The undead legions I had commanded to be the first warriors in the genocidal war I was waging on Salifinos" mortal population included the warriors who fought in the battle against the reptilefolk encampment, and many, many more undead.

They were all bloodthirsty, violent creatures who wanted to execute the living for committing an unforgivable sin: living. Among them, only the most powerful and important could reanimate the dead unaided, creatures similar in strength to Nivar.

As they marched, flew, and crawled to try and be the first to get to bathe in the blood of their enemies, I quietly turned a small portion of my mind to the hyenoid encampment in Puerto Rico. At last, the most important hyenoids had fallen asleep which gave what I needed to begin to enact another of my schemes.

________________________________________________

Darkness wasn"t the only thing spreading out across the plain on which Luthor and his kin lived. So too did a vast, brutally armed legion of the undead. The skies were darkened by the spectral bodies of undead monsters who worshiped a G.o.d of death, nightmares, and pain. The plain"s ground was covered in his servants who ineffectually crawled, walked, and shuffled across it, driven by a singular desire: to kill mortals.

From worlds away, their G.o.d focused a fair amount of his divine mind on them. He was aware of their actions, of their urges, and he enjoyed the emotions they felt. Their beliefs and their hate fascinated him, and he found their emotions surprisingly amusing to examine. That said, he was doing his best to let them roam freely and to give them free rein to act, so long as they generally obeyed his orders to hunt down and kill mortals. And they fully intended to do that.

There was precisely one thing that kept the mortals of the town"s closest to the frontlines of the war alive: the distance that separated them from the undead Althonian hordes. That said, that distance was shrinking more and more every second.

________________________________________________

My tower was hundreds of kilometers away from Puerto Rico. But I could reach out across the cosmos and freely interact with people and objects in other worlds, it was all too easy for me to reach out to my home and the closest thing I had to a birthplace.

Without any sign of mental or divine strain, I quietly flexed a divine muscle and hurled a part of my mind into the dream of the first of the targets I had for my schemes to acquire the second tier of influence over the corruption subdomain. I proceeded to flex my divine muscles more and hurled more of my mind into other dreams, dreams belonging to hyenoids and humans alike.

Fomenting conflict was not something I usually did, but I didn"t mind doing it this time. I actually liked the idea of experimenting and discovering if I had a talent for stoking conflict. This would be the first time I was purposefully doing such a thing.

The fragments of myself that appeared within the dreams I had invaded all entered vastly different dreamscapes. I could see and drive each of my dream-selves at the same time thanks to my expanded powers, and I had no difficulties awakening my dream-selves with merely the mental version of a flick of the wrist.

One fragment awoke within a dreamscape that was of a vast forest. Another appeared within a rustic house. The other two woke up in a hyenoid camp, and in the Silver Xana. All four of the dream-selves I had generated had goals in their "minds": appeal to the mortal, manipulable emotions mortals felt and use those emotions to start conflicts.

The "true" me, my physical body, smiled as the dream-selves I had created begin to move through the dream-worlds imagined by the people whose minds I had invaded. My dream-selves took on distinct forms and began to investigate the personalized dreamworlds of my victims.

________________________________________________

Nivar was silent as her mount dashed towards a town just barely becoming visible in the darkness. The disgusting, wormy ma.s.s that only superficially resembled a gigantic humanoid, stared straight ahead. She had no eyes, as every bit of her humanoid corpse had been devoured by her master"s chosen mound of worms, but she was clearly facing the distant community she was approaching.

The worm that walked was standing on top of a strange, slack-jawed, and quadrupedal zombie giant. The zombie giant was mindlessly dashing towards the town and was one of the fastest creatures in the particular horde she had been a.s.signed too. Nivar would have sighed if she could, but that sound was too complex for her to make, given what pa.s.sed for her throat.

The creature was composed entirely of filthy worms. A countless number of filthy, wallowing worms were magically and psychically fused together and driven by the incredibly powerful will Nivar possessed.

