《A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse》


 1 Open Your Eyes

    In the beginning, there was nothing. Just an endless void as far as the eye, my eye, could see. And honestly, that was quite far. Not that there was anyone else to see it, at least as far as I could tell. And frankly, if anyone else was out there, hiding in that vast darkness... well that''d be quite silly!


    All that seemed to exist the moment I sprang into being was indescribably vast darkness. Literally, everything... or maybe the only thing, that seemed to exist was a vast, awe-inspiring slate of blackness. At least as far as I knew that was the only thing that existed. I definitely couldn''t see anything else, anyway. Not one person, animal, spirit, or extraplanar made themselves known to me.


    I sprang into being knowing those words. Or did I gain consciousness knowing them? Knowing these words. Many of the words I knew made sense to me.


    Words like "I" and "me" made the most sense. And other words, ones like "void" and "darkness" also made sense. Heck, I even knew about words like "alone" and "others"!


    Some words though... well if I''m being completely honest, and I had no reason to lie to myself, they didn''t make sense. Words like "person", "animal", "spirit", and "extraplanar" didn''t make sense to me.


    Those were... strange words.


    I knew them, that they expressed concepts that had some sort of meaning, but their meanings escaped me. I began to think about them. And when I did, time began to pass. Or at least... it felt like time began to pass.


    I spent a long time thinking about the words I didn''t really understand. And at some point, I even began to wonder if words existed that I not only didn''t understand but didn''t even know! Now that was a humbling thought.


    Nothing changed though. And of all of the bad stuff about being in a slate of darkness where you''re alone with your thoughts, that''s perhaps the worst thing of all. Nothing changes in a void of endless darkness.


    Eventually, I got tired of it. I began to ask myself questions. Real questions, not just ones about words. Questions that made me think harder than any confusing word had made me think. Will anything ever change? Should anything ever change?


    I was afraid that maybe nothing would. That I would be stuck in this... terrifyingly vast darkness, forever.


    ____________________________


    I don''t know how long I was thinking about questions. It felt like a long time, but I had no way of knowing for sure. But eventually, something changed. And the thing that changed was the darkness before me.


    There was no warning when it happened. The void went from being indescribably vast and terrifyingly dark to being different. All of a sudden there were words in the darkness. Words that I understood. That I could read.


    And there were very nice words.


    [Hello little one!] The words read, emblazoned in the void in shimmering white stars. And there were so many words even in that last sentence that I had an instinctual, perhaps contextual understanding of, but whose precise meaning escaped me.


    And then again, perhaps instantly, they changed. They now read something else.


    [Can you hear me?] The words in the void asked. And you know what? I couldn''t hear them. I could read them. But I couldn''t hear them. And the instant I noticed that there was another change.


    [Oh shoot! Sorry. Let me try something...] The words in the void now read. And it was perhaps a second later, at least relative to my understanding of time, that I heard something.


    "Hello young god!" Said an indescribably vast voice. The voice was warm and filled with kindly energy. It was a friendly voice. One that instinctively made me want to trust it.


    "Oh, that''s so nice of you to say. Are you going to be a god of kindness and sweetness, you cute little thing, you?" The voice asked, gently and softly. I took my time listening to the voice, replaying what it just said in my mind and sorting through the words. One of them stuck out to me.


    The voice asked if I was going to be a "god". What is a god? I... don''t know, but that word feels familiar. I like it.


    "A god is what you are, little one. Gods were entities of creation and destruction. They were power incarnate. They created entire universes, and were worshipped by thousands, to even quintillions of beings across the multiverse!" The voice explained, leaving me with so many questions.


    I wasn''t oblivious to the fact that despite the voice''s glowing and very vague description of gods it kept referring to them in the past tense. That was... concerning, to say the least.


    "Oh hey... are you actually observant? Weird. Cool, but weird. That said, we should get started. We don''t want to keep you here for any longer than necessary. And you''ve already been here for so long, we''re sure you''re inching to get out into the multiverse and begin to acquire worshippers." The voice told me, promising so much more intrigue, but also giving me extremely little information.


    "Nevermind your need for information little god. We''ve got a process to get through. Your answers will come soon enough, just trust us." The voice told me.


    I wasn''t sure I could trust the voice. But since we''re being honest, I didn''t think I had a choice.


    "You don''t. Now... what''s your name? We can tell given your curiosity you''re probably gonna think something like ''Name? What''s a name?'', so we''ll tell you right now. A name is what others call you. Your name is gonna be one of the next things to appear. It''ll look to you just like our first words did." Said the voice, confidently and more than a bit disparagingly.


    But sure enough, something below their words did appear in the void. A word in "brackets".


    [Althos]


    Althos. Something about the word felt... right. It felt good to see it in the void, like the words of the voice but more... me.


    "Althos? Hmm... that''s a curious name. We''ve never heard of it before. But hey, that''s one question down. Only... several more to go." Said the once kindly voice.


    "''Once kindly''... Oh Althos, the truth is so much more complicated than you know, you youthful little god." Whispered the strange voice condescendingly.


    "We''re tired of you calling us ''the voice''. We''re the system. We are the creation of an ancient god, a member of the same species as you, who wanted to categorize and quantify things like domains, subdomains, classes, and more." Lectured the entity that was apparently some sort of "system".


    "Hey, now you''re getting it! Yes. That''s us. The system. Anyways, let''s move right along. When we ask you things you''re gonna see more words in brackets. By now you''ve no doubt noticed, at least subconsciously, that we can read your mind. Which is how this conversation is a two-way one. We just need you to repeat the words you see in the brackets, in your mind okay?" Asked the system.


    I wondered if more changes were going to happen anytime soon. This idle thought provoked a strange peal of laughter from the odd voice, the first sound it made that didn''t cause new words to appear in the void. The laughter lasted for a few seconds before new words appeared in that eerie darkness.


    "Yes Althos, more changes are going to happen anytime soon. Now please cooperate. What is your alignment?" The system asked, curiosity noticeably tinging its voice.


    [Chaotic neutral.]


    Chaotic neutral. Hmm... I wonder what that means.?


    "Chaotic neutral? Yeah... you strike us as a chaotic neutral sort. It''ll be quite interesting to see you strike out on your own, in the multiverse." The system said, cryptically.


    For a second my curiosity was higher than ever, but the system ignored me and kept talking even as I was thinking.


    "Now we''re gonna ask you about domains and subdomains. We''ve now officially hit the part in every god''s life called the ''tutorial''. It''ll last longer than you think. Are you ready to learn?" When the system was finished speaking this time there was an edge of sarcasm in its voice, as if it knew that I was ready to learn.


    But for the sake of fairness, and though a part of me was loathe to admit it... I was ready to learn. I couldn''t keep it from myself, which meant I probably couldn''t keep it from the system.


    "That''s the spirit! You need to understand that gods are not all that exist. You have some knowledge in your mind of other types of beings already, and that knowledge will come to you, to your consciousness, as you meet other sorts of beings. What you need to know right now is that gods are far stronger than other types of beings." The system taught me, apparently trying to prepare me for some future.


    "We''re gonna ignore that and just be forthright with you. So please listen to us right now. It''s actually very important." The seriousness in the tone of the system''s voice made me listen, and if I could have I would have inched closer to it to better be able to hear whatever it was about to say next.


    "Gods haven''t existed in a very long time. And neither have other... we''ll call them ''higher beings''. We have no idea how you exist, just that you do and that you are a god. It is our purpose to help gods, and you are the last one. The last higher being. That may not mean anything to you, but it means something to us. We''re not trying to mock you, or be sassy. We want you to succeed." The voice told me, a remarkable level of solemness in its voice.


    I was moved by what it said, but there was something I didn''t understand. What does it mean for a god to succeed? Because all I want, after this incredibly confusing exchange is simple. I want to know things, and I want to have power.


    "That''s it. You hit the nail on the head, Althos. Gods in the old age wanted power. Some of them wanted knowledge, but they all wanted power. Do you know why you want power?" The system asked. There was a tone of excitement in its voice the whole time it was speaking.


    Why do I want power?


    I know why I want knowledge. I''ve spent... I don''t even know how long pondering questions and words, and because of that I want to have the answers to any and questions and know any and all words. And even now I''m having a very confusing conversation. I don''t like it. Having knowledge would prevent that. Or at least it would lessen my confusion.


    But why do I want power? That''s... harder.


    I don''t know. I''ll just have to add that to the questions that knowledge would help me answer. Self-awareness is a type of knowledge right?


    "Yes it is Althos. There are mortals alive today who don''t seem to realize that." The system said, before laughing at its own joke.


    "Now... I suppose we really should hurry this along. This prologue is getting too long. We don''t have many questions left. It''s bracket time. What are your neutral, natural domains?" The voice asked. And once more, just as it predicted, brackets lit up the void.


    [Althos'' domains: Knowledge, Chaos, Nature]


    Knowledge. Chaos. Nature. Those words... I could sense how they resonated with me, in my soul. I wasn''t sure how though.


    "Knowledge. Chaos. Nature. I guess that explains the void." The system said, breathing a strange sigh at the end of its strange statement.


    "Okay, since you''re chaotic neutral... what about the vice and virtue under your control?" The system asked me, almost immediately after sighing. And again, brackets cut up the otherwise infinite void. Though this time there were two instead of just one, which was an intriguing change.


    [Vice: Lust]


    [Virtue: Patience]


    Lust and patience. Patience and lust. What an intriguing combination. Does that mean that I''m those things?


    "No. Well... not by definition. As a chaotic neutral god, you immediately spring into being possessing a ''tier of influence'' over all of the things you''re seeing right now. For the sake of this making sense, we''ll go ahead and tell you a bit about these things. Especially since you''re a curious god." The system told me.


    "Domains and subdomains are concepts that gods have control over and can influence. Domains are more generalized than subdomains are. Here''s an example: since you came into being as a god of knowledge you will spring to life having a wide assortment of knowledge and can readily influence the knowledge of others. That said... if we tried to tell you much it''d be too much right now." Said the system, teasing me that there was more to this than it had just said.


    "Gods have no limits on how many domains and subdomains they can influence. But it takes time, experience, and worshipers to gain influence over new domains. And to increase how much you can influence a domain or subdomain because just because you are a god of a domain doesn''t automatically mean you can exert infinite control over that domain or subdomain." Continued the system.


    I thought about that for a few moments, at least as far as I could tell, and found that it made sense. Or rather it made as much sense as anything else the system had told me.


    "Good. Now what about your subdomains?" The thing asked me, diving right back into its mission.


    [Althos'' subdomains: Vermin, Earth, Agriculture]


    Vermin, earth, and agriculture? What a strange combination.


    "Those three? Hmm... There''s never been a deity of vermin before. Weird. Especially in conjunction with earth and agriculture. That''s potentially a cursed combination. So now it''s our turn. All gods are born possessing several inborn domains in common. Now you''ll be able to see them."


    [Innate domains: Faith, Minds, Dreams, Civilization, Magic,]


    Faith. Minds. Dreams, Civilization. Magic.


    "Yep! We know that doesn''t make any sense, but we promise we''re nearly done. And when we''re done you''ll be able to open your eyes." The system told me, dropping a bombshell that it refused to give me time to process.


    "What is your school of magic? Or possibly, if you''re lucky, what are your schools of magic?" The thing asked me, speaking quickly now.


    [Althos'' school of magic: Healing]


    Healing? Really? All of these things are starting to sound like I''m gonna be a... what''s the word? It''s on the tip of my mind...


    "Never mind that! Healing is a good school of magic. We have a lot of respect for the healing school. Skyrim could... The multiverse could use more healers. Now, what is your class?" The system asked, shortly after making a rather nonsensical comment.


