-Ordained Emperor-

  “Long live the Holy Roman Emperor!”

  “Hail the great Voidbreaker!”

  “Where is he, I can’t see him.”

  “Savior of the immortal homeland!”

  Hector smiled as he surveyed his subjects from behind the curtain. Recruiting the Church had been the right move. The moment he had offered Father Armand the opportunity to mold Central America in his image, the priest had jumped at it.

  And it had been glorious. Bloody, but glorious. Every rival cartel and enemy had been crushed beneath the power of Hector and his supporters. The surviving members of the army had joined his crusade to restore Mexico. And why stop at Mexico? Why not go further?

  He would be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Rome had been the center of civilization, its anchor for thousands of years. Now that legacy was his. Hundreds of thousands of adoring subjects cheered from the streets and rooftops.

  David, his original second-in-command, was still his second-in-command, though now with a much swankier new title. Hector wasn’t entirely sure what Steward meant when the priest had offered it, but after it was explained, it worked. Honestly, he preferred a title like Director of Homeland Security, one with more weight behind it, but Steward made the people happy.

  “Are you ready, boss?” David asked.

  “I was born ready,” Hector said as he stepped toward the door.

  It was more than a formality. Today was his public coronation. Today was the day he consolidated his control and started his conquest of Central America.

  Loudspeakers crackled to life along the roadway, all of them painstakingly wired together since radio signals still refused to function. The national anthem of Mexico began to play, and everyone turned to face the flags lining the streets.

  Hector saw no reason to change the flag. An eagle devouring a snake was a perfect symbol, both strong and savage. It was now his.

  David opened the door as the anthem played. Hector strode forward into the roar of his adoring fans. They lined both sides of the street, chanting his name, and he felt invigorated. This was what he had been born for. He was born to be a king, to rule all he laid his hands on

  He raised his arms and waved to his subjects. The armor coating his body gleamed under the sunlight, its golden polish reflecting brilliantly. He had commissioned it himself. It wasn’t simply ornamental, though that was its main purpose. The condensed stainless steel had been powder-coated gold and weighed as much as four or five full sets of armor combined.

  Yet it hardly slowed him. Most of his sigil levels had gone into body and vitality. A red mesh lined the gaps, offsetting the bright gold and giving him a regal air. At least, he felt it was regal.

  A large axe was strapped to his back. It was the weapon he had used to conquer Mexico, the symbol of his rule. Every time he raised it, the crowd’s cheers intensified. He had saved them, after all. He was no longer just the leader of a cartel.

  He was a king. He was a hero a symbol for the spirit of his nation.

  A procession of his elite soldiers followed behind him, each dressed as flamboyantly as he was, though in silver instead of gold. Just a year ago, they had been hiding drugs from law enforcement and sneaking across borders. They had been hunted, considered the scum of the earth. Now they were rulers, adored by the very people who once feared them.

  Hector reached the central platform and stepped up to the center. A man in white robes and a tall hat stood waiting. A cross hung from his neck, and he held a Bible in one hand. The Archbishop was the highest-ranking official of the Church they had been able to secure. Hector would have preferred the Pope himself, but the man was on another continent, and it wasn’t worth the delay to go get him.

  The Archbishop raised his hands, and the roaring crowd slowly fell silent. He cleared his throat and lifted the microphone. It was wired, awkward in his grip, as if he were used to projecting his voice without it. But there was no other way, hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets. The ones at the back were nearly a mile away.

  “People of Mexico,” the Archbishop said, “I bring you wonderful news and glad tidings. As you know, every leader serves a purpose. Every leader is born for a time. Every leader is placed in their position and granted authority by God Almighty.”

  “Today, I present to you a man who was born for these times. A hard man. A man who has known great sorrow and inflicted much of it as well.”

  Hector clenched his fist. This speech was supposed to be entirely positive. He took a deep breath and relaxed. Who didn’t love a redemption story? He let it slide.

  “He was a wolf among us once,” the Archbishop continued. “But we know this about wolves: they do not tolerate trespass upon their lands, and so we were given a protector. One whose eyes are turned outward, who stands as a shield for his people.”

  After the first few minutes of two-faced compliments, Hector started actually enjoying them. Being a brute who was also a savior had a certain flair to it. It felt like being a dragon protecting a city it had once burned down. Yes, he thought, I am a dragon.

  After a few more minutes, the archbishop finally turned toward him. That was the cue. Hector strolled up to the dais.

