After the necromancer thanked me and retreated, I summoned more Bloodline Contracts from my divine realm and levitated them toward the people. Every single one of them took the bead of dragon blood, although not everyone swallowed the blood at that time. In fact, the majority of the people disappeared almost as quickly as they received the Bloodline Contacts. The undead, including the liches, waited until the living men and women disappeared into the darkness.
Then the undead moved forward. By this time, I had summoned forth the Soul Contracts, a variant of the Bloodline Contracts. While they cost more faith points to create, they accomplished most of the same things. However, instead of using blood as the medium, it used souls. I also altered many of the powers available to the undead as well. For example, if they wanted wings, the wings created were ghostly.
Surprisingly, handing out the contracts didn’t take as long as I had expected. In fact, I had sort of expected the mortals to hang around. As for the undead, I hadn’t even considered creating a contract for them until I saw how they were so respectful. However, I guess they were happy with their “gift” and didn’t want to overstay their welcome. I felt a little like I had just spent a lot of money taking someone on a date, where they ordered expensive items, and then said thank you for the meal before leaving me to pay the bill.
Despite the bad aftertaste the experience was leaving in my mouth, I felt that things turned out okay. Still, I needed to go home since I had a lot to do. One of the first things I needed to do on the way home was design another contract system for kobolds. Their contract needed to be a little different. I also needed to create my holy text, design vestments, and create rules for my priests.
Of course, there were a lot of other things that demanded my attention. I was fairly certain that Einvaldskonungr the red dragon would be attacked soon. I also wanted to see how the systems that I had created were working. If they did well, I could formulate a plan to roll out the contracts en masse. If the contracts didn’t work, I would need to make changes.
I was also pretty sure that I was forgetting something, although I couldn’t remember what it was. I probably forgot something during the lobotomy. Then again, I might just have too many things on my mind. I had always been forgetful, which was weird since being smart usually implied a good memory.
As I was flying out of the city, I started to realize something. Within the city, I hadn’t been able to make any changes to the physical environment. After leaving, however, I discovered that I could, at least to some extent. Although it would take effort, I could change everything within about a hundred feet of myself. The reason I couldn’t do that in the Necropolis was probably because of its unique existence.
By the time I arrived home, it was just past dawn so most of the kobolds had already fallen asleep. Not wanting to disturb them, silently and invisibly flew to my room, which also happened to be the Dungeon Core. That was when I decided that I would use my make some changes in the Dungeon Core room.
One advantage minor and lesser gods had over true gods was their ability to walk across Guthheimr with their divine bodies. This applied to my current situation because gods could control the space around them to an extent. I could walk anywhere in the world and make changes. Of course, as with the Necropolis, there were limitations. However, true gods were not free to travel freely through the world.
True gods had merged their divine body and their divine realm. Because of this, they were bound outside of the world. Some theologians even theorized that minor gods and lesser gods were actually just more powerful demigods. However, that didn’t mean that true gods couldn’t visit the material planes.
Many true gods created avatars which they could send. The reason they needed these avatars was because the material planes would be damaged if a god tried to force their way into Guthheimr. However, avatars didn’t have the same ability to make changes in the environment. As for bringing their divine body to the material plane, that was like trying to fit an adult into a baby’s clothes. Although it could be done, the clothes would be ruined.
Therefore, since I hadn’t rejected Guthheimr and merged with my divine realm yet, I could still make changes in my environment. Since that was the case, I was going to take advantage of that fact. Unfortunately, being the weakest god in the world also meant that I didn’t have the magical ability to change anything. Because of this, I needed to use faith points. Once again, I realized just how important faith points were to gods.
Speaking of gods, why hadn’t any of the other gods visited me? I was half-expecting one of the good gods to come charging in with his paladins and slay the evil god of death while he was still weak. I could only assume that there was some type of treaty or at least the fear that the dark gods were protecting me. What really puzzled me was the fact that none of the gods from the System Lord pantheon had visited me. In fact, they hadn’t even sent a message.
Either way, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were leaving me alone. While I started reshaping Sanctuary with faith points, I also started organizing in my mind what I wanted to include in my holy book. Being a little lazy, I stole a lot of ideas from various religious books.
By the time I finished college, which took almost ten years and gained me three different degrees, I had taken classes on just about everything. Some classes were about different religions. There was even a class about meditation. I also took classes with future military officers after getting a lot of attention from military recruiters.
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With my new improved memory, I was able to steal words and ideas from the teachings of many great men as well as many evil men. Since I was the god of death, I did have to include a lot about how to face death and live life, but I didn’t limit myself to those self-help subjects. It was true though that all of those psychology and religious classes helped me a lot with this area.