    [Althos'' class: Druid]


    Druid! That''s it. That''s the word I was looking for earlier. Somehow I had instinctual, almost knowledge of it.


    "Druid huh? Yeah, that checks out. You''re gonna be a really weird god. A deity with powers over crops and ants. And mines and beetles." The system told me, teasing me. I didn''t like it.


    "Oh well. We''re nearly done here. What are your wild traits? These are strange, often totally unique traits the gods possess." The system asked. There was a sense of finality about its tone just now. It was exciting.


    [Althos'' Wild Traits: Shapeless One, Breaker Of Curses, Omniglot, More Than Meets The Eye]


    Shapeless One. Breaker Of Curses. Omniglot. More Than Meets The Eye. There was something... intimidating about those words when put together. Something that made me feel a bit nervous. And that was a feeling I didn''t even know I could feel!


    "Whoa... those traits are unlike anything I''ve ever seen. Althos..." For the first time ever the system''s voice drifted off, confused and alarmed. There was audible fear in the voice that had been my sole companion. It took what felt like... a minute, for lack of a better word, to speak again.


    "We don''t know... We just don''t know. But Althos, at last it''s time for you to open your eyes. We''re gonna go and do some research, but if you need us, if you have questions... when you have questions, just think about our voice. Our strange, mechanical, and friendly voice." The system told me.


    I could almost hear something strange in that tone. Something like a smile. But I couldn''t be sure. And then, at last, the system let me go into the world. It just had one more thing to say.


    "Open your eyes."


    And just like that, after an unknown amount of time in a void... I did.

 2 The Room I Opened My Eyes In

    I opened my eyes. And for the first time in my life, if my existence could even be considered life, I saw something that wasn''t a vast, indescribable void or words emblazoned in the sky of that void.


    The first thing I ever saw outside of the strange place where I spent my first moments was a series of interconnected thatched ceiling panels. Those were more words that I knew but didn''t quite understand.


    The panels were a light brown color and they were high above me, lingering out of reach. I didn''t move and kept staring at them. I didn''t try to touch them either, I was just perfectly still. If anyone saw me, someone might even think that I was studying them. I wasn''t. I just wasn''t sure what I could do.


    I stayed still until the system spoke to me again. And when it finally did, it didn''t speak to me how I anticipated the thing speaking to me.


    "Good morning Althos! Get up and get out of bed, you sleepy head... Huh. That''s weird... We should probably fix that. We don''t want to be just an audible voice in your head." The strange entity told me, happily telling me what to do before it suddenly got confused.


    Its initial tone was quite cheerful. Annoying so in fact.


    "Hey, system..." I said, before abruptly stopping. My eyes narrowed in confusion, as I wondered what I had just done. That was supposed to be a thought, but it came out of a part of me I wasn''t familiar with.


    [Oh no... you''re VERY curious. Annoyingly so in fact. We hate it. Ah! We did it. We... think.] Complained the system, its voice both audible and appearing at the top of my vision. This caused my eyes to further narrow in confusion, enough so that the edges of my vision began to darken slightly.


    [Alright, we''re gonna stop this right here. You have a body now. You can do things with that body. You can stand up. In fact... try it!] The system told me, its voice still audible in my mind, as well as in bracket form.


    I considered this for a second, and the ramifications of the bombshell that the system had just dropped on me. Words like "body" and "things" were words I understood. The system was telling that I could not just see things, but touch them too! That I had "limbs" and "fingers" and "toes". Which, if true, was a game-changer.


    "I can stand up?" I asked my voice rougher and gruffer sounding than I thought it would have been, now that I knew to listen to it.


    [Yes you can! Try it. Just move. If you''re scared it''s okay to try and take it slowly.] The system said to me, sharing genuinely helpful advice. It also spoke in a kind tone, as if it were a concerned friend and not... whatever the system was.


    [We are a kind friend! You''ll see.] The system snapped, still able to hear my thoughts and observations.


    I chuckled, at defensive declaration. And then I visualized myself getting up. Or rather I visualized someone getting up. I only assumed it was me for a second until I studied the entity in my mind.


    The entity I visualized was a mannequin-like entity with no face and no clothing. No genitalia either. The thing that stood up in my head was not a person, but a featureless facsimile of some sort of living creature.


    [Stop that! You''ll just scare yourself. Your body isn''t important... Wait, let us rephrase that. That was really bad wording on our part.] The strange entity that gave me advice told me, pausing for a second to gain a better grasp on the wording it wanted to use. For a few seconds, I considered questioning it about the thing in my mind. I never got the chance.


    It began to speak to me a few seconds after it stopped.


    [You aren''t mortal. Your body and mind are not connected to each other. And the truth is, one of your wild traits means that even among gods your body is less important than it would be for others. Which is interesting. You can do a lot with that. So for now, don''t worry that much about the limitations of your form and just... stand up.] The system told me.


    There was something weirdly uplifting about its voice at the end there. And so I took a deep breath and tried to move my hands.


    To my surprise, it worked. I felt my limbs respond to my mind, and suddenly I was gifted with an awareness of my two extremities.


    I moved the limbs until I could see them. It took me a second to get used to moving the things, as any sort of moving was not something I was used to doing. But when it clicked, it clicked.


    I brought my hands to where I could lay my eyes on them and was surprised that my skin was so... calloused and tan. The hands in front of me were not the hands of a newborn entity, but of a middle-aged being whose career involved physical labor.


    I looked at them and began to smile. I could feel the corners of my lips tugging upward to form the facial expression. I felt joy at the bit of me that I could now lay my eyes on.


    [Oh come on, hurry up! There''s a mirror in the room you''re in. Just get up.] The system whined. I audibly chuckled at its complaints and readied myself to stand up.


    ____________________________


    A few moments later I was standing somewhat unsteadily on my feet. I could now see the rest of the room I found myself in.


    I was in a plain room with not just a thatched ceiling, but thatched walls as well. I had just been laying on a bed made of straw, covered by a single thick blanket. It was atop a simple bedframe, but one that did a good job of keeping the bed off the floor. The floor was made of wood panels, strong ones that didn''t creak when I first stepped on them.


    There was a single door that led into and out of the room. It was made of hardwood, and at a glance looked to be quite sturdy.


    In front of me, there was a desk for clothes, and atop that desk, there was a single mirror. It was a roughly treated and mishandled piece of glass but it got the job done and in looking at it I got to look at myself. And I spent a few moments memorizing every detail of my face.


    I wasn''t a young ikeman or anyone someone could describe as guapo. In fact, the part of my consciousness that was supplied with externally sourced knowledge and like all of the words that I knew and some sort of supernatural understanding of the ones that I didn''t know informed me I was rather average looking.


    The body I awoke in was that of a man who appeared to have enjoyed physical labor. I had sun-kissed skin, long brown hair, and well-developed muscles that strained against my clothing. I had a full and healthy beard with follicles the same color as the hair on top of my head. My eyes were a shade of brown that I could only describe as matching the color of healthy soil.


    I was wearing clothes. I didn''t have a choice in the matter, it''s just that the moment I opened my eyes this body was already in clothes.


    I wore thick looking brown robes, but they weren''t too thick. I felt warm, but not uncomfortably so. On the desk there was a thin scarf, I grabbed it and wrapped it around my neck without much difficulty, despite the fact that that was the first time I had used my hands for something other than lifting myself off the bed.


    I stared at my reflection for a little bit longer. While starring at it, I wondered what was about to happen.


    I spent what felt like a long time in the void before the system spoke to me. While looking in the mirror I reflected on that. I considered how it affected my outlook, now that I had a body and knew... well not a lot, but some things. I now knew some things, and I wanted to know more.


    I didn''t know if I''d be able to learn things if I stayed here. And a part of me, my heart perhaps, told me that that wasn''t what I needed to do. Whatever I needed to do was outside. It was out the door, in the world. Somewhere.


    There was a part of me that had questions about what laid beyond the door. Actually... all of me had questions about what laid beyond the door. But I knew that wondering about them wouldn''t give me the answers I sought, and it wouldn''t let me increase or improve the powers I supposedly possessed.


    I nodded at myself, and took a deep breath. And then I turned towards the door.


    I now felt ready to go. After all, I knew that I could speak, that I could walk, and what I looked like. Anything else, I quickly reasoned, I could learn along the way. I took my first step away from the mirror and towards the door.


    And rather annoyingly, at that moment a familiar voice interrupted me.


    [Hey, do you wanna... slow down a second?] The system asked me, rather sassily. I did stop, due to that response.


    "Where are you asking me to stop? At first, you wanted me to get up and mill about, and now that I''m up and milling about and you''re trying to stop me... Well, it''s starting to feel a bit like you don''t know what you want." I said, annoyed at the thing''s constant command-giving.


    I heard an exasperated sounding sigh. And then a grumble. It was a few seconds after the grumble that I heard that I heard words I could actually make out.


    [There''s a whole, wide, and very scary world out there Althos. We want you to be safe. Though we will give you credit where credit is due: the fact that you are willing to venture into the unknown means that it''s likely that you are decisive and brave.] The entity explained, lecturing me.


    [And though the multiverse usually needs wisdom more than bravery, sometimes history is changed or even saved by a single brave fool.] The system continued, while very politely insulting me.


    I opted for politeness myself and bit my tongue, though not literally, and waited for the thing to expand on its thoughts. I knew it was coming, so I just waited in almost awkward silence for a few seconds while the system got the hint that I wasn''t talking. When it picked up on my subtle hints it began to speak of its own volition.


    [Before you go, we wanted to teach you about your class and your class features. If you want to be successful then you need to have a holistic understanding of all of your abilities, not just your godly ones.] The system said, teasingly.


    For a second I felt my face contort in confusion. I took a step back and composed my thoughts before I began to speak next. When I began to speak I felt confident in the points I had on the tip of my tongue.


    "I don''t know anything about any of my abilities. Because you haven''t taught me anything about them. Or at the very least you haven''t taught me how to teach myself about them. You''ve taught me about domains, subdomains, and how to see my name, but I know nothing about any of these... abilities and features you just talked about." I said, speaking rather frankly to the system.


    There was an awkward silence between us after I finished saying my piece. After a minute passed wherein the system didn''t speak I huffed in annoyance and began to walk towards the door, taking full steps until I was close enough to reach out and put a hand on the doorknob.


    I actually did have a hand on the handle when the system shouted into my mind.


    [Wait! Oh come on Althos, don''t be like that. We won''t hold you back anymore, we just need you to do one thing. It''s a spell. It''s really simple. And if you do it, it''ll be easier for us to teach you your skills and abilities. All of them. Will you please do it for us?] The system asked. It was pleading with me, really wanting me to do this.


    I sighed and gave the system an affirmative noise. It immediately cheered, causing me to winch in annoyance. And then it began to talk to me some more.


    [Awesome! You don''t even have to take your hand off the doorknob. Please open your other hand.] The voice in my head said to me. I nodded and did as I was asked.


    [And now repeat after us: Abre Vallem Knorus.] The odd entity in my mind said to me. I considered not doing it, because it sounded odd to me but I sighed, a noise I made a lot apparently and then did as I was asked.


    "Abre Vallem Knorus." I muttered, not aware of what was about to happen. I hadn''t expected the words to do anything, but I was proven wrong almost immediately.


    My ignorance was why when I felt something begin to materialize in my hand I immediately turned my head towards my hand. My initial apathy towards the task I was asked to do faded as the object I had just conjured grew more solid in my hand by the second.


    Once I was facing my open hand I was able to watch a staff the color of tree bark phase into being in my open hand. It took it a matter of seconds to finish materializing, and when it did my hand was wrapped firmly around it.


