Now that I had a mobile fortress with elite undead and a multitude of high tech weaponry to play with, it was time to escalate my campaign against this world to the next stage.

I sent telepathic messages to a dozen of my Death Knights to take the aircraft out for a test flight while I made use of the nuclear reactor to expand myself further.

While I had filled my mana pool to it’s maximum, it was nowhere close to the maximum I had in my world. It was time to upgrade my mind, body and soul as far as I could while I had the luxury of a defensible base and powerful minions to defend it.

I had my other Liches and Death Knights busy with various tasks within the Regan to repair damage, monitor various potential threats and to adjust to their new states of being.

The normal cycle for living organisms is to hunger, eat and grow until they reached a certain level where growth would slow down or even reverse over time. After death, an undead had a far greater potential for rapid growth, as an undead didn’t have to worry so much about aneurysms, heart failures and death. Someone who conquered death as a Lich had essentially unlimited potential to improve, admittedly it did take longer, as the requirements to advance are more involved and has it’s own unique dangers.

I channelled the power from the nuclear reactor into my body, using the mana to improve my body even further as it was the foundation for greater pursuits. I discarded unnecessary organs such as the stomach, gall bladder, pancreas, lungs, appendix, large and small intestines.

I made use of the extra room in my thoracic cavity to expand my heart to triple it’s size. I used bone magic to strengthen the ribs and also to reshape them adding vertical columns to create a grid of bones to protect the expanded heart.

In place of intestines to process waste, I grew two specialised organs essential to a Lich. The Gressich, an organ that served to concentrate various poisons ingested, inhaled or otherwise imbibed into usable poison for either conversion into mana or as an attack. The second organ called the Urselna served a similar function to the fictional dantian allowing greater quantities of mana to be contained within the body itself for longer periods of time.

As a high ranking Lich, I was more than just an undead with magic and a bad attitude. I bordered the realm of living and undead and could take the best of both to reshape myself into the best I could be. Those weren’t the only changes I made, I increased the density of bone in my skull, thinning it while making it ten times tougher to break with bone magic and toughened the bones of the spine and neck. Then I increased the toughness of my epidermis making it tough like alligator hide, making use of ancient reptilian DNA within the human genome to equip the change.

The knowledge of DNA was a real boon to me, as it allowed me to play god with greater precision making use of necromancy, blood and bone magic, along with enchanting to upgrade my current vessel.

Satisfied by the changes to the body I worked on the toughest of all to upgrade, the mind itself.

I quarantined my own memories from life as a mortal and stripped out the memories of love and loss and copy them into a newly formed and empowered Soul Servant. Using the new knowledge gained from the people of this I encoded him with memories of being a librarian. Gifting him with a limited supply of soul magic I essentially create a Soul Librarian within me. He was given the goal to digitise my Soul Library in whichever way would be most effective.

Creating him cost me most of my mana to but thankfully due to the nearby nuclear reactor I had a convenient source of nearly infinite magic to make use of to recharge. I named him Luthor, a slight variation on my former human name.

These days I’m usually referred to by various titles, most of which are made by my enemies and are generally stupid or unimaginative. The Lich King, the No Life King, The Undead Bastard, Abomination, Undead Emperor and so on.

I usually only answer to Master or Supreme Lich or Lich when my minions talk to me or when I’m having a conversation with the Demon King about getting rid of potential threats.

I rarely talk to enemies directly, sometimes I do monologue when I’ve been cornered by some annoying Hero and need to stall for time for reinforcements or to plot a last minute escape.

Luthor would provide me with more mental space to concentrate on certain tasks.

I couldn’t upgrade my Soul directly, I could only wait for Luthor’s efforts to pay off. Once he processed the souls, stripping them of their useful memories and the multitude of traumas, my mind and soul would be enriched. Their knowledge making me smarter and their traumas strengthening my soul.

Luthor had a lot of work to do, I had thousands of Soul Books piled up. I grabbed a handful of the unsorted Soul books and brought them into the mortal realm.

Channeling the power of the nuclear reactor into mana via [Energy Drain], I used Spirit Sight along with the advanced spirit magic [Call Spirit] to reform the Soul Books into the spirits of the dead.

Ignoring their usual complaints about me killing them I used [Ephemeral Chains] to bind them to my will, [Telepathy] to share with them the knowledge of a few spells granting them with the magical knowledge to use [Telekinesis], [Levitation] and [Soul Drain].

