Twenty four million… that was much higher than the previously recorded two hundred and ninety. How were these numbers related? Was there a much higher time distortion factor between the soul realm and reality? If I could create a stopwatch in the soul realm I would have already. There was another peculiar thing I hadn’t taken time to check out. There was a thick black smoke flowing out of the exposed head of our first prisoner. I obviously wasn’t going to take the risk of touching it but my minions would. One of the ghosts grabbed some and attempted to eat it but it just floated right through it, seeing that it was of no use it simply brought it to me.

I had seen this phenomenon quite a few times when summoning things or killing summoned things but there was no definite probability that they were the same things. Oh well, it couldn’t be that bad. I dipped my hand into it and as if my hand had suddenly turned into a drowning fish gasping for air all of the black smoke began to get vacuumed into it. It didn’t feel unpleasant so I guess it was fine.

“Your hair has changed.”

What? I plucked out a piece of my hair and found it was whiter than the nose candy commonly consumed by drug addicts.

“What color are my eyes?”

“Your pupils are red and the rest is black.”

“Ok, any other changes?”

“Your nails are sharper and so are your teeth. You’re also taller and bigger now.”

“Very cool. You try absorbing some.”

“I already did, I can’t.”

Ok… I materialized a mirror and checked myself out… I was… Perfect. Exactly the way I fantasized myself looking. Strange, the black smoke had done this? What good was changing my appearance though? Being bigger was a pretty decent improvement if I thought about it but there had to be something more. Maybe if I absorbed more there might be more significant changes. Which meant I needed to make more of it. We quickly hopped into the head of our new prisoner and discussed.

“We should have more variety, I suggest… a pool of boiling oil.”

“That's unoriginal. You remember the water droplet method? Let’s do it with hot oil.”

“That’s pretty evil. Are you sure I’m the bad one and you’re the good one?”

“I’m very sure.”

“You think we can just make the rules whatever?”

“Doesn’t hurt to try.”

I strapped our prisoner onto the floor and completely restrained all movement then created a floating orb of hot oil that would randomly decide to drop oil whenever it felt like it. This was very pleasant indeed, I would greatly enjoy creating a personal eternity of suffering for everyone. I quickly cycled between reality and the soul realm while pulling souls into our prison. After siphoning everyone inside, me and other me began to create personalized paradises for our guests. Continuing the theme of the water droplet technique I designed a completely senseless fall that had varying heights and methods of death.

And continuing the theme of mental torture I created a challenge, a rope suspended over an ocean made of slowly killing acid, which would always return the challenger to the rope following their death. A death that was guaranteed to always make someone desperate to not experience it. I had figured that after experiencing the same amount of pain endlessly one would grow accustomed to it, unfortunately, even I could never become used to it. Even with the threat of permanent damage and death gone it was still an unpleasant experience. I could still vividly remember a toothache that nearly drove me insane.

What next? How about… ooh! A tree implanted into the asshole that slowly grew until it eventually ripped its rider apart, after which the process would start again. Of course, with a ridiculously coarse bark that could scrape away flesh with the slightest twitch. And, just for the sake of it, randomized growth periods. Now what else? Insects… What if… I turned someone's body into a hive for a colony of insects, similar to our other friend but slightly different. Oh! Here came the ideas! Being force fed shit and piss, an ocean full of octopuses that crawled around your insides, extreme slow roast, an itch that could never be scratched nor relieved, oh this was fucked up, pumping shit directly into the blood stream.

I’m too damned evil to be allowed to have this much power. This was simply proof that if god did exist it had obviously abandoned earth. Which creator would allow its creations to have such a fate befall upon them? Maybe I just had to imprison more people to make them take action. I might even have to take it a step further and destroy all life in existence. Whatever, back to the fun. It would- no, but it would- it would be funny, to make someone give a horse the ultimate gawk gawk super suction nine thousand. Fuck it, I had to see it at least once in my life. The perfect target would be that treasurer. I found him among my prisoners and slid inside his head, similar to how the horses d- anyways.

As I manipulated him into position I noticed that his ass was particularly ripe for the taking, so instead of one horse, I made two. Now, considering that there was room for him to start feeling pleasure at some point this could go horrifically wrong. I’d find out later though, onto his wife… as expected of a rich and powerful man, his wife was ranked pretty high on the scale of attractiveness. At least physically she was, the only thing I would dare to use to penetrate her was my foot, and it’d be going straight up her ass and out of her throat. This cunt had made fixing the kids atrociously difficult, considering all their skin was missing. Speaking of skin, I would just peel off her skin and feed it to her for the rest of her miserable unending life.

After her was where the problem arose, I did indeed have a strict no children rule, but these goblins, there was no redeeming them. The probability of me being able to fix their parents' teachings was zero, as such, to bring the possibility of them ever attacking me to zero, I would have to give them free tickets to a live show performed by satan himself. I finished off my sentencing and left my little power generators to their own devices. There was only one step left, I gathered a drop of blood from each of the living yet dead bodies and let it trickle into my stomach. Would they turn into zombies if I just left them there? Maybe I didn’t need to convince the two realms to go to war with each other.