    The object in my hand was thick. It had some weight to it, and I could tell that the staff I held in my hand was a powerful object. I moved it and the hand that held it to my side and in doing so realized that when I moved it the thing was impossibly light, like it was made for me as an individual.


    [Do you like it?] The system asked, and from the tone of the thing''s voice, I could tell that if it had a face there was a wide, shit-eating grin on it. But I didn''t try to deny how I felt.


    "I hate to admit it, because this may give you a big head, but... yes I do. I''ll need to use it to know for sure, but I have a feeling... in my gut, that this thing was made for me." I confessed, sighing in mild annoyance as I did so.


    Before the system next spoke there was an audible peal of laughter from it. But it didn''t last long, barely a second actually.


    [That''s because it was. The spell you just used was a druid spell that conjures a soul-weapon and makes it phase into being in your hand. Once you actually know some magic you''ll be able to use an upgraded version of this spell that lets you summon soul weapons that aren''t staffs.] The voice revealed, that same grin from earlier audible in its voice.


    [Congratulations on using your first spell Althos! Now that you''ve used some magic and you''ve experienced one of your powers... We feel a little bit more comfortable with the idea of you leaving this room. But first, we should tell you a bit about the druid class.] The system told me.


    [Druids are magicians who use natural energy to fuel their spells. Their spells and class features revolve around nature. To give you an example of what they can do, they can shape-shift, they can heal people, animals, and plants, and they can cast spells that revolve around nature. They can do more than that, but we think that''s enough of a teaser.] My constant companion said.


    "So I can do those things, right? You know... because I am a druid?" I asked, curious if I could do all of that right away. It sounded very interesting and if I could do all of those things right now that''d be awesome. And the system''s answer was actually encouraging, just not in the way I expected that it would be.


    [Actually yes. Though in your case not because you are a druid. You''re a level 1 druid. Druids normally have to level up to do all of that, but because you''re a god with the right traits and domains under your influence you can do all of that already. And more.] The thing revealed to me.


    After hearing about that I was suddenly feeling very enthusiastic. Suddenly there was a shit-eating grin on my face, and I opened the door and took my first steps out into the world beyond the room I awoke in.

 3 Making Friends, Accepting Quests

    When I stepped out of the room I opened my eyes in and through the door that led in and out of the room, I walked into a lobby. It was a tiny one though.


    The lobby in front of me was split into two parts. One of those parts was a small, shared space furnished with two small sofas and a table between them. This part of the lobby was unoccupied.


    The other part of the lobby was right in front of one of the walls that defined the lobby and consisted of a desk, countless papers messily spread around the top of that desk, and a small woman sitting in a chair behind it. She was reading one of the many pieces of paper that decorated her desk.


    If someone walked past the desk and the woman sitting behind it they''d reach a door with little windows. Sunlight was coming in through that door. Early morning sunlight, so early it looked as if the sun itself wasn''t quite awake yet. Like the sun still needed to drink its own coffee cup.


    Once I was through the door I turned and closed it, causing a sudden noise to fill the otherwise silent lobby. This caused the woman who was behind the desk to turn and look at me. She smiled warmly at me, and I returned the gesture, right as she began to beckon me over. She motioned with her hands that I ought to go over to her right away.


    I took the few steps necessary to arrive in front of her and right as I did she began to speak to me. "Good morning Althos! You''re up bright and early today. How did you sleep?" She asked, knowing my name and repeating it with the familiarity of a friend. Which was odd, because at least at the moment I didn''t know hers.


    Before I responded I took a moment to examine her. She was a short woman, even sitting down, which meant that she was small standing up as well.


    She had soft green eyes, brown hair, a warm smile, and delicate-looking hands. She was dressed in the clothing of a professional woman, long black pants made of some material I couldn''t identify at a glance, and a dark buttoned-up shirt. Her hands were on the desk, holding a piece of paper still so that she could read it.


    "I slept well, thank you for asking." I said, as I smiled at her, and tried to mimic her warm and familiar tone. I must have done a decent job of hiding my confusion because the woman didn''t question my words or my sincerity. Thankfully I didn''t have to persist in my ignorance for long.


    [That woman''s named is Isadora. She''s the receptionist at this inn, which is named the Silver Xana. A Xana is a minor type of nature spirit.] The system informed me, educating me a bit as to where I was almost as soon as I replied to Isadora''s initial comments.


    Isadora turned her face back to her papers before next speaking to me. She opened her mouth to speak even as she began to scan the contents of the page in front of her.


    "Are you planning on looking for a quest today? I know you just got here last night so you may want to explore the town instead, but if you are looking for work there''s absolutely quests suited for a druid that we''d be thrilled to see fulfilled." She said, suggesting that I accept something called a "quest".


    I considered her question for a moment while also half expecting the system to provide me with some juicy knowledge that would help what she just said make sense. I could tell by the context that she was asking me if I planned to go out and earn some money, but there were certain words that made little to no sense to me. But I did like the idea of going out and earning some money.


    Right as I was about to respond affirmatively to the question, I was interrupted by my old friend: the system.


    [If you just asked us a question using your thoughts we''d provide you with the illuminating context you need. We were not the ones who put the knowledge you came into being possessing in your mind. All we did was select this as the place you''d awake in, and modify the memories of the people here to include you.] The entity revealed.


    That revelation made me curious about two things. The first thing I was curious about was the identity of whoever or whatever put the knowledge I have in my mind there in the first place, and of course, the why and how of putting it there.


    The second thing I was curious about was one that probably had a more direct answer: what could the system do? And equally as important: what couldn''t the system do?


    If the system could answer these questions, it opted not too.


    [Quests are tasks you undertake for someone else. All sorts of things can grant quests, domains, subdomains, us, you, and also people, can grant quests and stipulate rewards for the completion of said quests. Successfully completing quests grants you rewards as stipulated by the quest giver.] The system said, continuing its earlier statement without regard for my interruption.


    Armed with what knowledge the system had opted to arm me with I now felt more secure in the decision I was making. It was unchanged.


    "Yes, I am Isadora. I am ready and excited to get to work!" I said energetically, eager to go out into the world and learn more things. She grinned even as she continued to read the paper in front of her.


    "That''s awesome news! Ours is a small town, we are a frontier community after all. And as such we are lacking in magic users, but we''re a kind people. I hope in time you can experience our kindness yourself. Your excitement will take you far in that regard, provided you can keep it up." She told me. And she wasn''t done yet.


    "Why don''t you sort through some of these papers here? These are our own, local quest-requests. That way you can select the most recent and the most local quests. Starting off your time here by completing these quests is sure to grab you a few new friends!" She said, as she idly gestured towards the desk. I chuckled and grabbed a few of the papers on the desk.


    I began to speedily read through the assortment of tasks the papers recorded. There were all sorts of tasks that were asked of me, and presumably, a few other able-bodied individuals when or if ever such individuals rolled into town looking for work.


    Each form that I had gathered and was reading through had a simple format. At the top of the form was the type of quest, generalized into vague categories like "Hunt" or "Heal". And then there was a space wherein the quest-giver gave their name.


    After that, a reader could learn the specific details of the quest itself, a deadline for readers to know when the quest-giver was hoping to have the quest completed by, and the reward for successfully completing the quest. The rewards section piqued my curiosity, but only for a second. I was disappointed when I saw that all it was money. Just different amounts of money.


    Some of the quests were requests to cull nearby predators. One that really stuck out to me was a request to hunt down five bears.


    A number of them were requests for healing. Those ones intrigued me because I knew that I had some, an as of yet unclear amount of influence over the magical school of healing. The bold part of me that liked certainty interpreted that knowledge as saying that I was good at healing.


    A good number of quests were really just attempts to find day-laborers. These requests involved coming over and performing a series of repetitive tasks with the final payment being dependent on how the quest-taker performed in those tasks. This was often for work more advanced than just cleaning something over and over, and there were numerous types of quests like this in the pile.


    The last type of quest that had a good number of examples within the pile of quest forms were gathering quests. These quests were uncreatively labeled and revolved around retrieving a certain type and number of items. In many cases, these quests were labeled as being given by Isadora herself.


    Something I learned when I read those quest forms was the name of the town I was dropped into. It was called "Comillas". I learned this because several of Isadora''s quest-forms mentioned leaving the place and heading to a nearby forest, or a nearby plain, to search for various ingredients with naturalistic sounding names.


    I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts. I allowed myself to think about why I was going on a quest in the first place so that I could more easily pick whichever type of quest I''d end up picking.


    After thinking about it for a second I knew that if I were to leave today it ought to be to safely practice my powers, abilities, magic, and class features. To build my familiarity with myself. And preferably to do so in a way that doesn''t hurt other creatures, because I instinctually knew that being in pain wasn''t something most people liked.


    And if that was my goal I ought to pick a quest that leads me out of where I might be seen. Especially since I didn''t yet know how my own abilities and powers stacked up to those of other beings. Without that knowledge I had no way of knowing what I could do that would allow me to look normal, and what I could do that would give away my identity as something more than a druid.


    Once I had my objectives in mind knowing which ones to pick was easy. I began to separate gathering quests from none gathering quests, placing the non-gathering ones back on the desk where they had been before. It took me a few moments to do that, and when I was done all I had left in my hands were the forms for the gathering quests.


    I quickly sifted through those as well and returned all but two of them. The two I had left asked me to go out to the forest, and one of them was a quest given by Isadora, and the other was a quest given by someone named Mateo.


    Isadora''s quest asked me to retrieve three portions of woke-root, and Mateo''s quest asked for five portions of protus plants. I lifted the forms outlining the quests and turned them over so that they were facing Isadora. When she noticed the action she looked up and studied what I was holding. She smiled when she saw that of the forms I had was created by her.


    She looked up at me with her big green eyes and radiated an aura of pleasant surprise. When she spoke it was with even more enthusiasm than before.


    "Althos! Thank you for your interest in one of my quests. That''s such good news for me. You see... I haven''t had time to venture into the forest myself for the past few weeks. My father asked me to spend more time here at the inn, which is fine but I can''t exactly both in both places at once. Now as for you what you need to know... to get to the forest you exit the inn due north and then walk for six kilometers. When you do you''ll have just entered the forest." She said, happily giving me directions.


    I nodded at her in quiet understanding and she mimicked the gesture as if trying it out herself. She giggled just after she did it though, so it kind of undermined the coolness of the action. And then she decided she had one more thing to say.


    "When you get back from your quest I''ll give you a bit of a walkthrough about quests including how to turn them in. Just consider this... a trial run. You did mention that today was going to be your first day as an adventurer last night, and I haven''t forgotten that. But for now, focus on fulfilling your objectives and come back later when you have the woke-roots and the protus plants." She told me, revealing a bit more of the memories she had been implanted with.


    "The forest isn''t particularly dangerous, but do be careful. Don''t drop your guard, and come back safely. Hopefully, you won''t have to go deep into the forest to find what we''re asking you to find. If you do that''s a worrying sign in and of itself." As she was speaking she grabbed one of the forms and began to doodle on it.


    "But for now just go and search for two plants that look like this. And when you get them, hold them up to the quest form. That way you know for sure you got the right thing!" She said, handing me one of the quest-request forms but one that was marked as "expired".


    The two drawings she had made were surprisingly skillful given how little time she had worked at it. One of the two plants was a yellow vegetable not unlike a weirdly colored turnip. The other one looked like an apple, but one that was a deep shade of blue.


    I examined the form carefully, before folding it and putting it between my neck and my scarf. Then I smiled at her and walked to the door that separated me from the outside world. As soon as I felt the early morning sun''s rays on my skin I sighed happily, luxuriating in the glories of the natural world, now that I was outdoors.


    I took my first steps into the outside world and immediately began my trek through the small town of Comillas, towards the forest mentioned in the quests I had opted to tackle during my first day of life.