I usually didn’t bother with enslaving spirits, those that survived in my world were usually the mindless undead or restless undead and neither made useful spirit servants. Sometimes I used them as scouts or messengers, as those without spirit sight could not see them and they moved quickly over long distances.

They made poor warriors as they had a multitude of weaknesses and thanks to Lumos’ light they could not move during the day without expiring. They were seldom worth the effort of using in my undead armies.

However creating Luthor had reminded that this was a new world and a Spirit Scout could be quite useful. All it required after all was a Soul tethered to the mortal plane and a little bit of spiritual slavery. If I was right, it was possible that they might be more effective than my traditional armies. They may even be able to advance into Wraiths or even Wraith nobility without much in the way of meaningful resistance. No Gods seemed to be active on this world and the people had little mana or magic to make use of the usual inherent weaknesses of spirits. It was worth experimenting with, all it’d take is time and mana and I had more than enough of both to spare.

It took a couple of hours to create 5 Spirit Scouts, Souls pumped full of mana to serve as my eyes and to some extent my claws. Most of the time was spent indoctrinating them on the necessity for loyalty and patience and stripping them of any leftover morality or anger towards me. It wasn’t uncommon for the undead to have grudges against me as my minions or I were often the last thing they saw before they died. This meant I had to strip them of their rage before they could be of use. Unlike the fictional versions of ghosts, real ghosts managed to stay on the mortal plane mostly out of resentment or rage or in some cases calculative insanity.

While I did like getting reports about what came up on sonar or radar or on the radio, I found the information gained from an invisible, intangible minions loyal to me to be uniquely valuable on a battlefield. I sent them off to scout ahead for me. They were the equivalent to military drones but with far higher individual intelligence.

I sent orders to my minions on the boat to set sail, such as it were towards our destination, with the aircraft that I had commandeered serving as our aerial escort.

I gathered my 500 Liches along with Orochi and the Skeleton Knights to perform a ritual in order to get me another Bone Dragon.

I planned on having a small army of Bone Dragons at my disposal, the initial costs of Bone Dragon were excessive but they paid off quickly. With 500 Liches to help channel the growing supply of mana into the sacrificed bones of the Skeleton Knights I soon had another Bone Dragon to call my own. The Skeleton Knights would simply regrow their lost bones soon enough.

I called the new Bone Dragon Feilong in honor of our intended conquest. It’s shape was far different from Orochi’s as it was built mostly from the femurs of my Skeleton Knights and shaped with the will and mana of 500 Liches, boosted by the corrupted mana produced by a Bone Dragon. It measured roughly 20 meters long and lacked wings. After all the wings weren’t strictly necessary as [Levitation] did most of the actual flying, wings were just typically there as a back up. The memories gained from the Japanese had this sort of dragon as an emblem of their culture. All the more reason to use it against them.

I had decided on my next target, China for a few reasons.

The major reason was that it had a billion plus people. A number I had never considered possible in my world. I think the entirety of my world had only had 30 million humans in it who were at constant risk of attack by monsters and threat of famine to get numbers anywhere near those of Earth.

The second reason was that it was conveniently close by, reachable in less than a day and was simply too good to pass up. The third reason was that according to the memories I gained, China had a large proportion of the elderly. Those over the age of 50 should have deliciously strong souls to consume or potentially turn into Liches depending on their magical affinities.

I had Orochi hover above us while Feilong prowled the deck, displaying a sinuous grace as it walked around, pumping corrupted mana into the air for my Lich Brethren and myself to enjoy and absorb. It’d take roughly twenty hours to get there as we were only travelling about 50 k an hour and it was over a thousand kilometres away. We made use of the time to create another 10 bone dragons. Every new bone dragon increased the quality and quantity of mana on board, allowing us to recharge our mana supplies faster. Soon we wouldn’t have to rely on the nuclear reactor and could use it solely for it’s original purpose of propulsion.

My Spirit Scouts made it to the coast of China far faster than our ship as they did not have to resist the crashing waves. They flew above the surface at 3 times our speed, averaging around 150 km/hr. They scouted the coast, looking for good spots for us to disembark. They found us a good place to land and while they waited for us to get there, they went out to feed.

