When the sun was high enough in the morning sky to be noticed from the castle my forces had occupied and transformed into our first stronghold I was surrounded by the netherghul. All four of my potent generals were gathered around a table I had created, and we were quietly studying the thing. 

The table in front of us was situated in a chamber near the edge of the castle. The table was a war table, complete with my perfected understanding of the world map, and was the focal point of a conversation we were having. 

"So in summary... We have control over this castle, over several leaders in the halfling region to the east of Spree, influence in Heaven's Peak, and the Ruborian Desert. But the rest of the world is mostly under the control of disparate factions." I stated, having just finished a longer, fuller explanation of the various factions that controlled most of the world. 

"Hmm... When the time comes, how will we go to the rest of the world?" Asked Malady, in a sickly sounding voice. I turned to her and filled her mind with knowledge of "Planeswalker", a powerful Living God power I possessed. 

"With 'Planeswalker' I can create portals leading us to every part of the world when we are ready. For now, I want to cement my control over this continent, before we make our way to the rest of the world." I explained, opting to travel slow and steadily rather than rush across the planet. Malady, the necromancer and deadly magician, nodded at me. 

"So what's the plan for now?" Hakon, the dwarf rogue, asked as he looked up at me. As I turned to look at him, I wordlessly transformed some of my servants into mighty, nearly invincible alpha-vampires. I did that by channeling my powers as a sanguinarch and infecting some of my powerful Blacklight servants. I mostly focused this on the Underdark and Heaven's Peak, for now, as those were two of the more interesting places I had kept in my mind's eye. 

"The plan, for now, is to cement our control over Spree and the rest of Mellow Hills before expanding. Fortunately, as you all know, we have Blacklight beings in the part of the region controlled by halflings, but we still need to go and secure the halfling fort and the route to the Evernight forest." I replied, aware of the existence of the last remaining elves on this continent in Evernight, the ancient forest home of Oberon Greenhaze. Hakon nodded at me, satisfied with my answer. 

"Alright, gang... Let's get ready. We're taking the halfling fortress today." I told the four mighty creatures, all of whom nodded at me and turned to leave. The halfling fortress we were targeting was where the majority of the halfling military had settled in the decades since the restoration of the region after the great cataclysm that devastated this continent in the wake of the disappearance of the third overlord. 

As the sun rose in the sky above the Marethian forest I felt its light touching my skin. Beside me stood Bellatrix, who was focused on a straw target dummy in the distance. She pointed one of her fingers at it and I could hear her mentally mutter an incantation before green light began to gather in her fingertip. 

A second later light exploded out of her fingertip and rocketed towards the dummy. She began to laugh when she saw it fly out of her, and when it collided with the dummy the thing exploded, sending straw flying in every direction. Bellatrix had just performed her first wandless, silent spell! 

"Yes!" She roared, excitedly. The magic of her world was surprisingly powerful for a planet that had both modernity and magic hand in hand, but also had fierce limitations such as a talent for nonverbal magic being quite rare and most human magic-users needing wands to do magic. My powers allowed me to directly address her limitations as a native magic user of her Earth and get rid of them. 

"Master... My magic is already so powerful!" Bellatrix told me, before excitedly hugging me. In many ways, the true love of her life was magic, not Voldemort or even me. I chuckled as she hugged me, and when the humans I had created emerged from one of the nearby huts they looked at the lazily descending straw that had come from the dummy in confusion. 

"Bellatrix is practicing her magic." I informed the two of them, making the pair chuckle and look at us with soft smiles on their faces. 

Distantly, my various astral projections began to pick up much of the rest of the world beginning to awaken. Blacklight beings didn't need to sleep, and as a sort of ultra being I was also not limited by needing to sleep even outside of my capabilities as the focus of the Blacklight Virus. Bellatrix and I had stayed up all night, entertaining ourselves and empowering each other. Part of her magical growth came from us spending the entire night intertwined, due to the nature of my powers. 

As creatures began to awaken across the planet many of this world's corrupt entities immediately began to focus on self-indulgence. This empowered me, and I chuckled as I felt the power of thousands of instances of various sins beginning to seep into me. This planet was so lost to sin that even being here and merely passively absorbing the sinful energies the people here exuded was enough for me to grow in power bit by bit. 

One of my greatest strengths as an ultra-being was that I was capable of passively feeding off various things at a tremendous distance. I had a universe-wide range when it came to absorbing energies produced by emotions like love, activities involving sex, and the eight deadly sins, as well as the power to feed off of worship, directed my way. I gained more power whenever I was involved in things like causing fear or despair, or sex, but I was still more than capable of passively feeding off of all instances of such things. 

