Degritone flew out into the white void, weightless. After a few miles, he stopped and waited, his tentacles healing back to their original forms. Either for an ambush by creatures of the Horrid or for the man in his mind to finish speaking.
"-ding on your Skills, it won't be possible. You could find me a new host and kill it, but at that point, you'd be free and there'd be no point killing me, yeah? It'd have to be someone that has a higher chance of being with Melena than you, wich is almost anyone, given your state," they spoke over several agonizing hours.
Degritone looked through his library of memories for the time he made a body while just a soul. He repeated the feat in front of himself. He made sure to include the upgrades that allowed for speech and feeling pain. A few hours of talking slowly later, a black ray shot from his head and into the body.
"Ok, now I'll just go-"
"No, you won't," Degritone said, raising his mental defenses as thick and sturdy as he could. Without elaborating further, Degritone's arm unfolded and grabbed the throat of the body snatcher. With his victim having a body he created, he knew all the right buttons to press to inflict the most pain.
When the body snatcher passed out, Degritone destroyed and reconstituted its head, waking it back up, and began again. They tried to escape, but Degritone's grip was iron as his tentacles bored into the flesh of his victim, following the nerves as closely as possible as to cause the most pain possible.
Finally, after a few days, the sturdy body Degritone had crafted gave out and he retracted his tentacles and released his grip, leaving the swiss cheese of a dead body to float in the endless nothing.
"Gonna give me control again?" Degritone heard in his mind.
He sunk into his mind, looked at his other self, nodded, and merged back with the room itself. He spent a few minutes to get his body back to normal before teleporting to Melena's garden. After seeing no one around, he remembered the Degritones and Melena he left sitting in Duels's world. He teleported to them and gave the Melena a hug before starting to cry.
The Horrid had disappeared along with most other Degritones, just these 11 and the Melena sitting on the edge of the world. Melena waved the other Degritones off as she teleported herself and her Degritone back to her garden. Melena messaged the other Melenas that she was leaving the voice chat as she did so, then tended to Degritone.
She laid his head on her lap, held one of his hands, and began gently, calmly rubbing his head, as if running her fingers through hair his current body didn't have. A Melena brought over a box of tissues from Earth and sat it down beside the pair before disappearing.
They existed together like that for a few days as Degritone occasionally blurbled out the horrible things he had to experience while in the Horrid.
The tissues were useless, since Degritone didn't have tear ducts.
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"I am glad you're back," Melena said after Degritone'd finished crying.
Degritone weakly nodded. "I feel like I just want to sleep for 12 years," he quietly said.
"No one will stop you, or blame you, for doing so."
"I am biologically unable. So, I'm kinda stopping myself, in that way. Have you already got a group working on finding Duels's soul?"
"No, I have not split my attention from the moment I teleported us here."
A few hours passed before Degritone asked, "Do you know who the dude was that triggered all that?"
"Only person I can think of that could do anything remotely similar is Nezhar. He was originally a protege to Obsession, then became the Patron of Minds. His addition to the Patrons opened up many new Skills, as very few could affect the mind directly before then, and even then, only minorly. The effects still were not very pronounced, even with his help, but it seems he made a breakthrough. Taking someone over must have taken a long time to figure out.
"He disappeared around one hundred and twenty years ago. I think it was one hundred and twenty-four, but it is hard to keep track of the years. I guess that is when he started his traversal across bodies until he eventually found himself in possession of the body of So'Ejan."
Degritone hugged his Melena. "The others should have a plan to save your friend across so many timelines in just a few seconds of notifying them, and be able to act on it in a matter of hours."
Melena sighed while shaking her head. She pat his back a couple times and said, "I am sure they will pull me into other trouble the moment I reconnect with them. Are you sure you want to give me up? I am sure So'Ejan can wait."
Degritone nodded and said, "Not really, but you're the loli here. Way more important than I am."
"No," Melena said.