  The archbishop stood beside a small table that held a cloth-covered bundle. Hector lowered his head as he approached, exactly as the ceremony demanded. Some of his original opponents had criticized him for modeling his empire after Rome. They said he had Aztec heritage, why imitate a foreign empire when his own ancestors had ruled something just as mighty?

  But Hector didn’t want to be mighty for the region. He wanted to be mighty for the world. Rome was remembered. The Aztecs were conquered by a few lost Spaniards. So just like Rome once had, he would crush his enemies.

  The cloth was pulled away.

  Two objects were revealed, one resting inside the other. The first was a crown made of solid gold, not spiked like the normal depiction of crowns, but a thick band, three fingers wide, encircling the temples. Where it covered the brow, it rose upward into a semicircle, stamped with an image of a serpent being captured by an eagle.

  The engraving had been lacquered red, and a shard of crystal had been set into the eagle’s eye, glowing purple. Powdered sigil dust had been embedded into the background, making it shimmer faintly with violet light.

  It was beautiful. A crown worthy of an emperor. Hector inhaled slowly as the priest picked up the second object: a bottle of oil. The archbishop raised it above Hector’s head. This wasn’t a custom Hector cared much about, but the man insisted. Then he was directed to read the story of King David, which had soothed his pride. Who didn’t want to slay giants?

  Oil dripped down over Hector’s hair and forehead as the archbishop drew a cross in the oil.

  “Do you swear to rule faithfully,” the archbishop intoned, “honoring both God and man, as suits your station as king?”

  Hector smiled. He had no intention of honoring either of them, but this was all theater. “I do.”

  “Will you serve your people justly, rewarding loyalty, righteousness, and protecting the weak?”

  “I do,”

  Oath made: You have sworn to honor both God and man to steward your domain. Reward: Technique. Cost: deposition.

  Hector blinked. He hadn’t expected that part. Was it really a cost to honor this oath? His subjects would be paying taxes and fighting wars, wasn’t their growth only to his benefit? In the end, it was an easy trade. The priest continued, but Hector barely listened now. The rest of the vows passed like a wedding ceremony formal, hollow, inevitable.

  Finally, the archbishop declared, “With God as my witness, I anoint you king over this land.”

  He set the empty bottle down and lifted the crown.

  “I pronounce you king.”

  The circlet settled onto Hector’s brow. At that exact moment, he opened his interface. He had long passed the threshold that had been labeled capacity, but he had not selected a personal sigil, due to it being attained based on past experience.

  Notice: New Sigil Acquired, Greater Ordained Emperor

  Golden light surrounded him as the interface text scrolled. The hushed crowd exploded in cheers while the archbishop looked on with a stunned expression.

  You are the head. The empire, the body. All of your attributes will rise in accordance with how well you grow your nation in accordance with your oath. (Greater) Three stats will be raised in conjunction with the sectors of your nation that you improve. (Technique) Enhanced learning speed and application of all knowledge related to ruling.

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  If that was all, Hector would have been satisfied. However, heaven favored him, so what came next was no surprise.

  Notice: Due to uniting the hearts and minds of the people Greater Ordained Emperor has advanced. Focus, Wisdom, and Control have advanced to reflect this.

  Notice: Due to rooting out sources of corruption both of men and spirits Greater Ordained Emperor has advanced. Body, Vitality, and Wisdom have advanced to reflect this.

  Notice: You have made a binding oath to seek your people’s prosperity as a foundation for your rule in the hearing of all your subjects. Wisdom, Vitality, and Memory have advanced to reflect this.

  Hector grinned. In a world already teetering on apocalypse, he had just gained an ability that scaled with the rise of civilization itself. He had no doubt anymore. He wasn’t just going to be king. He was going to become the strongest human in history.

  -Elder Vampire-

  The elder vampire scrambled through alleys and abandoned buildings, trying to understand what the hell was happening. They had been kings of this world once. Ruling from their cold fortress in the north, stronger than humans in every way that mattered. Even now, humans hit harder than before with their toy guns, but they were still fragile. Still delicate and just as delicious.

  At least, that was what he had believed.

  He entered an apartment and felt relief as he found that his assumption had been right. Using his blood dominion, he took control of every thrall in the building, stealing them away from the lesser vampires who made them.

  “Defend me, kill anyone who follows after,” then he ran, leaving the building through the back door.

  An explosion rocked the apartment he had just exited. The vampire nearly lost his footing as a wave of blinding light tore through several buildings, slicing through them like a knife through soft flesh. In that single moment, he lost connection to nearly twenty thralls.

