In all of my life, including the short bit of my life to date as a Living God, I had never learned as much as I learned wandering the halls of the nunnery. The place was lined not only with invisible psychic residue that was useful for me as a psychic being but also filled with documents detailing the full and bloody history of Felmocism. 

I gazed at them and through my potent psychic abilities felt their contents entering my mind. As they did I instantly understood their contents and purpose, no matter how long they were supposed to be. And that was not fun when the books and other, assorted documents detailed the dark history of this immensely frustrating religion. 

The book titles included darkly sinister words like "Witch hunts" and "Pogroms", both of which were harsh words that conjured images akin to genocides and scapegoating on a truly vast scale. That very knowledge further helped me realize that the choices I was making to move against Felmoco were ones that would not be hard to justify morally. The elderly deity, though younger than many of Earth's other gods, was a cruel foe who deserved to be defeated. 

As I traveled deeper and deeper into the nunnery I also decided to do something else. I decided to go ahead and gradually begin to expand my faction and gain more agents throughout the world. That was easier to do now than it had ever been, thanks to my potent sanguinarch powers.

Sanguinarchs were beings of unbelievable power. Their mastery over undeath was such that due to being one I could transform someone on the other side of the planet into a vampire if I willed it. And that mattered a lot since vampires of mine were fanatically loyal agents that would eagerly commit even the most egregious sins if I commanded them to do so, with zero hesitance. 

I had created countless breeds of vampires and the greatest of them were world-changingly powerful if I commanded them to unleash their true might. My greatest kind of vampire had traits such as having a physique one hundred times beyond that of the peak of their native species, be that human, dragon, elf, tiger, or whale, they could read minds and control them even without looking into someone's eyes, they could fly and shapeshift. It was easy to see why I had been careful to only transform Imani and Titania into such potent beings. 

That said, as powerful as my vampires were the most terrifying fact of all regarding my ability to create them was that I could convert anyone weaker than an ascendant into a vampire so long as they were on the same planet as me. That range was surprisingly limited, given the sheer scope of the omniverse, but since I wanted to stay on Earth for now it meant that I possessed a potent playground on which to mess around with these powers and get used to them. 

I could transform the president of the United States into a vampiric minion of mine with a thought, but I didn't want to do that. My plans were more subtle than that, though as clearly evidenced by the most recent actions I had committed I was willing to sometimes be less subtle. Some things were worth throwing subtlety away for a second. Not much longer than a second, usually, but as the world began to react to my actions I continued to move, readily utilizing worldly ignorance of my identity to my advantage. And I wasn't just utilizing my power to turn people into vampires to my advantage since I possessed so many fun abilities to play with.

The government of the United States was a vast, normally slow-moving behemoth. That said, the one time someone could expect some pushback from the Americans was with regard to their weapons and their military. Fortunately for the planet, the Americans were dealing with the one force that could reliably outgun them; an actual god. 

Throughout the planet, American military officials who had just begun to get news of the disappearance of their nuclear weapons stockpile began to react strangely. Instead of panic and confusion, or even threats of violence to deter any sort of opportunistic posturing from enemies of both "freedom" and actual freedom, American military leaders came together and wrote assorted memorandums to send to themselves, to other soldiers of lesser rank, and to the Department of Defense.

What was stranger about this than the fact that it demonstrated an unusual sort of unity among the top brass of the military was that even retired generals did this, ones vastly out of the loop of the Department of Defense. This wouldn't be noticed for hours, because of the strangeness of the actual memorandums, but it was a strange "coincidence". 

Eerily, something frighteningly similar to this would occur in other nuclear-weapon-states, and would of course be kept top secret in every case. No one in any nuclear-weapon-state wanted the public to discover that their stockpile of nuclear weapons. Historically the only effective deterrent against other nuclear-armed states blasting them into oblivion, the ability to fire nuclear missiles at whoever fired them first and thus ensure mutual devastation and destruction, had vanished. 

What was going on here was surprisingly simple, albeit, unlike anything that had ever happened on Earth to date. The generals of the world's most powerful militaries were all being puppeted. For a few minutes their bodies would not be under their own control, but rather under the control of an alien entity who only looked human. The entity, a potent overlord of vampires, was the same figure who had erased the nuclear weapons in the first place, and he was now cleaning up after himself by using "Puppet Master".

The ability he used was a potent sanguinarch ability that allowed him to remotely control the bodies of an entire galaxy's worth of people at once to sow confusion and to promote caution rather than rash retaliation or the threat of violence. He only needed to do this once, and upon doing so he wiped the memories of this event from the minds of the generals. In doing this he was able to quietly create so much confusion and chaos that no nation's leadership would feel comfortable attempting to attack or posture at this moment. 