After a few seconds of her not elaborating, Degritone asked, "What?"
"I am not more important than you. According to every single one of your selves, you are the person who will take to the void and become a multiverse hopper, along with anyone you take with you. You are absolutely more important than anyone else in this multiverse. Maybe even further beyond, but I do not know if ways exist to know that, and if you have seen them or not."
"Uh... we'd probably-"
"-not be able to make any claims about anything further than half way through multiverse hopper, yes. That is not the point. By known metrics, you are the most important person in this multiverse."
Degritone sighed and squeezed her tightly. "Fine. One more day, then we get back to work. Maybe sooner, I don't know if I'll be able to stand putting off even just potentially making you happier for that long."
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He only lasted 4 hours before the guilt of not working toward happier lolis overtook him. They told the whole crew about So'Ejan being taken over and they almost immediately began working on how to use mind attacks through the System, which immediately hit a dead end; however, they were able to make a barrier around their mind that would trap anyone trying to intrude.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
They tested this by shoving two Degritone souls in a single body. Whoever managed to get their mental shield up first was always the one that took control of the body. Melena confirmed nothing was visually happening between the two souls, and Stavch sight revealed almost nothing. Some movement in the Stavch, but nothing they could reproduce externally.
Potentially a noticeable difference in Stavch and Raijingeki, but they doubted it, given how similar their universe was to that of the RP this far down, and differences like that should have been noticeable right from the get go. One Degritone proposed it could have been the alternate control method, similar to that of the language none of them could remember the name of that the enemies from half way through the multiverse hopper arc used.
The theory was not immediately thrown out, but shelved until after all the So'Ejans they could reasonably save were saved. Meanwhile, Degritone prime worked on tracking So'Ejan's soul to find where it had gone after he was killed. After a few months, he was able to attach a marker to the soul of another Degritone and follow it around, even through teleports.
A few other Degritones took a few weeks to bring their images up to par with that of Degritone prime, and ambushed a So'Ejan alongside Degritone prime. They followed the marker on the dead Patron's soul. They then revived him with a full pure Stavch body, sent him back to talk with the Melena of his timeline, and spent a few months finding the soul of So'Ejan prime.
When they finally found his soul, it was covered in Stavch corruption. They ripped it from its place in the afterlife of the System and spent a few days investigating the intact souls of the other free So'Ejans before working on repairing the soul. It took a lot of finagling to be able to control the soul material of the Patron, but with an in charge Degritone sharing a body with it, the System let them control his soul material, if slowly.
After 12 hours of work, the soul was repaired and So'Ejan prime and Melena prime had a reunion while the Degritones began working on taking over Earth, while making sure the one planet they already ruled over remained stable. It had a rebellion start up, which they rapidly quashed. Given the state of the world before they took over, they gave every non-loli on the world a Mark of the Loli Heretic, just to be safe.
It took almost two years to fully stabilize that world, changing infrastructure and supply lines to get away from the loli-slave labor that ran its economy before and to get the general population, if not happy, at least content with the new order of things. As content as they could be under an entirely new government no one asked for, anyway.
During that time, some Degritones worked on creating cloakium. They had zero breakthroughs until the 16th day, when a Degritone who'd spent the whole time trying to upgrade his Stavch vision came along and noted that cloakium's deviation from pure Stavch material looked much more intricate than they'd originally seen.
In this pocket of creation, cloakium was a quine. The additional flow on top of pure Stavch was a flow that resulted in a flow identical to the structure that created it. This was dependent on the pure Stavch flow existing, acting like a shell around the flow. When all knitted together, the pure Stavch infinitely branched out and recombined to make the cloakium structure, and the cloakium structure wrapped around the pure Stavch in such a way to create a mega structure of structures that made the pure Stavch.
They initially tried making the Cloakium structure out of another material, just to see what happened, but nothing did. They tried every solid element to no avail, then tried pure Stavch when none of them had any result. It instantly created a ball of black cloakium. They made cloaks for everyone, even So'Ejan, from cloakium.