Normal spirits gained power exceedingly slowly as time goes on and they grow ever more frustrated by their lost lives. They gain the ability to affect the physical world in small ways, becoming what is known in this world as poltergeists. Particularly nasty spirits may haunt a person until they die in ‘tragic circumstances’ so that they can feed on their souls, gaining power that way.

My spirits started off with the ability to drain power from a soul while still contained with a living body and to inflict their will upon the world. As such the Spirit Scouts could drain the Soul energy from a victim in an hour, leaving only a soulless husk behind. Their preferred prey were those considered sages, those in isolation above the age of 60. By the time we disembarked on Sheshan Mountain outside of China they have consumed several souls and 4 of them have become Wraiths. As Wraiths they only require half an hour to devour the soul of a living person.

One of them however was killed by an amateur necromancer who banished the Spirit while it was in mid feed. I guess all the corrupted mana pumped out by my bone dragons have made all the quasi spiritualists nearby with even a hint of natural talent into Necromancers. I was not overly concerned about it, amateur necromancers or exorcists would only be a speed bump, not a serious obstruction to my plans.

I lead a small contingent of my troops into China, leaving the bulk of my forces on the Reagan. I jumped on the back of Orochi alone, while the other Bone Dragons were loaded up with my elite troops. Each of the other bone dragons carried at least one Lich and 20 Death Knights.

Each of the Liches carried a bone staff, made with the skull and spine of a Skeleton Knight and ensorcelled with various enchantments to maximise certain magics specific to the Lich’s preferences. Each Death Knight was armed with a Bone Sword in one hand and a gun of one sort or another in the other, some M-60s; others carried pistols of various makes and manufacturers. All the new weapons were acquired from the armouries aboard the Reagan. While I appreciated the value of these new weapons of mass murder, I harboured a sentimental attachment to cold weapons of bone. After all I preferred a weapon you didn’t need to reload so often.

In my absence I had the other 490 or so Liches focus on creating more Bone Dragons so as to allow us to carry more troops across at a time. With so many Liches, they should be able to mass produce Bone Dragons in my absence.

We flew over fields of green and brown as the sun rose. The Death Knights were dropped onto the ground just within the small district of Tangzhen to reap lives like wheat while Liches spread poison from above on the backs of bone dragons to weaken any potential resistance.

The Death Knights killed without mercy, quickly going through their ammo supplies eliminating the humans in the way. The Liches descended transforming the recently dead into zombies who sped up the early morning slaughter with their fearsome appetites. Meanwhile the Wraiths ranged far ahead, sapping the energy from the souls of the elderly with greatly increased speed. The empty husks left behind by the Wraiths were turned into zombies once the Liches were within range.

We glutted on the abundance of prey. The Wraiths feeding on the souls of the living and the ghosts of the dead who died with lingering resentment and were still bound to the world by their rage.

As we marched towards Shanghai, the Liches raised the dead into either zombies or skeletons depending on the state of the body. Our numbers quickly swelled.

Zombies quickly advancing into Ghouls after eating their fill of human flesh leaving behind bite marked skeletons in their wake. The Wraiths advanced into Wraith Lords after draining the energy from many souls and were granted the ability to use [Ephemeral Chains] to bind Spirit Scouts and Wraiths into service beneath them.

Most of the zombie leftovers were turned into Skeleton Warriors, Knights or Mages while the corpses left behind by the Wraiths were reanimated into Zombies.

In the case where there was a skeleton too damaged to be worth animating into a Skeleton minion, the bones were collected by my undead army to turn into staves, swords or simply into material for Bone Dragons later.

I also continued to rain down Bone Spears onto the ground near newly animated corpses so they could have a convenient weapon nearby to arm themselves. Sometimes I simply Bone Speared those who tried to get away so that when a Lich got around to raising them, they could simply pull out the spear and immediately use it as a weapon.

Soon Tangzhen was at our back. From a little over 220 troops to over 20000 in only a few hours, I led a veritable army on the march towards Shanghai, a city with a population of over 20 million people to harvest.

I took a moment to appreciate the Shanghai skyline, while I had plenty of memories of it thanks to the souls of the recently deceased, it was still a marvel to me. The people of this world had created some impressive works of construction, it almost made me feel bad about being responsible for an impending cataclysm. Almost. However some things must be sacrificed in pursuit of loftier goals like immortality for the human race. I'll pay them all back once I've become their God.