Perhaps more interesting than my ability to feed off of distance instances of lust, despair, or pride, was my awareness of such acts. In the back of my mind, I knew whenever someone in my sensory range either engaged in an act of lust, despair, or pride, or felt emotions such as despair, love, or other things I could feed off of. In the future, I'd be able to use that to my advantage. Knowing someone's fears, knowing their lusts, knowing what made them feel furious, were all quite powerful things to know since I intended to rule through influence as much as I ruled through raw power. 

I turned and examined the area we were in. We had converted this part of the forest into our territory, building various buildings and fortifying our position in this world, mostly by positioning ourselves around one of the incredibly few two-way portals in Mareth, but we weren't far from another portal. Mareth's half of the portal was now inside of a building that was guarded by some of the few minions to be summoned into Mareth. 

I rose a hand and without even focusing on the portals leading to the netherworld I began to call upon some of my minions. As I did I turned to my allies. In my mind's eye, I could see the other portal that was nearby beginning to shudder and radiate cosmic energy. Someone was coming through it! 

Minions began to dash towards me from the distant portals that surrounded the fortifications we had set up. These minions were as thoroughly infected as my other minions had been by Blacklight and so they more resembled orcs than they did goblins, just as my minions back in Northos did. Once my minions were gathered I reached into my inventory and pulled out one of the items I had gotten when I first stepped through the portal; a blade made of gleaming white metal. 

The blade was a powerful instrument meant to combat demons and other corrupt entities. In my hands, the thing felt weightless and as easy to swing as a stick of wood used by children to pretend to swordfight would. With a nearly silent chuckle I pointed a finger right in front of me and a portal leading to the part of the forest where the other portal was located spun into existence.

The portal was seven feet wide and fifteen feet tall, and I turned to my minions and servants and wordlessly nodded at the portal before stepping through it and appearing in another clearing right as the portal to another world spat out a woozy looking young man who was dressed in light leather armor. 

Right as he fell through the portal and landed on his knees a cruel-sounding cackle began to become audible as a tiny imp came into view. The imp was a small creature, just barely a meter, or just over three feet tall, with dark red skin and vicious orange eyes. He wore no shirt and had on thin pants that barely hid his member from view. 

The young man tried to move away from the imp, but he, a young human, was clearly drugged. As I studied him I saw into his most recent memories, including him drinking something that was a sickly shade of purple and had made him feel increasingly lightheaded since he first drank it. It didn't take my newfound alchemical knowledge to piece together that the man had been drugged before being sent through the portal.

A split second later the name and type of the drug that the man had ingested became clear to me thanks to my newfound alchemical knowledge. Someone had made this young man drink a lust draft, a type of potent aphrodisiac, shortly before sending him through the portal!

"Hahahahahaha! Another 'champion' from Ingnam!" The imp said, deviously. He licked his lips and began to close in on the human. I chuckled as I studied the imp, though he was someone I had seen before using my potent powers and so I had already used psychometry on him. I knew who he was, he was a deadly ambusher who waylaid the sacrifices sent from Ingnam and delivered them to demonic forces lurking not far from the forest. 

He began to unzip his pants and cackle madly while approaching the human intended to be a sacrifice to the Marethian demonic hordes. I shook my head and hurled my blade at him. The blade zipped through the air and gained speed as it did so thanks to a subtle usage of telekinesis on my part. We were dozens of meters away from the diminutive serial kidnapper, but my blade flew fast, and when it reached the imp impaled him and instantaneously ended his life by cutting through the creature's heart before violently surging out of his chest.

The little demon lifelessly fell to the floor and began to bleed profusely all over the grass. The champion let out a shocked gasp when the creature who had been about to attack him fell to the floor, dead, and looked at the beautiful blade in the air in awe. 

I began to walk towards the champion and with a slight mental tug pulled the blade back to me. The sword flew through the air and the champion followed it with his gaze until he saw me. When he did I heard his breathing stop for a moment and I couldn't help but chuckle internally. Reaching him only took me a few moments, and as I approached him I laid my eyes on him which allowed me to study the "Champion" further.

As the "Champion" selected by the elders of the village of Ingnam gazed at his savior he felt funny. The warrior walking towards him was clad in metal armor that was the color of night, and the sword that flew back into his hand after saving the "Champion" was seemingly made from daylight judging from how bright it was.

The young man had the presence of mind to know that he had been poisoned, perhaps unintentionally though he knew better than to think so naively, but he still felt various things as he gazed upon the face of his savior. The warrior was supernaturally handsome, and so were the creatures in his retinue. He was accompanied by three humans, only one of which wore clothes, and by an army of orc-like creatures who seemed to come in four distinct subtypes. 