Nivar herself was a grave-giant who had initially been reanimated by Althos and then deanimated so that he could experiment with a magical corpse. Althos allowed worms to devour her deanimated corpse and then aided her in handcrafting a disgusting new form, made of those same worms.

At first, her new form had been a thing she had hated. But days had pa.s.sed since she gained her new form, days which she had to mull it over and to accustom herself to her new body. And now she was indifferent to her new form. She quietly a.s.sumed that it pleased her master, and for her, for now, that was enough. That said what she was about to do was pleasing to her.

The giant was silent because she was focused on the sight in front of her. She could see a thick, wooden, wall that outlined and protected a small town off in the distance. She smiled and mentally thanked her dark lord for the chance to be one of the undead warriors who got to be violent in today"s brutal activities.

She raised a single hand made of worms and pointed a single finger, in so far as she possessed a finger, and took aim. The giant was silent as she channeled the magical energy she possessed.

Gathering magical energy, when done by non-deific beings, was a laborious and concentration-intensive activity that took serious effort. Even for a purely magical being like Nivar it wasn"t easily done. The grave giant was utterly still for several seconds, aside from the disgusting movement of the worms that made up her form before she had successfully gathered the energy she needed for what she had in mind.

When she had the needed amount, she began to grin. Or at least she tried to grin. A mortal would not have been able to tell. As soon as the energy she needed was concentrated and at her disposal, she took a moment to shape the necromantic lance that was about to fly out of her finger. It only took a second, as this was perhaps the easiest part of magic usage aside from the release of the magic.

When the energy was primed within her, and shaped to her satisfaction, she merely unleashed it. A thick lance of magical energy shot out of her fingertip and rocketed towards the wall that outlined the town she and her allies were intent on destroying. The lance was the color of midnight, was several meters long, and amazingly enough, it managed to be even thicker than it was long.

Nivar watched, curious to see what would happen when her attack collided with the walls protecting the mortal community. It took the lance several seconds of sailing through the air before it finally collided with the wall. When it did the strange, magical attack ripped into the thick wooden posts that comprised the barrier and torn a sizable hole in the wall. The spell continued past the wall and sailed into the town itself before finally slamming into a small home and ceasing to exist.

The grave giant felt ecstatic as she realized just how powerful the first of the magical powers she now possessed was. She hadn"t had the chance to use this when battling at the encampment, but now that she had seen it with her own eyes she was quick to begin to ready another lance.

It was while she was preparing another evocation-based magical attack that her master began to move. The distant G.o.d was not burdened or bothered by mortal constraints like distance. His divine powers could stretch across the universe if he wanted it too. And in this instance, all it had to do was reach partway across the solar system and reward one of his servants.

Nivar smiled as she felt her master"s approval seep into her and as she read the notification she just received. It filled her with pride and made her feel that what she was doing was something her master approved of.

[Alert:

You have received a dual blessing, bestowed upon you by the G.o.d of the grave. The G.o.d has been pleased by the power you"ve displayed and seeks to aid you. He has magically and evocatively blessed you.

Your next there low-level magical spells, such as your dark spear attack, will cost you no magical energy. In addition to that, your evocation magic will be cheaper even beyond the next three spells you cast, and the spells will be stronger. If you continue to please Althos, he may bless you even more.]

Nivar grinned s.a.d.i.s.tically, a terrifying sight made all the more frightening by the fact that her mouth was literally made of wriggling worms, when she was done reading the notification. She felt power and magical energy surging back into herself and did what she could to prepare for the wicked power that would be exploding out of her fingertips soon.

"Thank you... Master." She whispered as she took careful aim with her other hand. Behind her the undead army that was roving towards the settlement inhabited by living mortals cheered in s.a.d.i.s.tic joy as they began to be able to see the settlement. The distant sight of the town invigorated the undead horde and they dashed with renewed enthusiasm towards the living community.