Literature / Only Villains Do That

In which the Dark Lord plays with fire

While waiting on an Akihabara train platform one day, ordinary high schooler Yoshi Shinonome was suddenly plucked from his normal life in Japan and whisked away by a beautiful goddess to Ephemera, a world of magic and adventure, to serve as her Hero and drive back the evil Dark Lord.

This is not his story.

Standing nearby at the moment Yoshi was isekai'd was a man named Seiji - a rude, cranky, misanthropic musician who was not at all pleased to find himself also snatched up and transported to Ephemera by the goddess's wicked sister, Virya. According to this self-proclaimed Goddess of Evil, the whole fantasy adventure thing was a game she and her sister played to stave off the boredom of immortality, and since the good goddess, Sanora, had picked a chubby widdle Hero... well, Virya wanted a hammy bully of a Dark Lord.

Unfortunately, Ephemera doesn't really need heroes or villains - it desperately needs social workers and reforms. The Holy Empire of Lancor is a corrupt bureaucratic nightmare which prospers by ensuring its client states are miserable backwaters ruled by truly insane psychopaths. The 'bad guys' are divided, starving, and barely holding together as persecuted tribes trying to get by. And did we mention most of the world is literally blown up? Rather than start a conquest against entire nations, Seiji's first order of action is to help the poor and downtrodden - and then point them in the direction of the aristocrats ruling it all.

But upending the status quo? Waging war against the gods? Starting a revolution made of slimes and whores?! Well, only Villains...

Only Villains Do That is a web serial novel on Royal Road by D. D. Webb (of The Gods are Bastards fame) updating Tuesdays and Fridays. It is an Affectionate Parody of the isekai genre, and while generally light-hearted the alternate world of Ephemera is not a nice place. Expect lots of Mood Whiplash.

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Only Villains Do That provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Seems to be Seiji's preferred approach.

Seiji: "As it happens, I am allergic to poison. Not to impugn your hospitality, good sir; clearly you could not have known."

