Demon lords, the fel-princes and princesses of the nightmarish land known as the "Heart of Darkness". I knew of a few of the ancient and long-dead monsters, thanks in part to the memories I had poached from my demonic servants.
Morthos, the ancient prince of the realm known as the "Spoken Scourge". He was in all likelihood an ancient spell-singer who was believed to have once been a mortal who died, became a demon, and eventually became a demon lord. He favored subtlety snd his brand of evil was just as destructive as other demon lords but he wasn't fond of violence.
Leviathan, thought to be the ruler of a layer that was an unspeakably vast and impossibly deep ocean. She was a demonic princess of the deeps and was worshiped by all sorts of creatures who depended on the ocean to live, be they fish or creatures who lived near and hunted in the ocean. Like Morthos she was skilled at non-violent evil.
Apep, the demon lord of serpents, deserts, and flame. He once ruled a layer of the dimension that was a vast desert filled with enormous pyramids. His servants were snakes and their evolutions, as well as half-demon reptiles. He was an exceptionally violent demon-lord of wrath, though far from the only one. He was also the only demon lord who was served by one of my demonic servants, the asesinato demon I had conjured, weeks ago. He was the only demon lord who appeared in the memories I had absorbed to date and so I knew more about him than I did other demon lords.
Each of these demon lords was probably a bit weaker than I am now, making them tremendously powerful entities. Through means that eluded my current knowledge, each of these entities had managed to seize control of a layer of the dimension I currently existed in, the Heart of Darkness. I had to assume that a part of becoming a demon lord involved taking control of a layer of this dimension, a surprisingly unchaotic thing for a demon lord to prioritize.
There was a not small part of me wanted to ask the domain of knowledge about how to become a demon lord, but I also knew that there was some value in attempting to learn things on my own. I had a mechanism by which I could circumvent a lot of research if I wanted too, but it's not like there was no value to doing my own research.
I also had a theory that I hadn't yet "qualified" to become a demon lord. I had gotten a quest to become an elemental overlord when I gained the proper sorts of powers needed to give me the means to act like one. I hadn't gotten a quest to become a demon lord yet, which suggests that the powers associated with demon lords yet eluded me. But if demon lords were creatures who ruled over layers of this dimension than all I had to do was begin to conquer this place. And that was something I could do.
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Sombra was still in my arms, and relaxing after she had asked me what I wanted. I was beginning to formulate a more concrete plan about how to progress from here. And in order to achieve that plan, I extended my hand. As I did so I began to concrete, and will the countless praereptor demons within me back towards my arm.
As the demons began to congregate in my arm I watched my skin begin to darken. She gazed at my arm curiously and darkly grinned. She knew that I had kept many praereptors in my arm, and I could tell she was excited to see what happened next. I looked at my arm and commanded the creatures within me to leave my arm.
The demons quietly and meekly obeyed, knowing better than to try and disobey me. They left my arm and seeped onto the floor around me. To a mortal this would render the incorporeal beings nearly invisible, especially creatures like them who crawled on the floor, visible as shadowy silhouettes, but not to me. I could clearly both see and detect them using a number of my other senses.
Dozens and then hundreds of the creatures exited me, performing a dark exodus of their own. They surrounded Sombra and I, crawling on the ground like beasts. It was an uncouth appearance for such creatures, and in response to it I arose, and I also took Sombra with me.
I studied the demons before spreading my powers out over the area around me. As my powers spread out around me, a thin blue light surrounded me and breathed Sombra, her fellow praereptors, and myself, in unholy radiance. It was at this point that I began to speak.
"Praereptors! Welcome to your new home. I have a number of gifts for you." I declared, speaking mysteriously but haughtily. There was a smile on my face as I spoke.
I rose my hand and began to manipulate the darkness of the bodies of the praereptors, closing my eyes to focus as I did so. I heard a number of excited groans and moans in surprised pleasure as I granted the praereptor demons physical bodies by manipulating both the darkness of their incorporeal forms and the chaotic substances of their souls.
I transformed some of them into various animals. The animals I transformed them into comprised a fair variety. Some of them were massive insects like enormous praying mantises, massive spiders, a few invertebrates like worms, and others were large but not supernaturally-so hounds and cats. A small number of them were transformed into birds, particularly ravens and also bats, which were mammals and not birds.
I transformed another group of them into humanoids. For now I gave them all the forms of variously beautiful or handsome humans, which made sense since I had plans for them and I wasn't about to unleash them on a variety of worlds but rather keep this legion close to me, and have them work as my direct servants.
With regards to the demons who I gave human forms I split them up evenly, in terms of gender. I created some incredibly beautiful women, remarkably handsome men, and also some truly plain-looking women and fairly unremarkable men. I also mixed the ages a bit, creating bodies that were as young as early teens and bodies that were visibly ancient. I did both of these things mainly based on their existing statistics, making praereptors with higher charisma better looks, and ones with less remarkable stats more regular looking bodies. But I wasn't without kindness.
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I boosted the stats of all of my demonic servants. I would spend the next hour bestowing blessings to each of my demonic servants so that each of their individual stats was at least a thirty by the time I would finally finish with them. This was not a difficult process, but it was a laborious one since there were hundreds of demons for me to go through.