When we reached the busiest section of Shanghai there was some resistance in the form of armed police officers, but not that many and not that well armed or accurate with their shots. They were armed with a mix of pistols and sub machine guns. As the Death Knights had all the benefits of a Skeleton Knight (tougher skeletons) and [Life Drain] allowing them range and the ability to easily repair damage done to their bodies, the slaughter was fairly easy.

There were some surprises, there were a few people flinging around magic, which I did not expect but probably should have, given recent developments. Not very high level magics, admittedly, the odd fireball or frost bolt. Some of them even managed to cast various banishments upon my Death Knights which slowed their progress somewhat. I thought it was an entertaining development and rained down bone spears near them and trapped them within [Bone Prisons]. I sent through an order to spare anyone who displayed any talent at magic. The Liches oversaw that project as they could be useful to study the necessary attributes for Skeletal Sorcerors or future liches. The amateur mages were trapped within [Bone Prisons] for the time being until they could be properly dealt with.

Once the police were killed and were raised as Zombies or Skeletons and turned against the population, the slaughter sped up as they came equipped with weapons of mass murder. The unarmed humans were at greater risk of death from a reanimated cop with a sub machine guns than they were from being stabbed with a bone spear/sword wielded by a martial minded Skeleton Knight.

All the death helped the minions rank up quickly, the Death Knights became Death Lords, allowing them to raise Skeletal Steeds and raise their own Death Knights and increasing the range and effect of their Life Drain. One of Wraith Lords advanced into a Wraith King, allowing him to enslave all the spirits below him into his service. The Ghouls advanced into Ravagers and Skeleton Knights advanced into Skeleton Knight Captains and commanded groups of Skeleton Knights.

A new variation of Skeleton Mage became apparent amidst the battle, a Skeleton Sorceror, these were more powerful than a simple Skeleton Mage as they could use different magics than were assigned to them by their Lich or displayed greater ability than expected with the spells given. Either way, they made a useful addition to our swelling numbers.

Each of the Liches I had brought with me, managed to find at least 2 suitable apprentices each, increasing the amount of liches with me from 10 to 35.

Skeletons numbered over a hundred thousand. Roughly 1% Skeletal Sorcerors, 10% Skeletal Mages, 50% Skeleton Warriors, 30% Skeleton Knights and 10% Skeleton Knight Captains.

Zombies numbered about twenty thousand with 60% being the standard Zombie, 30% Ghouls and 10% Ravagers.

Spirits numbered around five thousand, with Spirit Scouts being 30%, Wraiths 50%, Wraith Lords 20% with only a single Wraith King commanding them all.

Death Knights numbered 200, Death Lords numbered 20.

The population of Shanghai was decimated after a long day of murder. Each Lich led different groups through the branching streets to maximise the reaping.

We bypassed children (potential demon bait) and women under 30 (repopulation) wherever possible. Some of the men that displayed courageous acts of bravery against my army were [Bone Prisoned] for repopulation purposes and other reasons.

When the sky turned dark and a new wave of heavily armed soldiers appeared I called a calculated retreat.

When they tried to follow on land, my liches simply raised up a ten foot tall [Bone Wall] with the bones of their Bone Dragons.

The enemy aircraft was somewhat hampered by our use of hostages… Or more accurately our collection of budding Mages that I wanted to experiment with in quiet. There was also the fact that with so many more Skeleton Mages, the planes were being bombarded by various magic missiles of every sort of elemental flavor every time they were within range. The Wraiths were of great use in alerting us of enemy aircraft movements before they could even get in range of us.

We marched back to the coast with an army of over a hundred twenty thousand. I had already ordered the commander of the Reagan to come pick us up from near the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. We easily tore through the token resistance in our way, mostly those with intelligence quickly got out of our way and we didn't bother to pursue them. When we arrived at the meeting point, we found the Reagan clogged with new undead and with 3 new ships in its wake.

According to the memories shared with me from the Commander of the Reagan formerly known as Patrick they had been attacked by the naval forces of both the US and the Chinese. They had scraped out a victory using a combination of the weapons on board, the aircraft, the remaining troops and the Bone Dragons.

The Reagan was damaged but we had taken over a couple more (mostly) sea worthy ships and gained a dozen new Bone Dragons so it was only a minor setback, not a serious one. We would need to make repairs though before we could make full use of the ships.