  Humans were supposed to be weak. The first three months had been easy, these soft people in London had been easy prey. Sure they had fought, but when death was an inconvenience, what could the mortals hope to accomplish?

  Then Berlin went silent, the blood ancestor of that region, gone without warning. At the time, it hadn’t seemed alarming. Enclaves fell occasionally, blood ancestors weren’t apostles, and were still prone to the rare failure. It was nothing to worry about.

  Now he understood how wrong that had been.

  He fled into a building of stone, much older than the apartments. It was little more than a repurposed office building, but it had served as a stronghold. Or it had. He ordered the thralls to delay the enemy once again.

  Another wave of light ripped through the structure. He felt ten more thralls vanish, then more as the side of the building was simply carved away. Three stories of stone fell, shaking the city streets and caving in the area over the sewage lines.

  That human, he had to be only in the first stage. There was a small chance he had reached diversification in five months, but it was unlikely. Talents like that had to be nurtured, right? The vampire himself was at the upper end of diversification and he did not like his chances in a fair fight.

  “What’s going on? Was it you who took our thralls,” A young voice called out.

  The elder vampire turned to see two of his juniors. Humans who had taken blood dominion as their personal sigil. He repressed the wave of disgust at seeing the cattle who had risen above their station. This new generation had no respect for hierarchy.

  “Indeed, that was me,” The elder vampire said.

  “Well, now why did you up and do that you crotchety bastard,” the taller of the two said.

  “I don’t have time for your inanity,” The elder vampire muttered, He grabbed two lower-ranked vampires by their robes and shoved them toward the wrecked office, “Slow him down.”

  One of them glanced back warily as another beam sliced through the roof, a second section collapsing under its own weight, “Are you sure we can handle him?”

  “I don’t care if you can handle it,” the elder snarled. “As long as I escape, I’ll bring you back.”

  “But what if we get purified—”

  The elder seized him by the face. “Do what you’re told, or die for nothing.”

  “So there you are,” an amused voice called out.

  The vampire turned slowly, finally laying eyes on its pursuer. The man was painfully ordinary at first glance, with brown hair, brown eyes, and short and stocky. That was where the veneer of banality ended.

  Two massive antlers rose from his head. His hands were encased in phantasmal fur-lined gauntlets tipped with claws. The rest of his body was covered in blinding white armor, and in his hands were a sword and shield forged from the same radiant material.

  Up close, the truth was obvious. This man had somehow reached diversification and had developed a massive amount of synergy with each sigil. The two junior vampires formed an orb of blood between them, swelling to the size of a human head before they hurled it forward.

  The human didn’t block. Instead, he leaned sideways, far past the point where gravity should have taken him down, yet remained balanced, letting the blood sphere pass harmlessly by. Then, without any visible strain, he returned upright.

  It was almost as if he were a puppet. The action was both terrifying and unnatural. The elder shoved the two forward again. They rushed in, forming weapons from crystallized blood, coating themselves in jagged red armor.

  It didn’t help. Crystal shattered. Flesh split. The Hero of Berlin’s sword swept once in what looked like a lazy strike, yet a wave of light extended from the blade, increasing its reach by nearly fifty feet.

  A technique, the man had a combat technique. If he were allowed to grow, even the apostles might be in danger. The elder vampire snarled and coated himself in hardened blood, jagged spikes forming along his limbs. He blurred forward in a streak of crimson rage.

  He got two steps. Something slammed into his shoulder and drove him into the ground. His armor held, but he hadn’t expected the attack and thus had failed to defend against it. He looked up at the top of one of the buildings lining the road.

  Another human stood there, holding a strange weapon composed of two prongs etched with glowing purple symbols, a small metallic pellet hovering between them. The human had the gall to wave at him. He snarled at the man, he refused to be disrespected by cattle.

  The crunch of heavy boots on gravel reminded the vampire of the Hero of Berlin. Telekinetically controlling his crystal blood armor, the elder vampire launched into the air, spun, and drove a fist down upon the glowing man. A shockwave was released on impact as enough kinetic force was released to crush one of the humans’ metal chariots.

  Crimson eyes widened as he saw his fist caught in the hero’s palm. A disinterested gaze met his own.

  “You really don’t understand how bad of a mistake you made,” the man said calmly, raising the glowing sword, “You came to my world. Killed millions of humans. Then thought there would be no retribution.”

  Desperately the elder vampire tried to free his fist. The glowing white blade descended. It didn’t cut. It didn’t burn.

