As the new King of Japan, it was time to take a day off from conquest to lay the ground work for future endeavors. Luthor insists a day off from soul collecting would give him the time needed to help finish up the digestion/digitization process of all the souls that had been consumed so far.

I don’t need much convincing to spend a day touring the cultural hotspots of Japan, after all, it’s an amusing way to pass the time. It’d also allow me to review my new territory and its assets. More importantly it’ll give my new subjects a chance to meet with me and learn of my greatness, or at least hear about it.

I have a list of popular Japanese tourist destinations to visit given to me by the Japanese Prime Minister. Presumably to keep me out of the way as if that would work.

I jumped on Cucumber’s back and we head to Hiroshima, site of the first nuclear bomb used against civilians in World War Two.

During the flight, I find myself sinking into Cucumber’s new flesh, abruptly passing through his skin and past his bones and made a guest within his cavernous insides. There’s not much inside him, other than a large green Mana heart and a lot of bones. I ignore the strange urge to decorate.

I make myself comfortable in the lotus position, drawing upon the mana of his heart through [Meditation] as Cucumber increases speed, Hiroshima is quite a distance from Fukuoka after all. The wall of flesh and bones serves as protection against outside forces, such as wind and missiles. Cucumber has become much more capable as of late, capable of generating a large [Mana shield] around himself and any passengers he may be carrying. He makes the perfect transport and bodyguard.

Near my feet, a small circular patch of Cucumber’s underbelly thinned, providing a small 'window' of red with which to view the Japanese landscape. Japan was bathed in red, an ominous portent of things to come. I didn’t care too much for the scenery, giving it only the barest of attention as I conferred with Luthor and to a lesser extent the Lich network

There were a lot of Liches to manage. Some were in Russia, organizing a retreat from crazy Russian attacks. They were being harried by waves of suicidal/insane Russians armed with a variety of weapons from moloktov cocktails to nuclear warheads.

Most of my Liches were already on their way back to Japan, travelling on the backs of Bone Dragons or captaining Bone Galleys. They would help to reinforce my rule over the Japanese. I had no desire to rule over Russia after all, too large and cumbersome to conquer at the moment. Maybe later, after I dealt with the Devourer, I would return and conquer Russia.

Those already located in Japan spread out on the backs of Bone Dragons to ground all civilian air traffic, while the ground troops monitored ground traffic. My new mixed fleet of Bone Galleys and various types of mechanical war ships spread throughout the waters of Japan to monitor and control sea traffic.

Cucumber landed a few hours later outside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

It was the only building (formerly the Genbaku Dome) left standing near the hypocenter of the nuclear strike. It was preserved as a reminder of the devastation wrought by a nuclear attack and a memorial meant to inspire people to give up on creating more weapons of mass destruction.

At least that’s what the somewhat terrified tour guide stammered out after Cucumber and my arrival during her speech to the other tourists.

Probably didn’t help that Cucumber dropped out of the sky without warning near a group of tourists, depositing me on the ground before shapeshifting into a naked humanoid. After the typical amount of confusion, awkward laughter and screams, Cucumber grew out some bone armor from out of his sternum, covering his new naked body. It reduced some of the hysterics, at least, though some of the smaller younger male members of the group, ran up to Cucumber, wanting to play with him, much to the distress of their mothers.

Cucumber had shrunk down to a human size, well 5’8, so a medium human size, serving me as a body guard of sorts or as my dragon pet. Who knows, he keeps doing things without my orders. He's a loose cannon. I have no idea how he's condensed his mana heart so much in order to create this form.

Cucumber has become more of a dragon than I expected. Dragons have a habit of shapeshifting as needed, it’s a lot easier to collect treasures when you can create hands to pry coins and jewels off humans.

I move on from worrying about Cucumber and his displays to focus on the memorial, as he's now busy giving the children piggy back rides, growing a pair of bone wings out of his back to achieve a low altitude glide. Their parents and guardians are freaking out though.

This seems like an odd way of commemorating a massacre of civilians. I would have favored creating a mass grave for the people who did it but I guess they were too weak to do so.

After causing a stir and introducing myself as the new ruler of Japan and apologizing for the antics of my dragon man and listening to the stammering tour guide detail the history of the site, we moved on.

The Genbaku Dome was a blown out husk of a building and had little to recommend it. The levels of radiation after 60 years was unsuitable for a new home base. It was practically the same background radiation as everywhere else. I had something very particular in mind.

