I used [Soul Communion] to order a full retreat of all my forces in China. I would have liked to keep my troops spread out to occupy the area and exert my influence in preparation for my post ascension plans but alas, the enemy Devourer trumps that.

I waited somewhat impatiently for the nearby Dragon teams to return to the Shanghai Tower so we could regroup before heading to the Reagan. To pass the time I had Orochi eat the Skeleton Knights that I had made while on the top of the building in order to increase his strength.

With every chomp, another obsolete Skeleton knight disappeared into Orochi’s maw and through his Mana Heart, became a part of him. Thereby increasing his bone magic aptitude, granting him better control over his own bones and increasing the durability of his own bones incrementally.

After eating a hundred or so Skeleton Knights, he had gotten a lot heavier, as his bones had grown denser after fusing with the Skeleton Knights. He'd have to use more mana to Levitate but he should be able to take hits more easily and recover faster from lost bones.

Once I could see the nearest Dragons teams heading towards me, Orochi and I flew upwards to meet them. I could see the army of spirits flowing over and around the legions of zombies and skeletons of various ranks as they tried to keep up.

I exchanged some details with them while we waited for their ground troops to assemble. Mostly I told them of my short term plans, as to upgrading our offensive abilities and counteracting any possible vulnerabilities and listened to their progress reports as to their respective conquests.

We hovered over the conquered city as we talked, [Levitation] allowing the Bone Dragons to maintain position easily. Shanghai was quiet, as anyone left alive had barricaded themselves within their homes or offices. Somewhat unnecessary as our army hadn’t bothered to clear out buildings unless the occupants attacked us directly but I suppose they didn’t know that. I admired their efforts regardless of how futile their resistance would have been if we actually wanted to attack them.

It took some time but eventually the closest ground forces were sufficiently assembled within the heart of Shanghai so that we could return to the Reagan. The other 200 Dragon teams and their forces would have to find their own way back to the shore later. I hadn’t planned for a full retreat so I hadn’t factored in that the Bone Dragons were far faster than the ground troops could hope to be even with Skeletal Steeds. My forces were spread out all over China and it would take a lot of time for them to retreat with me to my fall back position of Japan.

In total, there were roughly 80 million troops at my disposal. This simply wouldn’t work, I had stretched my forces too thinly in my desire for easy conquest and had left myself vulnerable. I had overextended myself, I couldn’t pull out quickly enough to deny the Devourer more power and still maintain control over all my forces to the fallback position.

I sent a message to the other Liches that were still incoming to organise their ground forces to head to the Russian border. It was the best solution I could think of to counter this new problem. I simply didn’t have the time to wait for them.

While the majority of the ground forces headed north to Russia; the Liches and the Mage Prisoners would be returned via Bone Dragon. The Death Lords would be left mostly in charge of the offensive with a handful of Liches to report back their progress. After all at this point I didn’t really need any more troops. I just needed them out of the way of the Devourer, so they wouldn’t make him more of a threat.

I would just have to figure out a way to transport the 3 million troops that I had available on hand, across the ocean, to Japan, to finish my occupation attempt there.

It would be a challenge as I only had 3 ships and even cramming my troops in tight, it wouldn’t be nearly enough space for all of them. Especially as I needed to transport living prisoners that would take up a disproportionate amount of space. I had some ideas how to clear up some space though and increase the capacity of transportation.

I had the 30 Shanghai Dragon teams deposit their unnecessary luggage of Death Knights and instead collect the Mage Prisoners who had been trapped within Bone Prisons. They used [Life Drain] to put them to sleep or [Soul Drain] to sap their will to fight.

I had the Dragon Teams return to the Reagan to secure our valuable prisoners while I led the rest of the army on an uneventful march back.

The Shanghai forces numbered over 3 million troops (not including Skeletal steeds).

Skeletons made up 80% as they were arguably the easiest to animate and control; roughly 2.4 million of them, with simple Skeleton Warriors making up nearly half of those numbers.

Zombies made up about 15% of the army as they were stripped off their humanity and simply hungered for meat for the most part, 450000 of them so far. Only a couple hundred of them were of the elite varieties, Revenant Lords and Rampagers.

Spirits numbered about 5% of the army, roughly 150000 of them, One Wraith Emperor, 15 Wraith Kings, 15000 Wraith Lords, 75000 Wraiths and 50000 Spirit scouts.

As to the elites, there was roughly ten thousand Death Knights, one thousand Death Lords and 10 Dead Kings.

After I led my ground forces to the Reagan, it was about time to start thinning the herd and get rid of all this dead weight. I needed a leaner meaner army, with far less cannon fodder.

