The Nerd Turned Conqueror: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Oscar Reeds

  “Do they hate me?”

  He shrugged. Clearly what I was now going through was nowhere near his alley in terms of interests.

  Then I had an amazing idea.

  “Norman,” I grinned. Immediately he knew I was going to make a worthless wish, but still turned to me and, with a sigh, asked me what I wanted.

  “I want to pass my presence inside of people,” I said, “but not be felt there and not feel there. I want to just spectate by sharing a body with others.”

  It took the powerful gust of wind after the surge to make me realize that I did, indeed, acquire a new power. And I was about to use it.

  I didn’t go home right then and there. Instead, I opted to teleport myself to my spaceship. It was a good place to think, reflect, and feel. And it was possibly the best place to escape the press. Considering it was cloaked, it was also amazingly well hidden from the military satellites of the whole planet. Naturally, I told every single member of the ship’s personnel to sod off, so that I could be alone with my thoughts. Arduck thought this strange, but even if he wanted to share his concern, he chose not to. I, on the other hand, had some eavesdropping to do, and so I closed my eyes, concentrated, and let my mind travel.

  There are billions of souls on our little Earth. Before I got the hang of the power, I travelled to at least twenty of them, across the world. A human mind is a hectic place, so getting used to sitting there and listening was a chore. A chore, mind you, that I got used to quickly, but a chore which bothered me nonetheless. Soon enough, I was ready, and managed to launch myself into the mind of Janine. She was slowly walking towards Melissa’s house, and a few tedious knocks later, she was in.

  Melissa was crying. It was devastating to see her like this. A little pile of handkerchiefs told me she was probably masturbating before this. Either that or her tears just never stopped after she had left the press conference.

  “Honey, what’s wrong?” Janine asked, worried about her friend, and in a very genuine, natural way. Melissa merely waved her off. “Honey, come on.”

  “No!” she shouted, still sobbing. Janine slowly approached and hugged her, and I clearly felt a very powerful heartbeat.

  “Come on, honey…”

  “He’s such a jerk!”

  “There, there…”

  “Fuck!”

  “Go on then…”

  “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!!!”

  “Let it all out.”

  She wept there for a solid minute and a half. Yet, strangely enough, it felt as if Janine knew what she was doing.

  “I mean, why would he do that?” Melissa hollered. “Was it his change in looks? Did it turn him into a dick?”

  “Honey, relax,” Janine responded, and I have no idea how, but she was braiding her hair expertly, and very quickly. “It’s not the looks.”

  “Then what? Am I not good enough? Is an empress that much better than me?!”

  “Sweety, he’s still just a confused nerd.”

  These words oddly stung.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So honey, he’s still new to dating and love and shit.” Janine began work on the second braid. “And he’s omnipotent. Of course some of this shit will go to his head.”

  “But does he care about me?”

  Janine smiled.

  “Honey, I’ve been in his mind. He cares about you.”

  “Really?” Melissa asked, incredulously.

  “Yeah. He just needs to talk. And from what I can tell, you need to talk too, babe.”

  Melissa smiled, wiping her tears.

  “Thank you. But I’m still upset.”

  “I know, honey. But you two ought to talk it over.”

  Lovely. Now I had to worry about THAT, too.

  However, curiosity took over. I didn’t just want to listen to my girlfriend and my former slave talk shit. I wanted to see how my own creations think for a moment. Of course, I stayed a little longer while Janine and Melissa were changing their clothes, getting ready to visit Petra and talk to her about everything. I had almost forgotten about her, John and Gene. John was still at the hospital, though his foot was feeling much better. I was thinking of visiting him, but had to leave it for a different time. Right now, I had underlings to inspect.

  Upon my consciousness’s second travel, I wound up in the mind of my maid, Tohrumi. She had just finished cleaning up the kitchen and waved my father goodbye. He had found himself a job at last! It helped that I was his son, as they gave him a decent position, even though it was still low-paying. He was turning his life around, and I felt genuinely happy for that. Tohrumi was also happy, but Yukio, my adult performer servant girl, wasn’t.