The cloaks were inert, unlike the original, as the automatic defense system would have to be crafted and applied to the material separately. That much was beyond them, as of this moment.
Yet another group worked on entering flash space. Their first success was to be able to create a short-ranged teleport that the System saw as a Skill, but it required Mana to be injected into the structure to function. This took them most of a year. Another few months later, they had a working flash, but no flash space. Any time they tried to enter flash space while keeping their awareness, they would not move. So, they were unable to use flash space for infinite time to think, but could teleport around outside the purview of the System.
Another group worked with the Melenas and the, now fully included, research group she was a part of spent time working on a way to detect and automatically activate a Stavch structure once an object passed through an area. Enchanting was most valuable here, as they had the highest degree of ability to think laterally, making logical jumps the others could never make.
In a way, they were putting Enchanting out of business. In another, they were opening the whole new world of enchanting-like Stavch construction. They were able to collectively create a system that worked well enough for what they had planned to use it for about a month after the Degritones figured out how to flash.
They combined the two into a system that would automatically teleport any Stavch flow that passed through a threshold to another location. The system could not control the orientation of the object at its location, so it was unable to work as the automatic defense system for the cloaks.
It would also need to be able to detect what constitutes as an attack before that was possible, as a Degritone losing an arm to trying it was warning enough for the others to not do so. Once a Degritone with upgraded Stavch sight applied this to microscopic sphere, they spent a few hours wracking their brains as to how to actually apply it to the center of the acceleration white hole.
After some experimentation, they were able to apply it to the AWH's center, prompting the System to perform an emergency update removing perception Skills. It granted everyone with one an amount of SP equal to their perception Skill's Level, and made it so the perception of combatants would automatically speed up so they would appear to be moving a maximum of 15 feet per second.
Observers outside combat could also opt to accelerate their time so the fastest object currently perceptible moved at most 15 feet per second. If they entered combat during this time, their perception would rapidly slow down so their own movement speed made them move a maximum of 15 feet per second.
Additionally, all regenerations were divided by (min(700,max(1,Vitality/100))+min(300,max(1,bonusRegeneration/10))), but were now tied to the current perception speed of the one regenerating the resource, multiplying the effective regeneration per second at higher levels by multiple thousands. All damage and heal over time effects were also reduced in potency, on a per-Skill basis, and made to work off the subjective time of the one who applied them.
While they did that, Degritone prime and a few other Degritones worked on preparations for taking over the Earth. They decided two shows of force would be necessary. But first, the whole world would need to know about it.
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Across every news station, as well as on every video hosting website, Degritone's declaration of war was broadcast.
"Hello," Degritone began. "I am bad at public speaking. Well, really, I'm bad at getting my point across in general, so I'll try to keep this brief. I am going to take over the world. You cannot stop me, but I will allow you to try to prove you can, if you even want to. We have set up a small web page explaining the basic laws we'll have, to see if you even want to stop me.
"For those of you who do want to stop me, I will erect an arena under the statue of liberty. Surrounding it will be a barrier stopping anyone with an image that would be unable to pierce my body from entering the arena. The barrier will also allow in anyone who was voted to join the fight by at least 4 governments across the world to enter. I will fight the first four people to claim a seat inside the arena. Don't worry about the statue itself, my other selves will make sure no collateral damage is done.
"After that, I will head to a point in the pacific ocean where my other selves have already begun erecting an artificial island. It will be able to support well over a million people at once. Feel free to send as many combatants as you wish to that spot, we'll make sure to support a single, massive battle involving as many people as you can supply.
"The 1v4 battle will happen whenever all four people gather. The micro-war will happen 24 hours after the 1v4 finishes. By the time the first people to listen to this are hearing this sentence, other versions of myself should already have meaningful threats against major population centers, as well as those in power of the various countries."
"So, unite against me so I can show you there is no combating my reign."