As the spirits didn’t take up any physical space, I wasn’t overly concerned about their numbers. However if I wanted to deal with this threat, it was better to have a small selection of elite undead, rather than a large horde of low level undead minions.

I had the Wraiths [Soul Drain] the Spirit Scouts out of existence, about 5000 of the Wraiths advanced into Wraith Lords, while the others simply became slightly more powerful Wraiths.

Once that was done, I sent out a scouting team, complete with a Lich on a Bone Dragon escorted by a handful of Wraiths to keep an eye on the Devourer from a distance. That way they could keep track of it’s movements and to help identify any weaknesses it may have and report details back to me, real time, through [Soul Communion].

Typically an unaffiliated Devourer moved fairly slowly as they stopped often to devour everything they could. As this was a high level one, it’d simply use [Energy Drain] at it’s highest setting and strip all energy from it’s opponents or anything living in it’s path to feed it’s endless hunger. Anything could and would feed it, it’d stop at nothing to get stronger.

Next I had the Skeleton Warriors engage in a brutal free for all. I watched as over a million Skeleton Warriors hammered away at each other, using [Bone Siphon] to steal the marrow from their competitors in a bloodless war of attrition.

While they were doing that I had the Skeletal Mages, Sorcerors and Skeleton Knights gather into their respective groups. I had a plan for them.

My zombies were sent out to secure a perimeter and rear guard, though at this point, the Chinese had essentially surrendered up their country after the defeat of their armed forces and were wisely staying out of the line of fire.

I had the rest of my Liches assemble, including several Skeletal Liches and using their collective energy performed an upgrade on myself. I upgraded my oversized human heart into a Mana Heart, which would allow me to generate my own mana like a dragon, instead of relying on this world’s mana supply like a chump.

The Death Knights maintained iron control over the 700 or so living prisoners we had.

There were more incoming. This was going to be a logistical nightmare.

The Skeleton Warriors were still going at it, hammering away at each other with bone spears and bone swords, those that were closer to ranking up, gaining more power than they were losing. It was still too slow. The Skeleton Warriors weren’t really meant for combat against each other but needs must when the devil drives. I threw in some Skeleton Knights to speed up the culling.

At my command the prisoners were gathered up along with the Liches and an equal amount of Death Knights.

Since I was getting rid of some of the dead weight, had upgraded myself, sent off some troops to perform such espionage on the enemy, it was time for the next step. The Soul Virus needed to be removed from my prisoners as a test run and a quick way to test for potential necromancers and Liches.

Once the Death knights gathered the prisoners altogether, I took a rough count, there were several hundred prisoners, ranging from the ages of 13 to 30. They could be very useful if used right but first I needed to strip them of Soul Virus, couldn’t let my knowledge be spread without my control, didn’t want another Devourer on my hands.

I walked into the centre of the crowd of potential mages, ignoring their screams, shouts and sobbing as irrelevant.

I only had about a hundred Liches under my command nearby, so I could only do this on a small scale, at least until all the other Dragon teams returned.

I connected myself to my Liches, I was their master and they were my minions but we were connected by shared blood shed and by our very souls. A little piece of my soul was in each of them, admittedly some had a stronger connection than others but such was the way of things.

I drew on the shared power, linking us together for a moment, letting our souls resonate on the same frequency and with a thought reached out to our nearby prisoners and with a very light touch pulled on the soul fragment within them.

All of them were infected with the Soul Virus and all of them had incidentally learned Meditation from being a host and discovered their own form of magic while under stress. I watched with eagle eye attention as to which of their souls resisted the most...

With a yank I pulled harder and pieces of soul flew towards the gestalt soul of my Liches and I. We consumed the pieces hungrily, it was a light snack but flavoured with the very best of their souls. At least from our point of view.

I flicked through the memories. They all sort of blurred together, mind numbing fear of being eaten by the zombies, impotent rage at seeing their loved ones die. The deaths varied, some killed themselves, some died of natural causes, some were gunned down by reanimated soldiers or police or simply torn apart by the teeth of zombies or sliced and diced by the weapons of the other undead .

It was all so repetitive, heartache, loss, fear of losing the mortal vessel. Soon no one would have to lose anyone again.

I passed off the traumas to my Liches, so they could digest them and improve their souls and increase their general mastery of the soul. It held little value to me.

In this group there were at least 50 with the potential of being necromancers or decent liches.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I had to make do with pumping in more mana and effort into creating Liches from the crew of the Reagan. Only a handful of them actually had the talent for mid level necromancy.

Top level necromancers had both spirit sight, which allowed them to see ghosts and other being of other planes such as demons or the generic term used by the Chinese, the Yaoguai as well as base level necromancy talent, which allowed for two way communication.