• Anti-Hero / Anti-Villain:
  • The previous Hero and Dark Lord fit this to the bill. Hara was a Nominal Hero who used his idol status to rape women and destroy critical infrastructure, and is the primary reason Donut is a hellhole. By contrast, Yomiko was a Dark Messiah who conquered territories in order to pass judgement on corrupt nobles and promoted equality and fairness for everyone else, to the point that even some within the empires she fought against secretly hail her as a Saint. Nonetheless, Hara fought for the side that nominally believes in morality and justice, while Yomiko fought for the side that believes Might Makes Right.
  • Seiji's villainous plan is to conquer, torture, and slaughter... the rich sociopaths in charge of dystopias. By recruiting lower class citizens and tribes who happen to be considered inferior or inherently evil.
• Anyone Can Die: Several characters including Sakin and Marguo are built up as either special and/or with major character arcs only to die very ignominiously.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Seiji's not necessarily likeable or pacifistic or merciful, but compared to Virya he's a saint.
• Berserk Button: Seiji hates Okatu. He outright flies into a rage when he realizes the goddesses are effectively all-powerful weeaboos.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Exploited and Subverted. Seiji calls upon Sanora to blast him, then casts Deflect Divine Retribution. Actually casting his own lightning spell, Strike.
• Crapsaccharine World: Ephemera is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink - where Fantastic Racism and Fantastic Caste System are on full blast. Half the buildings use the colorful supernatural material akhor - which can only be found in magically chaotic jungles while digging into bedrock is illegal, meaning city development is even more constrained and hostile than during the Feudal Ages. Anyone can gain the ability to use magical artifacts or cast spells - but surviving the unholy gauntlet or illogical spirit trial to get those just puts a target on your back by the nobles, who will scheme to 'fairly' send you into a bandit-built deathtrap or enslave you with debt contracts until you're resorting to prostitution. And goddesses do answer prayers, granting massive miracles - for money, at fluctuating rates they choose at their whimsy, and always for some obscured secret agenda.
• Comedic Sociopathy: Sakin, who manages to be not just incredibly amusing whenever he's on screen, but also deeply unsettling. As things proceed, he's shown as someone who's seen enough that when someone genuinely new — like Seiji — comes along, he'll help and assist, until at least he grows bored.
• Connected All Along: Sanora and Virya are Elder Gods, from the same ancient civilization as the Elder Gods of The Gods Are Bastards, who decided to build their own world.
• Deal with the Devil: Void Devils can do almost anything for their contractors, but the caveats are truly damning. Almost every deal requires the classic selling of their soul - or the souls of others. Anything the Void corrupts is lost forever, especially shrines. And Devils are so reviled that Sanorites and Viryanites will temporarily team up to defeat them, so anyone who's caught dealing with the Void will find no respite among either side. Until Khariss reveals she screwed her devil over.
• Defector from Decadence: Nazralind used to be heir to the archduchy. Then her fiancée tried to rape her sister, followed up by strangling said sister to death, and got paid by her family for it. She abdicated and went straight into the woods to become a Robin Hood-expy.
• Desecrating the Dead: Seiji drags Lady Grey's corpse across the dirt from where he killed her to his hideout to make a point of how vile she was. Then he decapitates her corpse and pickles her head in a jar, and gives that to someone even more repulsive than either of them with a grudge against her.
• Did Not See That Coming: Seiji often tries to make plans that invoke this to catch his enemies off guard. However, he himself is vulnerable to this as well and many of his plans are disrupted when others go “off-script”.
• Divine Assistance: Both Yoshii and Seiji, as chosen of the goddesses, are given extra abilities not available to the inhabitants of their world. Additionally, neither goddess is above stacking the deck toward their chosen when they can get away with it.
• Enemy Mine: While Sanorites and Viryanites are constantly at each others' throats, they have a formal agreement to work together any time the Void is involved, as Void sits firmly on the oblivion side of Evil Versus Oblivion with its obsession with permanently corrupting shrines and harvesting souls.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Seiji has shown disgust at the sexism and racism present in Ephemera, and his general policy is to build an army made of those most grievously wronged by prejudice. Hell, his crusade's motto, referring to the two signature unit types in his arsenal, is Slimes and Whores.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Seiji is trying to retain as many of his as possible. Circumstances are unlikely to be cooperative however.
• Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: Lancor has a dueling tradition of always explaining your artifacts and spells to the opponent. Seiji suspects the goddesses wanted more shonen anime duels.
• Familiar: Seiji is given Biribo, a sarcastic flying lizard as a familiar, largely to act as a Mr. Exposition for Seiji.
• Fantastic Caste System: Elves are at the top, and beneath that your social rank is determined by how much elf heritage you have, with pure humans at the bottom.
• Fantastic Measurement System: Ephemera has a doozy. The author has stated much of the world-building exists simply to be as annoying as possible to its protagonist.
  • "A limn is five hundred and twenty-four dhils. A dhil is ninety-six strides. A stride is thirteen ridds, and is defined as the distance of an average male elf’s step." -Aster
  • The denominations of dungeon-farmed coins is a mishmash of rules that can easily confuse an unwary commoner who might accidentally trade a windfall away. Even worse is that there's no consistent pattern of cost-benefits to purchasing 'miracles' from the goddesses. It's at this point Seiji comes to the horrifying conclusion that Ephemera isn't an RPG - it's a gatcha game.
• Friendly Enemy: Yoshi and Seiji aren't friends, but Seiji's long-term plan is to be allies of convenience so they can jointly take the fight to the goddesses, who Seiji considers the actual Big Bad.
