Becoming a God

"Honestly by making me a God the you would profit a lot. You see as you've guessed I'm not quite human I'm also not technically a monster either and since those are the two options I'm both. I'm also neither. What I am is something new. My goal is to create a safe space for myself and those like me. The way you profit is by monetizing this process. The way I see it when something is fundamentally different there are two choices. Either you make this difference into something outstanding or you make it something lesser. An example is how humans keep beastfolk as slaves. Their animal aspects were considered something that makes them lesser than human even though there is no downside to this aspect and it actually seems to only have benefits to beastfolk. Essentially what I'm pitching is you become the person to discover me and demand tribute while I keep to myself. Give me a place to live and you can make profits as you wish by using my image. The only condition is that you let me be free."

For a few seconds Dolus seemed dumbfounded and even thought Arthur may be more fiendish than himself. However he soon replied, "I could do all of this without freeing you and keep you as some kind of attraction. You seem to be asking a lot for someone in your position."

However, Arthur knew that this was the next logical place to reach and already had a counter argument, "I completely understand how you would reach this conclusion but what I'm proposing isn't just a method of earning money but also influence because as the head of the religion of me you would have followers who with enough time would become pious enough to throw away their lives and with that comes the power to essentially make all the authority of the influencers become null if they cross you. Because a religion can undermine all structures in society based off of the doubts and weakness of others."

Dolus continued to become cautious of Arthur since he seemed completely blackhearted and cunning. Dolus knew that the more he thinks about this the better the idea becomes because of the infectious nature of a religion. All it takes is doubt to create the fear necessary to make someone a believer and with that he could prey on countless monsters too uneducated to know that they're being scammed. Then by the time they know he'd be powerful enough for that to not even become the slightest of an issue.

Reluctantly he agreed that this idea would be completely beneficial and if he couldn't start it up due to others interfering he could just throw this boy under the proverbial bus to save him from losing out.

"Ok I'll help you but how can I trust that you won't betray me." He had seen how blackhearted Arthur could be and knew that this boy would betray him without a second thought so he wanted some kind of insurance. However he wasn't expecting to hear what he heard next.

"If it's trust you need then how about I give you my blood I'm sure you could think of a thousand curses to use on me right and I'll even give you a cup full of it." Arthur knew that the ultimate sign of trust among demons and devils was trading blood but giving blood without receiving any is beyond that. To the entirety of monster kind this would be the same as making yourself their slave.

Arthur knew this but he was aware that in his position this was the only way to break past his current situation. He needed to no longer be under oppression and he can't allow himself to be subordinated so his goal was to create a reverse slave pact, the point of him becoming a god was that by doing that he'd be more important than Dolus so if it weren't like that and was instead making a company or something similar he would be below Dolus and would become restricted so this was the best route out of his current situation. Thinking this Arthur sneered internally thinking that he has a thousand ways of making the exchange of blood redundant sadly at his current level and with his limited resources they would be impossibly difficult to pull off.

Dolus agreed to this plan and they discussed the first step which needed Arthur to use his assimilation skill in front of an audience and on a powerful monster this was in order to show power that could instantly destroy even high level monsters. Arthur had been reflecting on his fight with the bull and the only thing that distinguishes that from any other fight was the completely different levels in strength.

However, if the enemy only needed to be stronger than him then he would've been capable of activating it in a few other fights such as one he had against a slime where he was actually inside it. This caused Arthur to need to re-evaluate the situation and he soon realised the difference between the two scenarios in the fight with the slime he planned a method to kill it and the same is true for most other monsters he fought because in-between fights he was studying the creatures fighting in the arena whereas in the fight with the bull he had no plan and had to improvise. In that fight he was incredibly nervous even slightly scared he thought that if this was a skill of a timid monster then it being a last line of defence made sense. He stopped his line of thought there because he didn't want to fall down the rabbit hole of 'why would a wisp have such a broken skill' again.

For the next few days Arthur continued to fight in the arena however soon he would be scheduled to fight an enemy he had never seen before not only that but it's strength was classed as two ranks higher than the bull. Dolus said "The creatures species is called harlequin. Everything about this creature is undefined since their species is unstable they are impossible to predict and also impossible to categorise. No two harlequins are the same and their powers differ greatly as well. One thing to know is that against one you know nothing. Kehehehe"

Arthur could only feel this fight would be the toughest so far but he also felt a deep and incomprehensible emotion rising within him. The feeling was primitive and most modern humans had lost this emotion. Bloodlust. His excitement to kill was beyond gaining strength for some kind of noble cause like protecting the ones close to him. Put simply, his soul had begun to yearn killing, blood and the growth that comes from trampling on his enemies.

Unbeknownst to Arthur he was slowly becoming a monster.