Plugged In: Reincarnated As A Demon Lord (Now I'll Conquer The World)

The forest hums with the ordinary business of late morning, sunlight breaking through the canopy like scattered gold coins, the ground still soft and dark from last night’s chaos.

Lucien claps Val on the shoulder, lets out a long, contented sigh, and grins at the treeline like it’s personally promised him something debaucherous.

He struts toward the edge of the clearing, hands laced behind his head, walking with the loose, easy stride of a man with absolutely nothing weighing on his conscience and an entire continent’s worth of depravity waiting for him.

"It’s going to be a great day," he says. "We get to meet the beast-folk."

"Thrilling." Val groans.

"I’m hoping for cat girls." Lucien’s says as his eyes go distant and dreamy, entirely too invested in whatever mental image he’s currently crafting. "I’ve always dreamed of getting scratched while making one scream in bed. Or do they meow? Do they purr?" He bellows a laugh, delighted with himself, already halfway into a fantasy that has nothing to do with trade agreements. "Oh, there’s so much to learn!"

Val growls, low and unimpressed. "We are on a business trip. Not a copulation vacation. Trade routes, Lucien. Not tits."

Lucien hefts his pack onto one shoulder, points a finger gun at Valgereth with total confidence, and clicks his tongue. "Multitasking. I’m a master of it. Ask Serenith. I enjoy a productive fusion of business and pleasure, always." He winks.

"You’re impossible," Val groans.

"That’s exactly what I say," Serenith calls from behind them, not looking up from her plate. "Every single day. Multiple times a day. He’s going to get us all killed."

"That’s exactly what I said," Val calls back, jerking a thumb at Lucien. "Just yesterday, actually."

The two of them share a brief, entirely unexpected chuckle, the kind of quiet, mutual understanding that only forms between two people who have both, independently, reached their limit with the same insufferable man-child.

Lucien waves them both off, entirely unbothered, and calls ahead toward Serenith.

"Come on, Angelcake, lead the way. I’m itching to get scratched."

Serenith shakes her head, watching him with something caught between exasperation and disbelief.

She genuinely doesn’t understand how a man can leap from chasing her, relentlessly, shamelessly, for two straight days, to enthusiastically plotting his conquest of an entirely different species before breakfast has even properly settled.

"You truly are the worst kind of deviant." she murmurs under her breath.

And, she realizes then, with the sudden clarity of a slap to the face, that she’s falling in love with him anyway.

The thought hits her so hard she physically jerks backward, both hands flying up to clamp over her own mouth, losing grip entirely on what’s left of her plate.

Berries scatter across the dirt.

"NO!" she squeaks, muffled behind her fingers, eyes wide with pure, unfiltered horror, self-induced horror.

Lucien glances back, tilting his head.

"You alright there, feathers?"

She just nods her head, rapid and wordless, hands still clamped over her mouth, face burning so hot it’s a miracle her halo doesn’t actually ignite from proximity alone.

He shrugs, entirely unbothered, and gestures toward the treeline. "Hurry up then. I hate keeping potential clients waiting. Especially the ones with fluffy tails."

Serenith nods, lowers her hands slowly, and takes one long, steadying breath.

"I need to get back to heaven and file a report," she mutters to herself, mostly to keep from screaming. "Something is seriously, deeply wrong with me."

The next few hours pass in a haze of tangled roots, sloped ground, and Val’s increasingly frequent detours to hunt anything unfortunate enough to cross his path.

Lucien’s legs ache in muscles he didn’t know he still had access to as they trek through the undergrowth.

"I swear!" He says for the third time that hour. "It’s like I was in somebody else’s dream. A wet dream. But I had no control."

"So you had a sexy nightmare?" Serenith scoffs, "You’ll get over it."

"It was not a nightmare." Lucien insists, a small smile playing at his lips. "To be honest, I kinda enjoyed most of it..."

Serenith rolls her eyes and drifts ahead as Lucien continues relaying the details of his late night mind manipulation.

At one point Val vanishes into the underbrush for a solid twenty minutes without a word of warning and returns dragging the charred, smoking remains of an entire family of boar, having apparently hunted, roasted, and eaten most of it single-handedly before anyone else properly noticed he was gone.

"You couldn’t have saved me some ribs?" Lucien asks, watching him lick grease off his fingers with an almost animal-like enthusiasm.

"I saved you a rump each," Val says, sounding wounded. "That’s practically charity from me."

Serenith wrinkles her nose at him and takes her share without comment, eating it eventually, because pride only extends so far on an empty stomach.

Lucien spends most of the rest of the walk deep in business talk, running through strategy, timelines, and a growing list of people they’ll need access to once they reach civilized ground.

The rest of the time, less productively, he spends fishing for information on beast-folk biology and courting customs.

"It’s for market research purposes." Lucien argues, as Val waves him off again. "Do they have two nipples or six? Eight? I need to know."

"How does cow-kin nipple count help with trade routes?" Serenith asks from above, semi-intrigued, though she already suspects the answer.

"That’s not important." Lucien replies, "It’s critical business-related research. So, is anyone going to answer my question? I have about a dozen more."

"Two." Valgereth groans. "All beast-folk have two. Now, can you please stop your racket? You’re scaring away my food."

Eventually the trees thin, then break entirely, opening onto a wide stretch of farmland rolling gently toward a small, bustling village in the near distance.

Smoke curls lazily from a dozen chimneys, fences stand neatly mended in long, even rows, and fields of grain sway gold and orderly under the midday sun, dotted here and there with furry figures bent over their work, ears poking out of farmers hats, tails swishing as along with their humming.

It’s quiet in a way the Ashlands never quite manage to be, peaceful in a way that makes Lucien’s chest itch with something halfway between longing and opportunity.

Val surveys it all with open disdain. "It looks so... rural."

Lucien’s grin spreads slow and wide, hands settling on his hips as he takes in the view like a man appraising real estate he already intends to own.

"It looks," Lucien says, turning back to Val with a knowing smirk. "like the next step to conquering the world."

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