  • They eventually agree that they can be friends when it comes to fighting Void enemies; even scripture explicitly points this situation out as what the goddesses want.
• From Cataclysm to Myth: Ephemera is introduced as a literal broken shell of a world where sparse islands connected by thin land bridges hover over an empty abyss with the core concealed only by fog. There are no oceans or even a mantle, just empty space. There’s so little planet that partial light form the sun shines through even at night. Only the powers of the goddesses are keeping life sustainable. There’s no explanation as to how the world ended up this way^note All Virya will tell is that she and her sister gave reality warping powers to everyone at the beginning of their games. Oops. and only local creation myths even suggest there was ever any other state.
• Giant Spider: Khariss created spider minions (and her other zombies) using necromancy and slime glue.
• Harem Genre: Invoked. Yoshi and Seiji quickly realize that the world itself is nudging them to form adventuring parties of nubile women - and it creeps them both out; Yoshi because it meant his Lancer may have been marked for death by the goddesses for being a male third wheel, and Seiji because it further proves the Goddesses are sadistic nerds.
• Hobbes Was Right: Seiji's philosophy; people will always be sacks of angry shit-throwing monkeys, and not even the gods will ever be able to fix this. Surprisingly, there's a positive side to this: that anger and malice is exactly what they can use to overcome everything the universe throws at them, from racial injustice to Jerkass Gods, but only if someone can guide them to lob shit at their oppressors instead of each other.
  Squirrel Seer: What do you believe in?
  Seiji: I believe in people.
  Aster: Seiji, you're not supposed to lie.
  Seiji: I believe in the darkness in people.
• Instant Expert: Most Weapon Artifacts have the ability to give their wielder temporary mastery. The downside is that the wielder has to have the Blessing of Might power.
  • It's mostly subverted in that the artifact's mastery can be learned if the wielder practices long enough.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: Most chapters are titled in this manner.
• Kick the Dog: Lady Gray cements her place as number one on Seiji's hitlist when she kills several Gutter Rats just to try to make Seiji too angry to think straight.
• Medieval Universal Literacy: Fflyr Delmathys, despite having a rich-poor divide wider than the grand canyon, boasts an impressive literacy rate among the poor, to the point that it's easier to find a book lying around than any scrap of food. This may have to do with all of Donut once being a bustling Dungeon Town before Hara completely screwed it up.
• Mob War: Seiji manages to kick one off between Lady Gray and Clan Olumnach by complete accident during his first day in town. Much of his early plans revolve around the razor balance of taking advantage of this state of affairs and not dying in the crossfire.
• Mood Whiplash: The early chapters are almost slapstick. Enter Immolate.
• Mundane Utility: Invoked. Orb of Healing and Breath of Vitality are weaker versions of Heal that are used to keep Seiji's true powers under wraps. Mostly by using them as pet toys.
  • Summoning slimes of different elements. In combat, elemental slimes act like thrown molotovs, cryo grenades, and emps. To the goblin industry, they're a godsend of new cattle to power their machines and supply raw materials.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Explicitly how the Hero and Dark Lord gain new powers - certain situations will automatically trigger new abilities to be granted to them. However, knowing what these are in advance blocks the upgrade so you can't deliberately trigger them.
• Our Goblins Are Different: They're a technology-centered robber-baron underground civilization.
  • Goblins hold the title of their first job, no matter how unglamorous it may have been. This used to be abused for wage discrepancy, but over time it became a matter of pride to boast how low their careers started.
  • Goblin law enforcement consists of Judges who are a compromise between Judge Dredd and a standard judge, as they have both the legal knowledge to justify their crackdowns and the martial prowess to enforce them.
• Powers as Programs: Seiji describes the feel of spells in his head as code, as if they are literally instructions to reality as to how it should behave.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Seiji would claim Even Evil Has Standards. Being entirely unconcerned with the fate of annoying girl in the train station however suggests he leans more towards this than he'd like to admit.
• Rage Against the Heavens: Seiji really does not want to be a dark lord, and is sickened by the way the goddesses treat the whole thing as a game. He very quickly decides that it needs to stop.
• Robbing the Dead: Several artifacts that Seiji and his Allies get involve killing enemies who possessed them.
• Society Is to Blame: Seiji totes this trope to attract disenfranchised criminals and prostitutes. However, he specifically draws the line if someone has embraced their society-imposed wickedness and hurt/raped/murdered innocent people for fun.
• The Syndicate: Seiji's version of the Dark Crusade is to conquer the criminal underworlds of all nations, effectively becoming a dark twist on the United Nations.
• Tranquil Fury: Seiji gains this as one of his situational unlocks. It's explicitly a power granted the Dark Lord so they can function at their best when they need to most.
• Trapped in Another World: A pastiche of isekai stories, of which the protagonist is well aware. He even refers to the experience as being isekai'd in his mental monologue.
• Trauma Button: After weeks of healing prostitutes from the abuse their clients casually inflict, any kind of sexual thought or experience becomes this for Seiji.
• Villain Protagonist: What the goddess Virya intends to happen.
• Villains Act, Heroes React: Invoked. Velaven explains that Viryanites believe that villainy is a revolutionary's version of heroism; someone who breaks the status quo, for better or worse, rather than defend it. And that like heroes, villains should be both rare in number and respected.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Lady Gray. While she’s nowhere near the top tier of strength in Ephemera, she’s still an established crime boss with access to more resources and experience than Seiji has at this point and is the first opponent he can’t just steamroll over using his power or outmaneuver with dramatic manipulations.