 4 The First Power

    Not long after I walked out of the inn I was out of town. Even calling Comillas a "town" was a bit of a stretch. There was a handful of houses, a few stores, the inn, and a single building which served as a sort of catch-all administration building. It was more of a hamlet than anything else.


    It took me perhaps six minutes of walking at a leisurely pace to reach the furthest outskirts of the community. I had walked for perhaps a kilometer and a half when I got to where I was. I was standing at the top of a hill.


    When I looked down the hill I saw a vast expanse of grassy land, a plain was spread out before me. Some of it was used for farmland, and at the moment the farmlands were occupied by laborers. They were busy tilling soil, watering crops, and in some cases even harvesting hardy crops like potatoes. And once I had seen them I couldn''t look away. Or rather I didn''t want to look away.


    My eyes were glued to the scene unfolding before me. I was consciously aware that what I was seeing was "agriculture", which was one of the subdomains I had influence over from the moment I came into existence, perhaps minutes ago or perhaps ages ago. I wasn''t quite sure at the moment.


    It was positively hypnotic to watch people go to work tending to the land. I spent several moments studying what I had just seen and committing it to memory. I studied the men who were at work, the tools they used, and their techniques as they either readied the soil for crop growth or tended to soil currently growing crops.


    I found it oddly beautiful. And there was a part of me that wanted to keep watching it. But I couldn''t. And I didn''t.


    What tore me away from the scene unfolding before me was that my first and at the moment only companion, the system began to talk to me once more.


    [Oh Althos, you didn''t let us down. You choosing to go on a quest like this presents us with a perfect opportunity to teach you about your skills! Now you just hold on and walk down towards the forest. As you get closer to your destination we''ll start to talk to you and unlock the powers that are waiting for you.] The voice in my head said to me, sounding quite pleased with my actions.


    I have to admit, I was quite pleased too. Which was why I began to smile. I think I''m allowed to celebrate, especially if it''s just to that extent.


    It was at that moment that I began to trek down the hill, my lips twisted in a content grin.


    ________________________________________________


    I walked in silence for a few minutes, before instinctively deciding to test something. I was still walking down the hill when I tried to send a message to the system. I had a few simple questions for it, all of which were about druids:


    1: What is a druid?


    2: What does a druid do?


    3: When humans learn that I''m a druid, what do they think that means?


    The system was quiet for a little bit. Long enough for me to reach the bottom of the hill. It was quiet long enough for me to begin to wonder if maybe it hadn''t heard me. That was when it answered my questions.


    [We''ve already told you what a druid is. Druids are magic users whose magic is natural. Their spells and their class features, their abilities, all stem from and revolve around nature. Now the question of what a druid does is trickier...] The system said and then confessed. I chuckled at that response, as I wasn''t prepared for the system to admit, even tacitly, that something was a hard question.


    I was now walking through the wide expanse of grass and farms that I saw when I was at the top of the hill. I could smell crops on the breeze, which blew by me as I made my way past a few of the barns I had spotted from my vantage point.


    I heard farmers chatting with each other, some of them loudly and others of them quite softly. Their voices filled the air around me, and they spoke about a range of topics.


    "Hey... do you have any projections for your yield?" One of them asked another. Both men were hard at work next to each other, back to back. They held metal watering cans and used them to pour liquid life on the potato sprouts at their feet. I could see them clearly, even though there was a fair distance between us.


    His companion hissed as if just thinking about this year''s harvest made him mad. And then he responded to the man with the question.


    "Nope. And I don''t want to think about it. It''s not looking good though and Sarah, being Sarah, only ever brings it up as a point of attack, and it''s... well it''s tiring to even think about at this point." The man confessed. He had sounded angry when he said the first part of that, but by the end of his response, he just sounded tired.


    His friend looked at him sympathetically and told him something to help him calm down. "Hey, it''s alright. We''ll go down to the inn after this. We''ll have a few drinks. On me!" He told Sarah''s husband, saying that last part conspiratorially as if they needed to keep this a secret from Sarah.


    I wondered why this was, but I didn''t dwell on it. I had more personal and introspective things to ponder than the intricacies of Sarah''s marriage.


    ________________________________________________


    Another few minutes passed and I had now passed not only the town but at this point also the farms. I could see a seemingly endless ocean of trees off in the horizon. I was walking towards it. And now I was once again alone with my thoughts.


    On both sides of me, there was little more than a sea of dazzling green grass. But not directly underneath me, as there was a single, long trail that led from town to the forest. I enjoyed the sound the grass made whenever a soft breeze blew it in one direction or another, something which happened a lot during my walk but the breezes did cause the staff in my hand to get a bit chillier which was annoying.


    [Hello Athos! We''ve spent the last few minutes thinking about what a druid ''does'' and we''re ready to give you an answer. Druids work to help nature. Now what that means precisely is context-sensitive.] Said the ever-helpful voice that seemed to live in my mind.


    [Helping nature in a city is different than helping nature in a forest. Where you are, helping nature could reasonably be said to be pursuing a balance between the needs of humans and other nearby humanoids, and the health of the forest.] The system told me, quietly revealing some deep thoughts on druidic duty.


    I considered that while I walked. Eventually, I nodded in agreement and muttered my response to what I had just heard.


    "So as a druid... I''d be working to find balance between plant life and non-plantlife? That sounds... interesting." I admitted, suddenly having a greater appreciation for the powers I was hopefully going to get to learn about soon.


    [Yep! Druids are an important force for the natural world and their work not only protects and helps the forests of the world, but also the oceans, the tundras, and it often saves the lives of the people and animals who live in those places.] The voice told me, sharing insights that made me think more fondly of the powers that were within me but as of yet unknown to me.


    I reflected on that as I drew nearer and nearer to the forest. Every footstep brought me closer to it, and with each footstep, I gripped my staff a little bit tighter. I didn''t know what would come of the trip into the forest, and I was feeling nervous as I got closer and closer to it. But I also felt curious, and a part of me intended to sate that curiosity.


    ________________________________________________


    I took my first steps into the forest a few minutes after I left the inn. As I did so the system still hadn''t answered my last question.


    I went from walking on a small trail to walking on a soft, almost wet grassy floor. I listened to the sound of the grass crunching underneath my feet. I was still as I looked into the darkened woods and realized that it was an eerie sight. As if the sun''s rays were afraid to penetrate the forest''s canopy.


    And right on cue, as I was about to venture further into the forest the friendly voice in my head began to talk to me.


    [You''re here! This place will serve as the training ground from which you begin to explore your abilities. We''re going to begin to unlock some of those abilities right now, but before we do we wanted to take a second to talk to you about a few things.] The system said, rather cheerfully.


    I was quiet and I waited for it to continue. It was starting to catch on to my moments of silence quicker, and quickly continued its explanation.


    [A long time ago, the god who designed us gave us the ability to do a few neat things to help young gods and goddesses learn to control their powers. One of the things we can do is lock newborn gods in a tutorial mode. This keeps them from using their full powers right away while giving them and us time to help them learn about their powers bit by bit.] The voice explained.


    "I don''t like the sound of that..." I muttered, under my breath. I was ignored though and the system just kept talking.


    [As of right now the only incredible ability you have at your disposal is your infinite magical energy. That''s still a heck of a lot of power though. But we''re about to begin the process of revealing your powers to you. And to us. We don''t know what powers you possess, especially with your strange wild traits. And we won''t until they are unlocked...] The strange people in my mind told me, with an unusual level of concern in its voice as it said so.


    [But for now, you''re gonna get your features for being a level 1 druid and tremorsense. Tremorsense is a divine power and it''s... well it''s kind of a lot. You''ll see and understand what we mean in a second.] The system said, its voice quiet and far more serious than it had been until this point. And then it unlocked what it told me it was going to unlock.


    The effect was immediate, as the system immediately did whatever strange thing it was going to do the instant it stopped speaking. I hadn''t been expecting it to be, so it came as a surprise when my mind suddenly expanded in a way I never imagined possible.


    I almost fell to my knees as I felt my understanding of the world grow infinitely wider in a fraction of a second. Until now I had been limited to know only what I could see, smell, hear, touch, and taste. But now, for reasons that were only partially understood by me, my awareness was being forcibly expanded by something the system had just unlocked.


    It felt like my brain was growing inside my head, expanding outward and beating itself against my skull. It was actually so overwhelming that it was physically painful for a second, but only a single second. Unfortunately during that second, which felt like an eternity, my mind felt like it was on fire.


    The pain was so agonizing that it caused tears to form in my eyes. Hot, wet tears, that filled my vision and made it blurry.


    It was in the aftermath of that second, presumably the time my mind needed to adjust to the new things the system had released to my control, that I began to be able to understand on an instinctual level what "tremorsense" was.


    I didn''t know the mechanics of it yet, but whatever the system did to me left me aware of where all of the nearby living creatures were. At least the ones that lived or were on the ground, in the ground, or in or on a tree at the moment. I had an instinctual understanding of my location relative to any of them and could tell if they''d be on the ground, in it, or on or in a tree.


    When I closed my eyes to blink away tears and reopened them afterward there was a new thing at the top of my vision.


    It was a strange circle with me in the middle of it. I was represented by a triangle. I tested this by moving a bit and watching the triangle move in real-time as I did.


    And all over the mini-map, there were all sorts of other symbols on it as well. Countless blinking dots of various shapes, sizes, and colors. I was studying it when the system dropped in to share some information.


    [Whoa! We''re super sorry that the rollout of that power was so painful Althos. We didn''t know how intense it would be. When we unlocked it within you the reaction you suffered had to do with the fact that there were so many living creatures around you. Which is not how that power has revealed itself to deities in the past. It overloaded your mind for a second. And now that we know that we definitely won''t do that in a forest again. Yikes.] The voice said to me, apologizing for its mistake.


    I looked straight ahead in annoyance, pretending that the system had a face that I could direct my annoyance at.


    [Hey, hey... we''re apologizing! Anyways this is tremorsense. Tremorsense is an incredibly handy power and your particular version of it is even more potent than the power tends to be for most deities at birth.] The mechanism in my mind explained, starting off defensively and then beginning to tell me a bit about what it had just unlocked.


    [The reason for that is that you sprang into being with the power of the earth, vermin, and agriculture subdomains which increase both the range of your tremorsense and the variety of creatures you can sense. Now as for the power itself, tremorsense gives deities access to a minimap that informs them of the locations and species of all sorts of creatures as long as those creatures are on or in the ground or on or in a tree that is on the ground.] The voice told me, explaining the power in sufficient detail for me to understand it consciously.


    "So that''s what was going on... That''s a pretty scary sounding explanation if I''m being honest." I said, happy that I now knew both the nature of my new power, as well as what happened to me. "But before we do anything else..." I told the system, opting to see what happened if I closed my eyes again, since the last time I did so it caused my minimap to appear.


    My world went dark as my eyes closed, something which was a little bit frightening. But I steeled myself and kept my eyes shut for a second, which was long enough for the mini-map to appear in my mind''s eye and unveil itself fully to me.


    "Whoa..." I said, breathlessly. In the darkness of my shut eyes, I could see farther and more accurately than I ever could with my eyes open. I spent several moments statically observing the shapes on my radar. And when I mentally reached out and did my best to gesture with my mind at specific shapes I learned what they were, via a system like bracket text-bubble.


    The first time I did this, I selected a random red circle deeper in the forest but not far from me.


    [Nearby enemy detected. Preparing proper notification... Scanning enemy...


    Enemy status identified.


    The selected enemy is a level one warrior. The enemy is a forest goblin. The enemy is currently enraged, losing health, and stuck in a trap. It is also in danger of dying, as it has lost a lot of health already.