Oh well, as with everything else, it would take time. I unsealed the cage and my companion shot through the opening. Surprisingly, he dropped to his knees upon seeing the children.

“Hey dummy, don’t feel too bad. You can’t save everyone, but you can try to save these kids. I have to go play police, you work your magic and fix them.”

There was no way he didn’t have some insane healing concoctions, but then again it was much easier to destroy something than fix it. Fuck.

“Hey kid, you know about any people with healing abilities?”

“Uh… It’s rumored that there is a hidden clan with the power to heal anything.”

“And assuming from the label of hidden it’s going to be very difficult to find them huh?”

“Yes.”

What to do? What to do… Their souls. I could preserve their souls. It wasn’t like I could only torture people with my abilities, based on what I was capable of I could also create an eternal paradise. It was uncanny, this was power only a god could have. But if even I was capable of this, then what reasoning was there for me to not suspect that I too wasn’t trapped in some eternal prison? This was a major mind fuck. Screw it, whatever happens, happens. I’d just deal with it when I got to it. Among the poison I had been given there had to be one that could only put people to sleep. All the other times I just had to think about it hard enough if I wanted to control specific aspects of my abilities. This time I would have to take a risk and see if I could get the results I wanted. I sprayed what I hoped to be sleeping gas over the survivors.

Those who could still move slowly ceased any movement and those who couldn’t shut their eyes. After a single attempt my concerns were dissolved and I rapidly transferred them to my soul realm from the dream realm using the ancient method of carbon monoxide assisted permanent sleep. Upon completing this part of the mission I realized I didn’t know what exactly paradise was.

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“So uh… what should we do?”

“Give them new lives, with randomized conditions, but let's give them systems. They might catch on at some point but we can just perform a hard reset.”

“If that’s the case we should just wipe their memories and give them a new storyline to follow with preset conditions. It’ll be easier for us and it's guaranteed to make them happy.”

“This method may be able to work. Shall we implement a constantly reincarnating element to give them access to an endless journey?”

“Oh! I’ve got it. We’ll just give them systems and send them back to the moment they were born in this life, with all their memories as well. Being able to fix your regrets is something everyone wishes to do…”

“Sounds reasonable. Let’s begin then.”

I guess reading all those system novels had come in handy now. What design should I use for the system? I didn’t particularly like those luck based ones. Ah! Genius! A system that allowed them to enter another realm and hunt monsters for stats, skills, and powers. This method would force all of them to become the perfect soldiers, perhaps if I could create bodies for them one day I would have quite the amazing army. The dream realm was surprisingly much more reactive to my thoughts than expected, within moments I had been able to construct not only everything from their mind, but also mine. The monsters of the realm brought themselves into existence with their own skills and traits, of course, they had all been based off of some concept in my mind.

If I had lived a normal life I might have been a great writer with all the creativity bestowed upon me. I had managed to create entire civilizations and complex factions within this imaginary yet real realm. But honestly, the best part of the system was the fact that I had been able to input myself as it’s personality. With my guidance they would become capable of achieving anything. It would’ve been nice to have some kind of system since birth, or be able to simply reincarnate. But deep down, I know it would be the easy route. Even if I did reincarnate, that version of my family wouldn’t be the original, even if time rewinded itself and I watched them come back to life they would still be copies.

It was hard to think about but I would never be able to see them again, the real them. I would never be able to save the real them… fuck, I really would never be able to be with them again. Eh, whatever, there were still plenty of fun things I could do without them. I wiped away the involuntary tears that had decided now was an opportune moment to escape and continued on my system building task. Actually, how had none of the protagonists in reincarnation stories questioned if their family was really their family? I personally would only ever settle for the exact version that had always been with me, even if it meant having to claw my wa back as a ghost.

Who knows though, maybe their ghosts still existed somewhere. Of course they would be traumatized but they were the closest thing I could get to the original version. I’ll figure it out later, too much thinking. I finished up with creating the paradises and went to gather all the black smoke that had accumulated inside the tower. I had been outside for quite a while and there were a lot more prisoners so the built up smoke had to be significantly more than earlier. Maybe now I might see some real changes. As soon as I stepped inside my body was flooded with a rush of black smoke, to the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me it had gained consciousness and was trying to take over my body.

After… a very extended period of time all the smoke vanished inside my body. Never one to miss the chance to admire myself I summoned a mirror and- holy fuck! More arms! Two specifically but that was still double of what I had moments ago. It was weirdly natural to me, as if they had been there my whole life. This was good, very very good. I was already enough of a menace with only two hands, with four… the possibilities were endless. I could not only hold someone's arms down, but their legs as well! Wait a minute… oh nevermind, good thing that hadn’t been multiplied. A key that was too big wouldn’t fit.

