“The imperial fleets were able to turn the stalemate slowly, but the cost was high when the prize was empty and destroyed worlds.

We started hunting in packs to single out and destroy the enemy's ships. They were simply too powerful. Anything less than a three-to-one ship engagement meant defeat.

That they left no installations or bases behind and only seemed to be focused on destruction worked in our favor.

Sadly, none of the enemy ships have been captured. The enemy would rather self-destruct than let us lay our hands on their technology.

Mankind still ruled from Luna despite high command advice for the evacuation of Sol.

The fourth empress of the Kingfisher dynasty, who led us during this time of difficulties, was adamant about not leaving the system of our birth. We had already lost Earth.

Along the borders of the Andromeda galaxy, two fists of the imperial fleet arrived with wrath in their hearts and demand for retribution.”

- Elistar Iscariot, Grand Magister during the second Kingfisher dynasty.

I don't know how long I spent in the home of my bonded domain when clarity returned.

Still, Erebus was as always uninterested in anything besides existing and holding back the tides of chaos, so getting a clear answer out of the domain about things like time and space was something I had given up on long ago.

What I did know was that staying here was a balm on my ravaged spirit. The more time I spent here, the more my past and my present were made into one, becoming unified as a single entity instead of a confused jumble of personalities and memories.

I found it strange how something so harmful to my physical body could be such a boon to my spirit. Here, there were no distractions unless I wanted it; I was just a spirit reveling in existing.

Despite feeling better, I still didn't understand why I had split memories from multiple lives or why some were more prevalent than others. Asking Erebus was like yelling at a wall. It was a stubborn old goat at times, refusing to give an answer that made sense. I think I made it crack a smile when I sent the thought over.

Erebus was stubborn and was certainly old. Besides, goats were lovely creatures.

It was the closest I have come to getting something that resembled humor from the entity that was the will and force of this domain. Calling it an avatar or a representation like the other domains had would be an insult to the words avatar and representation. Erebus was no God. Erebus was Erebus, as it told me time and again at my increasingly mounting frustration and blood pressure.

All my queries about what had happened since my passing, why my spirit was brought back and if it had anything it needed me to do were met with the same indifference as always.

Our communication was a direct exchange of information without all the nonsense the sentient species engage in. The gist of its answers was. “Your body died, and died and died, but your spirit did not. I sent you back because you're not done.”

Asking it what I was supposed to be done with only got me the answer. “To do what must be done.”

Giving up, I soared through the endless dark for a while, just exploring, with the ever-hungering void at its center as my North. It was the only thing that was stable inside this domain. Even the borders of other domains constantly shifted.

I hunted other beings of the dark when I grew hungry. Anything from the smallest voidlings to the elder dragons, the size of planets, was my prey in this place.

I remembered the words of the filthy madman who would rip apart his own soul rather than speak, and he had been right. Here I was, the prince of darkness. I was also the serf, butcher, tinker, the judge and the executioner. I was the lowest and the highest. No other being was given the ultimate freedom to express themselves as I was in the domain of Erebus, and I had no idea why.

When I grew lonely, I conjured illusions of my loved ones to keep me company. Speaking of the old days, of lovers and wars so ancient that even my memories of them were becoming dim.

I soared past the border of Gaia and Lux, throwing insults and declarations of future conflicts when I passed the myriad denizens of the domains. Nothing serious ever came of it, but it was in keeping with the tradition of my last stay here, and it made everyone chuckle at memories that seemed so long ago.

The peace between Erebus, Gaia and Lux had stood since the beginning, so my shenanigans were all in good spirits and fun. Some brave souls from the house of Gaia and the house of Lux joined me in mock battles more akin to children's games that were fought in the veins of Erebus, which separated the domains to pass the time or just reacquaint ourselves.

More often than not, it ended in merrymaking and gossip before we parted ways. I always felt uplifted by the interaction and in good cheer. Even beings as different as us could find some common ground for laughter and kindness.

Unlike me, however, the courts of Gaia and Lux had their own responsibilities and functions as part of their domain's ruling cast, and they would always end it too soon, making me continue on my journey without a destination.

On I traveled, staying away from Chaos as it was forbidden to me. It was the only decree Erebus had ever given me.

I sailed the sea of darkness until I reached a dead domain. Its inhabitants locked in a never-ending hell of crumbling memories, slowly dissolving back into cosmic dust.

It pained me to remember how many domains I had done this to in my early days. Back when humanity had been young and knew little of the mysteries of the universe and its myriad abstruse rules.

Rules to keep the supposed balance in place, a balance tilted in favor of those who placed them there in the first place. Rules were so obscure and abstract that individual pieces on the chess board had no hope of understanding them in their entirety or ever using them to their own benefit.

Then I remembered what had driven me to become part of the power that crushed domains, and my guilt was replaced by wrath. Some things could never be forgotten, and could never be forgiven.