It only took the warrior who had saved the champion a second or so to arrive and be standing over him. When he did the strange warrior smiled and the champion felt himself beginning to recover from whatever poisons or drugs were circulating in his system. 

"It wouldn't do you any good to still be poisoned. And definitely not by a lust draft." The warrior said, gently. When the strange entity said the words "Lust draft" a picture appeared in the champion's mind of the same drink that one of the village elder's had insisted he drink right before he went through the portal. The damnable old man had insisted that the drink was a strength potion! 

"Don't worry, you're safe now." The strange warrior said, comfortingly. As the creature spoke the champion felt his strength returning and the effects of the drink fading, but for some reason the desire he felt wasn't going away. 

"Welcome to Mareth, friend, though you've certainly come at a hell of a time." The warrior told the champion, a sad smile on his face as he spoke. He offered the champion a hand, which the young man took with a nervous, weak smile. The warrior turned to look at the portal leading to Ingnam and sighed for reasons as mysterious as he was, though the champion was still grateful for the save. 

"Set up a forward operating post around here. We need to go ahead and secure this portal." The warrior uttered, clearly speaking to the strange creatures who accompanied him. They nodded, silently, at him and got to work. The champion gazed at the powerful warrior and felt his interest in the creature rise while the beautiful being was studying the portal. 

"For now... This'll do." The creature uttered before raising a hand and causing a simple wooden house to spring into being around himself, the champion, and the portal. The champion gasped at this powerful display of reality-warping power. 

"I... You're doing so much for me!" The champion said, in awe of the powerful creature who stood over him. The man turned to the champion and chuckled. 

"Sorry friend, but the truth is a bit more complicated than that." The overlord uttered, a soft, almost pity-filled smile on his face as he spoke. This caused the champion to look at him in confusion, though the warrior didn't utter another word.

Unbeknownst to the champion, but not to the young god who had saved the champion, a distant figure was watching the misdeeds of the dark god who had invaded Mareth. This figure, a powerful and masculine-looking omnibus, sat atop a rock formation, not unlike a throne and stared into a pool of sinister fluids. 

In the pool's reflection, he could see the champion and the god. As he did he licked his lips. Both figures radiated something valuable. The god radiated power, and the champion radiated potential. 

"I suppose I could send the god a gift..." The demon, an infamous figure known as the "Hellhound Master", uttered. He had a voice like thunder, an impossibly deep, powerful voice that made each utterance far more compelling than it would have been otherwise. The demon then began to chuckle, as he opened his mind and began to mentally sift through his mental catalog of pets. 

The master of hellhounds was a powerful pet trainer who had created some of this world's most dangerous predators. And he was determined to send Mareth's newest god a fitting gift to signal his desire for peace. It took him a few seconds to find one that the god might approve of; a powerful hellhound of his very own. 

The demon silently focused on his connection with one of his most valuable pets, a powerful two-headed hellhound. The demon smiled, a bit sadly, as he realized he'd have to give up one of his pets but if it meant that the demon was given mercy by the powerful army of minotaurs surging through the mountains in the name of Fohion it'd be a worthy sacrifice. 

With a moment of intent and directed thought, the creator of hellhounds transmitted a focused desire in the hellhound he was giving to the dark god. The hellhound, who had just been asleep, awoke and gazed in the direction of the dark god. And then the creature stood up and began to walk towards his new master. The master of hellhounds leaned back in his throne and wondered if he had done the right thing, and was shocked when he felt his mind be invaded. He shivered as he felt a chill overtake his body right before a voice began to whisper inside of it.

"That was... wise." Uttered the dark voice of the deadly god who was altering and corrupting the forest he had claimed as his own. 

"You shall be spared. So too shall your pets." The god proclaimed, his voice rather silk-like, which caused the demon to relax and sigh in joy. He didn't want to fight Lethice's war, and his sickly scrying magic had allowed him to see the potency of the minotaur army that was steadily heading towards Lethice's mountain stronghold. 

The demon watched a portal appear in front of the distant hellhound he had given to Fohion, and the hellhound stepped through it without hesitation. A split second later the thing vanished as rapidly as it had appeared. 

"Fuck... That's a power of his?" The demon uttered, as he realized that that meant that any travel the dark god did was a formality more so than a necessity. That meant that this whole time Fohion had been letting him live rather intentionally instead of simply because the demon was too far to attack. It was humbling and frightening, to see that Fohion's portals weren't limited by range.