Balor picked the landing site in the same continental landmass that the first civilization was on. He wanted to hide the impact far away from any settlement in a relatively untouched coastal region.

  As he pierced the atmosphere, he passed through the ghost serpent’s stellar core, which had been thinned to a membrane that enveloped the whole planet beyond its stratosphere.

  That’s one way to implement magics.

  The ghost serpent had dispersed their stellar core soul matter in particle form, mixing into the molecular footprint of the planetary atmosphere itself. This way, the planet’s inhabitants could use magics based on the ghost serpent’s parameters.

  It was a bold, invasive approach for implementing magics.

  There were many other ways to integrate magics into a world, depending on what worked for the particular sapient species. The least invasive method was evading explicit magics altogether, opting for the rapid development of technology based on magics that the species perceives as scientific discoveries. Some of the most successful sapient worlds of the Dominion operated on that doctrine, oblivious to the existence of the Dominion itself.

  The cleanest conquest is when the subjects never notice they’ve been conquered.

  Balor cloaked himself as a meteor by briefly altering his own matter and energy as he passed through the stellar core membrane of the ghost serpent. If he didn’t, he would’ve been detected right away. World-making was a solitary art. No serpent would sit idly while another encroached upon their project.

  He passed undetected through the membrane and crashed in the ocean shallows a long distance away from the populated center of Veilthorn.

  Crashing diagonally into the water, the ocean arrested his momentum before he met any surface to leave a crater on. He caught glimpses of some creatures getting obliterated along the way, which was fascinating.

  It was two things at once. Veilthorn had a very high density of lifeforms. A rock crashing from space into the coastal regions had a decent chance of destroying more than five creatures. The other thing was how big the creatures were. He had inadvertently killed a flat fish the size of a small island, dwelling in the relative shallows.

  As he reoriented himself underwater, he saw other creatures already gathering around the carcasses of the ones that he obliterated in his landing. This was a remnant of what he’d witnessed from the moon millions of years ago. All land life on Veilthorn came into being through an elaborate and highly competitive ocean phase. These creatures still retained the spirit of that same evolutionary war against each other.

  He didn’t have his stellar core to give him precise details based on prior knowledge. He relied on inferring them in real time based on his senses.

  Veilthorn just smelled fresh and alluring.

  Suppose that’s because this is my first one.

  He had grown up experimenting with countless simulated worlds, but none of them could compare to what he was experiencing now. He felt the same way when he landed to plant the seed earlier, but he never stopped to admire the world because he was too eager to get the world seed done and over with.

  Now he had all the time in the world to see the world for himself. He was going to do just that. He propelled himself out of the ocean and hovered above the surface, absorbing the scale of the world again.

  Veilthorn was a huge world, two times as large as the planet that his ancestors had evolved on. Even in his godlike form, he felt the size of the world as something intimidating and wholly alien.

  He hovered over to the shore and placed his feet on the sand. He had to calibrate his senses down to perceive the world as a reasonable inhabitant of it. He lowered everything from the distance that his eyes could see, the distance that his ears could hear, and the sensations that he could feel through his skin. All his soul matter rearranged in layers as he shapeshifted into a lesser form than even his bipedal form.

  A sapient inhabitant of Veilthorn was much lower than that, but he had to find a specimen first to assimilate into. His disguise had to be perfectly authentic, and that meant replacing an individual with himself.

  He was unfamiliar with the way this specific civilization worked. There was definitely a lot of other calibrations and adaptations left.

  First, he had to find an individual who wasn’t significant.

  Balor made himself invisible and headed in the direction of the nearest settlement.

  Traversing over the ground at a relatively slow pace, he reached a forest of tall coniferous trees. The terrain was mountainous and uneven; some parts of the forest were completely impenetrable at ground level. He saw all sorts of creatures in his brief visit as he passed them by without disturbing them. A gathering of wild beasts, each one a quarter the size of a tree, was the most fascinating. They had big heads, sharp teeth, and big snouts. They were no doubt a predator species that was used in the epoch of trapping intelligence through evolutionary pressures.

  He found the settlement a safe distance away from such predators lurking in the deep forest. There were signs at first. He saw a gathering of hominids operating primitive metal tools to fell trees. They used magics at limited capacities to enhance their tools, each individual having a specific role to play in the whole enterprise.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  They looked like a tight-knit group, one that he couldn’t properly blend in with.

  He found a better target in a more forested area. He was completely invisible, and he happened upon a hominid who was attempting their very best to be invisible to hunt a herbivore twice their size.

  He almost trampled the man because in his limited senses, he was as disadvantaged as anyone else. The man jolted as Balor stepped over him and jumped around, shouting loudly in fright.

  The herbivores he wanted to hunt with his stringed implement ran away into the trees.

  “W-what—goes there—” the man yelled loudly at the darkness of the trees.

  The communication barrier would’ve been a problem at this point if it existed. Luckily for Balor, the Seedmakers included a component within the targeted sapient species that only serpents or Dragons could interface with. It had done what it was designed to do, translating the man’s words into what Balor recognized as his own language.

  He didn’t intend to talk with the man. He wanted to be the man.

  Balor removed his invisibility, appearing before the man towering above him twice as tall.

  The man started screaming, shooting metal-tipped stick projectiles at him with his stringed implement. They ricocheted off his skin, disappearing into the darkness beyond the trees.

