When I made Pedro Alvarado into a corpse puppet, I didn’t expect to be offloaded problems he couldn’t handle. I sat on my bunk in the crew hold of the ship, thinking about how to tie some sacks of canon balls to a stick for training. When the captain arrived dressed to the nines and wearing a large hat with a feather, I suspected the corpse puppet had broken its programming. Instead, it delivered a problem.

“Men under my command are fighting over the last of our virgin African slaves. They are causing problems, and giving them to you is the most optimal solution.”

“Are they too deep and wide for Cortes?” I asked.

“Yes, he left it to me to distribute or take them for myself. There have been fights already from the most desperate of our men. A storm brews outside; some believe this might be their last night on Earth. What are your orders?”

At first, I didn’t believe the situation. The Thunder Eagle Sect preferred corpse puppets, but some cultivators kept mortal sex slaves. It was a status symbol, like owning the newest car. What I saw was something else.

I needed weights to assist in my body tempering. When I had a stuck-up nail, anything heavy looked like a hammer. That thought was insane to someone of a weaker disposition, but men fought harder and longer for a goal. Milestone rewards were essential.

“I want to see them,” I said.

“Havier will lead you to them while I deliver punishment to the worst troublemakers.” Pedro De Alvarado said.

Slaves from the other world were prisoners of war or captured civilians sold off, given away, or used by their conquerors. My righteous sects preferred to use mortals to do menial labor and dangled the carrot of cultivation knowledge. It wasn’t slavery, so long as there was a potential prize. Only one cultivator I met was a former slave, and she sucked her master’s dick very well.

I followed Havier to the Orlop deck and the crew’s space. The man led me dutifully into the sweat and body-odor-smelling depths of the ship. The wood smell fought to beat out the stench but failed at the door to the crew’s space. Slave men worked on the upper deck while down in the hold, and the Blue women worked as seamstresses or anything needed on the ship. Cortes funded the expedition and brought anything the captains thought we might need.

There weren’t any chains on the women or even a man with a whip cartoonishly waiting for a mistake. To get here, these women had to come from Africa to Spain. Most knew passable Spanish. Some were taken care of, but others were used and abused.

We walked down a row of working girls until we encountered six blue teens. They were tall, dark-skinned, and had deep brown eyes. Each of them was dressed in linen, covering their bodies from head to toe, including a bonnet on their heads. Six sets of eyes looked at me as I stood before them.

“From today onward, you six are mine,” I said.

“Yes, master,” I pointed to the smallest of the six. “You’re coming with me.”

On my way to the hold where the seamstresses were kept, I thought long and hard about what use six mortal women would have for me. At this stage, I had an idea.

We were in the sex room, a small part of the hold with a blood-covered mattress with various other stains. The room reeked, and I chose the floor instead of the mattress. So I got into position, knees up and hands out for her.

“I don’t understand.” The girl said.

“I want you to stand and balance on my hands while I sit up.” Using the smallest one was the test to see if I needed to increase my weight or practice with some canon balls.

We were on the orlop deck, the third floor, down from the half-deck. She stared down at my hands like they were snakes waiting to bite her. Thanks to her wide dress, I had no stir of passion or sudden desire to pull it off of her and see what she hid underneath it. No, that was a reward waiting at the end of body tempering. Setting milestones was important.

I decided that if I reached the peak, then before I broke through the barrier, I would take all six of their virginities. She accepted my command and stepped on my hands. I curled my gut, and she lifted it with me. The sudden lift shifted her balance, and I grabbed her boots. She was just able to keep on her feet while I rose. Every shift forced me to adjust my core, giving me a welcome burn.

“Just 19 more of those, and we have a set,” I said.

After two hours of training, my core burned with every twitch. Soon enough, I would get to the point where I could lift one with each hand and two with the other two balancing on my shoulders.

She stared at me and looked away. “Say what you want to, and I won’t punish you for speaking.”

“Did the others ask for this? Is it a Spanish ritual before you rape me?”