  The Hero of Berlin whispered a single word, “Sunder.”

  Everything went black. He hoped that the humans would be distracted or delayed. Purple energy struck his consciousness, filling his consciousness with pain. The elder vampire’s mind scattered into nothing as heaven’s wrath erased him from existence.

  -Hero of Berlin-

  Mateo watched impassively as an elder vampire went up in purple smoke. The creature before him deserved no more of his thoughts.. These things were monsters of the highest order.

  There were other sapient monsters in the world. Seven known variants, if the last scouting reports were accurate. Some were worse than others. The dragon-types had a habit of taxidermying people, which put them very high on Mateo’s list of creatures to kill later. The void-types simply killed everything around them, then built their lairs and moped around like emo children. They were the lowest priority.

  But the vampires…They were the only ones who tortured and enslaved people. They forced victims’ bodies to work against their will.

  Mateo didn’t like admitting it, even to himself, but after seeing enough victims, something in him had grown cold. As a constable, protecting life had always been his priority. Justice, not vengeance.

  But after a while, the line blurred. Mateo kept walking through the ruined streets of London, heading toward the city center. Germany had been hit hard, but at least it wasn’t an island. People could escape across borders. Brittan didn’t have that luxury.

  Here, humans had been hunted like deer in a fenced preserve. The military infrastructure had been built too close to civilian centers. When the portals opened, the monsters reached the bases before full deployment was even possible. The resulting bloodbath had been unprecedented. Mateo suspected only parts of Asia had suffered worse.

  “We’re gonna keep going, boss?” one of his teammates answered.

  His squad had an odd composition, one healer, three sharpshooters, and himself. Normally, that kind of team would be a death sentence. Stealth was supposed to be the winning strategy in modern warfare. Not tanks. Not armies. Assassins.

  The ones who removed figureheads and stole classified information. The ones who caused chaos without ever being seen. Unfortunately, Mateo’s second sigil was light crafter. Everything he did was bright, making it a waste of his talents to be sneaky.

  So they adapted. Mateo drew attention. His team killed everything that targeted him. He killed everything that got past them. Even the healer was technically a sniper, just one with a healing sigil instead of a trio of momentum booster sigils.

  “We’re heading to the center of London,” another Mateo said. “The blood ancestor should be there. After we free England, we move on to France.”

  “I heard there was a lich in Paris?” The healer asked. “That’s something I would be interested in seeing. Imagine, death being curable.”

  Mateo shrugged, “Don’t know. I’ve heard that the Empire of Death has become a lot more literal than poetic, though. So I wouldn’t be surprised. Let's get moving.”

  They moved in silence after that. As they advanced, Mateo formed a javelin of light in his hand. He’d been powerful before, but after his diversification, his abilities had become far more synergistic. He could now create almost any weapon a hero might use out of pure light. The only limitation was that it was its strength was determined by the number of people he saved.

  The governments had styled him as the Hero of Light. Posters showed him with glowing antlers, radiant gauntlets, medieval weapons held high against the darkness. He wasn’t sure if that image limited him, or if it was his own bias, but the results were undeniable. He had saved tens of thousands and inspired more.

  His armor could withstand a tank salvo. Against basic monsters, he was nearly invincible. Something that proved true once again as he marched through the streets of London. Vampires and thralls flocked toward his light trying to snuff him out. The older ones realized what was happening and tried to flee. Mateo chased them, cutting them down without mercy.

  Any elder vampire could convert dozens of humans. If even one escaped, the catastrophe could simply restart in another city. He couldn’t allow that.

  As they pushed deeper, they linked up with other teams. Those squads functioned more like ambush units, hitting hard, then vanishing. They’d suffered fewer losses than Mateo’s group. They weren’t the ones advancing like a walking fireworks display.

  After a few more minutes of slogging through monsters and their human slaves, they saw it. At the center of London stood something that hadn’t existed before, a castle made entirely of crystallized blood. Red stone towers twisted upward, formed from what had once been millions of people.

  The abomination was built by a blood ancestor as a show of dominance. Mateo had killed one before. He’d be more than happy to kill another.

  The fighting intensified as they approached. Thousands of thralls rushed them. More military groups arrived and they cut their way through. Unlike the vampires themselves, the thralls were not immortal. Guns worked just fine on them.

  High-caliber rifles thundered as thousands of euros’ worth of ammunition vanished in seconds. Politicians liked to complain about the cost of war. Mateo would rather spend money than lives.