  “No customers today,” she said, hurling a webcam at a desk. I never knew Yukio was capable of anger. Moreover, I didn’t know Tohrumi was capable of compassion.

  “Are you sure you didn’t just hit a holiday or something?”

  “Nah,” Yukio put her legs up on the desk. I found it charming, but Tohrumi clearly hated it. “It’s the whole aliens thing.”

  “Get them off.”

  “Wha?”

  “Legs. Off the table. Now.”

  Yukio moved them and just continued talking, a little bewildered.

  “Tohrumi, when our master and creator,” and not the commander, I thought, giggling, “crushed those aliens, they became world-wide news. Everyone was now interested in the extraterrestrials. It’s like sex became a secondary issue these past few weeks.”

  “That bad, huh?” Tohrumi said. “I assume our master just doesn’t think that far ahead.”

  “Or think hard at all,” Greysticks said, entering the kitchen with his hands filthy from washing the dishes and then scrubbing the sink. Really? Greysticks was THAT intelligent? And was I really that big of a dick? Could that be why Melissa cried so hard? Am I really that clueless?

  “But his heart is in the right place,” Tohrumi said, momming them rather hard. “See, since my creation, I’ve met lots of people.” I giggled at this. “There was the butcher, the greengrocer, the record store salesman, the people at the construction site…” I was furious. She went out without my permission? “Then there’s my wonderful crush, with her flat chest and red hair…” Now I was curious again, but for the sake of avoiding copyright infringement I kept it to myself. “But none of them are as complex as Master Conrad.”

  “He’s not a bad person,” Yukio added, taking a sip of her juice and passing it to Greysticks. “I would just prefer him more reliable and, y’know…responsible.”

  Greysticks nodded, and Tohrumi had nothing else to say. They continued discussing the current events of the day, and at the question of my conquests, Greysticks raised a point of me using his own latter-born brothers as cannon fodder. He nearly cried, despite not having eyes. Again, I was dumbfounded. Greysticks was the earliest creature I had created. Was he really THAT advanced from the start? Or did he learn it through experience?

  Suddenly I felt sick. I remembered how many millions had died in my name. I remembered how many of my personal creations I had sent to their untimely demise. I was no longer a nerd turned conqueror. Now I was a mass murderer, and worst of all – a murderer who literally paid no heed to his victims.

  I wanted to vomit. I needed to expel the filth from my body. But I had to maintain my composure, as my travels had not ended yet. They were far from over, and I was far from done with listening to opinions about me. But now I needed familiarity. I needed to be in a headspace that made sense again. I needed Janine.

  And seconds later, I was in Janine’s mind again. She and Melissa were walking towards Petra’s house. It was a modest estate, with a big Slovenian flag in the backyard. I assumed it was Slovenian, I have to admit, because I didn’t care enough to check. Petra was sitting in the front yard, talking to what I assumed was her mother. The three girls said hi to each other and then made their way towards the mall.

  “Janine texted me, Melissa,” Pe
tra said, “saying you had a bit of a fit about Conrad?”

  “Yeah…”

  That look on Melissa wasn’t pleasant, not one damn bit.

  “So what happened?”

  “Well, during his conquest, he actually went and fucked a shit ton of other women.”

  Petra was stunned.

  “Really? How many?”

  “At least sixty,” Melissa said, now angry rather than sad or disappointed. “He’s even fathered children!”

  “How could he have fathered children in that short amount of time? That makes no sense.”

  “Aliens,” a random guy with a weird hairstyle said, both of his hands in front of his face. He sounded Greek. Melissa sounded pissed.

  “What he said. Alien pregnancies apparently last shorter.”

  “Wow…and he didn’t run this by you before he left?”

  “Of course not. I mean, he did say he might have some relations without proper commitment out there, and I wasn’t going to mind that…”

  Petra chuckled.