I gathered my Liches, Bone Dragons, Skeleton Mages and Skeleton Sorcerors and Skeleton Knights to perform a grand rite in order to mass manufacture us new Bone Dragons. I had the Liches team up in groups of 50 and make a circle and had the Skeleton Knights sacrifice their bones and place them inside the circle. Each group had at least one Bone Dragon and at least a hundred Skeleton Sorcerors to draw extra mana from. They started the ceremony and each group created a new Bone Dragon, twice the length as before in the ‘Eastern’ style.

The new Bone Dragons were sent to roam around on the lookout for other ships that may try and attack us. Using this new method, each group could create a new Bone Dragon every half an hour.

I orchestrated my own special rite, using the freshly bloodied bone swords of the Skeleton Warriors and Knights to create a Bone Dragon variant, called the Bloodied Dragon. It was simply a bone dragon with a layer of blood, it was about twice as strong as a normal Bone Dragon because it could use both blood and bone magic.

It could use the corrupted mana it generated to pump poison into its blood to create an acidic blood that it could rain down on enemies, along with a shower of bone spears. I named it Zedong after the famous Chinese political leader that lead his own bloody cultural revolution for more power. I still had another problem to be dealt with though, there were too many foot soldiers and not enough Bone Dragons to transport them quickly.

It was time to make use of a classic spell, [Raise Skeletal Steed], to provide my troops with mounts. I did have to make some adjustments to the spell since there was a distinct lack of horses nearby. I simply used human bones and used [Bone Shaping] and [Bone Strengthening] to create Skeletal Steeds for my army. It cost about 10 times more doing it this way, than just animating a dead horse but I simply had too many troops and there was a distinct lack of horses to make use of.

The night passed me by as I worked endlessly to produce Skeletal Steeds while the rest of the Liches worked on Bone Dragon production. The captured mages were just shoved into the depths of the Huanggang a Frigate captured off the Chinese to be dealt with later.

There were a few attempts by various military forces to attack during the night, a squad of ‘elite’ Chinese soldiers who tried to infiltrate us, suffered from a nasty cast of Life Drain. A naval operation by some SEALS that also ended with the group surrounded by zombies.

I had to admit the SEALS did a better job than the Chinese army, they did even more damage to one of my newly captured ships the Vikramaditya along with destroying several thousand of my skeletons. They managed to trigger an incomplete and somewhat premature explosion of C4 in it’s decks. From the memories I gained from their souls, their mission was to sink the ship to deprive me of their use and to undermine the local powers because of boring and complicated geopolitical reasons I had no interest in.

Learning from this mistake, I had the wraiths patrol beneath the water for any more aquatic incursions. The local sea life did suffer as the Wraiths made use of the time and their underwater patrols to kill every living thing in the area with Soul Drain. The simple aquatic life forms were no match for the Spectral predators.

In the morning as the sun rose, I was finally done with my preparations. The Skeletal Steeds numbered roughly ten thousand and there were 230 Bone Dragons, it was time to move. It still wasn’t enough for all my troops to have a mount but it would do.

Each of the Bone Dragons were loaded with at least 2 liches and 20 Death Knights and 20 Skeleton Knight Captains. Two Hundred of the Dragon Teams were sent deeper into China for a reaping, escorted by a selection of Wraiths and surviving aircraft piloted by other Death Knights. While most of my elites were flying far away to perform their reaping, I planned on making full use of the rest of our numbers to finish our work harvesting Shanghai. Previously I would have to wage during the night when my forces were the most powerful, but now it was far more convenient to attack during the day and reap any who were outside on the streets.

The rest of my forces spread out towards Shanghai, the Wraiths led the way serving as both scout and vanguard to search out and soften the enemies wherever possible. The Death Lords were mounted on Skeleton Steeds as were the remaining Death Knights and some of Skeleton Captains.

All the other skeletons and zombies filled out the middle and made up the bulk of the forces. The skeleton mages and sorcerors served as the rear guard and artillery support. The 30 Bone Dragon teams flew around the back of the army on the lookout for threats that could be dealt with.

Zedong and a few thousand undead stayed upon the Regan as the rest of my forces advanced on China. They were responsible for protecting our ships and repairing damage from multiple hostile encounters upon them. There were also about 40 Liches on board to continue the Bone Dragon production, though at a greatly reduced pace.