The moment before I was about to hop out of the soul realm I noticed a golden colored light slowly wafting up from where we had left the chosen ones. I shimmied over and ogled as my other self bathed in the golden light and started his transformation, like me he gained white hair, unlike me his eyes turned golden while his pupils remained black and he didn’t gain any freaky traits. What a fucking do-gooder, it was clear to see that he obviously had all the positive traits while I had all the negative ones. Just looking at him made me sick to my core, as if he was about to descend from the heavens and tell me everything was fine now.

“Everythi-.”

“Shut- The- Fuck- Up.”

“You have to admit, that would’ve been funny.”

“I didn’t know you were capable of funny, you come off as more of an antihero type of guy.”

“Antihero’s can be funny.”

“I don’t know about that one, most of them are too caught up in brutalizing people and trying to look cool.”

“But there’s one guy.”

“Ryan-”

“Ryan-”

“I guess we can settle for him then. But let’s be honest, it wasn’t the character he played. It’s him that we love.”

“I do see your point though, almost all of them have the same personality.”

“Hold on… it’s probably because we only consume a specific type of entertainment.”

“Not we, you.”

“I forgor lol. My bad, was there anything you did want to watch?”

“No, I didn’t want to watch anything you did.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“If I showed the things you watched to mom, even she would stop loving you.”

“Oh, you meant that, can’t argue there.”

“You know, I understand that you are fucked up, but how did you get fucked up that badly? Like, we can’t even blame dad for that, you learned that shit on your own.”

“I don’t know. Damn! Dude, we were really good as children. What went wrong?”

“...”

What did go wrong? Tracing back my life to the time when I first displayed strange behaviors… It was around the age of six that I began toying with ants. I remember vividly that the reason for it was simply because it was fun, I just found it enjoyable. I guess I really was just born this way, what a fucked up combinaion of events. A child lacking common sense and fear combined with a father crafted and raised by violence. The equation for absolute and complete chaos was none other than this. In a sense, everything was kind of meant to be.

“Bro… you think maybe we would still be the same with a different set of parents?”

“That’s a possibility that cannot be explored.”

“In that case I’ll just blame dad then.”

“You are almost as unreasonable as dad is.”

“Was.”

“You’re a cunt.”

“I am what I eat.”

“What could I have possibly done in my past lives to be deserving of this fate?”

“You probably saved the world or something. Can you imagine how many beings wish they could have our powers? I bet if god was real even it would be trying to take our powers.”

“If we ignore the part where you would never have been born or would have been smited down then yes, any being would indeed seek our abilities.”

“How do you think we got them? It can’t be what I’m thinking.”

“We’ll figure that out eventually, just focus on gaining strength.”

“Right. We should get back to that.”

When I went back to reality my beast form had now sprouted an extra pair of arms. My partner was also pouring something out of a container that was rapidly restoring the conditions of the bodies… we fucked up big time.

You shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.

“Hey bro, give me a tiny drop of that. The smallest amount you possibly can is good enough. What is it exactly though?”

While handing it to me he explained.

“This is a poison that accelerates the metabolic and regenerative processes, the reason it is considered a poison is because it will rapidly exhaust the energy stores of the body and cause death. To alleviate this it has been mixed with a honey created from the nectar of Obeece Piggeys and diluted with water.”

“Did you just say Obese Piggies?”

“Yes, they are a special plant that only grow in nutrient rich areas. A single drop of their nectar can sustain the average person for at least a day.”

“Very cool.”

I had told him to give me all the poison but I guess I could make an exception for this. How could I forget that not all poison had direct negative effects?

You’ll never see the sky if you are looking for it on the ground.

That one was just confusing.

Made sense to me.

You’re a special kind of person.

Just drink the poison.

Hold up, I just realized we haven’t had to eat in quite a while. How is our body sustaining itself?

Stop worrying about stuff we can’t figure out.

Good idea. I popped the smudge of potion into my mouth and waited for results. What would happen if this stuff was constantly coursing through my body? Would I just have a natural immunity to it? Technically it was a good thing for my body. If I could assimilate it and use it to enhance myself I would have quite the edge on people. Oh fuck, here it comes. This was even worse than plain pain, it felt like everything in my body was trying to grow but with no room to grow. It wasn’t even painful, just an extremely high level of uncomfortableness. It really felt like caffeine had been pumped directly into my cells.

Pay attention.

To what? I looked around and noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Actually, that wasn’t very ordinary, I was sure I had already turned my time perception back to normal. But now everything was moving slower again. I turned it to the max and found that my perception of time had slowed by a factor of around three times. Time now moved a further three times slower for me on top of the natural time slowing I originally had. At this rate life would start going so slow that just a simple conversation would take years. With great difficulty I managed to make time resume at a normal speed, but the moment I got excited or moved a little too fast time would slow again. This was great for fighting but a real pain in the ass for everyday life.

I guess this is what they mean when they say too much of a good thing is a bad thing.