The night air shattered with the sound of splintering wood. Donald Witter barely had time to rise from his chair before his front door exploded inward. Black-armored soldiers flooded into the cramped living room, their goggles glinting under the flickering lamplight.
"Who are you?! Leave us alone!" Donald bellowed, face flushing red with outrage.
One soldier stepped forward; his voice devoid of inflection. "Donald Witter. You are guilty of criminal offenses against the State."
"What crime?!" Donald's meaty hands clenched into fists.
The soldier didn't blink. "Abusing your daughter. Selling her to the slave camps."
A beat of silence. Then Donald's lip curled into a sneer. "That...that thing is not my daughter!"
The soldier's head tilted slightly. "Donald Witter identified. Elimination criteria met."
"Wai—"
"
The gunshot echoed through the shabby house. Donald crumpled to the floor, a dark hole between his eyes. Two more shots rang out—his wife's scream cut short, his son's body slumping over the dinner table.
"Elimination complete," the soldier intoned. "Moving to next inspection."
Outside, another shadowy figure emerged from the neighboring house, wiping black ichor from his blade.
"Same heartless bastard inside?"
"Same," the first soldier replied. "This one was worse. Sold his child and parents to the camps like cattle."
Shadow Henry—for that was his name now—let out a humorless chuckle. "To be honest, we were like that too once. Until His Lordship's brilliance enlightened us."
"Indeed," Shadow Richard agreed, adjusting his gauntlets. "Made me more human than I ever was before."
The two soldiers moved down the street with purpose, their forms blending with the darkness. They spoke, joked, even sighed with exasperation at particularly messy assignments—proof that Shadow Soldiers were far from mindless drones. Each carried echoes of their past lives, their personalities sharpened rather than erased by their transformation.
But one thing bound them all: undying loyalty to the Shadow Overlord.
Across Genosha, similar scenes played out in the dead of night.
In opulent Magistrate mansions.
In Press Gang hideouts reeking of cheap liquor.
In the homes of "upstanding citizens" who'd profited from Meta flesh.
Each death was clinical. Efficient. The bodies vanished into the night, transported by unseen hands to their final resting place—Sugar Town.
Once a bustling settlement, Sugar Town now stood empty of living souls. The human population had been relocated to Hammer Bay's refugee centers. The town's pristine white buildings now served a different purpose—rows upon rows of cold storage units, each containing the purged.
The stench of blood and fear clung to the air as I strode through the makeshift holding area. Dozens of captured Metas—Press Gang enforcers, Magistrate lackeys—shrank back as my shadow fell over them.
"My Lord," Shadow Sergeant Heinrick saluted. "Another batch of Meta enemies has arrived."
I cracked my knuckles. "Great. Let's harvest them."
A wiry man with flame-scarred hands scrambled backward as I approached. "Y-you're that prince! Wait—what are you doing?!"
My palm pressed against his chest. His eyes widened as he felt it—the terrible pull from within his core.
"Wait...wait! NO!! My power—!" His screams turned to gurgles as the last of his abilities drained away. I stepped over his twitching form, already moving to the next.
"All of you say the same thing," I muttered. "Annoying."
"
The gunshot silenced him permanently.
"Power Steal…" The command rippled through the chamber. Fifty Meta prisoners convulsed as one, their abilities tearing free from their bodies in shimmering waves. The energies swirled around me before sinking into my skin, adding to the growing storm within. Five days of refining this technique. Five days of perfecting the mass targeted harvest.
The air in Sugar Town hung thick with the metallic scent of blood and damp earth. The last of the harvested Meta powers thrummed beneath my skin, settling into the vast repository of [The Tree of Power]. The perks of this ability were undeniable—no strain, no rejection, just endless potential.
Psionic tendrils.
Invisible, intangible threads that slithered through the air like serpents, latching onto every Meta within range. A single thought, and their powers were mine. Simple. Efficient. Perfect.
I flexed my fingers, watching the residual energy crackle between them before dissipating. "Another successful harvest," I murmured to myself.
Turning on my heel, I strode toward the body dumping grounds—a vast, open field now littered with corpses. The stench should have been unbearable, but the Shadows had long since drained the corpses of anything that might rot, leaving them preserved in an eerie state of suspended decay.
"Arise," I commanded, my voice echoing across the field.
The earth trembled. One by one, the fallen stirred—soldiers, enforcers, even the rare Meta who hadn't survived the power extraction. Their eyes snapped open, glowing with an unnatural violet light.
Shadow Servants. They knelt before me in perfect unison, their voices a hollow chorus.
"As you command, My Lord."
I surveyed them with cold satisfaction. "Civilians will dispose of the excess. The rest of you—join the front lines in Hammer Bay."
A ripple of acknowledgment passed through the ranks before they melted into the darkness, their forms dissolving into the night.
Five Days of Silent Conquest, for nearly a week, this had been my routine. Harvest powers. Raise Shadows. Expand my army.
Sugar Town had become my sanctum—a sealed zone where none but I and my Shadows could enter. The place itself was pathetic—barely a town at all. A cluster of crumbling houses, a few boarded-up stores, and streets that hadn't seen maintenance in decades.
500 meters in radius. That's all it is.
But its insignificance was its greatest strength. No one cared about Sugar Town. No one noticed when its people vanished overnight. No one questioned why the roads leading into it were suddenly closed.
And because of that, the war in Hammer Bay remained 'clean'. No piles of corpses. No mass graves. No evidence of the atrocities committed in the name of order. Just oddly empty streets after every battle, swept clean before the sun could rise.
---
Of course, the GLF noticed the oddity, the cleanliness of the battlefield,
"How do your men clean up so fast?" Melisa had asked me yesterday, her brow furrowed.
I'd smiled, leaning back in my chair. "Efficiency. We have protocols for battlefield sanitation—don't want disease spreading among civilians, do we?"
She'd hesitated, then nodded. "Makes sense."
A subtle pulse of pheromones—just enough to ease suspicion, just enough to make her believe. And just like that, the conversation ended. No one can know, or even should know the darkest thing I had done in this war, and it would remain that way forever.
Genosha was a wasteland with delusions of grandeur. Hammer Bay, the so-called "capital," was little more than a glorified port city. Sugar Town was a joke. The rest? Untamed wilderness and mines that had barely been tapped.
1286 square miles. Small by most standards, but more than enough for what I had planned. For the basic infrastructures? The roads were already there—crumbling, but salvageable. with a little bit of repair work and upgrade the road should be useable and be remade brand new, the mines promised resources. And the population?
1 to 2 million. A modest number, but one that would grow. And the best part? 60% of them were Metas. I am thankful for David Moreau for his racist and exploitive personality, he alienated and treat these Meta horribly for a long time, engraved a submissive mindset on them, it was so bad, that all I had to do is just be their savior, and all of them began to worshipped me their messiah
All it took was food. Shelter. A few kind words. And just like that— 500,000 loyal followers. The foundation of my empire.