My first class of Mages, had achieved moderate success in their studies and I saw fit to reward the highest performers with reembodied relatives. After the last demonstration, they were all too eager to comply with my request for their blood, giving it up easily. It made me want to laugh at their stupidity.

If only I could have reembodied my wife as easily. Alas her spirit had already been claimed by the time I gained power over flesh. I refuse to give up on her resurrection regardless of whatever obstacles get in my way.

I assigned the entire class new tasks, which they took up with greater fervor now that they knew that I would follow along with rewards. It probably didn’t hurt that they enjoyed the acquisition of more powerful magics. I imagined they still harbored the urge to kill me for what I had done to their lives and families, regardless of how they acted to my face.

Still the first Mage class had been successful in furthering my main ambitions and providing me with the all important blood samples to proceed with various arcane pursuits. I could now produce affinity stones for detecting talent for the major affinities with ease. I passed on my new knowledge to the other Liches and had them proceed with testing the rest of the Mages.

I’d leave them in charge of testing and selecting new students based on their own affinities based on respective talents. I sent through reminders to my Liches to make sure that their new Mage students were properly fed and attired. I also suggested methods on effective crowd control spells and best practice teaching methods.

Since I had given my Mage Class more free study time to practice with each others, I had the time to check on my other minions. I had an overabundance of them.

The Wraiths had occupied themselves by snacking on the souls of the abundant sea life and unlucky sailors and seafarers in our way. The Ghouls fed on the meat and the Bone Dragons absorbed any useful bones left behind by the hungry Ghouls. The Skeleton Knights made use of the leftover bones for various purposes, sharpening them into weapons, draining them of their marrow or simply using them to replace lost bones.

Since the lesser minions had provided for their own sustenace, it was time to feed Cucumber, help him grow bigger and stronger.

The Wraiths scouted ahead for me on the hunt for appetizing prey.

I flew on Cucumber as he ate his fill of various sea birds, along with a variety of fish, a school of dolphins and a lone shark. The real prize was the consumption of a whale, we did have to kill those on the whaling boat that were trying to take it for themselves but it was merely a speed bump on our path to glory. All the extra bones, helped to increase Cucumber’s size as well as give him some extra options for skeletal summons.

After I finished up with Cucumber's feeding, I checked in on the Liches.

They were hard at work, with the Bone Dragons continuing to produce corrupted mana, that the other Liches drew upon and converted into pure mana so as to power their efforts at mass producing affinity stones and corralling the Mage Prisoners. I watched from above as the Mage Prisoners were collected from the various ships we had captured and tested by teams of Liches and then grouped by affinity and sent away in batches of thirty to be supervised by a single Lich who would become their teacher for the remainder of our sea journey.

The Mage Prisoners were further spread out into various ships based on their affinities, so they could learn with Mages with the same affinities.

I was a little concerned about hundreds of Fire Mages grouping up together to learn how to use fire spells better. As a safety precaution, they were kept at the back of the flotilla, surrounded by Death Knights. If they rebelled, they might conquer a few boats before sinking to an early watery grave.

Of the nine thousand Mages, only a dozen had the time and space affinity, resulting in some strange speedsters and teleporters but nothing particularly game changing. It did however provide me with enough blood samples in order to create Time and Space affinity stones. There were other more exciting prospects to test out later on when I had more time and space to work with.

{Shut up Luthor, that was an excellent pun}

{Luthor: eye roll}

I made sure all the Mage prisoners were treated well and given free rein over the various ships they were on, with a smattering of Death Knights around for security. While I could intimidate them into submission, I wanted them compliant and willing to further my long term ambitions.

After a day or so of traveling the Wraiths reported enemy contact near the shores of Japan. There was a large naval fleet awaiting us.

I wasn’t overly concerned with their numbers, there were only twenty ships, with a mix of small boats that memories say are patrol boats, a seemingly pointless addition to their fleet. There were Cruisers that had an abundance of anti air defenses, presumably to take out the Bone Dragons. There were Destroyers presumably to help increase the defensive potential of the fleet and stop small scale attacks. There were also submarines, hiding below the surface, a mix of non nuclear submarines piloted by the Japanese and nuclear propelled submarines crewed by the Americans.

We slowed down a bit to make the necessary preparations for full scale warfare.

I jumped on board Cucumber and had him devour Zedong. Zedong disappeared within Cucumber’s maw, the effect was immediate as a wave of blood exploded out from within Cucumber, coating his bones, with blood. Cucumber was now capable of coating any of his bone spears with acidic blood.

