To tighten my awareness in this dimension I spread a certain kind of growth everywhere which allows me to manifest my will at any place it covers.

On this foundation, I formed a network of countless receptors which react to movement and all kinds of signals.

In case my main mind returns to any place I cover I will know.

I establish a hive at every new conquered tower to raise my ranks by reshaping there every bit of life my servants can gather.

I could travel to each of them through my network in a blink, but at the moment my focus is on the main base from where I observe everything.

This is the most effective way, as even if I'm powerful it's simply more effective to simultaneously direct many thousands of my subordinates with omnipresent control than to throw a giant tantrum at a single place.

Which on the other side might be more entertaining.

However, this way I can make great progress towards my goal of absolute control.

This is until I suddenly receive a report.

* "Master!"

Urgh, what is it now?

One of my demon commanders, which I've linked to my mind as a means to support my conquest, calls.

Due to this mental connection, I can keep myself much better informed about their progress than I could by spreading my consciousness on my growth.

Especially when they're at places I haven't covered yet.

They're surprisingly simple, but this just makes them follow my orders more closely.

Yet something seems to be up as his primitive mind shows unusually strong turmoil. Maybe I should correct this.

Anyways...

* "Yes, what is it?" (I)

* "Defiance!"

What is this about defiance?

Directly I use my network to gather intel.

At the location of my troop, I let an eye grow on some growth.

There I see that my troop got caught up in battle.

It's an abnormally large group of some kind of humanoid mutants with blade arms.

My hounds put up a good fight, but their defense is lacking in comparison.

And my demon-captain struggles against their version of a commander.

I consider personally showing up there but decide against this as something is up and I should maintain total awareness.

Instead, I give the order to retreat and let every available troop gather some distance away.

At the loss of some hounds, I can get my demon out of his pinch and the mutants are while fast no match for my hounds regarding speed.

I lead them some distance away on my growth.

I don't have too much power with this bit of flesh, but it's enough to form spikes on the ground and lower like this their mobility.

Then from all sides, my called soldiers rush them down.

The battle is rather short.

However, while I can mend any damages in the next hive and even got some plus I ponder.

This kind of coordinated attack was novel.

Well, coordinated might be too much given their mediocre performance and how they naively fell for my trap, but it's clear something changed regarding their organization.

Someone is copying me and my feeling tells me it wasn't the commanding demon.

But if they want to play I'm up for a game.

However, after this, my progress comes to a halt in terms of conquering.

The attacks against me grow stronger and stronger.

While I accumulate quite much essence through won battles it's barely possible to spread further into unknown territory as I have to fight for any meter of growth.

I might be able to spawn many more soldiers but concrete control becomes all the more difficult.

My person on their own is simply too limited to control on a larger scale.

I can still give basic directives and naturally do so to a degree.

However, my main advantage is that I strategize to win the battles and like this earn the essence.

I would start to lose my battles as soon I stop this.

So my pace slows down and I have to concentrate on my flesh growth to keep the advantage and secure my conquests.

Especially nasty are those small worms which seemingly drop out of nowhere into my territory.

Those little fuckers have no greater fighting potential but no other purpose than to devour my flesh growth.

It takes quite a lot of mental resources to constantly patrol all my possessions with bigger creatures to get rid of them.

The bats are especially useful for that kind of job.

And at the next tower, it happens.

Someone put a giant army of monstrosities there.

Like this, if I want to progress, I have no choice but to gather as many creatures as I can on this front without pulling too much from the rest of my territory to sustain my power and attack.

The resulting massacre is quite the creepy, bloody horror shit.

Pure slaughter, flesh splashing into flesh till the gore fills the field.

A sight which would certainly be too much for my main mind.

Yet I'm different.

I don't feel anything watching how living things get ripped apart in all the ways one can imagine.

Rather I am expectant, as I know that the accumulated essence will be my price, ready for the taking to pursue my goals.

I press my soldiers further on, make them spread on the sidelines, and force the enemy to focus the fighting in the center.

They're still ridiculously numerous and due to their lack of panic, which should come from being surrounded, they might be able to overpower my forces in the long run.

What they didn't expect was that I join the fight.

At times one has to decide if the stakes are high enough to warrant personal involvement.

I gathered all the essence I could muster and created something similar to a flesh bomb.

The problem with waiting at a set point is that your opponent can prepare as much as he wants.

In my case, this means I could prepare as much as I deemed necessary for a decisive strike.

The resulting damage is satisfying.

Tendrils fly in all directions, pierce and absorb my opponents.

I direct them with my mind and play around with the lives below me, reshape it, mend it until instead of the creatures something else takes their place.

My new hive.

It's time to start some flesh shaping in my freshly created spawn factory as I've certainly accumulated enough mass to work with here.

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So things proceed.

Yet the opposing forces grow stronger and stronger, while I do the same in response.

I am quite sure they are led by some guiding force and come all the way from the planets on the other side of the necklace.

Greater fights are a common occurrence now and I grow more annoyed with them as time passes.

Because my conquest got somewhat stuck I decide to try something else.

I let all the territory I control reverberate to send out a message.

If one thing should still be a given then that I should be on the same wavelength with myself.

And that means that I might notice it.

The chance is low but there's no reason not to try.

With some adjustments, I can even do it in a somewhat automatic manner.

This way it's simply a basic directive I set to function in a specific way.

I want to become whole again.

Stop being only a fraction.

So calling her is a most instinctual action in this regard.

As I said, it's unlikely that I'll receive an answer anytime soon.

The me on the other side would have to be open to something I always avoided.