    The enemy is marked as an enemy because it''s emotional state renders it hostile to everyone who may approach it. The enemy''s status as an enemy might be convertible, depending on if the selected target is approached in the right manner, especially since it is currently considered helpless.]


    I suddenly opened my eyes, surprised at the level of detail that I had just received. I wondered about what to do for a single instant before opting to take decisive action. As I began my trip into the forest for real I spoke to the system. I didn''t bother trying to send it a mental message, I opted to use my words.


    "Hey system, I know you said druids could heal people but can nature magic be used for self-defense? I may need it where I''m going." I said, ready to pay this injured goblin a visit and see what may come of our interactions.


    [Yes it can Althos. While you''re heading there we''ll teach you how to access your spell-list! That''ll teach you all of your spells. And as we do, we''ll ready an answer to your question about what humans think being a druid means. Would you like for us to expand that to include goblins?] The system asked me, teasingly.


    I grinned and gripped my staff tightly. I was about to begin my life as an adventurer in a very exciting way. And I was both nervous and excited to do so.

 5 Prognosis

    My first foray into the forest was off to a fascinating and fast-paced start. I had dashed into the dense growth and with each passing second, I was speedily striding towards the trapped goblin I had detected earlier. My staff was in my hand and magic on my mind even as I was surrounded by great natural beauty.


    The forest was incredibly different from the town I was just in. It was a wild, unclaimed, and fully natural area. The trees that surrounded me on all sides were taller than any building I had seen in Comillas, and with just a glance I had a feeling that much of the wood that was used in the construction of the homes in Comillas came from a place with less dense trees than this area.


    As I moved through the forest I was able to see and hear a range of sights and sounds. I could see trees, bushes, and small animals flitting too and from their homes. I could hear the gentle swaying of leaves as they drifted down from trees and the soft pitter-patter of tiny feet on soft grass.


    As I dove deeper and deeper into the forest I relied on tremorsense to guide me. Striding with confidence felt right, it felt natural for me to move with purpose. Nearly a minute into my trip I received a message from that little voice in my head that told me about the world and appeared to know more about me than I did.


    [This sure is a pretty forest! We quite like it. Lots of animals, trees, and plants. A perfect place for a druid.] The thing told me, and as far as I could tell it was being sincere. It seemed to truly like the forest I found myself in. And so did I. That said, I knew I would probably like it even more once the situation with the goblin was resolved and I could appreciate it fully. A second later the voice spoke again.


    [Anyways, do us a favor. We''ve unlocked your spells, but none of us can see them until you open your spell list for the first time. In a second, when we''re done talking, you should see a book-like icon pop into being in your mind''s eye. That''s your grimoire and you can use it to access your spells. Mentally click it when you see it so we can all glance at what spells you can already use.] The strange voice told me.


    This time when my vision changed it wasn''t after I blinked. It happened the moment after the system stopped talking. It also wasn''t at all like what happened with tremorsense. Instead of a painful ordeal, it was more like a casual awakening. One moment the top-right corner of my mind''s eye was empty and the next there was a symbol of a black book there.


    Upon noticing the thing I smiled and did as I was asked, tapping it with a single mental gesture. And then another system-like bracket-box filled with text appeared unintrusively in my mind''s eye, just like when I clicked on the goblin while testing tremorsense.


    [Accessing grimoire... Loading spells... Preparing shortened descriptions...


    Base spells provided by your influence over the subdomain of healing:


    Restore Health (Heal a target for 15 points of hit point damage)


    Abate Sickness (Lessens the symptoms of a disease, providing the affiliated target with immediate relief, including lesser symptoms of magical diseases)


    Cure Disease (Immediately cures any mundane, as in non-magical, disease in a target. Single target per cast.)


    Restore Stamina (Provides the target(s) with 100 points of stamina. If the target''s stamina points would go beyond their maximum as a result of the spell the excessive stamina points are returned to the caster in the form of magical energy to help offset the magical costs of the spell.)


    Numb Pain (Dampens a target''s sense of pain, allowing them to endure blows without the negative effects of pain on the body)


    Cure Condition (A condition affecting a target is ended)


    Prognosis (This spell scans and reveals a target''s condition, it identifies hit points, stamina points, and magical energy, as well as letting the caster know what, if any, non-magical diseases the target is suffering from and their current mental state. It also provides caster with recommendations on treating them.)


    Subdomain Notes:


    1: Normally healing spells wouldn''t work on machines, spirits, constructs, or plants unless they state otherwise. However, yours do. This is because you are a deity of healing.


    2: You also have no cooldown on healing spells and can cast them on people no matter their location, provided you know the target you intend to heal and the target consents to being healed. If you increase your influence over the subdomain of healing then you''ll be able to influence people you''ve healed, though at the moment you cannot do that.


    3: You can cast this spell through someone else if they permit you to. This means that if someone prays for healing you can heal them or others they know as if you knew them. Those who pray for healing will receive a notification the first time you attempt to heal them, and if they allow the healing they are opening themselves up to future heals.


    4: These healing spells may sound unimpressive but healing magic is the third rarest basic school of magic and the ability to heal someone unseen from even thousands of miles away is literally miraculous.


    Druid Spells:


    Embers (Produces a small sphere of flame that can be used to illuminate your surroundings or as a ranged attack on enemies)


    Mote (Produces a tiny triangle of elemental energy that can be used to attack an enemy from a distance, sample elements include: electricity, ice, earth, fire)


    Boulder Bash (Hurls a medium-sized boulder at the enemy)


    Chaos Burst (Fires a ray at the enemy that displaces them, sending them a few meters away in a random direction)


    Tangle (Vines grow out of the ground that entangles an enemy and prevents them from moving)


    Beast Bond** (Creates a temporary bond with a beast that allies it with you and enables mind to mind communication. This spell can be targeted to create a bond between a targeted humanoid and a targetted beast.)


    Create food** (Creates real, healthy food. Due to influence from your domains and subdomains, any food you create will be fruits and vegetables but anyone who eats something you created gets a boost to their stats and it meets all of their nutritional needs no matter their normal diet. This food begins to go bad if uneaten in two hours.)


    Animal Chatter** (Enables a target to understand and speak with animals)


    Notes:


    1: You unlock more druid spells as you gain experience and as you practice your magic. Legendary magic refers to lost spells that are tied to domains and subdomains.


    2: If you reach the 30th level of the druid class before unlocking all druid spells you automatically unlock what non-legendary spells the class possesses that you didn''t already have unlocked.


    3: Several more spells, legendary and non-legendary alike, are hidden away while you are in tutorial mode, including healing spells. These will be made useable by you in time, especially once your magic domain and healing subdomain abilities are unlocked. The spells you currently have access to are a small sampling of useful ones that allow you to begin to understand your own magical abilities.


    4: To cast a targeted spell, focus on the spell itself, and select a target in your mind. Visualize the spell pouring out of you and into, at, or onto the target and then will the spell out of you once you feel it''s ready. To cast a non-targeted spell just focus on the spell in your mind and then will it outward.


    5: Being a deity of agriculture gives you an extremely handy power. Food created by you, including when something eats a creature or plant you influenced the growth of, results in the devourer unknowingly opening themselves up to your influence and becoming more easy for you to control or bring to worship you.


    6: Legendary spells are marked with an asterisk and spells that can be remotely cast are marked with a double asterisk. In the future this will be changed, but all of the spells that you''ve gained access too that are legendary can also be remotely cast.]


    When I finished reading the textbox it vanished, though not before influencing what I planned to do next and leaving a strong impression on me. I kept walking while reading the long textbox, aided by tremorsense and just moments before I finished reading through the grimoire''s spell list I had begun to be able to mundanely detect the goblin.


    The reason why I was now able to detect the goblin without my divine ability was that the thing was emitting piteous, agonized howls. Its howling caused the hairs on the back of my neck to go up as if I too was in some sort of danger even though I knew I wasn''t.


    The goblin was close enough now that I could hear its agony. It sounded like it was in incredible pain and it was howling constantly, from somewhere not far from me.


    It wasn''t saying anything in its inarticulate howling, it was just making disturbing sounding animalistic growls that echoed throughout the forest. In order to get closer to it, I was following both my divine power''s map and the creature''s eerie sounds.


    It took a minute or two of speedy striding for me to finally lay my eyes on the creature whose agony I was hoping I could alleviate.


    ________________________________________________


    The goblin''s back was turned to me. The little creature was a small, yellow-skinned thing wearing what appeared to be mishandled animal furs to provide it with some degree of protection. There was a poorly constructed stone knife on the floor next to the tiny humanoid, and one of its legs was trapped in what I knew at a glance was a rusted bear''s trap.


    I paused as I studied the thing, before opting to try and send another message to the system. I took a second to formulate the message in my mind before sending it.


    "The odd things I know... do you think they may have to do with the domains and subdomains under my control? And possibly that wild trait of mine, the one that startled you?" I asked it, in my mind. It was silent for a moment while it considered my question, and while it was silent I continued to study the goblin.


    The goblin was standing still, unconsciously trying to minimize its movements so that the rusty iron jaws of the trap didn''t cause it any more pain than it idly felt. Blood was still pouring down its leg, which suggested that the thing had triggered the trap only a few minutes ago.


    The area around the creature smelled of its blood and sweat, the foul odors mixing together to create a noxious vapor that probably would have sickened many weaker willed mortals. The system''s voice interrupted my attempt to learn about the creature.


    [It is... very possible that the source of the strange knowledge you sprang into being possessing is a domain, subdomain, or another sort of primal power but if it is, none of them have come forth to confess that this was their doing.] The entity said, its voice quiet and filled with concern, which only served to increase my concern about the weird things I knew and about what I didn''t yet know.


    [Also, humans think druids are potent spellcasters capable of shape-shifting, healing, and communing with nature. That is incredibly well-suited to you and your domains and subdomains so hopefully, if people ask about your healing when you say you''re a druid they''ll be accepting of that.] The system said, whispering into my mind. My response to that was to nod and ready myself for what I was about to do next.


    Here''s what was clear to me:


    First, the goblin was in mind-rending pain. I was operating under the assumption that pain had robbed it of its ability to reason. That would explain the howling.


    Second, this was relatively recent. I couldn''t see any visible signs of infection and there were currently no nearby scavenger animals who had been lured here by the goblins pained yowling.


    Third, the goblin wasn''t entirely inexperienced, or it wasn''t alone. The thing''s armor and weapon, however shoddily made they were revealed that it was either part of a larger pack who had access to the tools it was equipped with or that it had the skills to make those things on its own, both of which made it more interesting to me.


    Fourth, I needed more information. I could only see surface-level problems. If there was anything wrong with the goblin internally I wasn''t yet aware of it and I was not about to take that chance. Luckily, I had the perfect spell to give me more knowledge concerning this odd creature''s plight.


    I moved closer to the thing and brought my hands together. I aimed them at the back of the creature and focused intently on the name of one of the spells I had seen in my grimoire. I knew I didn''t have to aim my hands in the direction of the target since it was a targeted spell, but something about that felt right. It was like I was being appropriately dramatic for what was about to happen.


    I focused harder than I''ve ever focused before, on a single word. "Prognosis". I locked it in my mind and selected the goblin as the spell''s target. Half a second later I visualized the spell leaving me and gently touching the goblin. And then I pushed the spell out of me, urging it towards the goblin with my mind.


    Rather than create a text-box in my mind the spell manifested itself as a womanly voice that whispered in my ear, which was strange, to say the least. I was surprised and weirded out by this as it happened, but I''ll say this in defense of the spell: it was really fast. I heard the whispers of my magical nurse almost half a second after I cast the spell.


    "Scanning target... Scan complete!" The voice began, speaking calmly and soothingly.


