Marvel: A New God's Reign

Chapter 2: Life Till Now

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"Men are not men on the battlefield. We turn into some other creature. You can do the cruelest things... It doesn't even matter if it's an order or not. To protect yourself, your mind shuts out any emotions you have. It's like a steel door. But once the war ends, you can't keep it closed forever."

- Edward Elric, (Fullmetal Alchemist)

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<(Atem POV)>

There is a difference between being a god and an emperor. If you are a god, you can do anything you like, do whatever you want and nobody will ever question you but if you are an emperor you will always have to think about your people first, about those loyal to you, you will have rules and morals stopping you from behaving like a god to your people.

However different from the two previous positions, a God Emperor is something completely different. Being a God Emperor was both about having fun as well as doing twisted stuff that would make any sane normal person puke with disgust... like slaughtering an entire army without mercy.

Yeah, it isn't exactly as fun as it sounds on paper or in high-budget films and shows. No, an actual slaughter in real life can challenge even the people with the strongest will to throw up like a fountain. People dying left and right due to blood loss, severed limbs lying about, or severe burns melting off people's faces even when they were practically begging you to spare them, promising their eternal servitude and everything else they had, even sometimes resorting to curses and threats when they lost all hope. The entire thing can be pretty intense and stomach-churning.

The same thing occurred to me when I had to stand and watch my lifeless para-sentinel droid troops made of remodified mutant-hunting sentinels emotionlessly annihilate an entire race of green-skinned fantasy creatures. In my defense, I didn't have the desire to throw up but I did feel disgusted at the sight, at the bare cruelty of the crime that I was myself committing yet I kept on looking forcing myself to etch every moment of the event into my mind for eternity.

I didn't want to be someone naive who had no idea about the bloodshed that war can possibly cause, someone who thinks that a war is just a way to gain more power and influence. No, I wanted to always remember what war could do to civilization so that I would never become a war fanatic who would crave bloodlust just for some ego boost.

Of course, one might ask why I even followed through with the slaughter, wasting time, resources, and a perfectly healthy supply of free soldiers and labor.

It was because it needed to be done. As a New god, I had quite amazing psionic powers and through one of those powers famously named telepathy, I could read all of their minds, the programs embedded into their very souls, their bare instincts... And I was disgusted at what I saw.

The green-skinned warrior race wasn't a natural species but an only male race made by Karnilla's magic meant only for battle and war. It thrived on suffering and chaos, killing others, raping women to breed them, torturing them, eating anything they got their hands on, not even sparing babies. Even if I had let them live today, even if I had shown them pity or reprogrammed their minds into being my followers and obeying me, their souls would still always belong to Karnilla, they would always be spiritually loyal to her. Their instincts would always be of savage bastards wanting to cause suffering rather than loyal soldiers.

And I had no need for savages, no need for cowardly deserters or possible traitors, and believe me or not, they would have definitely betrayed me in due time. My para-sentinels were much better than them albeit they would probably do better with some software upgrades especially to quicken their decision-making and reflexes which proved a little lacking in this war resulting in some of them getting destroyed during Karnilla and Morgana's battle. But since this was their first mass testing, I was satisfied.