  He marched at the front. Friendly fire wasn’t a concern, for him. The bullets couldn’t penetrate his armor anyway. He dropped his shield and raised both hands, shaping light between his palms. A massive greatsword formed.

  It looked like something ripped from a children’s cartoon, absurdly oversized. If it had been made of metal, it would have weighed six or seven hundred pounds. Made of light, it weighed nothing at all.

  Mateo took his stance. One foot back. One forward. Then he stepped in and activated Stalwart Guardian. The world lurched. His speed tripled. The Guardian's aura flared around him, the instinctive drive to protect granting even more force and supplying strength to his allies.

  He swung. A crescent of blinding white light tore through the air, as wide as the blade itself. It looked like a newborn moon carving its way across the battlefield. The wave slammed into the thralls.

  They were flung backward, bodies shredded, cut apart by pure radiance. This was the ability that made Mateo infamous. He called it Sunder, on the advice of one of his younger captains. It was the same technique he had received from killing Berlin’s Blood Ancestor.

  He stepped over the corpses and approached the castle gate. Drawing back his fist, he launched forward again, stacking Stalwart Hero with Pack Guardian to pour on raw physical strength. The impact boomed like a cannon. He followed with another swing then another. The bloodstone around the gate flaked and broke before the gate finally collapsed.

  Mateo walked inside, lighting up the bailey like it was a clear day at noon. Soldiers poured in after him and mowed through the guards. Those who resisted the gunfire, were cut down by Mateo. He reached the keep and tore the door off and used it to behead the traitor ex-human lying in ambush behind it.

  The Blood Ancestor sat upon a throne of crystallized blood at the opposite end of the keep. Of course it did. Everything these things built had to be made of blood. The creature sneered and opened its mouth to monologue.

  That was another thing about vampires. Not only were they sadistic, bloodthirsty psychopaths with a torture fetish, but they were also insufferably arrogant. They genuinely believed the world existed to serve them. Mateo didn’t care to hear another speech about vampire superiority.

  So he attacked. A crescent of light tore across the chamber. The Blood Ancestor dissolved into liquid, split around the blade, and reformed on the other side unharmed.

  “Rude, rude human, I’m not like the… will you stop!” The Blood Ancestor yelled.

  Mateo frowned as the second crescent passed through without doing anything. The last ancestor hadn’t done that. It had made blood golems, which were like thralls, but an order of magnitude more dangerous.

  The vampire’s voice echoed, “Your powers won’t work on me. I am—”

  Mateo cut him off by trapping him inside a sphere of light. The Blood Ancestor slammed into the barrier, cracking it instantly. Mateo layered another sphere over it. Then another. He had a lot of titles from being the first at basically everything. He had enough spirit to burn.

  The vampire roared, its body flattening and expanding, blood pressing against the light from every angle. This was now less a battle of raw physical might and more a contest of will. Mateo did not lose contests of will.

  The bubble wouldn’t kill the vampire, but it didn’t need to. His team arrived followed by the rest of the special forces from the European Defense Pact. Most people assumed that Mateo was alone. While that may have been true in a sense due to how much enemy fire he attracted, he was still the point of a very sharp spear.

  The soldiers quickly loaded chemical rounds into bullets made of hardened light. The Blood Ancestor could see them and its activities got more frantic. There was one mistake these monsters made, they gave humans time to prepare and a reason to unite.

  Coagulants, hardening agents, and necrotic compounds loaded in bullets of light passed through the barrier unhindered. Entire magazines of fully automatic weapons were dumped into the Blood Ancestor at point blank rang. Substances that would have killed a human a dozen times over only managed to slow the vampire down.

  Every few seconds, as his spirit recharged, Mateo reinforced the cracking shield. The Blood Ancestor was breaking through faster than he could repair it. But not fast enough.

  Mateo felt the tipping point. The vampire re-solidified and for the first time, looked shocked. A javelin of light formed in Mateo’s hand. He drove it forward. The spear passed through the shield without resistance and pierced the vampire’s heart. The head exploded into branching spikes inside its torso.

  Mateo twisted. When he ripped it free, half the creature came with it. The Blood Ancestor collapsed into inert sludge. Dead. That had been almost too easy. Mateo worried about the future. When would the real heavy hitters among the monsters leave their dens?

  It was a concern for the future. Now it was time for celebration. Mateo raised the spear above his head, “London has been reclaimed!”

  He felt no joy. Only a dull, visceral satisfaction that another monster was removed from the world. The soldiers cheered, many of them were British. They had just saved their homeland. That, at least, was worth celebrating.