I honestly felt like Leonitus from Meet the Spartans. “Yes, I plan to have sex with all six of you together when I can lift all six of you without effort. I’m telling you this because communication is important for sexual partners. My desire is to have sex with all six of you, but only after I’ve trained my body with yours. My name is Atom. By the way, what are yours?” I asked.

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“Our original masters named me Venus. My friends Venus and Juno and her twin sister Juno, then Diana and Venus are there.” Venus said.

With her bonnet and linen clothes that looked the same as the other girls, I couldn’t tell them apart. She had the same amount of chi as any other mortal. My head really wasn’t in the game either. With the pain in my abs, I couldn’t think straight.

This was what I wanted. I raised my cup and took a long drink. Soothing cool chi flowed through me, and I felt myself push against the first barrier blocking my ascension. Nine mortal locks had to be broken to step out of mortality. All nine locks had to be broken to enter the Advent Soul realm.

I had only managed 4 before and never before chi gathering. From what I remembered, talented cultivators broke one in body tempering. Prodigies broke 2, and Dao seedlings broke 3. Another short-term goal I could reach was to break 5 before leaving the body-tempering realm.

After taking each girl, informing them of my intentions, and using their bodies to perform squat lung and other body training exercises, I passed enough of my fellow investors in Spanish glory to get some attention.

…

After taking the last girl back to her row, a Spaniard with a big knife cornered me as I made my way to the lower gun deck and my closet. The man’s breath smelled like feces, his knife was a mess of rust holes, and his parasites were ungulating in excitement.

“Give those girls to me, or I’ll cut your throat here and toss you overboard. Not a man will say anything. I can’t believe the captain gave those,” The man bit his bottom lip. “Mongrels to a useless horse handler like you. I heard you were too stupid to duck and got hit in the head by Buttercup. Do the smart thing for once and tell the captain you're giving those girls to me.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. There weren’t enough supplies to make a second corpse puppet yet. The cups may produce a lot of chemical X, but I used all of it last time. The leech in the cocoon was still there, and I didn’t want to work around it. Going to the closet was to remove the isolating seals so the predators would kill the parasite.

The training had wrecked my body. I loved it and wanted those girls even more. They would fall for me, given enough time. Yes, they were my sex slaves, and I understood I could take them. Where was the fun? I wanted them to get comfortable with me.

Was I going to teach them body tempering and raise them as cultivators? No plans existed at the time of writing, but Diary, who knew the future? At the very least, I planned to make them my women, and who knew what the future held.

“Take your knife from my friend’s neck, or we’re going to have problems.” My good buddy Diego said.

The Spaniard I talked to on occasion had a pistol pressed to my attacker’s back. “We are two days from shore. Don’t make me kill you. Captain Cortes said beautiful women were waiting for us in the Yukatan. I heard their women are wild. Don’t make me shoot you because you couldn’t wait two days.”

“Did you see that storm? We don’t have two more days?” The ship rocked back and forth at his words, and water dripped from above. “You see, we don’t have much time.”

“All crew, brace yourselves. We are taking on large waves.” A voice screamed through a brass horn.

The ship rocked, and the knife remained on my neck, holding me in place like any other mortal. My skin wasn’t tough enough to handle steel. All it would take was some pressure, and that would be the end of it for me. The parasites continued to undulate on both of them. The creature, vast distances away, soaked up streams of emotions.

“What’s going on here?” Fray Juan Juarez said.

The man of God dressed in a brown robe was parasite-free and radiated something I couldn’t quite place. It was purple if I had to give it a color. There was a mix of passion and knowledge mixed in with traces of yellow fear, and many blends of white and black were added to it. What I saw with my chi sense wasn’t his soul but the complicated emotions pouring off the man. There was nothing plain about what he felt. The parasites didn’t or couldn’t feed on him for some reason.

It was another data point I was more than happy to collect.

The knife came off my neck, and the man who wanted to rape my sex slaves backed away.

“I want no trouble with God or you fray Juarez, but this man was given something he doesn’t deserve. He lies with the mongrels, keeping them for himself. He should be executed. Doesn’t it say in the bible that a man who lies with an animal would be killed with the animal?”