Next up on tour was the Himeji Castle.

More time spent traveling within Cucumber before arriving outside Himeji Castle, scaring more tourists. This time when Cucumber transformed, he immediately grew bone plate armor over himself, so as not to embarrass the tourists with nudity. They still panicked and ran around aimlessly.

While I find Himeji Castle to be more useful as a potential fortress than the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, it’s still a remnant of a long lost era. It is far prettier than the fortresses I grew up with, with stylish grey triangular rooftops, around the building with white walls and brown stone foundations.

It was originally constructed in 1333 and rebuilt over the centuries and used as a cultural backdrop in many a movie.

May circle back, once my survey/tour trip is done if I don’t find a better location to base my new capitol. It's stylish if outdated.

Next up the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum. This time we’ve learned from our previous mistakes and have set down a mile away from the location so as not to scare the humans. Word has gotten out though and we are greeted warmly by the Museum’s manager, a woman in her 40’s, who gives us a private tour of the facilities.

She makes polite enquiries as to the nature of our visit and our bone armor. I compliment her on her grey pant suit, she blushes and thanks me. It still surprises me to see a woman in a position of leadership, that's not wearing a crown or carrying a mage staff. Pant suits are weird, even Luthor agrees with me on this point.

I do the talking for the both of us as Cucumber is too busy staring at the Dinosaurs with open hunger.

He runs off into an exhibit of Fukuiraptors, crashing through the glass and swallows the dinosaur whole. It’s a somewhat amusing sight, watching a 3 feet tall dinosaur disappear down the throat of a 5 foot 8 humanoid. Cucumber had somehow developed spatial storage. I’d have to find out how and use the knowledge to my advantage.

“Stop that. You’re making me look bad.”

“So many bones, they can spare some, I’m so hungry.”

I gave him a look, “You’re hungry?”

“Need more bones for my collection. I want an army of Dinosaurs. They look adorable.”

“Um excuse me sir, what has he done with the exhibit?” the museum lady asked, her knuckles going white as she tried to maintain composure as my Draconic bodyguard ran rampant in her museum.

“Cucumber could you be a good Harbinger of Death and spit up the dinosaur bones?”

“Give me a minute Daddy, I’m not done digesting yet.”

“Um What? I’m not your dad!”

Cucumber ignored me, the little bastard. I'm tempted to try and dismantle him but a beatdown would devastate this museum and I may be slightly worried that he'd eat me, body and soul. Children grow up so fast. Yet maturity seems to be the last to develop. Cucumber acted somewhere between a toddler and a dog but with the power of a lesser god. A dangerous combination to be sure.

A minute later he vomited up a FukuiRaptor, alive and moving under the command of Cucumber.

I had to admit I was very impressed and somewhat concerned, when he continued to vomit out the 3 foot Raptors with no sign of stopping. The museum director ran away screaming as did numerous other patrons.

“Dammit, kids, always making a scene, whenever you take them out in public. How am I supposed to secure my promotion now?” I sighed. This was a problem.

The FukuiRaptors spread out through the museum, collecting bones from multiple exhibits and bringing them back to Cucumber who swallowed them greedily. They acted like hunting dogs, serving their lord, Cucumber. Except instead of hunting something 'normal' like Iron Stags, they're hunting out and retrieving bones.

He ended up moving over to the exhibit of a Chrictonsaurus Bohlini, an ankylsaur and ate one of it’s bones and replicated it in a living form. “Now we have mounts for travel.”

I looked at the two mobile anklysaurs and they were quadripeds, 4.7 meters in length with jutting plates of bone sticking upwards and a long tail. The bone plates meant to serve as a defense measure in the prehistoric era had now become foot and hand holds for riding.

We took our new pets for a test ride, they handled well and were quite docile. Not surprising since they were humonculi.

After raiding the museum for bones, Cucumber restored the bones he ate, or simply created entirely new sets of dinosaur bones. As for the shattered glass cases, that was what maintenance crews were for. Or something.

Jigokudani Monkey Park was next, located in a famous hot spring area near Nagano. Steam and boiling water bubbles out of frozen ground, surrounded by steep cliffs and cold forests populated by Snow monkeys. It was an impressive place, in that it has multiple temperatures in the same small area to appeal to a wide variety of people. Unfortunately the tour buses quickly departed after we arrived for some unknown reason.