  “You weren’t going to mind that?”

  “Well, yes,” she replied. “What Conrad and I have isn’t necessarily a relationship. I mean, it’s somewhat open.”

  “In other words,” a random YouTuber said from his household window, “he flirts with her friends and gets nowhere, and she sleeps around.”

  “No, it’s not like that!”

  “You’re a cuck,” a random dude on the street chimed in.

  “I am not!”

  “You kind of seem like you are,” Janine smirked.

  “I said I’m not!”

  “Well, cucks rarely admit their cuckoldry openly for fear of mocking…” Petra added.

  “Goddamn it, I’m not a cuck!”

  Melissa was fuming at this point.

  “Did YOU sleep around while he was gone?” Janine asked.

  “Yes!”

  This was like a bombshell for me, or rather for everyone who heard it. The almost-two weeks I was away, Melissa apparently fucked roughly fifteen different guys. However, much to my enjoyment, she kept rejecting Haggard and his goons. The guys she was with were largely military dudes, firefighters, and even a comic book scriptwriter.

  “I had to,” she justified it, again tearing up. “He was far away, and had an entire universe of women at his disposal. I needed satisfaction.”

  Petra looked at her angrily.

  “So that’s it? Guilt? You’re angry at him because of what YOU did?”

  “No,” she replied, but more steadfastly than anyone had anticipated. “That’s not the reason at all.”

  “Then what is the reason?”

  “He should have told me about the children,” she sighed. “And he should have set some ground rules.”

  They all sat on a small staircase in front of a house. Melissa was now calmer and more reserved, but still on edge. I could practically smell the sweat of anger on all three.

  “Conrad is a gentle soul,” she said, playing with her hair. “He will never be as assertive as the other men in this town. And for some reason, that’s what makes me the angriest!”

  She threw her cellphone on the ground. It bounced off a bit, landing in thick grass. I was unable to see it from where Janine was sitting. A few short seconds later, my girlfriend got up and picked it up again, placing it firmly within her jacket pocket.

  “Yet out there, he became a conqueror. He claimed all of those planets, improved upon his looks, and even fathered an entire generation of kids. Why didn’t he have all of that courage with me? Am I not good enough to bring that about with him?”

  Petra now knew how to approach this.

  “Listen, Melissa,” she said, patting her on the head, “when I was in Slovenia, I couldn’t get a single boy to like me…” Petra then stopped; that was a piss-poor example, and she knew it. “Rather, when I was in elementary school, everyone hated me. But when I started what you Americans call middle school in a different town, I became the most popular kid. I know I didn’t tell you all this, but I did.”

  Melissa looked at her expecting a point. Janine was doing so as well.

  “Small towns like this,” the Slovenian girl continued “tend to be devoid of originality. Everything is seen and done, and as such, you get categories of people.”

  Both girls listening to her sighed upon their realization of what Petra was saying.

  “To the people of Knee Dahcologne, Conrad was a fat kid whose parents were horrible people. In that town, even a good person like you can’t help him come out of his shell. But in space?! He has the entire cosmos as a canvas to paint whatever life he chooses to! And he chose to conquer.”

  She grinned, which the two reciprocated.

  “There was something about him which made Dwyer convince us to embrace him. I didn’t know what it was, but he knew, and he wasn’t wrong.”

  The three girls hugged it out, and that was the longest I’ve heard Petra talk. It was magical, and I made a mental note to make her life better in any way I can. So I asked Norman right off the bat to provide me with the ability to shift the faces and bodies of any person from Earth I wanted to.

  “Sure,” he said, allowing the surge to embrace me, “but that’s quite the useless ability you have. Won’t really help you in the long run.”

  What was my long run? I never really told myself that, mainly because I hadn’t decided upon one. For now, what Petra said stood out, and I had other new friends to visit, those being Gene and John.