However, I also included practical things, such as war and politics. I stole from Sun Tzu, Friedrich Nietzsche, Miyamoto Musashi, Niccolò Machiavelli, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Basil H. Liddell Hart, and Carl von Clausewitz. Unfortunately, I had to cut a lot of information and only used the parts that suited my needs.
Unlike other holy texts that concentrated on morals and history, my holy text was aimed at how people should live their lives and how they should face their death. Of course, to make it sound mysterious and holy, I also included a lot of paradoxes. Since I already started creating my tenants and doctrine, all I needed to do was fill in the blanks. In fact, I separated my holy text into two sections, the Book of Life and the Book of Death.
The Book of Life talked about how to live your life and included politics, psychology, business, and ethics. The Book of Death was focused on how to wage war or how to survive as a noncombatant. It started with the military tactics a commander should learn as well as the nitty-gritty details on how to set traps and escape detection that every recruit should learn.
By the time the sun set, I had finished making alterations to my room. I had greatly expanded the Dungeon Core room so that when I grew into a large dragon, I would still have plenty of space. After that, I started writing down everything I had been thinking about while remodeling the center of my city. Unfortunately, I ended up writing a lot and had to actually split the holy book into two volumes.
One pleasant surprise was that I no longer had to sleep. I could gain the benefits of a full night’s rest while doing light activities. Because I didn’t have to sleep, I was able to write for over a week straight without sleeping. Of course, I wasn’t online writing the holy text but also refining my idea for the Bloodline Contracts.
I actually created two different versions. The first few days, I created contracts meant for other kobold tribes. Since I wasn’t going to be around them, I needed some way in which the kobolds could pass on the Bloodline Contract to their offspring. At the rate that kobolds procreated, my blood essence would never be enough to keep up with the demand. Because of this, I created a transformation option.
The transformation was just as dramatic as changing a kobold into a dragonborn. There were a lot of differences though. While I wanted to create even more changes, I was limited on what I could do, even with faith points. The transformation basically gave the kobold my bloodline, with a few extra perks.
The kobold would no longer be regular kobolds but would become Twilight Kobolds. The main benefit was that just like ancestral memories could be passed down in High Kobolds, the Blood Contract could be passed down in Twilight Kobolds. In addition, since my divine blood was draconic, the Twilight Kobolds would gain a more draconic appearance and grow wings. As for the other powers, they would have to use the contract to gain those powers. To differentiate it from the other contracts, I called it the Twilight Contract.
After that, I started on the version of the Bloodline Contract I would use with the High Kobolds who had already accepted my bloodline essence. Since they were already very similar to dragons in many ways, I was actually able to go beyond what I could accomplish with the regular kobolds.
When I finished writing the book and creating the contracts, I used magic to duplicate the holy texts. I then gathered the kobolds and declared that day as a holy day before offering them a modified version of the Bloodline Contract. I called the new contract the Dragon God’s Pact. By using the system, the kobolds could further refine their bloodlines. Since I was technically considered a twilight dragon, I discovered that I could also convert draconic kobolds into a variant twilight dragon as well.
Of course, it also took a considerable amount of my blood essence to achieve the result. Because of this, I set the cost very high. It would take kobolds years to earn enough to become a twilight dragon. I was certain that the kobolds wouldn’t care about the high cost at all. Even if they were going to be small dragons, they were going to be real dragons. I didn’t even have to give the kobolds a blood bead since they already carried my blood within them, or at least most of them. A few of the newer arrivals did need the bloodline beads. As for the others, all I had to do was activate the system with the blood they had already consumed.
Needless to say, when the kobolds discovered that they were being given the chance to become real dragons in the future, they went wild. Almost every single kobold became a zealot. I was giving them the keys to their dreams. As for the few kobolds who had not become zealots, I wasn’t too surprised. Recently, their lives had already become very fulfilling. It was already like they were in heaven. To have one more thing added was just too much for them to comprehend.
After handing out my new holy texts, I decided it was time to spread the word to other kobold tribes. First, I would concentrate on those kobolds who didn’t have a dragon god. Most of these kobolds could be found under human cities. Kings would often enslave kobolds and force them to dig out sewers and mines. Eventually, some of them would escape. Some of them would still be enslaved. I needed to find both groups around the biggest cities near me and “recruit” some more believers.
With this in mind, I left my minions as they got deliriously drunk with wine from who knows where. I even allowed them to break out the best foods to have a feast. Just before things escalated into a wild free-for-all in the warm waters, I escaped and made my way toward the nearest city, Skattgjöld, which happened to be Viscount Landskyld. Baron Réttr had been his vassal. As such, he also happened to be the one who would most likely take revenge on Einvaldskonungr since the red dragon had destroyed the baron’s castle.