  Balor flared a blue beam of light from the horizontal slit on his face, engulfing the man from head to toe. He lifted the man off the ground, suspending him mid-air. This restraint overloaded the man’s high-functioning primate brain with all stimulations at once. This was a necessary step towards assimilation—converting a primed subject’s matter into information and soul matter.

  Engrossed in utter bliss, the man slowly disintegrated as Balor claimed all aspects of his being. At the end of this process, Balor shapeshifted into the man.

  All the excess matter hovered above him in a writhing, formless ball.

  For the first time in his life, Balor was less than even his bipedal form. The unused half of his soul matter and the redundant volume of the man’s original soul matter started acting exactly like his asteroid-sized stellar core. If he was planet, this was his personal satellite.

  There is no way to integrate all of that matter into this design.

  He dispersed all of that matter far and wide, mixing it all into the atmosphere around him. He made sure to spread it thin enough to never be detectable in any form—the same way the ghost serpent had spread their own stellar core thinly into the same atmosphere.

  It didn’t mean letting go of his power. His matter was still anchored to him. Even when thinly dispersed, his matter would follow him wherever he went. He could reverse assimilation at any time, claiming all of his original matter and recreating the perfect copy of the man with his claimed matter.

  Can’t imagine why I would need to be that powerful in this world.

  Despite his aversion to being too strong in a world that didn’t require it, Veilthorn had a reputation for killing serpents. It was wise to be prepared just in case. This wasn’t a simulation. Whatever that killed the ghost serpent could just as easily kill him.

  Balor settled into the identity of the sapient hominid that he assimilated. The man’s primary identifier was ‘Erul,’ a hunter from a small village nearby. In terms of appearance, he had all the hairless primate features, and in addition, dark green eyes. His ears had pointed ends, and his muscle mass was lean. He was about eight Dominion standard years old, and in Veilthorn’s scale of time, that translated into somewhere around twenty.

  Balor didn’t care about the specifics.

  He was old enough to procreate, hunt, gather, and provide for a family. This defined his rather unrefined identity and blood drive. It had no hint of the serpent doctrine encoded in it yet. Erul had never gazed at the stars and wanted to be among them. The thought had never occurred to him or his entire civilization for that matter.

  This build was more about survival, Erul being the early step of many future descendants. Balor gained key insights from Erul’s perspective.

  Hunger and cold were the main concerns, as well as social standing and material wealth. Even though Erul was male, there were deep concerns that he had inherited from the maternal side; he was worried his future offspring would die before they could be raised to adulthood.

  He himself had been part of six siblings, of whom only he and one other were left. The rest of the brood had died before they grew half as tall as Erul.

  Life in the first civilization was unforgiving—a necessary step in tuning the species blood drive to strive for better and bigger things in the forward march of time.

  Balor picked up the stringed implement and the rest of his goods from where Erul had dropped them. He had to complete the task that the man hadn’t been able to finish.

  He had to hunt a herbivore to feed the village.

  Balor walked through the forest, paying attention to the surroundings in the way Erul had trained himself to do in his meager eight Dominion years. All things considered, it was impressive how fluid his training made him. He knew how to be invisible to the creatures he was going to hunt.

  Balor had never experienced an impoverished existence like this one.

  This is extremely entertaining! I understand the allure of world-making even more now.

  The sheer amount of perspectives that he could experience across time was simply limitless. It pleased his blood drive to dissect the cosmos this way, a fine distraction from the horrible forward march of time that his species despised above all else. They could only have these experiences in small pockets of time that took millions of years to forge.

  In hindsight, his decision to sacrifice as many worlds as it took felt outrageous. It would be such a monumental waste of unique perspectives, repeating the same Veilthorn experiment over and over again.

  Sad, but I don’t see any other way through.

  As he stalked deeper into the forest following the trails left by herbivores, he spotted a shadow of a creature that he’d seen before. It was no herbivore. It was one of those toothy predators lurking between the distant trees. It was already locked into his position. Erul had a name to call it: a Zartiga, a demon of the forest that hunted both prey and the hunters alike.

  Erul would’ve taken much longer to react with his primate reaction speed; he would’ve also left the forest at record speed at the sight of a Zartiga.

  Balor had more entertaining plans now that he was endowing Erul’s perspective. He had chosen a nobody, but that didn’t mean he had to remain a nobody, getting swept up in the world’s whims. He was an active participant now, and he intended to participate as much as it was reasonable.

  Balor used Erul’s bow to hunt the predator in the way Erul was used to hunt creatures. He held the bow with a steady grip, knocked the metal-tipped arrow against the string, pulled it back with perfect form, and let loose at the perfect moment. The arrow passed through all the narrow gaps in the trees, hitting his mark true.

  The Zartiga let out a gut-wrenching howl that would’ve made Erul freeze dead.

  Balor reached for the next arrow. He wanted to defeat the creature, and he had a good guess exactly where to hit to bring it down. The demon of the forest had a brain behind the eye socket. He could make that satisfying shot with Erul’s strength.

  Balor reached into the quill on his side without taking his eyes off the target, exactly as Erul had done a thousand times before. His hand only grasped air this time.

  There were no arrows left.

  Erul had used all the rest on him earlier.

  The forest leaves bounced as the heavy Zartiga dashed at him from the gaps in the trees.

  Ah. Perhaps it is a good time to run.