Pestilence: Rise Of The Pure Undead

"Why are you all looking at me like I am saying nonsense? Did you not see it? I know that she specifically want to see Vwoldtnir, I heard from Dracula when he went to Durter that one time, the Hierophant-Queen was disappointed! She clearly has something for him" Nosferatu asserted with full confidence, but was met only with silence from his fellow gravelords.

"I feel that you have been inactive for a tad too long, Nosferatu, for you to start attempting to pair up Vwoldtnir with a living…" Atsalinopalo tapped his metallic claws against his iron jaw, producing a rhythmic sound to accompany his words of death tongue.

"Come now, all of us here were alive once, are you telling me that none of you ever looked at a living and thought that they looked quite nice? I mean, Körpersucher wears the bodies of women like suits" the foetid vampire lord waved his large hands around and pointed to the ghost lord.

"There is absolutely nothing lascivious about me possessing pretty young women with typically tanned skin- It is purely a coincidence that everytime I end up possessing someone, that the vessel looks like that" Körpersucher attempted to explain in a most composed tone.

"See?" Nosferatu just waved in the ghost lord's direction "I mean, two rather short people, whose greatest hobby is digging through the earth, spending time together on the regular, and it makes some people on the side of the girl mad? Am I truly mad for thinking that there might be a little something going on there? Surely, at least- Vwoldtnir has thought about it if she were to become undead, which will eventually happen without the shadow of doubt" the vampire slapped the pale table with only a small amount of force, but still ended up sending a crack running through it.

The ghoul lord stood still, as per usual, and just ground the teeth inside of his torso together as a response for a few seconds.

"Very well, in the event of Artratac becoming undead, I suppose that I would not mind us mixing our death forces together" he carefully replied whilst crossing his arms- all four of them since his legs were also arms.

"Mmh… I guess that's the best I'll get out of you" Nosferatu rose up from his seat, and dust fell from him "I found a nice realm for my three vampirelings to progress, so I'll be hard to reach for a little while, but do make sure to inform me if Loimos returns in the meantime"

"I am certain that we'll feel it when he returns anyways, surely his strength will further increase from overcoming the old hero… But apart from that, how is the overall progress of the empire's conquests right now?" Multaemanus wondered.

"Personally, I would qualify our progress as slow, even with the new technique of conquering realms further away from our borders so as to trap portions of lively lands and oceans in between pockets of death force, we have been moving forward at an incredibly slow pace, everytime we make the slightest of progress, ambient life force grows stronger and resists our glorious death force more fiercely!" Vespertillo responded, the bestial vampire lord shaking his head.

"I think it is time to add new strategies, if this goes on, we'll never even get anywhere close to the other superpowers with the miasma, by the time we do, they'll have had years upon years worth of peaceful times to figure ways to counter and block our advance, it has probably been centuries since those ancient monoliths had anything to worry about in the form of military conflict, our mere presence is giving them a boost in that regard, for now, they are probably only making small advancements since we remain passive and are still far away from their borders…" Vespertillo explained

"My brother is correct, and also, the stronger the ambient life force becomes, the stronger they'll be able to craft life barriers, such things have already proven problematic in the past, it required effort to destroy the barrier of Tamaris despite the weakness of that living nation… Those superpowers occupy entire continents and rule with iron hands, their leaders are exalted beings who had been ruling for who knows how long, it is likely that we will clash against barrier that even our combined efforts might prove insufficient to breach" Atsalinopalo added, and indeed, this was something all of the gravelords were well aware of.

In the beginning, the empire had spread across the lands and oceans at incredibly speeds, life had been powerless to resist, but now, they were practically locked in place, although somewhat efficient, the method of using realms to engulf pockets of life from multiple sides still required time, each realm was a treasure trove that needed to be carefully conquered, explored and exploited, if there were people inhabiting them, those people would need to be converted to undeath using the trusty methods to avoid the rise of too many negators.

As such the realm method was not fast either, and the amount of territory that could be absorbed that way was limited to the placements of said realms, certains areas had no realms, or not enough to perform it, leading to the empire's territory no longer being a neat circle, but a sprawling mass if viewed from above.

"There are plenty of realms hidden underground, perhaps we could perform the realm method in another manner? Instead of encircling in an horizontal manner, we could do so from a vertical axis, using realms that are at greatly different elevations levels" the ghoul lord offered, but that method still had the same problems as the classical way.

"We could attempt tests with the various realms of death subordinate to Oblivion, we can open rifts leading to them even in life-infested areas, although we have not managed to send death force and miasma through them yet, we could try to focus in that direction" the spectre lord offered an idea of her own, but it seemed like Vespertillo already thought of something.

"The empire has put that area on hold for now, but I believe that it is our best bet to not only expand the reach of our territory, but also take the superpowers by surprised when the time comes to deliver them from their plight…" the vampire lord formed a grin with his objectively ugly bat face, a somewhat rare sight.

"And what could that be?" asked Nosferatu, he didn't say anything about expansion because his ideas were always about just ignoring everything and just charging head-on and overpowering everything with sheer force, and these ideas were never accepted.

The ghost lord looked up with his vessel.

"Do you mean…?"

"Indeed, it is high time that undeath spreads beyond all layers of clouds and makes its way into the vacuum of space- Think about it, whilst there may be some livings beings up there and some planets with life force, overall, it is an empty place with barely any energy to speak of floating around, life force can not resist us up there, we could spread death force all over the place with barely any opposition, and perhaps even miasma as well…"

"...Once that is done, we could theoretically envelop the entire world, we could launch an attack on ambient life from every direction at once, and the superpowers would never see it coming!"