Helluva Boss X Reader

Overlord Intro Part 2: The Moon, XVIII

You would work on crafting your "perfect deal" in whatever free time you were given. For weeks, months you trained. Your routine was brutal. Wake up, go to work. Brainstorm deal ideas between phone calls, throw away those ideas. After work you would get torn to shreds by Loona, who had been told sinners could regenerate by Stolas. Eternal punishment couldn't be eternal if you died that easily, he had explained, giving a reason why such an ability was granted to sinners. Though you knew that he had only told her that because he had gotten drunk on the small amount of power Loona gave him. He favored her, given her connection to Blitzø. This did not go unnoticed by Loona. She would often ask Stolas how she should put you into the ground before every fight, and after she found out about the regeneration, Stolas would play the role of a gladiatorial emperor, deciding whether you should "live," or "die," with a gesture of his thumb.

Despite the punishment—No. Because of it, you became stronger, faster, quick on your feet, and lost your hesitation when it came to the use of your teeth and claws. You still couldn't stop Loona from ripping you in half by the end of her lessons, but you could at least hold her off for a few minutes. For that, Loona was satisfied. Your schedule went back to normal, except for weekends at Stolas's, though Loona had chosen to become much rougher with you at work, now knowing you could handle a real beating.

Issue three was taken care of. All that was left was making the deal, and knowing if you would need help with the names or not.

You had made significant progress on the deal while you had been training. You had promised Blitzø that part of the deal would be that sinners could not discuss the deal, for safety when it came to outside parties potentially trying to gather information, nor could the sinner harm I.M.P. in any way. You had phrased that clause as such:

"You will be unable to speak of the details of this deal to anyone, nor will you be able to harm a member of I.M.P., should you be made aware of their presence and/or status."

That part had been simple enough. Asking for the soul itself was also easy.

"...In exchange, you will give me your soul," or something along those lines.

What you had realized, throughout your weeks of thinking, was that you didn't actually need to enslave the sinners you would make deals with, like all Overlords tended to do. In the cases they didn't, they would still hold the sinner on a tight leash during certain hours of the day and/or at certain locations. If souls gave you raw power, then what use did you have for the will of the sinner? You didn't care about control over new people, you wanted the raw power to destroy systems already in place. With this, you had completed the deal.

Another realization that came after that was that the deal itself was actually trivially easy. It was the reasons, not the rewards, that you would need to make this work. It was simple, cheap, and repeatable. It was simple, in that you would give the sinner their freedom in exchange for their soul. The deal cost you next to nothing; what was cheaper than giving up what you didn't have in the first place? And of course, it was repeatable; all sinners that were victims of I.M.P. would have a short period of time in which they would still have possession of their soul, ripe for the taking. All that was needed was an element of fear, to actually convince the sinner that holding onto their soul was worse than giving it to you.

Oh, and you tacked on a little extra clause to aid Hellhounds in the future. That was the whole point of doing this, after all.

"I will take your soul. In exchange, I relieve all control I have over you, except for the following: You will be unable to speak of the details of this deal to anyone, nor will you be able to harm a member of I.M.P., should you be made aware of their presence and/or status. If you ever meet or see a Hellhound in trouble, you must help them in a way that you deem appropriate."