Additionally, I would glance at the classes of each of the demons I had assembled before me. The demons had a wide array of classes between them. The most populous classes were berserkers and assassins. There was a cold logic there, as berserker praereptors got to unleash their wrath in a way that wouldn't hurt them as the praereptors didn't feel the pain inflicted on their victims, and assassin praereptors were able to adjust the bodies of their victims using their own stats and status modifiers as assassins.
Another common class for the praereptors was the alchemist class which itself definitely made sense. Alchemists experimented frequently and sometimes had to test their potions and even poisons on themselves but with the power to possess someone, praereptors could find victims to test their brews on without endangering themselves, while also experiencing the full potency of their creations directly.
In a handful of cases, I bestowed the demons with special and unique blessings, ranging from altering them directly to giving them special items like pens with distinctive alterations such as being poisonous or containing deadly diseases. By the time I was done with the process I had begun, I had also ensured that all of these demons were loyal to me through my eldritch, faith, and love based abilities. I wasn't about to take a chance with the chaotic monsters I had transformed into my latest army.
By the time I was done messing around with them, I turned to Sombra directly and gazed at her. I smiled at her softly and began to transform her form, giving her her own human appearance.
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Sombra's initial body was based on a drider named Imbrosa Ravenfist. I hadn't given Sombra the spider half of Imbrosa's body, but I had given her the spider-legged beauty's humanoid appearance. This time I was doing something different. I wasn't basing the body of Sombra on someone else.
The first thing I did was target Sombra's hair. I transformed it into a scarlet mane, making it a dark red with but a glance. The second thing I did was target Sombra's skin-tone and alter it in such a way that she looked human and also very pale. She shivered as she felt my powers wash over her.
I then targeted her scarlet eyes and transformed them into deep blue orbs, much like my own were. She shivered and audibly gasped as my powers washed over her vision. I kept her face otherwise unchanged, but the other changes were so dramatic that she looked like a different sort of unearthly beauty than she had once looked.
"Althos..." She sighed, luxuriously, as my powers washed over her. When I finished, she smiled at me and wrapped her arms around me. She was delighted with my usage of power and I could sense that she just hoped that I found her new form attractive. It was, but I wasn't about to act on the slight desire I felt towards her in this form. Not yet, not here.
I got Sombra to release me, though she did sigh in annoyance as she did so. I then turned towards the demons I had permanently altered and once more began to speak.
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"Demons! I am happy to have bestowed you with new, real, bodies. Now comes the part where I get what I want." I told them, grinning as I did so.
"This layer of the Heart of Darkness is to be our new home. It is to be the first place in this dimension we conquer. The first of many!" I emphatically declared, speaking as a god of conquest for the first time. I knew that anything short of violent conquest wouldn't work in this odd dimension and so while altering my minions I had quietly come to terms with that. This was a place of chaos and evil, and to take it over would require the usage of force. Accepting that reality would go a long way towards speeding up the process by which I became a greater god of war, chaos, evil, and eventually a demon lord.
The demons who heard me cheered in delight. They were envious, murderous little assholes so I wasn't surprised that they liked the idea of inflicting harm on other demons and becoming a more recognized and feared force as a species. I liked that they were receptive to the idea of going on a murderous war-rampage throughout the dimension. I bet I'd soon find other demons like them.
"We will conquer this dimension, one layer at a time! And in the days, months, years, decades, and centuries to come, we shall become a feared and hated force throughout the dimension!" I said, shouting while also grinning at the creatures assembled before me. This only fostered and encouraged their wicked cheering.
"Our first order of business is to begin to make this place a real home for us. We are to domesticate this land and build a settlement here!" I announced, which made the demons straighten up suddenly. They looked at me silently, and then at each other curiously. I could sense that this surprised them. I chuckled at this abrupt change.
"This layer belongs to us. To ME. We shall do with it, what we wish." I told the demons, speaking confidently and self-assuredly. My words washed over them and for a moment they mulled them over. I could tell the creatures were thinking carefully about my words. I sensed them considering them, and debating them in their heads. It was kind of cute in a way.
"I will transform this land as I have transformed you. And together we shall domesticate this darkened forest, turning it to our devices. Remember the feelings you felt as my powers washed over you, and think of how this land shall feel when my powers wash over it." I told the assembled creatures. And this struck a chord with them because they began to cheer.
I knelt and I touched the ground at my feet. As I did so I felt the writhing chaos that suffused the very floor and air of this dimension react to me, I felt it itself sense my incredible powers and begin to... resonate with me. I shivered as my chaos and its chaos intertwined for a moment. I felt myself bonding with this place, with this layer at least.
"That feels... good." I muttered, feeling its elemental instability begin to touch my own corporeal instability. I had total control over my body so it made sense that my own body was at least somewhat unstable. I chuckled as I felt our wavelengths of chaos and change begin to joyfully interact. And then I shouted at the demons.
"Go and begin to transform this place!" I commanded, once again reminding them of my status as their master. I generated an axe made of light and then I hurled it at one of the trees close to me. It bit deep into the wood of the tree, probably partially because of the shadowy status of the trees here and I grinned as it did so.
"Take my axes and get to work!" I ordered, planning to clear out at least some of the nearby trees and then using my powers over nature, civilization, and creation to make a few simple houses and things for us to live in.
Over the course of the next three and a half hours the demons would steadily clear out enough of an area for me to begin to get to work to create homes. And while they were doing that my mind turned to good-based powers and domains for one of the first times in my life. I did like the idea of balance and I had heavily emphasized my darker side lately. Sooner or later I would need to change that. And while my demons were at work that was what I thought about.