In my anger, I summoned the hosts of darkness to consume what remains of this dead domain drifting between the veins of Erebus that separated the domains.

There was little I could do for a domain without any hope or a future. Maybe the Fates would have mercy on the spirits that remained, and they would be given another chance.

In moments, the poor souls that crawled along the ground of this dead domain were consumed by the dark host that covered the entire domain. Then, the domain itself was ripped apart and turned into nothing, leaving only darkness behind.

I, who was known as Smiley and is now known as Alucard, took on the role of janitor of the dead domains and custodian of lost souls. Janitor, now that was a title I could do a lot with.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Watching as a new domain was slowly being born from the particles that remained of the old one.

I grunted in satisfaction. It was like keeping a forest. Making sure new trees were planted when one was cut. No, this was not fun anymore.

It was time for me to leave this plane once again. With a last thought of approval from Erebus, I found myself in my body again, and I damn well wish I didn't.

The useless sack of blood and bones I called my body was currently slouching against a rock wall.

A quick diagnostic told me my legs from above the knee and down had run away, as I thought they would be. Surprisingly, my right arm was just trying to kill me with gangrene and not actively trying to strangle me. Need to take the blessing where you find them.

In conclusion, my body was a broken mess, but whatever time I had spent relaxing in the endless dark was not long enough to really affect it. When I get myself out of this pickle, I will need to do some serious upgrades to this weak flesh so this doesn't happen again.

They had, for some reason, neither stripped me nor done a very good job of frisking me. Sure, I didn't have any weapons, but I lost them during the battle. Everything else was still in my possession, as far as I could tell.

Despite the state of my body, my spirit was doing great. That some moron has placed a spirit suppression color around my neck was a bit of a head-scratcher or would have been if I didn't use my one remaining arm to hold myself up in a sitting position. Maybe it was supposed to stop Awakened, who had no clue about how their spirit bodies worked?

Why and how anyone on this planet had managed to get a hold of one of those was something of a mystery.

They were immensely expensive and difficult to make and wouldn't even hold a Neophyte with basic training against them. Now that brought back memories of the dumb-ass Magi and why they thought it was such a good idea to keep their secrets until it was too late. I guess power always corrupts, even with the best intentions, especially when there are no functioning checks and balances in place to say if something is brain-dead or not.

Now, let's see what I have to work with here. A single jail cell of some sort. Thick bars made of metal on one side and three walls of hewn stone, no window.

Vacation-wise, I didn't deem it anything to write home about. One out to five stars, I had been in worse, but the sulfuric smell was just too prevalent to push it up to a two-star accommodation. Besides, as far as I could tell, they had forgotten to serve breakfast. If I ever started a travel blog, I would write a strongly worded review.

Opposite my jail cell was another one cell of the same size, and I could make out another pitiful lump of flesh. Unlike me, the sorry sight didn't even have an arm left, just stumps.

As I was about to call out to my neighbor, I heard steps coming from down the hallway. Three sets of steps.

Soon enough, I saw the new guests, and I almost drew in a surprised breath, barely keeping myself from alerting them of my attentiveness.

I had been wrong; there were four people. The last one was a creature that made my blood boil.

The Remdra I could handle, the ones I recently had been calling wyrmlings, were as diverse as humans. Some broods would fight you over nothing. Others would welcome you as a long-lost family. It largely depended on what domain they worshiped.

Then there was the last guest…Wherever the tailed bodies of the Untekhi slithered across the ground, pain and suffering followed in its wake.

Their main goal in life was bringing the avatars of their gods to every planet, and they seemed to think that competition was not needed, so their normal way of operation was slaughtering all other races by sacrificing their spirits to whatever demon they called their God that day.

Working with them like these remdra seemed to be doing was beyond stupid. They were basically working towards their own destruction.

Untekhi were fanatics with close connections to their powerful pantheon of devils. Devils that were so alien to humanity that we eventually gave up anything but all-out annihilation. That they were coldblooded, unlike the kobolds and the remdra, probably didn't help either.

While I couldn't speak the language of either group, they obviously had a way to communicate as the untekhi hissed something to the three remdras, who quickly unlocked the prison cell and, with some effort, managed to strap the torso and head to the far wall.

I didn't recognize the human in the other cell, but she was Awakened in the first rank. I didn't need True Sight to know how close to the brink she was. They had tortured her beyond what a normal person could hope to survive.

The untekhi was dragging its long claw down the side of her face, crooning something I doubt she could understand, much less hear at the moment.

When she finally seemed to come to again. I couldn't help but shudder as her eyes came down from the back of her head to focus on the horror in front of her through lidless eyes. The sound her tongueless mouth made as she took in the hideous serpent-like features of the untekhi was so tortured and pitiful that something in me broke.

I knew what the untekhi was trying to achieve now as its other clawed hand, which had started glowing with a purple light, was making circles on the woman's stomach while it continued its crooning hisses.

