The Nerd Turned Conqueror: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Oscar Reeds

  CONQUEST #6: ZOAV

  Five planets, and all of them I had use of while in space. I needed the Ehre for their warriors, the Girodians for their technology, the Cotahi for their materials (with the plants as a bonus) and the Valahs for their weaponry, with a little extra on the side in the form of Cybels. But my next two planets were entirely focused on my future efforts of integrating Earth into my empire.

  Zoav was a mining planet. Most of the local Zoavis had moved into the absolute inner core of the planet, and they rarely came out as is. In fact, they wouldn’t even emerge when there were open wars for their own territory among the many other people that were now inhabiting Zoav. They just didn’t care enough to do so. As such, multiple nations and planets sent their miners to this planet to collect raw materials. For some reason, most of them were other humans, from other planets, which made my own job of conquering and killing far easier.

  First I needed lots of stones and minerals, as well as sand. Construction was important, and if I wanted monuments and such on earth, I had to transport large quantities of these materials. After all, it would take far too much time to just take them from Earth quarries, and even then they would be finite. This planet had what I needed, though. An entire half of a continent was nothing but solid rock. Valahs manufactured a weapon for me which I could use to penetrate this rock, and it yielded great results – tons of rare minerals which were hard to come by on earth popped out, and I could smell the richness coming from them. Another device, this one from the Ehre, surprisingly, allowed me to utilize big chunks of rock and grind them into fine sand. Fine sand that was more than perfect for earthly construction. I commissioned thousands of my artificial workers to get on quarrying the rocks, grinding them into sand, and extracting the minerals. With the machines further enhanced by the Girodians, this task was done in a record time, with a bountiful harvest. Teleporters sent the raw materials across the cosmos, to each of my newly-conquered planets, where my other stationed scientists packaged them neatly and prepped them for their eventual trip down to Earth. The craters we were leaving behind worried some local quarrymen, and they approached us with disgust. However, upon learning they were dealing with who they called Conrad the Collector, they turned tail and ran. I liked that moniker – “Conrad the Collector.” They associated it with me collecting planets and races, but it fit well here – I mean, I was collecting resources, en masse.

  A little time had passed, and the vast swathes of the continent were devoid of rocks. There was still the crust of the planet, but I chose not to dig that far down. After all, what I had acquired now was more than enough. It was time to move onto the next potential resource. Luckily for me, this planet had an abundance of those, especially ones that Earthlings would pay millions for.

  The other half of the continent I had just devoid of all rocks was filled with deep, protruding mines. Said mines were structured much like the ones on Earth, except with a distinct difference of using anti-gravity carts. My two races of researchers studied one such cart and in a millisecond I had a more efficient vehicle mass-produced and working in every mine I could physically see. We were turning quite the profit with them, as other miners approached with offers to have the designs, so they can mine later. I didn’t mind. Girodians working for me drew up sketches and blueprints for them, and they sold them all in exchange for all of their cargo. I now had double the amount I wanted or even needed, and yet I wanted more. So we kept on digging.

  An entire rich vein was filled with gold. It was unrefined, but clearly pure and undiluted. A single nugget from this planet would get me half a million bucks in the US, and I had seven carts full of these, in just the first outing. That should give you an idea of how much I was now worth monetarily. This gold was useful for my troops as well, considering how well it conducted electricity. Every new weapon now had to have golden particles within it, which would make the shooting run more smoothly and added precision. Of course, the few Cybels I brought with me could use the gold to fashion themselves trinkets and crowns, as their artisans were quite skilled at jewelry.

  Speaking of jewelry, silver was not far behind. Two massive veins uncovered roughly fifty tons of the stuff. I was dumbfounded. Normally I don’t care for this stuff, but silver was and still is my favorite of the metals used for jewelry. I immediately ordered the fashioning of a silver statue in my honor, and when it was done – it didn’t take long – it barely contained a single percent of the material I was about to excavate. That’s how much silver I now had to my name. And yet, to quote Brian Butterfield, “that’s not all.”

  Lapis Lazuli was next. There’s something about space Lapis Lazuli that makes it more beautiful than the one here on Earth. I read somewhere that ancient Sumerians used this material quite often to fashion their instruments, weapons, steles, boxes, pottery, headdresses – literally any and every single thing imaginable. And I couldn’t blame them, the stone looked amazing. The vein containing it was smaller than the silver one, but the quality was far greater. In fact, it was a vein that was expertly mined by a group before us, who abandoned it when they found out who I was and what I wanted.

  Similar thing happened to a mine containing nothing but diamonds. A group was working on it when they’d learned that Conrad the Collector approached. They left in haste, but one guy lingered, a guy called Fawkes. Fawkes was a cool-looking chap, and I knew instantly that we were going to be friends. He told me of how this planet worked, who was running it, how it was run, and what happened to the native Zoavi. Apparently, a representative from a different planet, Clovier 5, took over at one point because of the lack of native rulers and representatives. He turned the planet into a bureaucratic nightmare, complete with insane paperwork and irritating waiting times. Most of the miners here, he told me, were illegals, and were willing to work for anyone who wanted them. This was information I readily used right then and there. Sending roughly a hundred thousand representatives through portals, I used some transmission software by the Girodians to ask them all to work directly for me, and promised that I would dispose of the diplomat in charge. Nearly everyone agreed, save for a few upstarts, but I will focus on them a little later.

