The Nerd Turned Conqueror: A Fantasy Harem Adventure

by Oscar Reeds

  I was staring at him, which made him clear his throat and continue.

  “Conrad, we’re not the bad guys here. We’ve been maintaining peace for millions of years, and people like the Dahrmite dictator or the residents of Salvar end up in our custody. But Norman is a different threat altogether.”

  “Is he a god?”

  “More of a force of nature, young emperor” Fekk said, getting back on his feet. “The kind that existed long before us lesser beings. He was one of many who were intent on destroying everything.”

  “And you’ve been hunting him for years, then?”

  “Thousands of years,” he corrected me. “Though not me personally. I’d only attained the divine abilities of a Marshal in the past three centuries.”

  I smiled. “Well, they suit you. You’re quite the fighter.”

  Hanalquan threw a rock at me.

  “Ouch! What the hell, dude?”

  “He’s not just ‘quite the fighter,’ Conrad,” he hissed. “Fekk is capable of leveling a planet with a thought.”

  I was speechless.

  “You are…”

  He nodded.

  “And yet, you can’t…”

  He shook his head.

  “Now do you understand how much of a threat Norman is, Conrad?” Hanalquan said, a bit irritated. “And why we had to stop you from releasing him?”

  This actually made me feel pissed.

  “Oh yeah? Some job you guys did! At least I wasn’t the idiot who brought a reality-shattering device and tossed it into his friggin hands!”

  “We didn’t bring it to GIVE it to him, you asshole! We brought it to USE it on him!” Hanalquan was also pissed, which resulted in us almost launching a streak of thunder at each other. Interestingly enough, everyone was now staring at me bewildered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You…still have your powers.”

  They were right. I still did. Just to check, I created a coin, which I flung at Fekk, making him produce an ‘ow,’ and I then used an aerial slap to…well, slap the former Dwyer, which made him roar. Finally, I powered up in the same manner I had while fighting Fekk. It was indeed all there.

  “Wonderful,” Fekk concluded, “now we can go together and stop Norman from activating the Obfuscator.”

  But I stopped him with my outstretched hand.

  “Conrad?”

  “Emperor Conrad, marshal,” I said, determined, “and this is my mess. I have to do this myself.”

  ***

  “So you’re going to face him yourself?” Janine said, via the video. Nearly everyone aside from Melissa was there. I sighed.

  “Yes, Janine. I have to. He’s my problem after all.”

  “But we can help! You gave us powers, we could—”

  My outstretched palm made it clear to her that she shouldn’t talk. Instead, her tears did all the talking, and I hated it.

  “Jan, dad, everyone…” and soon enough we were all in tears. “Just…just defend Earth while I’m gone. Tell Endolande I love her, let my many children know that I died protecting them, and…and…” I gulped hard. “…and tell Melissa I still wish her all the best.”

  Nobody dared say a thing. They waved the hardest wave I’d ever seen directed at me. The fact that it was via a computer screen thousands of miles away made it harder.

  Penna and Arduck were in a separate ship. Iana managed to get a hold of Giraud, and they were following close by. Fekk and Hanalquan were with me.

  “So, can we destroy the Obfuscator?” I asked.

  “No,” a quick response from ex-Dwyer as he was lighting a cigarette. “It’s what you on earth call a Perpetuum Mobile. It creates infinite energy and cannot stop existing.”

  “And can we kill Norman?”

  “Unlikely,” Fekk added. “Staerg could hurt him, sure, but it would take this machine to destroy him completely, or render him powerless enough to be sealed again.”

  I gave this some thought.

  “What does the Obfuscator look like?”

  Hanalquan merely pointed through the front glass of the ship. It looked like a massive jet engine that Boeing planes use, but had a part in the front which could open up.

  “Once he opens it, it starts working,” Hanalquan said, which confused me a bit.

  “I thought you said it worked constantly? Now you have to open it to work?”

  “It does work constantly,” he reiterated, “but it works differently when closed. That way it just rotates the energy it has and converts it into motion. When it’s open to a certain extent, it can distort reality.”

  “And how can Norman open it?”

  “The same way I can,” Fekk said. “With pure force.”

  Norman was laughing like a maniac. He was standing directly in front of the huge thing, and immediately began opening it.

  “Now the most beautiful reworking of the universe can begin!” he screamed in pleasure, yet somehow expecting my flung projectile from behind. He smirked at me.

  “How did you—” before finishing my question, I was rammed into my ship. He didn’t even break a sweat.

  “Remember, I have all the powers you do, kid,” he laughed. “And much more.”

  Our battle was not so much a battle as it was training for his lowest power setting. Everything I threw at him backfired. My telekinesis was strapped back, my aerial punches and kicks hit me, my super-speed slowed down, my freezing ability frozen, and even my physique was letting up. I shone with the same energy my planets were supplying me, yet I was unable to land a single punch on him.

  “You poor soul, kid,” I hated him calling me ‘kid’ so damn much at that point. “You think your powers can hurt me? Of course they bloody can’t, especially now that we’re separated! The only reason I didn’t take them from you now is because you amuse me.” He approached with such speed that I thought there were millions of him in a sequence, existing in several points of time at once. His grin was in my face. “But you amuse me no longer.” He took away my punches and kicks, then my super-speed, and, just to mock me, my looks. I was back to being the fat, unimpressive slob I was when he had first met me.