It was the same as the Magi had done to us for countless millennia before we understood the danger, except we gave our spirit stones gladly for what we thought was the greater good of humanity.

What we hadn't known was that the Magi used a vast majority of the gifted spirit stones to increase their own individual power.

What the Magi hadn't known at the time was that while it conferred an instant improvement and growth in Awakende's powers, it was a dead end.

The parts of the enemy's sprites we took while in battle were only a small portion of the whole, and only the parts that fit or were neutral to your own spirit.

When you started taking entire spirit stones to increase your power, you were left with too many conflicts and imperfections to reach even the middle stages of awakening. It was a quick way to becoming mediocre.

You were, in essence, screwed and had to start over by removing the abomination you had created if it didn't eventually turn you mad or damage your spirit too much.

It somehow took as far too long for the Magi to understand what was happening. I had suspected it was a deliberate ploy to keep the ranks full of mediocre Magi so the elders and council had plenty of expendables to conduct their business.

On top of that, the person would lack the will and experience that someone who grew through study, battle, and hardship to reach the same level of power over the centuries.

I would put my money on an experienced fourth-ranker over a fifth-ranker who had reached their rank by leaching any day. I had never heard about spirit leech that had reached past the fifth rank anyway.

My attention snapped back to the cell across from me as the crooning turned to droning. I had never heard of anyone being able to take the spirit stone against a person's will, but this was making the hair stand on the back of my neck.

I doubt the woman was lucid enough even to comprehend what the vile thing was trying to do, so why was its voice beginning to sound triumphant?

Screw this. I wasn't going to sit here and watch them violate a fellow human. Let alone a person as abused as that.

Flashes of what was done to my sister raced across my mind as my tentacles slid out. With contemptuous ease, the collar around my neck snapped open as the chain that held me to the wall was broken.

The clang my collar made as it hit the stone floor echoed around the chamber, and for a moment, everything turned still. The only sound I could hear was the moans of pain coming from the tortured soul across from me.

Four sets of eyes darted to my cell. If they saw me in the shadowy prison, the flash of my white teeth would be the only thing they saw.

With a roar that tore at my sore throat, I exploded out of my cell, sending the metal door flying into the nearest remdra. Right behind it, my body, held up by five tentacles, followed like a cannonball ripping the leftmost remdras throat with my left hand. The last of the remdra died with the hard, sharp tip of a tentacle pierced through an eye and out of the back of its skull.

Rising on my tentacles, I looked down at the frozen untekhi. They had never been able to deal with changes quickly, which is why they seldom fought in close combat.

I was perfectly fine with that.

Slamming two of my tentacles against the creature, I pushed it into the cold stone of the jail cell. Its barrier almost allowed me to bury it in the wall.

Then I followed, stabbing and smashing the creature until the barrier gave out, and I pulled the befuddled untekhi to me, with a tentacle holding it up and a tentacle holding its head in place. I stuck my left thumb into the left eye, giving it something more to screech about.

Pushing three of my tentacles into the soft scales on its belly, ripping past organs until I found my prize.

Tearing its heart out, I was sad to see its eyes had glazed over while passing from this world.

Well, no point in eating its heart anymore if it couldn't watch the blood running down my chin as I devoured it, I thought as I flicked the offending organ back into the cell I had been occupying. It hit the far wall with a satisfying squelch.

Letting the power I stole from the spirit of the slain seep into me, I took a moment to set up my energy circulation to heal my broken body, including my missing legs and arm. I refused to stay crippled in this life, and it would be easier to do something with it as long as my spirit body accepted that there should be something there.

Moving over to the poor soul that was hanging on by a thread, I felt my anger building again as I took in the woman.

With a thought, I printed the ritual of True Sight in the air in front of me as the room lit up from the suspended ritual. Drawing them by hand was for the uninitiated. It was merely a representation of a desired outcome superimposed on reality by the application of power and will. The ritual was merely there so our weak brains had something to work with.

Then, I berated myself for being an idiot. I had eight slots in the book now. I didn't need to open it to check. Feeling like a dumb-ass, I canceled the ritual and imprinted it in the book.

Activating True Sight, I looked forward to training the ritual until I got it back to the same level as it had been before I changed it for Celerity.

I already knew she would be a mess, but what had been done to her on a spiritual level was beyond torture; it was blasphemy against nature. It would wash away eventually if she let it, but she had a difficult road ahead of her.

The only positive side was that her spirit was so weak now that I could manipulate it without her consent. The very thought made me feel filthy, but I knew the Medicus had to do it from time to time when the situation was dire enough, and I didn't know enough about healing to direct her spirit that specifically.

Luckily, I didn't need to know how her spirit should look when healing; I just needed to get her system moving. It would work as an all-around increase in health and should hopefully keep her alive long enough to get proper help. I just needed to find a way to give her some sustenance soon.

“Hi, I'm Alucard. I doubt you can hear me, but I feel it is appropriate to introduce myself before I manhandle you. Let's get out of here, lady.”