Countless planets vanished in a bright white flash, and several great beings cried out as their own lives crumbled alongside the lives of those under their control. The invasive war machine continued to burrow its way through the space that once belonged to the Dark Bell Collective destroying everything in its path. A massive metal ant’s nest powered by a complex of two-dozen Dyson spheres released, planet-sized fighter-jets that chased down and slaughtered the colossal beasts that the native forces used to try and fight back.

Several stars collapsed within the 122 multiverses that were now under our Empty-Society’s control. Those stars were consumed for the creation of a set of special particles that would be used as the physical host for the system we’d be setting up within those multiverses. See, besides cribbing the leadership styles and philosophies of our superiors and forebears, our little group was also straight-up stealing books from their page for how to do things.

After centuries of fighting, that was still technically ongoing if you counted the beings and groups that went underground or fled to just outside our range, we were now getting to the nitty-gritty of setting up a system of rule. I left the vetting of new leaders amongst the surviving gods, devils, spirits, and fae royalty to Jack and Kalpana.

Jack had a better mind for those sorts of things and was much more patient when it came to dealing with that kind of political nonsense. Kalpana never really felt like she’d be an especially great ruler, but she was quite literally a born general, and she knew exactly how to utilize the ever-growing number of Empty-Harvesters that served beneath her as an excellent means of keeping those who might think of trying to revolt from our rule in line. Especially, since at this stage of things, we were still kind of in a semi-omnicidal, “it’s fine if the void takes it all” mindset.

That probably sounded colder and more evil than it was meant to sound, but it was a sad fact that when fighting with immortals you couldn’t really afford to worry too much about the mortals inside their control. There were too many insidious levers and pulleys that could be played if you got drawn into that sort of game. I mean, even mortals know how hard it can be to save someone who’s been not only captured, but also brainwashed and radicalized to fight for their oppressors.

Often rather than get trapped in an eon’s long chess game where you’d be stuck trying to free a few billion hostages from the control of a mad deity. It was better to just deliver a swift and painless atomization to the entire planet, and compensate the souls for the loss of spiritual progress and interruption of their eternal journey, with some extra karma and boons for their next lives, so you could properly pummel the being that was hoping to hide behind them. Especially, since all too often, things ended up being resolved that way anyway.

We probably should have been way more disturbed by what we’re doing. However, things at the cosmic scale just tended to operate that way, and by the time one started thinking this way, more likely than not you’ll have already started getting detached from the value of mortal life as one of the elevated forms of mortality, i.e the cultivators, great mages, half-immortals, etcetera...Which again, still feels like I was trying to excuse the unfathomable loss of life we were taking part in. So I think I’ll just stop trying, and move on to something else.

We now had enough control over the 122 multiverses to complete the changes we’d set into motion. New gods, spirits, and other “benevolent” immortals were rising into power. Ones that wouldn’t treat the lives of the mortals beneath them as playthings. A more moderate, less extreme faction of Devils had been reached out to, and we were assisting them with the take-over of the region’s hells.

We didn’t really have to think too hard about what to actually do now that we had firmly taken over because we could just dip into the playbooks of the House of Antipodes and the Division of Cosmic Artifice. Adjusting according to the difference in circumstances.

We were especially keen on setting up a “system”, as in one of those reality-altering, game-type systems. It was what the Division did in all the worlds that they took over, and it saved them a great deal of trouble in dealing with the minutiae of controlling their territories, because you didn’t have to worry about people breaking your laws, if you’d re-wired the very laws of physics to make it either impossible, or extremely disadvantageous, to do so.

That’s what I meant by saying that people either felt the Division’s control keenly, or they didn’t feel them at all. The average person doesn’t really notice the law of gravity, outside of when something falls and breaks. It’s only the people who were trying to fly that realized the tyranny of the gravitational constant. Similarly, very few people gave serious thought to trying to rebel against gravity and other natural laws. They were just a fact of life. You could work around them, or not, but they were what they were. That’s sort of how we wanted to operate.

Our goal was simple. We’d create a system that would maintain and promote positive environmental developments, while curtailing, restraining, and outright punishing certain kinds of cosmic and mortal dickishness. We had to be really careful about not looking at things from a “moral” point-of-view because morals were always at least partially informed by individual, cultural, and species-based, expectations and norms. That’s why for the most part outside of general guidelines like: don’t make a mess of your environment; don’t purposefully try to destroy your world; And don’t be a dick, we generally left the details of how each world should be run, to the locals.

The hard part was creating a mass of living code that was rigid enough and tight enough, to keep folk from slipping past, or exploiting the rules we set in place. While also, keeping the system flexible enough, and loose enough, for it to be able to adapt to the countless realities present in the 122 multiverses. Fortunately, our status as members of the Division meant that there was an abundance of code that we could study, or outright steal, to get the job done. With that, and our experience with the Empty-Dream, there was no need to reinvent the wheel, to make a system that would boost the effectiveness of the law of magical osmosis, but “wouldn’t” incentivize murder.

Even with the Division’s assistance, there were a lot of things that were a puzzle to deal with, but honestly, it was often kind of fun at times. I learned a lot about how the background meta-reality of the worlds worked. I even learned, and saw, enough that it gave my Empty-Archive an opportunity to absorb more of the information and goings-on of the cosmos. Spawning, re-writes, and expanded editions for various works that were within the archive, because my expanded understanding of how things in the cosmos worked led to an expansion of the archive’s own understanding.

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[Hm, isn’t this going a bit too easily?] said Kalpana. Speaking to Jack via an encrypted mental connection.

[Yeah...Yeah, it is… But, funnily enough, I doubt that this is some kind of scam or play] said Jack.

[What is it then?] said Kalpana.

Jack just smiled lightly, while she continued speaking with a god of the mountains, winds, and clouds, regarding his rights and obligations in the new cosmic order.

Elsewhere, in what was now called the “Empty-Bell Multiverse Complex” Jack did her best to persuade and pressure the various immortal rulers that their group had elected to enter treaties with. It was a bit of a slog, but considering that they were a vastly outnumbered, invasive force, “a bit of slog” equated to things going damned swimmingly. There were no holdouts. A few people dug their heels in a little, but only for the sake of negotiating from a slightly stronger position. Even then most of the people they talked to, still gave ground relatively quickly.

Jack had expected to have to play all sorts of tricks to get the conversations moving along. Jack had expected to play the bad cop, and have Kalpana play the good cop. Jack had expected to have to walk away from some conversations, with new names for either secondary talks or continued hostilities. She was surprised to find that there was no need for such tactics. Her wonderful, knuckle-headed, husband had rendered such plans moot.

Jill was supposed to be working on setting up the coding and machinery for the systems that would do most of the actual governance for the Empty-Bell Complex. He wasn’t supposed to actually be initiating any of that code and machinery. Alas, her boy worked fast, the only time he took his time was in the bedroom. Which meant, for a majority of the talks she’d been having, were with a backdrop, of the heavens shifting and bending, and changing, with entire galaxies disappearing and reappearing at random.

In mortal terms, this would be like trying to dicker terms of a contract for trade and property while someone on the other side had a co-worker working in the background, creating, and uncreating, and recreating the whole world around the parties, while they were trying to calmly discuss the terms. Some folk would play nice due to being impressed at the capabilities of the other side. Others would give ground due to sheer terror.

It was a grossly unbalanced way to negotiate. However, Jack was pretty sure she was going to do something wonderful and vulgar for her husband when they got back home. Having him unknowingly intimidate and awe the immortals of the 122 multiverses, was speeding up the process of consolidating their group’s power, to a point where they’d likely be done within a few centuries instead of having to grind through for countless millennia.