Next on the menu for Cucumber was a Bone Galley of undead, which included a selection of Ghouls, Skeleton Knights, Skeleton Knight captains and even a few Death Knights. They accepted their second deaths with calm, Cucumber swallowing them down one at a time, absorbing their souls, their bones, their flesh (if they had any) and their power for himself.

Cucumber’s appearance changed from a bloody skeletal version of a dragon, to the zombified variation, growing a thin layer of greyish flesh similar to the ghouls over his bones. That was only the external differences, the true value was how it changed Cucumber on the inside.

With the consumption of so many undead with their own particular talents, Cucumber was far more powerful. His bones denser and larger, with more bone magic at his disposal, his blood now poisonous and useful for all sorts of blood magics and his skin providing a layer of protection from blunt force trauma. He should be able to take on basically anything now.

Sent through a ‘capture don’t kill’ order to the minions. After all the goal was not simply to harvest any more but to come back as a potential savior, couldn't do that if I killed all my potential allies before they could serve their purpose.

The Wraiths flew outwards in massive numbers, temporarily darkening the area ahead with their black souls as they went forward to take out priority targets.

The unusual flotilla surged ahead undaunted, with my minions, spread out on metal ships, bone ships and on the backs of bone whales and bone dragons. Cucumber mass produced Bone Birds to fly outwards like little life seeking missiles.

As pilots prepared for take off, the Wraiths were already in the cockpits, using [Soul Drain] to undermine their fighting spirit.

{"That was an even worse pun than before."}

{"Shut up Luthor, it is funny."}

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{"Whatever you have to tell yourself to get through the day."}

Planes were sent off and mere moments after taking off were pelted by Bone Birds and hit by bone spears fired off from Liches and Bone Dragons. As soon as a Wraith gave the signal a Bone Dragon or two would dig their claws into the planes, jets, helicopter and drag it back to the flotilla to have the ground troops disarm the pilots.

The skies rang out with the sounds of explosions as missiles sought out a multitude of targets only to get prematurely exploded by Bone Spears, Bone Birds or to just smash into a Bone Dragon with little long term effect.

The ships suffered even more direct attacks with Bone Dragons firing off bone spears at the decks, near human targets, with the Liches on their backs casting [Bone Prison] to stall their movements. Death Knights dropped out of the sky onto the decks of ships and used [Life Drain] on the living to render them unconscious.

Wraiths and Bone Whales made short work of any aquatic threats, those of the submarine version and those of the underwater sabotage teams sent by the US.

All of them were incapacitated. It was a decidedly one sided battle.

While they had the advantage of superior technology, I had greater numbers and magical support.

The new prisoners were confined and gathered on one Japanese Helicopter Destroyer named the Hyuga. They weren’t going to be there long enough to complain about the overcrowding, though if they did complain, it still wouldn’t effect anything.

We landed upon the shore and all remaining opposition was swiftly pacified. Once we had established a beach head at Fukuoka I sent through a message via the returned prisoners, both Mage and Marines that I planned to offer Japan my protection and patronage against a true predator the Devourer, that according to the Wraith King watching him, is advancing through China with extreme insanity and intensity.

I set up my base of operations inside the Fukuoka city museum, with a small selection of elites to keep me company. I looked through the materials gathered together to represent the relative ages of peace and warfare of this region.

The majority of my forces remained in the waters around nokonoshima island or on the island itself biding their time.

I received a message from Arnie and the other Liches I had left behind, including the ones I had hide in the mountain long ago, during my first test run, wanting to meet up.

"Can we come in from the cold already?" Arnie asked

I was a little surprised that they were still alive after I had abandoned them to their fates.

"Of course, the more the merrier, I'm impressed that you've managed to survive this long without support." I sent them our coordinates. "Come over as quickly as you can, just try and keep the casualties to a minimum. I have big plans for Japan."

"Roger that command. Incoming."

Cucumber and over a thousand Bone Dragons circled over the region, quickly dominating the air space while the Wraiths spread out clearing the area of any wandering spirits.

A portion of my forces patrolled the streets, making our presence felt, while the majority of the citizens cowered indoors.

Several hours later after not much had happened other than me going through a multitude of Soul books and reports from the minions, the Japanese Prime Minister arrived. The minions directed him and his security detail towards my new temporary headquarters.

"Hello."

"Konnichiwa."

"You speak Japanese? How?"

"I speak everything and anything I want. It's one of the perks of eating souls. Multilingualism."

"Why have you come here?"

"To your country or to the world at large."

"Either. Both."

"I had a debt of honor that needed to be repaid."

"Why did you kill so many people?"

"It was a necessary evil in pursuit of a greater good."

"What could possibly be worth all this death and destruction."

"The end of death as you know, opening up the path between your world and mine, immortality, power, love, the usual suspects."

