Chapter 28.North

It took almost a week for Samantha to calm down enough to complete the rune, even with my aid. Once she'd finally finished, she immediately leapt at my human avatar. So she chose the one least like her previous partner? It didn't matter much to me. I had plenty of knowledge of females fucking other females from watching Trgl and Mgrt. There were other female couples, but Trgl and Mgrt were the most experienced of them. Samantha didn't have extreme sensitivity on the inside of her horns, as she had no horns, but all other knowledge should be applicable.

My hope that fucking would allow Samantha to return to command was naïve. She was insatiable, refusing to let go of the avatar for two weeks before she finally passed out, finally being the first person to overwhelm the combined effect of the inverted enfeeblement and her own ability to recover stamina. She worked even harder than Trgl's army, which was surprising.

After five days of Samantha being indisposed, I turned to the most proficient magician in the army to aid me in subduing my new humans and leading the force. I could have forced Samantha to work again, but that would be cruel. Besides, she needed to increase her flexibility. Having a competitor for leader would be a massive aid in that regard.

Lagt was more than happy to comply. She was only a food hobgoblin, but she was more proficient with my improved circuitry than anyone else, making her the ideal candidate. My avatar's approach had almost had her passing out in euphoria, but she was disciplined enough to get her fan-girl in control. At least, she could do it long enough to draw a worship rune in the air.

Once that was set up, I built wards around an area to block out the influence of my avatars. The benefits to the army of having them active were too large to pause them as I converted the new humans. The first one I dragged into the ward was the one in full metal armor.

He woke almost immediately after he was released from the effects of my avatars. His reaction was different than I'd thought. He rolled onto his back with his arms and legs spread out. "Anything you desire, you can have. Simply spare Anhata, please!"

That was much easier than I anticipated. After asking him to bleed on the rune, though, something interesting happened. It was rejected. That had never happened before. The blood slid down the rune like it was a solid existence instead of being absorbed by the light, as was normal.

The only idea I had as to why his blood would be rejected would be if he was already a worshipper of someone else. In that case…the blood should have been rejected much more strongly. I should also have felt a backlash from whatever being he worshipped as that being felt something else trying to steal from it. There was no reaction, not rejection, it was merely refusing to be consumed. "Who do you worship?" his response was confusion, so I had to rephrase. "What is the driving force of your life?"

His response lacked any form of hesitation whatsoever. "Anhata. My love for Anhata is beyond anything and everything!" that was interesting. He worshipped a human. And one that was weaker than him, no less.

"Which one is Anhata?" I decided that the issue may lie in Anhata. Curious, I built a circuit with the worship rune as a core. The circuit had nowhere near the potential of the pure rune in creating worshippers, even a true circuit wouldn't be as effective as the rune, but it would probably be the closest any human got to using the rune properly. "Do you recognize the core rune?"

The man reacted with disgust. For that to be so, he had to recognize it. "The enslavement spell is a perversion! Such evil would only exist among the chokers, how does a cannibal know of it? Wait…what are you? You walk next to a cannibal goblin, but you are clearly not one. Yet you are under a force commanded by a cannibal…how are you even free to roam, now that I consider the issue?"

At that point, Lagt dropped Anhata into the warded area. She woke up even faster than the male had, though her reaction was identical. "Anything you desire, you can have! Simply spare Aughil! Please!" not perfectly identical, she was even more emphatic than Aughil, her emotions so strong they tainted her intent, making communication more difficult for her. At that point, she realized Aughil was already standing nearby and jumped to her feet, not daring to rush into his arms but the urge was so strong I wouldn't have needed the ability to see through intent as it was actually imprinting itself into the intent.

Then I realized what was happening. They'd used some lesser form of the worship rune in a circuit to bind themselves together. He couldn't use his blood to form a worship contract because his blood was tainted with whatever contract he'd bound himself to Anhata with. "Mix your blood and drip it on the rune."

