I went from “this title is intriguing” to “I love this world” real fast. This is like the pastoral medieval counterpoint to Dungeon Crawler Carl.

It’s. just. fun.

I also highlighted a bunch…

from Demon Overlord’s Retirement Plan (A Gentle Apocalypse)

Ashur almost always opened with Holy Strike, not because it was tactically sound, but because paladins were creatures of rigid faith, and faith demanded certain rituals be observed.

Not the clean agony of a sword through the heart or the righteous burn of holy fire, this was the pain of existence itself being questioned.

It really didn’t matter what type of magic you wielded. What mattered was your intent.

Chaos never dies. It just changes shape into a bewildering number of forms. I’d once thought I had the monopoly on chaos, but village life had taught me otherwise.

My nemesis. Everyone needs one, it keeps the mind sharp.

Human “elites” were really just demons in human form.

I’d seen this pattern before. Humans lived, loved, then died. They were good at the first two but didn’t seem to accept the inevitability of the third.

(always summon under the new moon, the old moon has opinions)

I’d forgotten the cardinal rule of retirement: comfort is complacency’s prettier sister.

Supply and demand were as inevitable as gravity.

I was at the head of a tactically retreating army. Or what I liked to call “attacking in a homeward direction.”

Human currency was, after all, fictional, and accounting was terribly difficult to understand.

Evil’s greatest weakness was its inability to understand that power could come from something other than strength or fear.

from Love, Politics, and Other Acts of War

After all, if love truly surpasses all rules, then even the most rigid divine laws must bend to accommodate genuine change of heart.

Effective theater always went a lot farther than any sort of logical argument.

Style was what separated a real villain from the amateurs.

She’d understood that unpredictability was its own form of power.

there was always a pattern, even in chaos. Especially in chaos.

He wanted me to have an education beyond commerce. Said it would make me a better merchant to understand how people think, what they believe, what drives them.

she valued questions more than certainty.

You can never fight an opponent whilst risking your life and not weave them into your being.

Diplomacy through agriculture. The wonders that could be achieved on a farm were limitless apparently.

from Band of Others

Delegation was such a beautiful thing. I would kill two harpies with one fireball.

Being adored was such a burden.

Speculation and gossip were the true superpowers of humans.

Nobody won by enacting Armageddon-level events.

Today, he surfed the wave of annihilation with abandon.

Human language was so needlessly confusing. They could never just choose one word and stick with it.

They clung to their cultural identities and died for it with shocking willingness.

“The reason the hero wins despite being inferior is really quite simple,” I said, and Sally perked up. “The hero, whether they are from Pelan, Trumar, the Divine Order, or any one of the countless human nations, does not fight alone. The hero and their companions never accept the odds when they challenge the Demon Overlord. Together, they achieve their goals by fulfilling each of their roles."

The hero is just someone that tries enough times until they get lucky enough to succeed.

We all preferred having this spinning orb of dirt to stand on. Space provided far less amusement.

There was always an unending supply of humans willing to fight and die, so I assumed they’d sprung from the womb with a tendency towards violence.

Few beings truly understood their own heart.

He had spared no expense to explain loudly and flamboyantly through retail design that he was the foremost merchant power in the region.

Domination was for the weak. A true knight was self-reliant.

Kings and emperors did not gain power because they were easily satisfied. And they almost certainly never got close enough to a battle to experience it firsthand or consider the cost of blood.

If humans disseminated knowledge and scientific truth at the same rate they spread gossip, they would have entered a technological golden age long ago.

What was truth anyway except something to be disproven periodically in the name of advancement.

What was the difference between blessings and curses anyway but two sides of the same coin? It was all in the eye of the beholder.

After an eternity of existence, I was finally free to decorate for my dreams instead of designing to indicate my status.

Disorganized chaos was just that… disorganized and chaotic. You never quite knew what would happen. I liked my chaos neat and tidy.

Mortals were infinitely creative when it came to flights of fancy and ignoring facts that did not fit their desired outcomes.

The traitors had followed my order to the letter whilst simultaneously annihilating the spirit of my command.

We didn’t just occupy space together; we lived the same moments.

Mortals were obsessed with stories. And legacy.

Why bother wasting time on fame when you had such a limited lifespan?

There was no such thing as perfect morality; it was just an excuse to be static.

A collection of quotes on children

Children, I discovered, were essentially drunk adults overrun with adrenaline who hadn’t yet learned shame.

I’d learned that children required constant validation or their questions multiplied… or worse. They leaked water out of their eyes for no apparent reason.

Human children were like ducklings, and hardly more sophisticated.

She was fabricating a personal tradition as if it were law.

Discussing logic with children was like trying to scoop up fire. It was impossible.