And regarding my knowledge about myself, I won't do this.

But what else can I do if I'm stuck like this?

So in regular intervals, I run something like an automated SOS signal.

All I can do to raise the signal strength is to gain more ground as it increases the number of structures I'm using to send with.

As it's an automated order, the strain on my processing ability isn't too severe.

But it still takes a bit of my capacity.

Nonetheless, ultimately I still work on my portal plan.

At least, with all those attacks in my direction, I don't have to worry anymore about getting the necessary essence to pursue my plans.

Had it just been me in this dead world, I might have needed centuries till I'd have cultivated enough energy to create a portal.

So I almost have to thank whoever is responsible for my struggle and like this accelerating my growth.

To be honest, it's a tedious situation.

I have to manage several different frontlines simultaneously, make sure not to lose too much essence in all of these battles, and even need to show up sometimes personally whenever a situation turns to my disadvantage, which could cause all the other battlefields to fall into disarray.

Basically, I have to be everywhere at once without a second of rest.

My processing ability increased with my growth and I set up some structures to support my mind on this matter.

Yet it's still limited.

I am not enough of mine to act to my full capabilities and so I have to stretch my whole existence to all my possessions.

It's annoying that I have to deal with so many problem zones at once.

As if I have to observe, check, and control every single cell of my body at once.

Do you have any idea how many there are?

It might even be a good thing that I have not a sufficiently elaborate character that might feel thoroughly fazed by this.

I can ignore the mental strain and all the terrors I see.

Instead, I just know that I need to return to the rest of me.

Yet it's vexing how incapable I'm to do exactly that at the moment.

But then, from one moment to the other, suddenly I feel something.

No sound, no vision, not even any outer input.

It's simple attention!

Something like the overlapping of wavelengths.

The certainty that I am perceived.

I know you can hear me!

"Come to me!" (I2)

* Come to me!

* Come to me!

* Come to me!

Yes!

Call her out!

I know you want as well to return to the rest.

If she can perceive it, she shall know.

Know that I'm waiting.

Stranded here until she returns.

However, the attention stops.

I'm left alone again.

My idiot self just fled once again.

But I won't give up here.

I'll make me recognize myself.

Either I'll come for the rest of me or I'll become strong enough that I cannot be ignored anymore.

With new vigor, I start to spread my growth.

It might require some essence to do so, but the more I spread the more I link to the realm itself and can like this influence its flow.

Channel its energy to me, to accelerate my growth.

As I said before, doing this would be more effective if this world had any actual energy.

But as it is, I only have the most minuscule traces, filtered from the environment, at my disposal.

The bigger creatures are better in this regard.

Yet increasing my influence on the realm itself takes now my top priority.

I have to send this message.

So I continue emitting my interdimensional SOS signal.

The problem with that is, that it apparently can be received by other beings as well.

It might be that I conveniently have the right wavelength to receive myself, but that doesn't mean that the things closeby won't hear me as well.

And well, my message was "come to me".

In hindsight a rather unfortunate choice of words.

This means I'm now even harder under attack than I was before.

This might be beneficial to gain more resources, which I can use to power up my signal, yet it's no doubt stressful.

* Master!

What is it now?!

I pass through the mental connection to see for a moment with my subordinate's eyes.

I don't like what I see.

One of those leviathans, which occasionally hover through the empty space between the planets is heading towards my current main base.

I directly send out as many bats as possible to fight it.

However, its skin is many times too thick for them to injure it in a meaningful way.

So I can only look at it till it reaches my place.

It crashes inside.

At this moment I unleash all my power, turn the very walls of the structure itself into weapons to spike and tangle this oversized kamikaze flyer.

It's a larger scale than what I'm used to but the process of consumption feels familiar enough so that I'm knowing what to do.

I only have to cut pieces off, spike deeper inside, find its lifeforce, and suck or filter it out of the empty shell which remains.

As I said, a stupidly big chunk, but while it's annoying how it thrashes around this colossus is surprisingly defenseless.

There are only some tentacles it's lashing out with, some creatures inside which apparently serve as its leucocytes, but in the total not anywhere enough to stop me.

And I don't have to fear it.

It's not like I could get hurt in any way as I am in fact the living will of all my possessions.

So all I have to do is to continue the process of conversion.

When I'm done I'm left with ridiculous amounts of spare material.

A part of it I turn into more soldiers but the majority goes into signal emitters which I use to contact myself.

* Come to me!

If there's one negative about this distraction then that other opposing forces used this moment to attack my territory.

All my planets are under attack and it's quite an effort to control so many units at once.

Nonetheless, somehow I prevail.

With superior tactics and continuous reinforcements, I can drive them back, out of my realm.

However, even when they're finally outside of my territory I still need to fight their counterattacks.

For example, there's one rather big group, mostly consisting of the maw monsters, that came pretty close.

Naturally, I send a group of hounds to intercept them.

For good measure another group of bats and a commanding demon as well.

This should suffice for taking them down.

Suddenly a wave rushes over me.

An undeniable presence that covered all the worlds the moment it appeared.

I need a whole second to catch up.

She's here!

* Here!

* Here!

* Here!

Yes, okay, fine.

For once you can be elated as well.

After all, why it went faster than anticipated, this separation lasted already far too long.

I want to return to being myself.

I let my servants guide my self to me.

And she comes with great steps straight towards me.

I can barely anticipate it and all my structures begin to quiver.

Finally, she enters.

I emerge out of the structure in which I spread my mind, use the hive's material to shape a body, and form a wide grin.

Time to show me myself from my best side.