The rest of the Liches I had made onboard the Reagan had little natural talent for necromancy and none of them had the Spirit Sight. Which admittedly wasn’t necessary, since I had managed to rise to prominence without that talent, I just had to rip out the eyes of a spiritualist and use them for my own until I had developed [Spirit Walk]. It was a simple but elegant solution.

With a thought directed to my Liches, I pointed out those with at least basic necromancy talents, those with at least some control of their soul. At least enough control to resist a tug on the soul by an enemy necromancer, it was a start, they had a modicum of talent, they just needed to be taught how to use it properly.

Each of my Liches picked out an apprentice from the group to be shaped in their image, passing along some of their knowledge, though mostly it was just my knowledge regurgitated through the lens of a novice.

Their apprentices were dragged off with the usual screaming, shouting and sobbing. Admittedly the path of a Lich could be difficult, especially with such a time crunch. The Liches pulled out the souls of their apprentices and stripped out some of their memories, added some of their own and walked off with new Lesser Liches in tow.

The crowd of potential mages was reduced as the Liches and their new lesser Liches went off for some intensive training. It was far easier to learn how to control your soul and the soul of others as an undead than it was a living breathing person, at least when you have mediocre talent to work with.

Thanks to the combination of my personal guidance, and the consumption of vast amounts of my soul fragments, death and soul energy, my Liches have progressed unnaturally quickly.

Normally I would slowly build up my forces in a new place but there was a clock ticking in my head, spelling out my doom if I delayed. Kono had only been in my world for a couple of months before bringing down my empire and it had only been a couple of days in this world. That spoke to a greatly disadvantageous time dilation that worked against me. I needed to take risks to advance and ascend in time before retribution found me.

I was still a little surprised that he hadn’t already ascended into Godhood and tracked me down to destroy me. Or that there didn’t appear to be any divine retribution heading my way. Maybe my contingency plans were working out better than I thought they would. It would make a welcome change, for something to work out better than expected instead of always planning for the worst.

The wayward Devourer spoke to an oversight on my behalf, I had left pieces of my soul throughout the world to make it easier for me to make and control the undead. I knew it had risks and was willing to accept them as the cost of taking over a world so much more technologically advanced than mine.

Now I had to deal with a Devourer I had probably incidentally created through my attempts to have the humans serve as mana collectors for me. Mana consumption increased the capability of bodies to fight and flee, makes it useful for reanimating the dead, as it's easier to do when they’re already partially saturated with magic. Those with natural necromantic talent in possession of a soul fragment of mine could become Liches in opposition to me.

At the very worst, I’d just have to put an ocean between us and make use of a different continent and different strategy to ascend. I had a lot of experience dealing with setbacks after all. There was always a way to turn a setback into a way forward if you were as intelligent and persistent as I am.

The amateur Mages were getting increasingly restless and hostile, some of them were even attacking me. Not that their attacks had much impact as I was coated in bone armor specifically to avoid potential threat by fire magics but it did throw me out of my introspection.

Work first, plotting later.

I had a bad habit of getting lost in my own thoughts, after all I had an entire library of other people’s thoughts and memories within my soul. Sometimes it was hard to stay focused or sane.

I had the Death knights use [Life Drain] to drain the prisoners into submission and had them drag them off to be dealt with later. Once all the other dragon teams had returned and I could categorise them into different schools of magic.

I watched as the Skeleton Warriors were either destroyed or advanced into Skeleton Knights with some of them advancing into Skeleton Knight Captains in the large scale melee.

I still had too many troops and not enough cargo space for them all.

I had those who didn’t already have a suitable Bone Staff, pick out a Skeleton Knight to sacrifice to turn their spine into a medium for bone magic. It only reduced the numbers of Skeleton Knights by a few thousand. At least all the Skeleton Liches, Revenant Lords, Liches, Skeleton Mages and Skeleton Sorcerers were properly equipped now.

There were still too much dead weight. I might need to take some drastic actions, with even greater risks with even greater chances of catastrophic failures.

I laughed maniacally and clapped my hands together, it was good to be the Supreme Lich, in a world with so little oversight, I could practice being a God of Death without Gods and Heroes and pissed off Demons and Dragons to get in the way. What a wonderful world, I think I might just conquer it, instead of simply using it as a mere pit stop on my way to glory and Godhood.

Time to break the cardinal rule of Summoners, yet again. I’m going to call forth a DracoLich into being. It’ll either bring me great success or catastrophic failure. Either way, should be interesting. Just have to wait for the rest of the Dragon Teams to arrive, to have sufficient juice for the Grand Rite.