System : Rest well, Demon Lord

I drifted off into a deep and dreamless sleep.

---

Years passed, and I’m grateful I was rendered unconscious through all of it. To be completely sensory deprived for that long would have driven me mad… Well, more mad.

It turns out that while AltSys had successfully hit the off switch for my consciousness, my subconscious was still going. And all it had to think about was my time since coming to Placeholder.

Which reinforced one thing… I really should have gone to a [Therapist] to work through some of the trauma.

Instead, my subconscious tried to work through it by itself…

----

When I finally did return to conscious thought, it was a really rude awakening.

System: ERROR, Cannot overwrite Demon Lord! Demon Lord has System-level write protection and cannot be directly modified!

System: ERROR, Demon Lord not in expected location!

System: Protocol Accepted. New Game

Then next I knew, I and my newly formed body were mercilessly dumped to the floor.

It was a familiar sight. A room in a cave with a dusty obelisk on a raised platform. It even had the shield I’d left next to it so long ago.

I shakily stood up and wiped the dust away from the obelisk to look at my reflection.

As I looked at the twisted and grotesque figure staring back at me, I suddenly found it all very funny.

“New Game,” I said with a wicked grin.

I laughed. It started small but soon became a long unhinged laugh, even as the next words appeared.

System: MaDnEsS FoRm SeT

The End?