“What did you hope to achieve by keeping these Yokai in Japan?”

“Merely demonstrating my power, my aim is to claim Japan as my homeland.”

“You have no claim here!” He got to his feet and his guards, armed with pistols, started to get a little twitchy.

I shrugged. “This vessel was born in this country, which makes me a Japanese National by blood. As such I feel comfortable saying that it would be far better for you to surrender this country to me, someone who has your national interests at heart rather than fighting me.”

“You can’t think the US army will accept this occupation."

"I don't really care what they think about it, I have an army of 70 million soldiers with utter devotion to me."

{"Lies."}

{"He doesn't need to know that some of you will inevitably plot against me and try and overthrow me."}

"How many?"

"Honestly it's getting harder and harder to keep track, maybe it was 80 million, most of them are in Russia, killing time, tyring to wait out the Devourer."

"What's the Devourer?"

"It's a hungry monster, that will try and everything, it's utterly insane at this point." He gave me an inscrutable look that I assumed to be a scathing judgement on my sanity. "Simply put, I am a relatively stable individual, sure I've killed millions but I can bring them all back, whereas, he will just devour them completely and give nothing back."

"You can bring the dead back to life."

"Of course, I wield power over life and death."

"Some of the Chinese claimed that you brought back their dead using a drop of blood."

"Well that's what it appears to be on the surface but in reality, it's a very intensive process involving the recreation of the body through genetic manipulation and the revival of the soul from an abridged copy." I could tell I was losing him, it was a very familiar look in his eyes, so many students had it over the years after all. "All I ask is for you to make me King of Japan, you won't even have to give me much in the way of institutional power, I just want to help you destroy the Devourer before it reaches Japan."

"Even if I wanted to, I don't have the power to declare you a -”

He paused for a moment to find the right word. “You can call me the king of Japan.”

“We already have an emperor, whose role is largely ceremonial as monarchy has been deemed unnecessary in this day of age.”

“I’m sure I don’t care, I could simply recall the rest of my army and destroy Japan and lay claim to the ashes if you prefer. Personally I'd rather not waste the resources but I will if you force my hand here."

“Please don’t. What have we done to deserve this tribulation?”

“This isn’t a tribulation, these are interesting times and I don’t simply plan on taking from you, instead I offer you great gifts, that will make Japan the new center of the world.”

“How so?” His eyes narrowed even further in curiosity or suspicion. Hard to tell.

“In return for your cooperation, I offer the people of Japan, the ability to wield magic, the training on how to use it and immortality of one sort of another.”

“Like those Chinese you freed?”

“Yes, they made for excellent test subjects.”

“What did you do to them?”

“Not much, just gave them some knowledge on how to use their new found gifts.”

“Why are there people like them in my country doing whatever they want?”

“Oh, you already have Mages coming out of the woodwork, excellent, that’ll save some time. Thanks to my recent research I should be able to turn any of your soldiers into Mages, presuming they don't mind a little bit of excruciating pain.”

He buried his head in his hands. “This is going to make Japan feared and hated.”

“It doesn’t matter what the world thinks, with me on your side you’ll have the ability to conquer the world.”

Seeing the writing on the wall he chose to surrender Japan to my authority. Well after a few more thinly veiled threats of military occupation and a few more promises of honor and glory to Japan.

Title Gained: King of Japan This title grants you greater influence in Japan and a seat at the table of international politics. You have gained this title through brute force, the people either fear you or don't know you. You have a hard road ahead to gain the respect of the people of the country you claimed and an uphill slog if you are to appease the international community.

Ah the voice of the world, I didn't expect to hear it again on this world, without my status stone. Must mean that this world has reached sufficient mana saturation levels as to attract the attention of the God of Order. More complications, that must mean that the other gods will be able to exert their influence. It will also make Ascension easier, theoretically at least.

Oddly enough, a few people had started communicating with the undead minions standing around. Mostly because my troops were mostly just standing around doing nothing but taking up space, so they weren't as intimidating. After the first few brave otakus survived communicating with my undead, more and more people started engaging with them.

People started to post pictures online with them posing with the skeleton knights and Death knights.

I told the minions to pass along the message that we were planning on peacefully occupying Japan to protect it from it’s many enemies.

I sent through a message through [Soul Communion] to the forces in Russia to perform a culling of unnecessary troops and make their way here through the creation of Bone Galleys.

I had Cucumber eject a wave of Bone Whales, Bone Dragons and send them off to the Russian coast to pick up our colleagues. Half our maritime forces were also sent off with them, along with a selection of Liches and ground troops to speed up their progress.

It’d give them something to do. Historically large bored armies made poor decisions and were typically counter productive for peaceful relations.