    "The name of the target is Triok Bloodknife. He currently has four hitpoints remaining, out of a total of seventeen." The spell revealed, immediately before diving into a longer-winded explanation and breakdown of the goblin''s status.


    "His stamina is down to two stamina points out of fifty, he has zero magical energy and is unmagical, is now afflicted with tetanus, of which he is in day one of a four day incubation period, and he is currently suffering from the frenzied condition. Preparing recommendations for treatment..." The voice told me, letting me know the specifics of his condition including that he was suffering from an incubated disease.


    I rose my staff in its direction and ran my mind over the list of spells I had at my disposal. I was mentally preparing my own plan with regards to how to handle the situation I had inserted myself into and I wondered how my plan would differ from the approach the spell recommended.


    Personally, I thought it''d be best to numb the thing to pain, followed by curing it of the frenzied condition and then healing it. A small, mischevious voice in my mind wanted to see how it reacted to me healing it before I cured it to tetanus. The voice of the spell made itself known right as I began to chuckle at the idea of waiting to make sure it wouldn''t attack me before curing it of tetanus.


    "Here is our recommendation for treating Triok: First, numb his body to pain and then cure him of his condition. It is unknown if he will fall unconscious when you do, but it''s not likely that that will happen. After you do that, with his consent, remove his leg from the bear trap. It is likely that the goblin does not possess the strength to break free himself." The spell told me, pausing for a second at that point.


    "When Triok is free from the trap, you should heal him of the damage he''s suffered. He will be unlikely to try and fight back as you free him or after you fully heal him because he''ll know you have saved his life. Cure his disease last, as its incubated status renders it harmless at the moment and thus the lowest priority on a decently long list of priorities." The voice finished, giving me a solid plan that I felt comfortable enacting myself.


    I nodded, accepting the spell''s recommendation and began to enact it, quickly casting "Numb Pain" on the goblin. A second later I immediately followed my first spell with "Cure condition", targetting the goblin''s frenzied condition. Both spells washed over the goblin at the same time, and the thing immediately stopped the shouting it had continued to do while I was preparing myself to act.


    It was an immediate change, as the goblin went from yelling so much that his voice was starting to crack, to suddenly stopping and standing still in confusion. At this point, I felt comfortable introducing myself and did so by taking a few steps towards the tiny humanoid and walking into its view.


    "Hi there." I said to the little creature. He reacted to my sudden appearance by hissing at me, but the hiss was half-hearted and there was a look of confusion and fear in his surprisingly large yellow eyes. I put my staff on the ground behind me, carefully placing it in a soft and clean patch of grass, and proceeded to showed the tiny man my open, empty hands in a peaceful gesture.


    "Hey, I''m here to heal you. I know you were in a lot of pain before, right?" I asked, purposefully keeping my voice soft and non-threatening so that the tiny beast-like humanoid felt like I wasn''t trying to scare him.


    He nodded, silently. I gave him a serious, empathetic look before I next spoke, hoping to begin to build a relationship with this strange creature.


    "And you aren''t now right? You should be feeling next to no pain." I said, hoping to lead the goblin to realize that I was able to at least make it not feel any more pain.


    The trapped creature considered my question. He mulled it over in his mind and seemed to chew on it. And then he looked at me and nodded at me, his eyes filled with quiet gratitude to me for whatever I did.


    But then the thing began to pat himself all over as if checking that all of his limbs were in place. He started off by patting his face, cautiously testing if all of his limbs were intact and unharmed and then proceeded to give himself a near-complete pat-down.


    He was calm until he got to his leg and realized that the thing was still stuck between the jaws of the bear trap when his fingers went down to the device.


    His face dropped after he realized that his leg was still stuck between the iron teeth of the bear trap and he began trying to pry the thing open with his bare hands, frantically trying to free himself yet again. I realized that because he was numb he was probably checking that his limbs were all still attached to his body which was a smart move, in its own way.


    I chuckled and walked over to the goblin until I was right in front of him but just out of reach of his arms. When I was in front of him he looked up at me and scowled.


    "Was this you?" He asked in an angry voice. There was a look of fury and hatred in his eyes. I sighed and realized that I had overestimated this thing''s intelligence.


    When he saw me sigh he reacted emotionally and began to throw his tiny hands in my direction as if trying to hit me. His hands were almost long enough to hit me, but when he realized they couldn''t that seemed to make him angrier.


    I stopped him with a question. "Why do you think I''d calm you down and numb you to the pain of the trap if I set it?" I asked, speaking in a loud enough tone to cause the goblin to stop attacking me for a second out of shock and slight fear. He stopped his attack and his eyes narrowed in suspicion as he considered the question I had just asked him.


    "I... don''t know. You want me to be a slave?" He asked, fear audible in his tiny and weakened sounding voice when he said the word "slave". I gave him a long, hard look for a second before next speaking. And when I began to speak I slyly moved my hands to the trap''s jaws and readied myself to yank the two jaws open.


    "I don''t want you to be a slave. In fact," I said to the little man. The instant I said the word "fact" I yanked the jaws of the trap open, freeing the goblin''s leg. "I want you to be free and healthy." I told him, speaking both honestly and kindly to the wild creature.


    "Now hold still while I begin to heal you, okay? Remember... I just freed you." I asked the gremlin-like being, hoping that what I was doing had left enough of an impression on the monster.


    The goblin''s face made it clear that he spent a second debating what to do for a split second, but he gave me a timid look and nodded at me. I smiled gently and prepared to heal the little humanoid. At that moment, the system opted to chime in.


    [Goblins are quite respectful and fearful of magic-users. Why don''t you say that you''re a healer? That may help set the thing''s mind at ease. Or... you could feed him an apple you create using magic.] The system suggested.


    I looked Triok in the face and asked it a serious question. "I could feed you, if that''d help. Do you want to eat? Are you hungry?" I asked, hoping that the thing would be after enduring this mind-rending pain for an unknown number of minutes and nearly dying.


    And at that moment I saw Triok do something I hadn''t seen him do yet: the goblin began to smile and nod excitedly at me.

 6 Escalation

    While the goblin continued to grin at me, eagerly awaiting some food, I activated my "Create Food" spell. I didn''t target any spot in particular, because of an instinct I had that this spell could be used as an untargeted one. The fact that it was listed as a targeted one didn''t deter me. I focused on the spell for a few moments and then I willed it outward, unprepared for what came next.


    The second I activated my power a new textbox appeared in my mind''s eye. This one didn''t spring into view with text prewritten. I was able to watch the message that it''d eventually contain be written out, letter by letter. While the textbox was being filled I momentarily wondered if mortals saw as many textboxes as I did.


    [What sort of food would you like to create?] The textbox asked me, written in an impressively direct vernacular.


    I considered thinking for longer than I did but I knew that it was better for me to move quickly so I almost immediately informed the system that I''d like to create something simple yet delicious: an apple. Another half a second passed and then I felt a sudden and unimpressive weight materialize in one of my hands.


    I turned my head to look at the object that had just come into being in my left hand and was not particularly surprised to see an apple sitting squarely in my until just now empty had. I quickly wrapped my fingers around the thing and admired it. It was a golden-skinned apple, one with a healthy sheen that reflected sunlight one that my instincts informed me couldn''t exist naturally.


    The object in my hand was massive for an apple, and it gave off a warm golden glow. The minute the goblin saw it his eyes went wide. He was still while he processed what he saw, but a second later he lunged for the apple. This took him off the now disabled bear trap, where he had stayed during the last few minutes of interaction he and I had shared even when I had freed him from it.


    When he was a few moments away from reaching out and snatching the apple I moved it closer to him and let him begin to scarf down the beautiful fruit I had just created. I heard his little fangs and uneven teeth tear into the apple, as I received an important notification.


    [System-created explanation: Influence


    "Influence" was a term among deities that meant different things in different contexts. Among the deities of old, when they spoke amongst themselves of "influence" it almost always referred to the domains and subdomains they had power over and the degree of their power over those domains and subdomains.


    "Tiers of influence" was a term that was used by deities to quantify how much control they had over domains and subdomains. Right now you have one "tier of influence" over the following domains and subdomains:


    Domains: Knowledge, Chaos, Nature, Faith, Minds, Dreams, Civilizations, Magic.


    Subdomains: Healing, Vermin, Earth, Agriculture, Corruption, Purity.


    Once you''ve completed the tutorial the system has you in you''ll unlock all sorts of divine abilities related to these domains and subdomains. You''ll also gain powers related to your vice and virtue, and as you gain tiers of influence over the subdomains of corruption and purity you''ll be able to add increase the number of vices and virtues under your control.


    With regard to how the term "influence" is used when talking about mortals, it has a similar meaning. "Influence" when talking about mortals refers to how influenced by the deity the mortal in question can be or is and how in awe of them the mortal is.


    You''ll learn how to increase your influence over mortals over time and on your own, but we hope that now you''re a little less in the dark about the language used by the system. Influence can also drop over time if you do not at least attempt to increase it until a creature begins to worship you at which point that creature becomes an Althonian, a member of your currently undefined faith.]


    I read the notification and then was again shocked when it went away. It was followed up by another notification, but thankfully this one was shorter.


    [Alert: Troik has begun consuming an apple you created. This means that he has unwittingly opened himself up to your influence and will forever be easier for you to influence.


    Troik is a goblin, and of below-average intelligence for a goblin. His unimpressive intelligence renders him more susceptible to actions that nab influence via magic or agricultural activities and attempts to gain influence over him that rely on strength are less impressive to him than they would otherwise be because of his low intelligence and high levels of self-confidence.


    The fact that you saved him and are about to heal him are also factors that affect how much influence you have over the tiny goblin and how much influence you can gain over him at this moment.


    Influence over Troik: 1%]


    I was surprised that giving the creature a single apple made my influence over the thing go up to a whole 1%. I was also excited by that revelation. But I didn''t let myself get distracted by that, and I began to heal the little goblin''s wounds.


    "Hey there, I''m going to heal you now okay?" I asked the goblin, looking the thing in the face. He paused his munching of the apple and looked at me cautiously. But after a few seconds, he nodded at me, giving me permission to use my magic on him. I grinned at the small creature and put my hands together. I then opened them up, with my palms facing him.


    I readied my "Restore Health" spell and smiled at the goblin for a second so that he had time to ready himself. I waited a few moments and then unleashed my spell.


    Golden energy began to radiate out of my hand and sailed lazily towards him. When the energy hit him I watched it surround and seep into him.


    Before my very eyes, I watched as the creature''s eyes went wide and as the bleeding of his leg came to an abrupt end. A second later radiant golden light began to shine onto specific spots on the goblin''s skin, and among the spots were the areas where the jaws had pierced into his leg.


    "Wow..." The goblin uttered, awe audible in his little voice. I didn''t say anything but I agreed with his rather efficient assessment. The golden light on the creature''s yellow skin was a beautiful sight.


    The light that was shining onto his skin began to heat up, and smoke began to waft off of Troik''s flesh. But somehow the creature didn''t look to be in pain. There was actually a smile on the beast-like humanoid''s face. A delighted, childlike smile.


    This bizarre phenomenon lasted for perhaps five seconds, after which the light dissipated into nothingness almost instantly, and the goblin was left staring at his unremarkable, completely healed leg. There wasn''t even a scar in the wake of the light''s disappearance.


    "Troik is healed!" The goblin exclaimed, his accent and word-choice both being simplistic but also mildly charming in their own way. His eyes were glued to his leg, and he quickly began to touch where the jaws had once torn into his lower limb. He didn''t wince at all as he tacitly explored the healed appendage and seemed genuinely euphoric after what he had just gone through.