Neither hesitated. I could see hesitancy in their wills, but they were keeping it in check. This time, the blood was properly incorporated into the rune. It was strange, though. Normally, the will rune could hold multiple contracts at once. The rune was filled with this singular contract. I could think of a few possibilities as to why, but I didn't have enough information to conclude anything. I activated it and was amazed by how stoic they were. They didn't even wince. Their wills were clean of pain and stoicism as well, which was confusing. If they were in pain but resisting, stoicism should have been prevalent, if not dominant within their wills.

I put more attention into my sea of worshippers, finding their position within. It was strange. They didn't form second will-cores, but they were far from as liquid as the norm. They also ignored the flow of others, orbiting each other as they slowly orbited me. This was also the fastest it had ever finished. I dove into their wills, trying to understand. Once I saw, it was all too easy to know why. Their will-cores weren't solid, which was the hardest hurdle to cross, but they were already fragmented. Whatever circuit they used took different pieces of their will-cores than worship did…no, the orbiting pieces in my worshipper sea confirmed that the pieces worship took were still bound to each other. There were still pieces of them left orbiting the other, though.

Whatever circuit they used didn't completely take the respective pieces, instead making weak copies that allowed the influence to be similar without taking away the ability to resist. Resistance would be terribly difficult and painful, but had I used as weak a circuit as they did it would have been possible for Samantha to break free. She'd have lost the pieces that would remain mine due to the contract, but she would have been able to cut herself free.

Well, this served to answer one question I'd had, which was whether my worshippers could have their own worshippers as well. Turned out they could, so long as the worshipper they wanted was also a worshipper of mine. I wasn't sure if they'd face any extra challenges as they advanced farther into the orbit, but at least I knew it was possible.

Having understood that riddle, it was much easier to convert the rest. The cannibal necromancers were harder. The largest hurdle I had with each of them was convincing them that the cannibals that worshipped me no longer ate goblins. Once I'd bridged that divide, the necromancers became much easier to convert.

All the while, Lagt was struggling to hide her inner fan-girl. Every time I dominated someone, she had a fresh shock of devotion go through her body. When I'd started using her, she'd barely formed her second will-core. By the time the enemy had all been converted she had already entered the inner orbit.

Lagt was the most interesting from any from the new broods. While the food goblins in the other armies saw themselves as tools and merely worked to be useful, Lagt was determined to dominate. Specifically, she wanted to dominate all of the female goblins in her generation. She'd had the aspiration boiling at her core since she was born, managing to subdue two by the time I promoted her, but that drive had been reinforced exponentially by the appearance of my food goblin avatar. Seeing her god adopt her form proved that her race wasn't inferior to the vastly physically superior regular goblins. Unlike many of the others that had inferiority complexes boiling under the surface, however, she saw the reality of the situation.

I was her only source of salvation. I was a magical creature, manipulating the world itself as I saw fit. She took that inspiration and almost ignored the power her body was trying to teach her and instead devoted herself to magic. She wasn't nearly as proficient as Angie, but the first thing she did once the enemies had been subdued is immediately use the worship rune on her two goblins. Both had second will-cores, but neither were able to enter the inner orbit. With the worship, though, they immediately entered the inner orbit. Their position was weird, though. They didn't generate any of the altered will like the rest of the inner orbiters, instead they provided exponentially more of it to Lagt. In compensation, they no longer acted as a source of altered will for any of the other inner orbiters though.

Samantha remained indisposed, giving Lagt the army like she didn't want it in the first place. I didn't mind so long as the army progressed as I wanted it to and there was a clear line of command. It also allowed me to familiarize myself with moving my avatar quite well. The rest of them were merely floating over my armies, they didn't even need to participate in cleaning up ambient monsters like my constructs did.

It took a month after Lagt had taken command of the army, and conquered the rest of the goblins, before she was the first to actually build a circuit using the altered will. It surprised me that Angie wasn't the first, but given the difference in how much of it each was generating per revolution, it was less surprising.