  Our hospital always looked god-awful. People literally went there to die just so they could be remembered for something. Nevertheless, it was the place where John the Lutist lay, and I was to visit it in spirit. I entered Gene, and observed the two as they played cards.

  “So Conrad is back,” Gene said, tossing down a jack of spades.

  “Yup. I heard he conquered a planet or two,” the man with a hole in his foot replied, picking up the jack with one of hearts.

  “A planet or two,” Gene stated somewhat sarcastically, “try eight.”

  “Eight?”

  “Yup. There was one with hairy lizard people, one with winged goblins, one with catgirls…”

  “Wait, Gene! Did he bring any aliens with him?”

  “Well, several,” Gene got up and walked to the window, while his friend picked up a piece of peach to eat from his bedside table. He still couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “But from what I understood, he didn’t want to flood our planet, so he left the rest elsewhere.”

  “And what about the aliens that destroyed our city?” John asked, swallowing his peach piece. “Did he defeat them or something?”

  “Oh, better. He’s now their emperor, and he fucked their queen to prove a point.”

  John chuckled.

  “We sure did well to listen to Dwyer and become friends with him.”

  Gene, I could tell, did not like this sentence, or the tone John had.

  “What did you say?”

  “I mean, now we have an emperor friend, so we can have anything we wanted – protection, money, hookers, coke—”

  “Shut the hell up!” Gene shouted, which made John hop a little, seated as he may have been in his hospital bed. A nurse entered and told them to calm down, so that they don’t upset the other patients. When she left, the two continued talking.

  “We’re not going to use him,” Gene said angrily. “He is our friend, and as such, he owes us nothing.”

  But Gene was wrong. I owed them everything, a lot more than he could imagine. And I owed John a foot.

  He was kind enough to point that out. “He does owe me, Gene. My foot just won’t heal! Every time I walk, the wound reopens! My damn leg is healthy, but because of the foot I have to be in a wheelchair! A wheelchair I shouldn’t fucking need!”

  Again the nurse popped in, ordering them to keep quiet. The two bowed their heads and swore to maintain silence.

  “Loo
k,” Gene said, a little flustered and maybe even a bit defeated, “I know you’re not doing well, okay? I know. But you cannot blame Conrad for this. Conrad friggin saved this planet. And based on what I hear, he’s the best option we have in an event of a future invasion. Hell, with his power set, he might even bring about planetary peace.”

  John scoffed at this.

  “You’re hopeless, John…” Gene’s phone went off at that moment. “Oh, it’s Petra. They will be joining us soon. You up for an outside walk and a visit? We can shout outside all we want.”

  “Whatever…” John said, leaving both Gene and an invisible Me to think long and hard about my actions.

  And I did have quite a lot to think about. Never having a girlfriend had made me dependent on sex, and it hurt the one person who wanted to love me. Treating life like a commodity made my underlings wonder about their purpose, maybe even fear for their lives. And on top of that, my anger at everyone everywhere made me not care about casualties while fighting a bigger threat. It was a massive mixed bag of emotions that I had to somehow tame. These were now my friends, and I had to talk about this to them, openly and with no filter. But I needed a break first.

  That’s when I decided to hop into the brain of Art Failey, a close friend of Bob Haggard. Most of the other friends Haggard had were either out of town or preparing to get out. It was actually kind of neat to see his bullying ass get left behind, especially now that I was the hero of planet earth. But I had to see what his opinion of my success was, and I had to see it soon. It’s not nice to admit this, but I needed his suffering to make me feel better about myself.

  I found Haggard looking…well, haggard. He was a shell of his former persona, and Art was just about to talk to him and one other friend, a guy I knew as Chuck who really liked to fuck. Chuck actually once broke my finger in junior high school, and it hadn’t healed properly until a few weeks ago, when I fixed it with my own healing. The three of them were just about to drink some beer.

  “Bob, you alright, man?” Art asked, somewhat concerned.

  “Shut the fuck up, bro,” he replied, the poet that he was.