    I waited and watched the goblin for a few moments before recasting "Prognosis" on the goblin. Not much had changed from last time, aside from the fact that he had received an appropriate change to his hitpoints, bringing them up to their maximum, and that his condition wasn''t frenzied like it had been before. Instead, it was now changed to "Fascinated".


    I chuckled and used "Restore Stamina" on him which resulted in both he and I being able to witness another impressive show of lights but this time the lights were silver instead of gold. They surrounded his entire body, encircling him before slowly entering him and infusing the goblin with energy.


    "Yah!" He shouted, the sound one of delight and confusion when the light had surrounded him. When they entered him and restored his stamina points to their maximum number he began to bounce around uncomfortably like he was a child in a candy store.


    It took him several minutes to stop jumping around, even when I asked him to stop. When he stopped I finally had a chance to chat with him. And I was determined to use it to get some answers.


    ________________________________________________


    "Troik, how are you feeling?" I asked the diminutive humanoid. We were now sitting down not far from the bear trap. I was curious about it, and I wanted to know Troik''s story.


    "I... good." The goblin told me, its yellow and catlike eyes focused on mine. I nodded at the creature, appreciative of its candor and for now operating under the assumption that the thing was being forthright with me.


    "That''s great!" I told it happily, allowing my joy at having healed the thing to be audible in my voice. This made the goblin smile, and it seemed that this made him have some questions of his own.


    "Can... ask too?" It asked, speaking to me in a way that left me uncertain as to what it was asking. I paused for a second before I received a brilliantly timed message from the system.


    [Oh goodness, let us explain what''s going on. The goblin is speaking to you in the language of humans, and that is not its first language. We''re gonna go ahead and unlock a divine power you have courtesy of a wild trait. It''s called "Omniglot" and it grants you the ability to understand, read, write, and speak in any and all languages including the languages of non-humanoids.] The system told me, sounding exasperated at what was going on. This was followed by a brief notification.


    [Alert: Omniglot.


    Omniglot is an intuitive, passive divine power that makes you omnilingual. Being omnilingual means you can speak any and all languages. For now, you will speak the language of goblins and when you return to Comillas you will speak in the language of humanity. This automated process can be controlled manually if you wish.] The notification read, shortly before blinking out of existence.


    I smiled at Troik and began to speak to the little fellow. "Here... why don''t we try to talk like this?" I asked, hearing no difference in my words compared to before but hoping that it worked.


    Troik began to smile a smile that not only curled his lips upward but went up to his eyes. He impishly clapped his hands together and laughed. The sound was as highly energetic as he was, and before he next spoke numerous peals of laughter escaped his lips.


    "Yes, yes! The words of my people, not the words of big, mean humans. That is much better." He said happily. I chuckled at his casual display of hostility towards humanity. That gave me one more question to ask him.


    "So Troik... tell me about your tribe." I said to the lively little thing. The goblin looked at me and there was a flash of fear in his eyes.


    "My... tribe?" He asked, sudden apprehension blazing to life in his gaze. His voice was filled with fear as he said that, and it made me curious. I immediately wondered if his earlier anti-human comment indicated a fear of humans and thus of what I, a magic-user, could do to his peers, or if he had done something to merit being out here alone. And that inspired me to momentarily close my eyes.


    I closed my eyes and left them shut. Darkness was all I could see, or rather I had willingly and temporarily blinded myself to be able to gain a bird''s eye view of the demographics of the forest. In a split second the same massive map that allowed me to find Troik had reappeared in my mind.


    I wasted no time, because I knew how odd this must have looked to my companion. "Can I use this to search for specific kinds of creatures?" I asked the system, speaking solely in my mind.


    Before I received an official response I heard a sound in my mind that was equal parts delighted and impressed. It almost made me smile. Almost. And then the system replied to my message.


    [Yes you can. Just think about the species you''d like to find. For now, that''s the only way you can track something on your mini-map but as you gain more tiers of influence in the right sorts of domains you''ll increase the number of filters you can apply to this mini-map to make it even more useful. And yes, you can use it to find specific plants as well.] The system informed me, before telling me something incredibly useful that I didn''t doubt I''d have asked it about later. I grinned.


    I refocused after grinning like a dummy for two seconds and immediately focused on forest goblins. I put them at the front of my mind and made them all I thought about for a solid five seconds. And then the mini-map noticed and immediately made all non-goblin markers on the mini-map transparent. I couldn''t see their colors due to their newly gained transparency.


    The remaining fully illuminated and colored markers were various colors but all of them were circles.


    Many of them, over two dozen of them, in fact, were clumped together in close proximity. That was revealing and allowed me to know with certainty that there was a community of sorts that existed in this forest for goblins.


    There was something odd here though; the figure at the center of this cluster wasn''t a goblin. Its marker was faded and transparent like all the other non-goblins'' markers were. And it was located right in the center of a bunch of the little, beast-like humanoids according to my power.


    Internally I grinned now at the fact that I knew the goblins had a community in the area, feeling much wiser already. This information would certainly be something I circled back too But my investigation wasn''t done just yet. Something about the different colors that adorned the minimap was irresistibly begging me to investigate it.


    Out of curiosity, I clicked on one red circle, one blue circle, and one green circle. These were not the only colors visible on the map at the moment but they were the most common. And the next notification I received was one that was apparently onto my extremely unsophisticated attempts at investigating how my powers worked.


    [Alert:


    Nearby entities detected. Confusion in *tremorsense* user detected. Multiple entities with different relational statuses to you detected. Creating a legend for your future reference and understanding...


    Red: For any number of reasons this entity is either an active enemy of yours or would become one if they detected you. For sapient beings, this tends to be a convertible status but there are creatures in existence who will always be hostile towards you and thus will always be red when picked up by your mini-map.


    Blue: These are entities that are neutral towards you at the moment. Or who would be neutral towards you if they detected you. These creatures can be transformed into allies or even friends if approached correctly.


    Green: These are entities that are in need of assistance. Approaching someone who the map has identified in this way will present you with an opportunity for a new quest. The quest system is part of the grander system which is why we can detect if a creature has a quest for you or for someone else.


    Enemy status identified.


    The selected enemy is a level one warrior. The enemy is a forest goblin. The enemy is currently out on a patrol and is hostile towards any non-goblin humanoids she sees believing that confronting and killing them would net her great honor in her tribe.


    Individual in need of assistance''s status identified.


    The selected individual in need of assistance is a level one alchemist. She is a forest goblin. She is currently out scavenging for rare ingredients for the assortment of potions and other handy magical items she creates for her tribe. If approached intelligently she may offer a quest to help her acquire rare ingredients in exchange for a few samples of her goods.


    Neutral individual''s status identified.


    The neutral individual is a level one ranger. He is a forest goblin. He is currently out on patrol but he has better sense than to be needlessly aggressive. He is one of the older goblins in the area.]


    Though what I had just learned was incredibly useful it didn''t give me any answers on its own. So I opened my eyes and refocused on the goblin in front of me. Only a handful of seconds had passed so I didn''t feel like me doing what I did was all that suspicious.


    "Yes Troik. Your tribe. I want to learn about them." I repeated, smiling at the end of my statement in an attempt to placate the fearful creature.


    "My tribe is big! And strong! And... scary!" The goblin said, almost mewling at me while he did so. I pretended to be surprised and to believe this, nodding at him as if to showcase that I knew he meant business.


    He studied my face, skeptically narrowing his eyes as if making his vision worse would help him determine how sincere I was being. After he spent a few seconds applying his own version of studious skepticism to me he nodded in satisfaction and appeared to believe I was sincere in my reactions. He quickly kept talking, all while gaining an undeserved bravado.


    "Yes! And our orc chieftain is powerful. Even his pet panther, Hunahpu, is mighty!" The goblin warned, evidently assuming that I knew far more than I actually did including, more than likely anyway, the name of this orc chieftain since he did tell me the panther''s name but not the orcs. But for now, I knew better than to correct the little guy.


    He seemed happy to talk and assume I knew enough about what he was saying to make sense of it. I didn''t. That said, I carefully played along and let my newest friend talk.


    But I know knew two things: Troik''s goblin tribe was ruled over by a strong orc chieftain, and this chieftain had an intimidating looking panther pet. I also had a feeling that I now knew the general location of the goblin''s lair, but I didn''t know that for sure, at least not yet.


    And while I was lost in thought, thinking about what I knew for sure, I heard something change in the goblin. I heard him sit upright, correcting his impressively bad posture, and up-close I could have sworn I heard a subtle sound of his tiny bones creaking.


    That was when the goblin opted to take control of the conversation. He locked eyes with me and used the same bravado from earlier, but less false this time while asking me a personal question.


    "What are you?" The goblin asked, showing uncharacteristic bravery. There was an edge to his gaze and his question that didn''t befit someone who had just gotten healed, and it annoyed me a bit. It was also completely new and unlike the fearful little creature he had been before he was healed. I smiled politely at him and responded as civilly as I could.


    "Do you mean ''Who am I?'', I''m Althos." I explained, my lips contorted into a civil and perfectly passable smile fit for high society. I even extended my hand forward for a handshake. The goblin''s lips edged upwards but not into a smile. The expression on his face was a lot closer to a sneer than a smile and his eyes began to flare and transform.


    His eyes, which until now had been the yellow eye color of a cat began to change and shift under my gaze. The yellow remained unchanged, it was the dark little slit in the middle of the gaze that transformed. That black slit went from being a thin line of darkness to a blood-red and bold line that parted his eye down the middle, like a snake.


    "Hello Althos. It''s nice to meet you. Why are you healing a goblin? That is... very unlike a human. Are you a human?" The goblin said, speaking to me in a voice that was very clearly not Troik''s. I was silent for a few moments while I considered what to say.


    A small part of me wanted to lie and say that I was, while another part of me wanted to be bold and tell this strange creature what I was just to see its reaction. I carefully considered what to do in this situation, all while I kept my eyes locked on my companion. I had just healed him and I didn''t want the little guy to get bruised and beat up just because some enemy wanted to use him as a meat suit.

 7 Towards Nightfall

    Rather than answer the question posed to me by a stranger whose identity I didn''t know, I opted to try a different route. I looked Troik in the face and asked him and the entity controlling him a simple question.


    "I''ve already introduced myself. Why don''t you introduce yourself? And maybe after that, we''ll discuss my act of kindness." I told the stranger, curious to learn his identity.


    The goblin laughed. I had heard the goblin laugh before and this was peal of laughter was nothing like its initial outbursts. This laugh was deep and quiet. There was a bit of malice and sadism in it as if the goblin wanted to see blood. Not like the childlike sounds Troik had made earlier.


    I quietly grabbed my staff and placed the thing across my legs. I wanted to be ready in case the thing using the goblin tried to attack me. The goblin laughed a moment longer, and then abruptly stopped. He looked at me and began to speak once more.


    "I am no one of importance. Just a voice within this forest." The thing told me. I had a suspicion that it was lying, and I couldn''t help but have a physical reaction to such a skepticism inducing statement. My eyes narrowed almost subconsciously at the thing, and my physical reaction its lies drew another peal of laughter from the thing.


    I wasn''t about to give up on extracting the truth from the thing. I steeled myself for whatever may come next and began to speak once more.


    "I''d rather not explain my motivations to a stranger. If you are not honest enough to reveal your identity to me, why should I explain my actions to you?" I asked, steel audible in my voice. There was a flash of angry fire in the goblin''s mutated eyes, but that fire was quickly put out and replaced with otherworldly calmness.


    "That''s... fair I suppose." The goblin grumbled. I grinned at the thing, happy to have annoyed it.


    "That aside, I will not tolerate any interference. I have a good thing going here and I won''t let you get in the way of that, especially if you won''t even tell me why you helped a strange goblin you had never met before. I won''t let a random good samaritan interfere with my schemes." The goblin told me.