Cucumber in human form eats one of the monkeys. It’s actually quite entertaining to watch, Cucumber’s ribs split apart revealing his greatly condensed mana heart and he ejects a bone spear and pulls it back along with the impaled monkey back inside himself.

After Cucumber eats the monkey, he spits it out again as a skeleton monkey soldier, then uses his incredible mana supplies to convert it into a homunculus. As it’s a monkey and its mind was simple, it was easy for Cucumber to program it into the new leader of his monkey troop.

We leave again, in dramatic fasion, as Cucumber switches from human form to dragon form, sending the monkeys scurrying away, similarly to the humans.

Mount Fuji makes for an amusing pit stop where Cucumber shows off his powers.

He tears off his phalanges (his finger bones) and throws them and creates/grows/summons different forms of minions, without needing to kill to do so. With his left hand he can summon bone shark, bone whale, bone bird, bone dinosaur. With his right hand he can summon/create a skeleton mage, skeletal Lich, skeleton knight captain and a death knight.

He had converted the bones he usually used to create the respective summons into a much smaller version, integrated into his own skeleton, within his own fingers, allowing him to create one of each type of summons in his humanoid form with a loss of a finger.

I have to say I'm very impressed by Cucumber's abilities. His powers are greater than mine as is his mana supply. At least for now. I have a plan as to how to out pace him entirely, along with any threats that could be posed by this world.

Visit Tokyo, hit the Ueno Zoological gardens, it's more of a prison for animals but it seems to keep the animals fed and the humans distracted from their meaningless existence. Cucumber keeps running off and eating the animals and replicating/cloning them. The children are unhappy as are the adults but neither can do much to stop him. I know I can't.

He eats giant pandas, asiatic elephants, sumatran tigers, Indian Lions, Western Lowland gorillas, California sea lions and brown bears. He even eats a llama for some reason.

Now Cucumber is capable of producing a managerie of animal humonculi, or bestial variants of skeleton soldiers. He replaces the dead/eaten animals, even adding a few more as an 'apology' but really they're just sleeper agents. I think Luthor and Cucumber are plotting against me.

The next destination is a lot closer. We visited the Tokyo Sky Tree, a massive skyscraper, that transmits my image and message to the people of Japan.

“People of Japan, I have come to your land to bring you great gifts of power and prestige as your new King and ruler. Not much will change to start off with, as your politicians will still be responsible for the day to day activities but I will be instituting new policies and a new agenda. Japan will be the new center of the world as the place to be.

For starters, I will be setting up a Mage Academy shortly in order to deal with a massive threat that’s incoming. If interested in learning or gaining magical abilities, simply speak to one of my minions. They should be easy to find, they tend towards being undead and armed and patroling the various pathways in and out of major transit hubs.

Once this threat has been dealt with my forces can be used to heal the dying, resurrect the dead and grant immortal life to those who believe in me and my power. Join with me now in countering threats to this new empire of mine and building a better tomorrow.”

I let the network people get back to work after delivering my message, I did have to strip one of the 'anchors' of his suit in order to deliver my speech. According to Luthor, bone armor would be too imposing to mollify the public, I settled for a suit and my bone staff made with a Skeleton Knight captain's skull and spine. Aiming for somewhat civilized but still very very dangerous to cross. It's a delicate balancing act of which I have little experience.

After running rampant through Japan on our little holiday/scouting mission. Cucumber takes me to Fukushima the site of the latest nuclear disaster to set up a Capitol for Liches. It's nearby to Tokyo and has quite a few amenities that cater to my needs. The nuclear power station serves as an excellent place for my Liches to draw upon the poison in the water to increase the ease of Bone Dragon manufacturing. The design of the stations, also favored durability over desire for beauty.

Admittedly since the disastrous events of 2011, they had reinforced some of the areas, making it more useful to resist potential attacks by other international powers. The increased background radiation would help mana regeneration and the whole plant could be operated by undead.

The whole site was helpfully cleared out once we arrived and explained the situation. Might have helped that Cucumber switched to dragon form and rained down a sea of Bone spears that morphed into skeleton warriors to enforce the new regime change. I still claim credit though. New capitol of Japan would be Fukushima. At least for Liches. It'd still be a few days before I could gather all the Liches together for a proper meeting.

Plenty to do before then though, there's Mages to train, a Devourer to destroy and a religion to start. Busy busy.