“They are not animals. Those people are merely unfortunate. Have you heard the rumors of Geronimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero? Senor Aguilar was a missionary sent to Panama and was shipwrecked along with others. Senor Auilar became a slave, and Senor Guerrero was sighted and rumored to have become Yucatec. We are to buy them, if possible, from their masters. But if our ship is taken by the storm, we wash up on the shore. I suppose we will meet a fate similar to theirs.” Fray Juarez said.

“We aren’t savages that worship false idols and drink blood.” The man said.

“How little you know of our history. Romans burnt our ancient brothers in Christ alive, accusing them of being cannibals and blood drinkers. Do not judge lest you be judged in turn.” Fray Juarez said.

“What so we should free our slaves? What would they do with their freedom here in the Yucatan?” The man asked.

“Don’t be foolish. The slaves are here to be guided by us. We are the shepherds, and so the sheep follow where we lead. Do not mistake misfortune for God's providence.” Fray Juarez said.

I wanted to knock back about a dozen eggs and let my regeneration technique go to work. We had two days, and I wanted to use that time to bulk up. The general store was in the hold, and I had a few Blanca in my purse. Those should be enough to buy enough food to keep me going outside of the morning and evening meal times.

A long draft from my cup reenergized me, but my body needed protein to build new muscle. Otherwise, the new flesh grown would fry itself from chi. I was just thankful I wasn’t to the point where I needed to chew bones for their calcium. Hopefully, that part of body refinement wouldn’t happen until we reached landfall in Yucatan.

…

I paid for a sack of 24 eggs. Pickling hadn’t been invented yet, but that was something I could work on. Brine was just water, salt, and sugar. If pickled right, even meat could last at least a year. Captain Pedro Alvarado was the perfect tool to implement my idea. An army was carried on their stomach, and food that could keep them for a year would be helpful. Protein was essential because the body could turn protein into nearly anything.

Those thoughts left me after I ate the first dozen eggs. I cracked them overhead and consumed the yoke raw. The yokes were red instead of the yellow I was used to, and my body loved them.

My regeneration technique was a passive thing, so it never turned off. I stopped by the hold and gave two eggs each to my girls. They looked at me oddly before the first Venus cracked one and swallowed the yoke. The others followed, and I ensured they could enjoy their gifts. Gift-giving was an essential part of ruling over mortals.

Occasionally, my master descended to the towns surrounding our sect and gave out a few resources. Through the lives of those mortals, he appeared and asked about their families, feigning interest and searching for potential. It was an important lesson I planned to replicate. Next time, I planned to privately ask them about their interests during my training and then publicly show interest. Showing that I cared would make them a weakness, but it would also give them protection. Those with no value were killed off and turned into corpse puppets out of hand. Being used as leverage at least kept them alive and often led to being taught cultivation as a form of making the hostage loyal to their captor. The Thunder Eagle sect loved that tactic because it was like being paid twice for blackmail.

Feeling better than I had in days, I made my way to the bowsprit, a long pole at the nose of the ship covered in riggings. Sailors milled about but didn’t pay me much attention. I thought being somewhat covered in blood would make a difference, but everyone had a bite or two and blood stains on their linens.

The sun had begun its descent when I felt something in the direction we traveled. A name fell into my head, attached to a pattern only I could see. Camazotz, the death bat, emerged from the land, and its wings were covered in stars. Storm clouds continued to gather, but I could feel the creature and the flow of millions empowering it.

The creature opened its eyes, and despite propaganda saying otherwise, I knew it saw us. The beast wasn’t reacting to my chi. A single green bolt crossed the horizon and struck the predator in the crow's nest. I looked up, eyes wide as entwined lights within the creature that I couldn’t hope to damage turned green and bore the pattern of Camazotz.

It was an angel, I realized after looking closely at what pattern remained. While feeding on the parasites and farming the humans, the predator was also here to protect the Christians aboard the ship. My attention turned to the other predator, a wild-looking creature with a crab’s body beneath the waste and a beard of tentacles. I took a second green lance. Fragment of Triton, the word entered my mind from the fading replicating pattern that made up the creature’s spiritual body.

A wave rose up and swallowed a nearby ship.