  With diamonds mined, emeralds were the last thing remaining. Not because there was nothing else there, but merely because I felt like I was suffocating in all of that wealth. Still, grabbing hold of seventeen tons of emeralds was a dream come true. My new miners were busy excavating away, using the tech my scientists openly gave them. I hate to repeat myself, but it still fascinates me how I managed to get all of that work done in a matter of hours, or rather minutes. Massive carts filled with precious stones were now leaving through my portals and onto my planets far away from Zoav, where they would wait for me safe and sound. I was making serious bank from this one continent on Zoav, and I was merely halfway done with the planet. After all, this wasn’t the typical conquest of war – it was one of resources.

  With most of the people on Zoav now listening to me, I had to deal with the upstarts. The biggest concentration of them came from the pearl farms in the middle of the Magnum Ocean. To illustrate just how big Magnum Ocean is, imagine if you had two Pacific oceans and one Atlantic ocean all rolled into one. Yeah, that was Magnum. But it wasn’t particularly deep. That’s why there were huge, elongated farms of clams and oysters all along its waters.

  It was these people who wanted me out of the picture. They had a long-standing deal with the diplomat in charge in terms of export-import and low tariffs for sold goods. If I were to remove that guy, they would lose massively, and I was a wild card, so they couldn’t really do business with me blindly. Their only real option was to risk open conflict with me, which would invariably destroy the massive pearl farms, which themselves turned up a profit the size of the annual budget of the United Kingdom. I had to do something smart, and I had to do it fast.

  Naturally, I turned to my scientifically-minded people, and they advised me to approach it in a business manner. So I divided my tr
oops into five distinct groups. One included nothing but Dahrmites and the Ehre, working side by side, in order to promote “racial unity among workers.” That sort of thing always worked on us humans. The second group was highly-skilled Valahs, or rather Valahs and artificial Valah constructs I created on Valahaed. They were using their weaponry to penetrate the lower regions of the ocean to unleash newer cultures of clams. As far as pearl production was concerned, my third group, containing nothing but Girodians, took up large swathes of untapped and, more importantly, failing “farm land” and successfully pulled out a year’s worth of pearls. My fourth group was the artisans of Cybornia. The ladies worked their way around the gathered pearls and quickly crafted beautiful necklaces which were highly priced in that sector of the universe. The final group consisted of me and the Cotahi, as we were overseeing the production and barking orders, focusing on shipping which we did via teleporters. We were a well-oiled pearl-farming machine, and we completed all of that work in the time it took one episode of Dragon Ball to air on TV, commercials included.

  Pearl farmers were impressed. They of course wanted to know what kind of tech and resources I had behind me, but I never provided them with that info. Or rather, I told them I wouldn’t until they swore allegiance to me, which they reluctantly did. The next step was for them to call the diplomat and tell him that the deal was off. Knowing what I knew about that man, he was not going to be happy about it. He had invested at least fifty years of his short life into this planet, and he was not about to lose it to some wannabe emperor from a distant planet, despite of how much of a Collector he turned out to be. But I was ready for this. All of the continents I now held under my direct control had units of artificial soldiers stationed at them, with the local miners serving as potential backup. They could also all rest now, considering how much work my constructed contractors actually did. In a word, I was a blessing for the Zoav miners, and they loved it. The diplomat didn’t.

  One final round of resources remained, that being wood. Vast forests surrounded the final continent, but sadly it was the same continent with the diplomat on it. It was also the only continent to have a standing army, which wasn’t strong, but which clearly had an ace in the hole. Namely the diplomat had planted charges around the planet strong enough to cause the tectonic plates to split. In the event of a war, he was to use them and blow the planet up. However, that rule demanded that it HAD to be ONLY in the event of a war. Me doing a traditional economic hostile takeover was thus excluded, and him activating the charges would effectively make him penniless and jobless on his home world. I have to believe that that was the whole reason he didn’t activate the charges the second I set foot on Zoav, because otherwise I have no idea why he didn’t just blow up the planet before.

  All in all, I quickly set up a logging company on the coast of the continent, when something caught my eye. This continent had pigs. Earth pigs, even. But it wasn’t just the pigs that caught my attention. It was also the fact that they were actively looking for something around the trees. So I followed a few of them personally, with the other soldiers and scientists, as well as local loggers and miners, wondering why I’d follow an ugly-looking animal anywhere. But I had my reasons, and I was not wrong. One of the pigs started rummaging around the outer roots of a tree, and sure enough, after I moved it and lifted the soil with my telekinesis, I spotted the unmistakable shape of an underground mushroom. They were truffles. And even more than that – they were gigantic truffles. One of them was as big as my head!

