Monarch of Darkness, Arsene

"Eh? Wai—AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH~"

"Mwahahahaaha~ Chop~Chop~Chop~ Squeal for this queen!" Cried Lily carving my soul into pieces. Pain smelter my core as I felt every neuron in my brain throb with smoldering fire. ????????n????e????????. ????oｍ

Sensing every part of me gradually losing the feeling in my appendages, I clenched my teeth. "You done?" I asked, grunting as I felt hundreds of living cognitions flare to life within me. Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions.

"Your… Conscious?Holy shit! How? Oh, I see. Your pride! Well, that's boring now." She said, groaning, but the pain and anguish hammering away at my flesh and bones like a blazing inferno only grew as seconds trailed by.

"... You seem a little too disappointed."

"I am! If you were a bumbling fool, things would have been so funny! Poo!"

Hissing in response to this bastard, I spoke through clenched teeth," When will this pain end?"

"End? It'll last a few hundred cycles. A person whose leg was amputated or blown away will feel pain for months and phantom pain or possibly the rest of their life. You're in the same boat. Cutting your soul once or twice is no big deal but a billion? You're not supposed to be conscious." She concluded with a long sigh. "Anyway, I've already set up a barrier around half of your soul. You have forty-nine percent of shares to sell: Make it count."

Soul still throbbing, I grunted in response. "I know. Let's begin soul fusion."

"So soon? You don't want to get accustomed? You've got billions of cognitions rattling in your brain." Came her warning, but—

"Into the fire, I go. If by some chance, part of my soul is destroyed, it'll regrow with time. The same can't be said about the other souls."

I sucked in a long breath coming back to myself as I pushed down the horrendous pain clawing through me.

Master and Slave. This is the main principle I needed with the souls around me. I needed them to be subservient to me, but I also needed them not to know they belonged to me. The concept of freedom is so delicate. Freedom, to an extent, breeds innovation. And that's what I need.

I need people like Sitri to be my slaves, but I don't want them to know that their ideas are mine. I need them to believe that they can keep stuff from me. I need to give them the illusion of freedom.

Reaching back into my soul space to the endless flame blazing like no other, I turned to the small section of Soul Flames inconsequential to my own.

"Lily, do you have any idea?" I said, slowly explaining to her what I wanted.

"Sounds to me you want to be their God. It's fine. But to do that. I believe contracts are in order. I've got some good ones."

"I could torture them—"

"If you use torture, then you'll only skew the potential of those you have. You'll limit the talent one can have. Remember, Angels are entities of order. To torment them is to lower their talent. Sure they might fall, but that's quite rare."

"Fallen Angels are rare?"

"Of course. Lucifer took most that would fall with him. And only a few have fallen thereafter."

Grabbing one soul that I beckoned to, a random low-god soul. I frowned before calling on my Divinity of Sin. Chanting the Path of Abyssal Night to do the impossible, I slowly brought the two souls together using my divinity while Lily controlled the abyssal essence.

…

…

…

"YOU! You bastard! Die!" cried a man by the name of Eric Naral.

I'd never seen him before, but somehow, he was part of the dead people I'd killed long ago, either on Iluthath or in the abyss. But there he was; this was the first time I'd entered a soul. The first time I saw their cognition.

Eric appeared to be a somewhat tall reptilian man. Red scales scattered about his cheeks, trailing down his neck. He was very bulky with sharp eyes, short red hair, and a set of greyish eyes seething venom.

He lunged at me, but as the domain's arbiter, I snapped, and he was on his knees. Head planted over the empty void we stood in.

"You! You!" He continued in a sobbing tone, " You took me from my family! My child! My Darla! You took everything from me!" he barked, squirming about.

"And what's your response? Charge at me blindly, believing you can kill me?" I mocked, truly unable to believe my eyes. Are people this dumb? I'm used to seeing this in anime, but not in real life. "Did you even have a plan?"

"Release me! Release me! I'll kill you, you bastard!" He howled, glaring at me with such a look that I almost laughed. But sadly, this wasn't the time to enjoy myself.

"Eric Naral. I've got a deal for you. A deal I'm giving everyone. A rebirth. A new beginning." I conveyed.

"Huh? I… I don't understand!" He snapped, still trashing as he struggled to even move.

"I can see that. Ever heard of reincarnation? Well, I'm willing to help you reincarnate. You can have all your memories or not. It's up to you. The only thing you won't remember is this conversation."

"I'll be free?!"

A serpent-like sensation slithered out my mouth as I lied, " Of course, there's even a possibility that you'll be reunited with your kids."

Hope filled his cognition as tears bubbled from his eyes. "Where are they? My kids?"

I shrugged. " Do you want the deal or not?" I barked, letting loose my hold over this fool.

The young draconian stood to his feet, tears trailing down his cheek as he nodded. "Reincarnate me! I'll find them. All I ask is to share the same blood as them."

"Whatever," I said, pulling out a blood stain contract Lily had given me. " Sign it. It states that you are willing to reincarnate in a realm governed by me."

"That's it?" Eric said, staring at me with a look of confusion. "You don't want to eat my soul, to take a part of me away?"

"I could care less," I replied, shrugging. "Do you accept? I'm sure you're looking forward to seeing your kids after you are born."

Snatching the paper away, Eric wasted no time and signed his name with bits of his soul, vanishing from my sight with the signature of his name.

"It's scary… I create a realm just to learn. I'll know their thoughts, will, and deepest secrets, and they'll never know it. Everything they do, I'll know. It's not the contract that's scary but the realm I created. I needed their consent to merge the two souls. And since Eric gave me his consent to send him into this realm, he must follow my rules. And rule one… He must merge with a fragment of my soul."

"This is like a simulation… a matrix." Said Lily softly. "Do you think you're in one? Do you think that everything you do is being processed by another? The same way, like, what you're doing now?"

"..."