  “Damn you, Norman!” I screamed, trying to fend myself off, but he merely cackled.

  “Kid, I was wrong! You’re still amusing after all. Guess what? I’ll leave you as you are, so you can experience this universe’s death first hand!”

  I kept swallowing fear and it kept coming back in rapid tears and sweat. The Obfuscator was nearly completely open now, and I could feel the space before it tumble and shift. It was activating.

  “Kid, you were swell. I’ll never forget your conquest – it made me feel all fuzzy inside.”

  “I’ll make you feel all fuzzy inside!” I said, not very intimidatingly so, when I tried to fling something at him with my telekinesis. He deflected that attack easily and began laughing even louder.

  “Kid, I already told you, give it a rest! You lost! None of your powers can hurt me!”

  And that’s when the proverbial light bulb clicked in my head, and I provided the confused Norman a smirk. He was confused.

  “You’re right, I cannot use my powers to hurt you,” I said, floating towards him. “So I’ll just hit you.”

  I swung a punch. He took it on the chin and bled out. This unnerved him.

  “What is this?”

  Another punch. This time I disfigured his nose. He became more irate.

  “How are you—”

  One more punch. His jaw blushed bright red with blood.

  “How are you doing this?!”

  I grinned, punching him several times more for emphasis. He was floating, but not keeping his balance. Fekk and others stared in utter bewilderment.

  “How?” I grinned. “You said I couldn’t use my powers to hurt you, which is true. But did you forget the first power you ever gave me?”

  He thought about it for a moment and then grinned.
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  “Oh, you sneaky bastard,” he gnarled.

  Powered up again and back at my slimmer physique, I kept wailing at him, pressuring him towards the open Obfuscator. To this day I cannot remember his last words, because they became jumbled and mixed with the sound of his entire being flung into chaos. With all of my might, assisted by Fekk from his ship, I closed the Obfuscator, thus capturing Norman for all eternity.

  The day was won, and right there, on the spot, Emperor Conrad was crowned Savior of All Life.

  ***

  The slobber of Danny and the embrace of Janine were far more of an award than all of the cheers from all nine planets whose collective energies now flowed into me. Sadly for the plants, animals and rocks, I had to remove their ability to think and feel like humans, but doubled their populations just to make it all even. I won’t go into details regarding the ceremonies that came after, but I will briefly mention one important detail.

  I was in my room, with Janine and Endolande on my bed. They were concerned with what I was about to say, but still kept it to themselves.

  “So you’re leaving, then?” Janine uttered.

  “Yes,” I replied swiftly, looking at my palm computer at some data. “There are planets out there with shitty lifestyles which I should conquer and improve.”

  “Why not stay here?” she asked, somewhat desperately.

  “Or with me, in our palace?” Endolande pleaded.

  I embraced them both warmly. They were, after all, fully within their right to ask me to stay.

  “I will always be a teleport away, my dears,” I smiled. “But this is something I have to do.”

  Petra’s video message from Slovenia was warm and uplifting, though I hadn’t heard from Melissa yet. Janine promised me she would talk her into at least saying ‘hi.’ It’s not every day that you get to say goodbye to the savior of the universe. John the Lutist was enjoying his Cybel wife, whereas Gene Ray and Hanalquan, who now legally changed his name to Dwyer, were discussing opening a business together on the Ehre planet. They waved me off, and so did Yukio, now an owner of her own adult webcam company. Tohrumi wasn’t there, though. She was too busy dropping onto my head.

  “Master!” she shouted. “I’ll miss you…”

  “I’ll miss you too, Tohrumi.”

  She then grinned. “I never did thank you for not ever using me for sex services, Master. It gave me tons of time to be with the lady I like!”

  “Hey, where is Greysticks?”

  “Here I am, sir,” the little sod said, standing there next to Penna and Arduck, both generals now. “Ready to follow you into danger.”

  “Really?”

  Iana and Giraud approached me as well.

  “It was my suggestion, sir,” Giraud smirked. “This creature will come in handy in our future endeavors.”

  “And besides, the more the merrier,” Iana concluded.

  All I could do is smile. A wave and a tear were enough for my dear old dad, who yelled a single thing out to me.

  “When you come back, we’re going to visit your mom!”

  I hated him again at that moment. But not actual hate, no. I hated him for making me love him again, in ways a god emperor never thought possible.

  Epilogue

  “And there you have it, sir. That’s my story. Right now I am heading over to the Florian planet to depose an aristocratic family and retake the land for the peasants. But I need your help.”

  “You know, you’re lucky I can pause time and stay awake for long stretches of it, young ruler. This was rather boring.”

  “Look, will you help me or not?”

  “Why would you need my help, Emperor Conrad? You seem to be having tons of powers already.”

  “I always have room for more. After all, Norman left me with the innate ability to learn. And I want to learn.”

  “Well, okay. But I cannot promise you much. If this mission of yours bores me – I’m out.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ kid. I have a name.”

  “Okay, Ayanon of Sylvia, Master of the Temporal Arts, Wielder of the Clock, and Dominus of Time.”

  “That’s better. Shall we go?”

  “After me.”

  ~THE END~