And yet, here he was, sitting amongst all of the trappings of his success, the Dark Lord of Demethros, harbinger of the apocalypse, feeling completely bored out of his mind.

Off to the side of his ma.s.sive bone throne, lit by the faint flickering of torchlight, stood the various heads of n.o.ble houses who'd sworn him fealty from his recent conquests. The Grovelsons, the Snivelots, the Cowertons... their armies counted for only a minute fraction of his strength, but he felt a strange sense of perverse pride to have them constantly waiting at his beck and call, waiting with bated breath for him to tell them to jump off a cliff because it pleased him.

All of that said, when G.o.d had offered him the chance to become the dastardly villain he'd always dreamed of becoming, and become the G.o.d of this new world of his storybook imagination, he'd leapt at the chance. Who wouldn't? But now, having done everything he could think of to do, and with absolutely no challenge to anything he ever did, even moving off his throne long enough to take a s.h.i.+t felt like a tremendous ch.o.r.e.

G.o.d had promised him there would be a great hero sp.a.w.ned into this world. His opposite. His equal. His one real challenge to becoming the G.o.d of this new world. All he had to do was find and defeat this great hero, and G.o.dhood would be his. But in all of his searching, with all of his resources ma.s.sed to the task of finding this legendary hero, he'd turned up nothing. Every report he'd followed up on about a great hero led to some other random NPC with a big s.h.i.+ny sword and a big s.h.i.+ny smile and a big s.h.i.+ny can-do att.i.tude, and after a few seconds, a big s.h.i.+ny corpse left smoking in a big s.h.i.+ny crater. It was all so very tedious.

The Dark Lord of Demethros snapped his fingers, and as if on cue, three things stepped forward- An executioner with a comically large axe, an entertainer in a fool's cap, and a scantily clad Succubus holding her own leash. He looked from one to the next with a sigh, his cheek resting on the knuckles of his left hand. After a moment's deliberation, he pointed to the executioner, who stepped forward and knelt. Before the other two could step out of sight again, he pointed to the entertainer, who yelped and attempted to run. With a lazy flick of his wrist, the Dark Lord locked the man in place, and compelled him to kneel, leaning with his face down towards the paved tile of the floor.

Suddenly, just as he was about to give the order to have the man beheaded, a small floating bearded man poofed into the air next to the Dark Lord's throne, and waved at him.

"Dennis! I have good news! I finally found you a hero to face. He just made into the world a few hours ago. He's looking for a challenge. Can I borrow a few goblins?" Frumpkin asked, hopping up and taking a seat on the arm of the skull throne.