by Superstes
One year. One barony. One deal with a Devil. Cornelius Vance was New York's golden boy — until the gold turned to slag. Framed by his firm, jilted by his fiancée, disbarred, and staring down federal prison, Cornelius has nothing left to lose... except his soul. A smoky back-room poker game and a bet with a too-smooth stranger named Mr. Ash change everything. The pot? A deed. But not just any deed! Overnight, Cornelius becomes the legal owner — and damned inheritor — of a struggling fantasy domain blighted by famine, hemmed in by hostile neighbors, and chained to a generations-old contract with Hell itself. The original Baron made a deal. And now, the bill has come due. Armed with nothing but logic, sheer audacity, and his New York style legal talents, Cornelius must outmaneuver people and Devils alike in order to save his starving subjects and find a way to bring the karma of the struggling Vespertine March Barony back into the black. And the clock is ticking. If he can’t balance the ledgers within a year, Hell shall collect upon the ultimate forfeiture clause: his soul. Devil’s Advocate: Specific Performance (or How I Became a Baron in a Fantasy World) is a sharp, high-stakes portal fantasy where courtroom cunning meets crown-and-sword politics — perfect for readers who love deal-with-the-devil bargains, underdog nation-building, and protagonists who win with brains rather than blades. When Hell drafts the contract, only a lawyer understands the fine print. AN: Free updates for this story will be published three (3) to four (4) times a week until we get to a decent Rising Stars ranking, and will then stabilize at two (2) updates per week. There are three Acts in Book 1. Act 1 is around 100k words. As always, Patreon will get significantly earlier updates. :) Also, I should mention that this book takes a little while to really "get going" in terms of actual plot progression. This is somewhat necessary due to the need for establishing the setting without things feeling like a boring "info-dump." The action starts at around Chapter 5. [Winner of the Royalroad writeathon challenge]
