“I AM THE MILKMAN! MY MILK IS DELICIOUS!”

“Will you shut up already?”

“YA YA YAY COCO JUMBO!”

“Urgh. Maybe I should have just let you be wiped away. Maybe then I would not have had to let your insanity taint my perfect world.”

In the middle of a desert, on a world that was not Mortis, and in a universe where Mortis did not exist, a massive tree had been planted. This tree, as you might suspect, was the Great Tree, and it had indeed not been blown to insignificant bits by the Darksolian VIPs in their final, all-out attack. Instead, a certain someone had once again broken the rules that had been set years prior by a pair of otherworldly beings. This ‘game’ of theirs was, as was stated many chapters ago, an experiment, but this experiment was getting more and more out of hand, although all that did was increase the entertainment factor.

The man who was treating the mad tree as if it was common refuse was the man who had pushed Kain’s Creator’s body in the path of that train in yet another reality. As it so happens, it doesn’t matter how connected you are, premeditated murder carried out in front of dozens of onlookers with their phones already recording the event can, and sometimes does, result in you getting the book thrown at you. And boy, did he get the book thrown at him.

A pity then that he never got to serve his sentence, having been killed by some very angry family members of the women (and men) that he had abused. He should have been more careful; one of those that he tried to ruin forever had a family with connections to organized crime, and that almost never turns out well. And, of course, given the fact that he was here, having long since conquered this world formed from his own twisted daydreams, mean that is did, in fact, not turn out well.

Actually, maybe that wasn’t how and why he died back then, but in the end, the truth didn’t matter. It was in the past, and all he needed to remember was the list of names and faces that he would deal with when the game was over and he got the opportunity to go back to Earth and not only conquer that world, but also wreak his revenge. Right now, though, he had to deal with the burden that he had initially thought was a potentially valuable asset for his inevitable conquest and destruction of Mortis.

“MY NAME’S NOT RICK! I AM NOT A CRUSTY CRAB!”

“Will you please shut the fuck up?! I have half a mind to just end you here and now and use you for firewood!”

“KH KH KH! MAH MAH MAH!”

“The Crystal Lake Killer isn’t around, you moronic piece of foliage! SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP!”

“I WON THE JOSH FIGHT! MANNY BOTHANS DIED!”

This was getting far too annoying for him to deal with any longer. The unnamed sociopathic narcissist finally gave up on his newest acquisition and walked away while shaking his head. He had wasted valuable time, money, and ‘willing’ human sacrifices to get this batshit crazy tree here, but it seemed that his gamble had not paid off as he had wished it would. Oh, well, it didn’t matter. He would just get a bunch of firewood and a few nice pieces of furniture and other woodcrafts from this.

“Since you refuse to do as the Perfect, Flawless God of this world demands, then you are nothing but an eyesore and a nuisance. [Divine Commandment: Instant Death].

The Great Tree’s mad ramblings cut off halfway through another bit of inane nonsense, its words ending along with its life in a single moment. The unnamed former Earthling took a deep breath and then exhaled. There was now silence. Beautiful, perfect silence.

“Ah, that is so much better!” he said with a cheery voice, practically skipping away from the dead wannabe Yggdrasil. “Now, to get my subjects to do something about this currently useless piece of wood. Maybe I’ll make a few pleasure barges with the wood, along with all the furniture that goes on them. Maybe even give my harem a treat. I wonder how well they’d scream if I forced them to use wooden sex toys?”

Smiling and with a spring in his step, the currently unnamed maniac walked off through the desert, warping reality as he went to change the vast sea of sand into an industrial hellscape filled with nothing but woodworkers, sawmills, furniture makers, shipbuilders, and more. As each new building was relocated from one part of the planet to another, hundreds, then thousands of people were teleported along with them.

Most of them were naked, most were obviously exhausted and many showed signs of either neglect, hunger, sickness, injury, or other forms of abuse. Around each person’s neck was a collar that was tighter than a noose and even more dangerous, forcing everyone who wore them to obey even if they didn’t want to. Upon seeing the person who brought them there, all those who were teleported there immediately dropped to their hands and knees, their faces pressed up against the ground as they begged internally to survive for just a few days longer.

“Ah, so good to see you all.” The unnamed sociopath said with a smile on his face and a mix of sarcastic mockery and utter contempt in his voice. “Now, your job is to take that thing apart and build for me whatever I want. Use whatever you have on hand for the job but know that I do not tolerate failure or procrastination. I want not a single scrap of wood to be unused or wasted, and if one is I will make sure that you pay dearly for it.”

The unnamed person then teleported away, leaving the people there to wonder how they were going to survive this. After all, they were not given any tools to work with even before being dragged here. This was a death sentence and an excuse for that monstrous and despotic ruler of theirs to have some sadistic ‘fun’ at their expense.

Well, this wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it would not be the last. All they could hope for was that they would at least be given a quick and mostly painless death instead of being tortured for weeks on end before being executed in a slow, painful, gruesome fashion for all to see. And at least they were not in that tyrant’s harem. The stories of what happened to those poor people would be enough to make even the worst of people recoil in horror and disgust.