Overlord: Wrong World, Can I Change It?

Once I'm done with my experiments, I sit there in the forge staring at the ceiling. Obviously, not for long.

Tina appears. She rounds the corner, her face unreadable, clutching a letter in her pocket. She looks at my stained fingers, then down at the half-erased circle at my feet.

"Hey, mind if I sit here for a while?" she asks, her voice quieter than usual.

I shrug, not trusting myself to say much. "Okay."

She sits down, hugging her knees, and for a moment we just listen to the quiet creak of the cooling forge.

She smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Don't worry about the letter. It's nothing."

Which, in Tina-speak, means, "It's everything and I'll never tell you." Noted.

I realize too late that I haven't bothered to erase my diagram from the dirt. I make a half-hearted effort to brush it away with my boot, but obviously Tina has already seen.

She studies the remains of the circle, blue eyes sharp. "Are you interested in magic, too?"

"Yeah… isn't it cool?"

She nods. "I get it. I have to go. My grandfather's looking for me. See you, Lucien. Rest up."

She walks away, her mood lighter. I'm not sure if I help, or if she just needs a moment of quiet. Kids are strange. Adults, too, for that matter.

I linger a little longer, tracing lines in the empty air, picturing how the circles would glow if I ever dared to use real mana with someone nearby. But not tonight. Not until the world is silent and utterly still.

I keep thinking about that magic diagram.

And time flies.

-Two months pass

Most evenings, after the last echo of hammers fades and the forge cools to embers, I slip back inside. It's the only time I can work without risk, a time when shadows hide my obsession and the world outside is just birdsong and the far-off gossip of villagers.

No one knows what I do here. Not my parents. And certainly not Tina, though she tries, sometimes, to catch me at it. I never cast magic while anyone is around. Not even a Spark. If someone might see, I stick to theory: tracing circles and triangles on the workbench with charcoal, layering runes and lines until my fingers are black and my mind's running on fumes. I practice structure and intent, drawing the complex shapes again and again, but always holding back the mana. If the System has taught me anything, it's that magic, real magic, is as much about discipline as it is about inspiration.

Tina is the only one who ever gets close. I hear her sometimes, sneaking up, holding her breath behind the half-open door or peering through the crack where the stone wall meets the beam. She's never managed to see more than the aftermath: my stained hands, the smudges on the bench, a faint shimmer in the air. If she asks, I shrug. "Trying to make fire easier for Dad." She rolls her eyes, but I can tell she doesn't quite buy it.

Gilo is stricter than my own parents when it comes to bedtime. As soon as the sun dips behind the pine trees, he calls her home. "No wandering after dark," he says, his tone brooking no argument. Tina always tries to stall, sometimes inventing new chores or pretending to misplace her shoes. But eventually, she's marched off, mumbling about injustice, leaving me alone with the forge and my unfinished diagrams.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to try becoming a mage in the world of Overlord, let me save you the suspense: don't. Or if you absolutely must, bring a snack, some alcohol, and a surplus of patience. You'll need all three.

It's been two months since my last "breakthrough." The days bleed together.

On paper, I'm not talentless. The System gave me [Control], the world's least impressive but most flexible ability. I can sense and move mana, life force, and, by now, Ki. If this were YGGDRASIL, I'd be a weird prestige class: Hermit, Ki Lord, or just "Stubborn Idiot."

The frustrating truth? Magic, real external magic. remains out of reach. I can build the structures: circles, triangles, glyphs. I can almost make the mana spark into something more than static. But it's never enough. Every attempt leaves my palm tingling and my pride stinging.

Still, I persist. I build the diagrams. I repeat the mantras. Sometimes, I even find myself mumbling for help, even though I know my System barely works half the time, if at all. In the end, the only practical advice I've ever really gotten comes from Tina, who once handed me a sandwich and said, "You look less sad when you're chewing."