  I explained away the significance of the truffle to my team, and the Girodians immediately started working on a locator device for me. In the meantime, I crafted thousands of pigs, and the team strapped these machines to each and every one of them. Soon enough, an army of pigs was rummaging about, bringing the truffles to me as if they were dogs fetching for balls. I had made them do that – instead of eating the truffle, like pigs are wont to do, they would bring them to me intact, and so I could store them. Upon clearing up most of the truffles in one sector, the loggers I employed would cut away at the lumber, giving me very high quality wood for potential building and crafting. We logged about half of the forest on that continent when the diplomat himself descended upon us. He threatened me with legal action, but I kept bugging him and egging him on. He could do nothing against my army, and when he tried to punch me out of frustration, his own fist punched him back. Enraged, he was about to press a button to activate the charges, but all of a sudden, a very slim, very white, very creepy-looking creature slowly rose behind him, sliding upward, like a slug, but with some speed. It had an empty expression, like those creepy girls in horror photos, staring right into one’s soul. He showed he diplomat a handful of weird-looking spikes, which I later learned were the triggers to his charges, and then he slowly snapped his neck and left him dead there. The creature then looked at us and nodded, retreating back into the ground.

  That was the first and final time I saw a native Zoavi, and his face literally still haunts my nightmares.

  Nevertheless, I now had almost all of the planets I wanted. One of them still remained, and it was possibly the most crucial one of them all.

  CONQUEST #7: CLOVIER 5

  Clovier 5 was one of thirteen planets in the Clovier system. It was especially important because it held diplomatic sway over that entire half of the galaxy. With the disillusion of major intergalactic empires, these guys acted as if they were the dominant political force out there. They were effectively the slightly more cancerous version of the European Union. Upon learning that their diplomat on Zoav had died unceremoniously and that the entire mining area was under my control, they issued a swift ban of me ever approaching them or their sector. And that ban wasn’t just on paper – there were force-fields and astral nebulas that could sense my very arrival and that would fry me if I were to show my face.

  Naturally, entering with my massive army was also a no-no. In fact, our ships were intercepted by one Clovier 5 fleet, and after a powerful battle in space, we had to retreat. Clearly war wasn’t going to win this planet, nor was diplomacy an option. There were no women there for me to woo into submission, nor any traders to trade. So I consulted with my chief commanders, and we devised a plan that was the most outlandish yet, but that had to work.

  Norman bestowed two surges upon me, where one ability was meant for me to use, the other to bestow upon others. After we took control of an enemy ship, we infiltrated it as a team of several people. There was Arduck, Penna, Fawkes, a Girodian called Giraud, a Cybel called Iana and myself. Each of us took three Girodians, three Ehre, three Dahrmites, and three Valahs with us, giving each of us a team of ten. I used my new abilities instantly – all of us were now able to hide or distort our presence anywhere in any way, so that we would become untraceable. The remaining Girodians and the Cotahi were on board our own ships, with teleporters at the ready. Other troops were even further away, serving as potential backup in case a full-scale assault was imminent.

  Hidden from the Clovier 5’s security measures, we entered its atmosphere. Much like Zoav, the planet was filled with humans, with only a scarce few hundred or so people being of different races. Our plan was to act as potential diplomats from a local world that was negotiating collaborative efforts with the Clovier system. The main council welcomed us with cheerful smiles and shit-eating grins, the kinds politicians have when they’re lying to your face. They began telling us of their own history, but unlike any of the ones I’ve heard from other planets, this one was purely one about business. They kept talking about deals, trips, contracts, accomplishments, awards, future projects, renewed projects, projected projects, and the like. I suggested that we take a tour of their fine planet and get to know it before we decide on a deal, and the higher-ups agreed. We then all split up and moved to different “districts” of Clovier 5, keeping contact with bugs in our ears that only we could hear, courtesy of Girodian tech.

  Arduck was taken to the Administrative district. Here he had ac
cess to the archives of the entire planet, as well as a great view on each and every business that dealt with massive amounts of paperwork. There was never a higher concentration of sweating men and women than in this particular part of Clovier 5. Everyone was running around with stacks of papers, powerful computers were active non-stop, pumping out new data, printers doled out lists of various kinds, screams and anger filled each room, and Arduck even witnessed a suicide. It just went to show that bureaucracy sucks on every planet everywhere.

  But Arduck spotted a few other details. Most people working these jobs were disenfranchised and willing to accept change. Shellshock was how Arduck described it, I believe. These were people who literally lived and breathed their paperwork. It was a ghastly sight to see, and I was killing an entire race of people mere hours before this. And while I was having my 15-minute power nap, Arduck was gathering relevant data about this place, noting every potential ally or at least traitor to the cause. He was good at judging character when it came to negative traits, and I came to believe him and what he concluded during our later endeavors. Upon my waking, I saw a massive list – people of both genders (and aliens of indeterminate sex) more than ready to destroy the whole damn planet and move somewhere warm and safe, away from the noise. I was willing to use that, so I ordered Arduck to stick around, but to maintain his cover. The Girodians that accompanied him knew what they needed to do.