And this was far from the only odd event going on throughout the planet. If anything, the strangeness of the events occurring within the militaries of the nuclear-weapon-states was less strange though much more noticeable and high-profile than what was occurring elsewhere. Throughout the world, billions of minds were being read at once by an unbelievably powerful psychic entity. And of those billions, only a few actually drew the interest of the potent and nightmarish entity behind the recent string of strange events occurring throughout the world.

"So, what all can you do?" Rebeza asked, glancing at me curiously. I chuckled and looked at her as I considered how to answer her question. As I was thinking of what to say she opted to add something to her statement that mattered. 

"I mean, I know about your sanguinarch abilities of course. I can read all about them in the back of my mind. Even the dominion abilities! But I mean beyond that. Stuff like your Living God powers." She added, causing the others to look at me with quizzical looks on their faces. I turned to them first to explain what she meant. 

"Sanguinarchs can utterly dominate territory provided we've acquired enough essence from within that territory. Once we've dominated it... I mean, primarily it sends us more essence, but it also becomes territory that we can easily command and control in a variety of ways. I have powerful abilities related to dominions such as one that stipulates that so long as I keep gathering essence from a patch of my dominion it will slowly but unendingly grow. I can also suppress the powers of anyone I designate an enemy who enters my dominion." I explained, brightly. 

"Having territory in such a literal and real sense is part of the appeal of being a sanguinarch, though far from the only real appeal. Sanguinarch powers are exceptional." I stated, confidently. I then turned to Rebeza, the queen of the fallen, and continued to smile while taking this chance to brag about some of my other powers. 

"I made myself quite a being. I am also a vastly powerful dragon lord." I explained, referring to the kind of being dragons become in the rare cases when they can undergo and survive an ascension. Dragon lords were rarer than archdemons but less common than sanguinarchs, transynths, and cosmic gods. This revelation made Rebeza's eyes widen in both shock and desire. 

"A dragon lord... You know, I skimmed your life but I did not study it as thoroughly as you studied mine. Plus it became much harder to do when I hit the part of it where you underwent your apotheosis." She explained, revealing why she wasn't fully sure of all of my powers. When she explained that I nodded, only not knowing it because I wasn't using our mental connection to perpetually hear every single one of her thoughts.

She also couldn't do that to me unless I gave her permission, whereas I did not need her permission to hear hers since I was her master in a real, cosmic sense. Nevertheless, I was aware of big things that she did and when she used my powers such as by transforming half of the women in her sanctum, members of her own collection of corrupted lovers, into my most potent kind of vampires and then the other half into thralls and ordering them to generate essence so that her sanctum could become part of my dominion. This had happened minutes ago, and even now I was feeling floods of essence flow into her and me.

A small part of me wanted to go there and experience her sanctum first hand, but I knew that if I did it might be hard for me to leave. Or rather if I went I might not want to leave. 

Both members of my harem had potent resources of their own. Titania was a princess of a major empire, and Rebeza was a powerful and legendary archdemoness and the owner of her own personal plane. 

I was in another universe compared to either of them as far as personal power went, but I both managed to lack their resources and also exceed their resources. I lacked the fame of either of the women and until earlier today I had also lacked their knowledge. That said, as far as actual arms and wealth went I outclassed both of them put together. Nevertheless, reputation was an important resource and it was one that I lacked. For now, I'd need to rely on my few existing allies for things that required a certain amount of influence, unless I was willing to just mind control people. I wasn't going to rule that out for important enough tasks but it wasn't how I preferred to do things.

Rebeza's sanctum was the most unique personal resource any member of my faction possessed. It was a dimension in which she was truly omnipotent and invincible to the point that it would have taken me utilizing "Ex Nihilo" to actually take her down, though now that wasn't necessary. That wasn't necessary because as her master, due to the potency of the actual "Dark Bride" power, what was hers was now mine. So I was equally as powerful as she was within the sanctum, which was quite nice. 

Someday very soon I planned to visit the sanctum of my fiancé. Though I knew that when I did, efforts would be made to get me to stay awhile.

Dragon lords were potent and mysterious ascendant beings, taking on the qualities which made lesser dragons so incredible and amplifying them to mind-boggling scales. I was excited to tell not only Rebeza about their powers but also the others in the car with me. I hadn't truly had a chance to actually demonstrate my dragon lord powers but I fully planned to change that quite soon.