Routine becomes monotony, and monotony, strangely, becomes comfort. But then, fate gets bored again and changes the game.

Tina's birthday arrives on the tail end of a storm. That morning, she marches into the forge, carrying two books so fancy they look out of place even in the city, let alone a village like Arona. The covers are new, the pages edged in silver, the titles written in the kind of calligraphy that only rich people and professional snobs appreciate. She drops them on the bench with a satisfied thump.

"Happy birthday to me!" she announces, beaming. "And to you, because I told my parents I wanted magic books. They went… a bit overboard."

I look at her, then at the two books, and my brain just kind of… blue-screens. Before I even realize it, I scoop her up and spin her around like some overexcited festival dad. For a second she is shocked, but then she laughs, and it is this pure, bright sound that hits me harder than any sword strike. Joyful. Real.

Over the past few months, I've finally managed to grow taller than her. A double win for Lucien. I set her down, and she gives me a smile that absolutely floors me. My heart, my actual, living, traitorous heart, skips a beat.

Is this puberty? Or is this just what being alive feels like?

Who knows. All I know is, just for a moment, I forget about pain, forget about danger, forget about magic, and just smile back.

She gives me that smile again, the one that could disarm a room, knock the wind out of your overthinking chest, and I return it, soft and real.

But as her gaze drifts back to the books, my own smile fades. Just a flicker. Not sadness. Something quieter. Something that slides in when no one else is looking, the way smoke seeps through the cracks in a house you thought was safe.

And for the first time in a long while, I ask myself:

'Is this right?'

The thought settles heavy in my chest. The more time passes, the more I wonder: am I doing the right thing?

Is this really the path I should be walking? Or am I just some idiot with delusions of grandeur, chasing shadows, trying to fight fate like it's something you can punch?

Maybe I should just live. Really live. Help my dad in the forge. Work herbs with Mom. Laugh with Tina. Grow old. Let the world spin the way it wants to, without me trying to script a new ending.

But then…

Then I remember 'Overlord'.

The series. The canon. The Sorcerer Kingdom rising like some inevitable tide. What if it's all true? What if everything plays out exactly the way I remember?

Part of me whispers, "Just let it go. None of it matters... it's all already happened." But that's not true. I'm here now, in this story, a variable. A glitch in the narrative.

But the other part of me refuses. I see Tina's smile, a real, human smile, and I wonder how many like hers have already been lost. How much sadness and pain Nazarick brought, how many lives were ended in the name of monstrous, efficient ambition. All those stories erased by demons playing at gods.

The more time I spend here, living among ordinary people, the more I start to hate Nazarick for what it will do. I hate those beings who play god with lives they see as beneath them. The mere thought that they could hurt my parents, Tina, Gilo, or anyone else I know makes me want to swing a sword a hundred times harder, burn through every drop of mana, squeeze out every Ki technique I can, and push my body to the limit with martial arts, just so I'm not powerless when the time comes.

What am I supposed to do then?

Can I stop it?

Should I even try?

I don't have the answers.

I'm just a human.

And humans make mistakes.

I glance down at my hands: charcoal-stained, toughened by calluses, crisscrossed with small scars and half-healed nicks, evidence of the forge, the training, the endless nights spent pushing past my limits. They tremble just a little as I exhale, only then realizing I've been holding my breath.

Looking at those scars, I find myself smiling again, the same simple smile as before. I remember something my father once told me, not Erob, but the other one, my father from Earth.

He said, "A man without scars is like a canvas without paint, empty."

What is a scar, if not a memory of trying? If you never take a risk, you'll never know. Sure, maybe you'll end up with scars, but that's life.

But if you have no scars, if you never dared, never risked, never failed, your life stays blank, like a canvas that's never known a single stroke of color. Safe, maybe, but empty.

Only a marked canvas can be called art; only a life with scars can be called lived.

Maybe it's not about being some universal justice, or always being right.

Maybe… it's just about trying anyway.