Every advancing Lich had orders to detain or protect those that display any magical ability for later harvests and to convert as many others as possible. The goal was not to kill and convert every citizen of China, the plan was to increase my own army before moving onto India and consuming it’s population before finally Ascending.

Upon reaching Shanghai there was a serious increase in opposition facing us. There were at least a few hundred thousand soldiers wearing gas masks and each of them were heavily armed.

I checked in with my other Liches to see if they were facing such entrenched opposition and they told me they had experienced little meaningful resistance. At least something was progressing smoothly.

The first wave of Wraiths took out some of the more troublesome snipers on the roofs along with their spotters, located throughout various buildings but could do little about the main bulk of the army. Too many of them, too tightly packed together for them to do their thing in peace.

The second wave of Death Lords, Death Knights and Skeleton Knight Captains crashed into the opposition and half of them fell to the heavy fire of massed machine guns, grenades and mortars. The rest however bought just enough time for the third wave of lower ranked skeletons and zombies to wade into battle. The skeletons tore into the living, using [Bone Siphon] and raw inhuman strength to render them limb from limb. They were followed soon after by the rear guard and support who helped even the battle.

The liches in the back line, raised the fallen soldiers and turned them against their former friends, throwing the opposition into chaos. The barrage of attacks from skeleton mages and sorcerors buried the enemy soldiers in alternating waves of ice, fire and poison, along with surges of lightning combined to really fuck them up.

Not to say it was without loss. About a third of my army was ultimately wiped out by the fighting but it posed no real problem. The survivors of the battle grew into veteran undead, able to maximise their talents to stay fighting without issue. Most of the dead soldiers were turned into one form of undead or another, some simply served as ammunition or were simply soul food for the Wraiths and Liches.

After the battle the total numbers of minions under my general control had more than doubled and numbered over a quarter million. My army was larger and stronger than ever.

Once the battle for Shanghai had essentially completed, I reviewed some of the memories I had gained from the fallen soldiers. They had evacuated most of Shanghai after the previous occupation. I sent my minions to hunt down any stragglers and finish them off. If they stuck around after yesterday they were too stupid to live.

After clearing the area, I had my forces split into 30 teams to raid all the smaller suburbs in the area and reap the harvest.

As my dragon teams went to work, I made use of the excessively tall Shanghai tower to serve as a roost for Orochi as I used [Soul Communion] to check in with each of my Dragon teams as they advanced throughout China, tracking their progress and their kill counts.

To pass the time, while I talked to them and essentially occupied the ghost town of Shanghai proper, I continued creating Skeletal Knights from the plucked bones of Orochi just on the offchance that some force tried to attack me while I was busy. There seems to be no end to the distractions, set backs and hostile forces here. It almost feels like home in a way, except less annoying priests and heroes to pose an actual threat to me.

Throughout China, the amount of Liches, Death Lords and Wraith Lords increased exponentially. Despite increasing amounts of the Chinese Army attacking my troops, the quality and quantity of my troops just kept improving.

More skeletons, zombies and spirits of increasing rank and power range from one Chinese city to the next. As I shared my knowledge of creating Skeletal Steeds from human bones with the other liches, the numbers of Skeletal Steeds dramatically increased.

As my Liches continued their missions, they took advantage of the endemic amounts of air pollution to refill their mana supplies as necessary.

Despite the truly staggering amount of people in this country, there were only about 2.5 million troops with another million or so held in reserve. They were spread far too thinly to handle 200 Dragon Teams spreading out, converting the 'harmless' civilians into agents of war and murder. China started to implode as civilians panicked and escaped the major cities as their friends and families were turned into killing machines. The police tried their best to stem the tide of violence and mayhem but they were outnumbered and were inevitably turned against each other as they fell, adding even more fuel to the chaos and mass murder.

By the time night fell, the total of minions under my regimented control numbered in the tens of millions and the death toll was in the hundreds of millions.

Unfortunately the good times are ended by a DEVOURER eating one of the Wraiths in Nepal where it was scouting ahead.

The Wraith King plays back its last moment for me and I watch in horror as it dies to an [Energy Drain] surrounded by familiar piles of dust.

FUCK FUCK FUCK. This is a problem.

A high level DEVOURER could ruin everything I've been working towards. My usual methods were either useless or unavailable, I'd have to think of something new to combat this problem. I might have to make a deal with the devil.