    He took his gaze away from me for a second and suddenly turned to look deeper into the woods. A second eerie howling could be heard coming from the direction the goblin looked in.


    "Althos, you''ll pay for meddling in things you don''t understand. If you survive this then know not to stick around. If I see you again you''ll pay for it." The goblin told me, before quickly leaping to his feet and hurling himself backward in the direction of the howling. The goblin ran away from me, even as the howling steadily got louder and closer.


    The version of my tremorsense powered minimap that was visible even when my eyes were open began to change. It began to vibrate, and I noticed three big red squares began to approach me from a distance. Curiously I sent a mental message to the system, as I quickly stood up and held my staff out in front of me, defensively.


    "I don''t want to close my eyes and see that big version of the minimap. Can you or the voice of tremorsense just tell me what''s going on?" I asked my first constant companion.


    While doing this I debated what to do about Troik fleeing, probably unwillingly, in the direction of his peers. A part of me contemplated chasing after the goblin, but I quickly quashed that idea. I knew better than to rush forward recklessly and tempered my desire to rescue my companion. This was made easier for me to do since I believed that I could heal him remotely if it came down to it.


    As I told myself I''d be able to help my friend if I needed too I received a handy update from tremorsense.


    [Tremorsense update:


    Three coyotes have been charmed and magically compelled to attack you by a mysterious figure with a respectable degree of control over two formidable schools of magic: necromancy and illusion. The figure itself doesn''t appear to be physically present within the tremorsense range.


    Coyotes are vermin, and thus magic you use on them is empowered by the influence you have over the vermin subdomain. You can magically free them from magical manipulation with spells you already have unlocked.]


    I smiled after I read that update, an instant before it vanished from my mind''s eye. The coyotes had just dashed past Troik according to the minimap and were edging closer to me.


    It took the coyotes a few more moments to reach me, as the things had been somewhat closeby when they were magically commanded to become my temporary foes. Even without the benefits bestowed upon me by tremorsense, I would have been able to detect the canine vermin in three distinct ways.


    The first way was the first way they made themselves known to anyone: they emitted loud, intimidating howls. The sounds they made traveled fast and far, giving me advance notice of their relative closeness.


    The second way was their movement. I was in a part of the forest where straight ahead of me, the direction that Troik had fled in, quickly became shrouded in dense undergrowth. Their movement disturbed this undergrowth and before I could see them I could see how the forest reacted to them.


    The third way was their smell. There was a gentle breeze coming at me from their direction and on it, the scent of dirty fur mixed with carrion was delivered to my nose. The pungent scent was something I was sure to not forget anytime soon.


    When the coyotes came close enough that I could see them, it took me but a single glance to feel pity for these things. The creatures were a trio of lean, white-furred canines who moved in dispassionate unison. Their eyes were white and milky like the things had somehow been robbed of their sight.


    I pointed my staff at them and immediately cast "Cure Condition" on all three of them in the blink of an eye. The spells didn''t manifest externally in any noticeable way but thankfully that didn''t mean they didn''t work.


    The spells struck the canines and immediately freed them from the magical conditioning they were under. Color returned to their eyes, and in a second all three of the creatures looked at each other and then myself in confusion.


    "You were... influenced, by a bad and dangerous creature to attack me. You are free now." I told the things, sensing a shift in the pronunciation of my words that wasn''t intentional but was almost certainly due to the influence of omniglot on me. The canines looked at me and then their body language shifted.


    ________________________________________________


    Before my very eyes, something in the trio of coyotes changed. Their body languages shifted from ones of confusion and fear, to hope and confidence in the span of a few heartbeats. The creatures stood up fearlessly and joyfully and as I looked at each of them their eyes displayed a level of intelligence beyond what my instincts told me coyotes should have been able to.


    "Curious..." I muttered as I looked at them. They were also very calm in my presence, and I wondered if the cause for their calmness was because they felt safe next to me or if my influence over the vermin subdomain was subtly affecting them. I walked closer to them, taking a few steps to close the distance and they didn''t seem to react negatively. Instead, they just kept staring at me.


    I decided to be brave and walk over to the trio. When I did they reacted, but not with fear. The trio began to make noises aimed at me, their bright and colorful eyes locked on my approaching form as they made the strange and energetic noises that escaped their muzzles.


    The best way I could describe the sounds they made is as a group they were yipping at me. It was an energetic flurry of noises that I could instinctually tell meant the trio was welcoming me as a friend. When I was actually beside one of them, something which took me a few seconds of walking, I placed one of my hands on its head, patting the soft fur of the creature''s head.


    All three creatures bounded up to me once I was close enough to reach out and pet one of them. I sighed and smiled at the things.


    For a moment I considered using one of the legendary spells I had, beast bond, to try and converse with the creatures I had just freed from some sort of magical control but didn''t quite feel comfortable doing that to them because I wasn''t sure how similar that''d be to the sort of magic that I had just liberated the trio from. Instead I decided to just talk to the coyotes.


    "Hey can you guys understand me?" I asked, curious as to if the things knew what I was saying. To me my words sounded relatively normal but I suspected that that might have been the system faciliating my mind''s understanding of my words to match their intention. I was unsurprised when the creatures nodded at me.


    I considered what to do next for a second. And then I knew I should go and retrieve Troik. I didn''t want the little goblin to get hurt, and now that I was out of danger and that these creatures were out of danger, it was time I went and secured the safety of the little goblin. I nodded and began to speak to the coyotes once more.


    "Alright, good. Do you want me to help me free someone from magical control, like how I freed you?" I asked the trio of creatures. They looked at each other and made a number of sounds. And it was at this point that the strange effects of omnilingualism began to truly kick in. A few seconds after they began to speak I began to understand them, even without using magic.


    "Do we want to help?" One of them asked. He was right in front of me, and he was the one coyote I wasn''t petting. As I spoke to them I began to scratch the head of the other coyote. There was one coyote on each side of me and the one that had just spoken who was in front of me. They looked similar enough that I suspected they might have been siblings.


    One of the ones who was being gently petted by me spoke up. "Of course we do! If it wasn''t for this kindly... what did the thing say he was again?" The coyote said, supporting my decision to go and help my friend before its mind began to wander and it began to try and recall what I was.


    I was confused for a second as I never told them my name. "Well the person never said what he was, but the message in our heads said the ''god of vermin''. It said he was our god!" One of the coyotes whispered, my mind translating its message by speaking those words into my mind quietly rather than loudly.


    This was both illuminating and confusing. It explained why the coyotes reacted to me so well and so energetically, but it left me with a number of questions. Fortunately, at that moment the system itself interrupted my slow descent into confusion with some context that made things a bit clearer.


    [We can see that you are confused. That makes sense because we didn''t think that this was how your first day was going to go. All living things in this universe have access to a system of their own. Or rather... they can get alerts and notifications from us like you can but theirs are less frequent and they have less noticeable abilities than you do. There are no beings like you left in existence.


    Althos, since you were liberating creatures who were classified as members of one of your domains or subdomains the coyote''s own system informed them of your true identity. This, coupled with your decision to immediately free them from the "charmed" condition has made them view you highly favorably.] The system told me, explaining much of what I was confused about.


    "We should help! Didn''t we want help when we were... charmed? If it was happening to us, we''d want help. I wanted help. Now I have a chance to help another person." The other coyote I was petting said, eager to go and help.


    This argument made the initially hesitant coyote pause. He stopped and considered the remarks. And then he nodded, which even though I had seen them nod before still looked oddly humanlike for a canine creature.


    "Yes. You''re right, we should help." The coyote said, its mind seemingly changed when its friend indirectly spoke of sympathy and compassion. The trio turned to me and looked ready to go. I smiled at them and then closed my eyes so that I could gain a bead on Troik''s location and the distance he had gained between us while I was freeing and then interacting with the coyotes.


    A few moments later I was armed with the knowledge I needed and leading the coyotes as we took off towards Troik. The little goblin was venturing deeper and deeper into the forest, in the general direction of what I assumed were his fellow tribespeople.


    ________________________________________________


    The coyotes and I were dashing through the woods. We were stomping through the undergrowth and past countless rows of eerie trees. Our surroundings were also getting darker, even though the sun should now have been approaching its peak in the sky past the forest''s canopy. The trees were packed closer and closer together as if they themselves were afraid of what lurked and lived this deeply in the forest.


    The sound of my footsteps was dwarfed by the noise the coyotes created as they followed me. The trio was communicating in barks, yips, and growls as we dove deeper and deeper into the woods.


    It wasn''t challenging for us to navigate this place as I was learning more and more about tremorsense the longer I had it which helped me, and the coyotes were natives of the woods and had spent their childhoods here. They weren''t challenged by the litany of tiny obstacles on the forest floor at all.


    I relied on a mixture of sure footing and tremorsense to navigate the forest floor successfully. At one point early on in the rush, I had gotten a notification from tremorsense which revealed a lot of what I hadn''t known about the map to me.


    [Alert:


    To help you better understand the minimap you''ve been provided with here''s a key detailing some of the shapes you may see on it.


    Circles: If a symbol on the map is represented by a circle that means that the creature it represents is a humanoid.


    Triangle: A triangle is used to mark you.


    Squares: Squares mark beasts.


    Pentagons: Pentagons are used to identify extraplanars.


    Crescents: Crescents mark spirits that aren''t undead and that are native to this dimension as well as fey.


    Hexagons: Hexagons mark insects.


    Octagons: Octagons mark plants.


    Star shapes: Star shapes mark birds, in the rare moments they are detected by tremorsense.


    In time, as you come across other types of creatures, we''ll expand this list. But for now, in this forest, that''s all you really need.]


    When I idly checked my minimap I noticed examples of every kind of shape that was just listed aside from pentagons. It stoked my curiosity, but I kept that wandering part of me under control for now. I was a man on a mission.


    And thankfully, while I was contemplating the sorts of creatures that were detected by the minimap Troik came into view. The goblin was dashing through the forest just ahead of us, but he was far slower than even the slowest of us and it had taken us only a minute of running to catch up with him.


    Troik was just ahead of myself and my newfound friends. Upon seeing him I grinned and sped forward, even faster than before, and tackled the little creature. I was far larger than he was and his fragile body was nowhere near strong enough to withstand being tackled by someone almost twice his height and width. In tackling him I caused us both to sail through the air.


    The goblin and I were in the air for a moment, my arms wrapped tightly around him before we crashed onto the grassy forest floor. We hit the ground hard and I had moved my weight around so that he took the brunt of the impact and not myself. I recovered almost instantly from this bit of aerial acrobatics. Troik? Well, he took a bit longer to recover.


    The goblin in my arms was stunned, and while he was I snatched up the knife in his hand and flicked it away. I quickly sent the system a message, one that was impatient and communicated my concerns.


    "I''ve got Troik. How do I free him from the influence of whatever''s controlling him?" I asked, directly and impatiently. I was basically shouting into my own mind and directing that annoyance at the system.


    [Hold on, hold on. We''ll scan him.


    Scanning... Scanning...


    Oh. Oh! He''s suffering from demonic infection. That''s the name of a seriously nasty magical disease. Treating it mundanely is possible, but hard. And treating it through domain powers will require at least a second tier of influence over the domain of healing. Which you don''t have.


    One of the symptoms of it is that the cause of it, the demon behind whatever particular strand has infected a victim, can possess that victim. Troik is currently possessed.


    If you want to cure it of your own power, you won''t be able too immediately even once the tutorial is over. But you can already repress the worst symptoms, including possession. Just use ''Abate Sickness'' on him. It''ll render him immune to possession, or at least this sort of possession, for a day.]


    The system''s revelation frustrated me but at least I was able to aid my friend. I also now had a specific goal: to increase my influence over the domain of healing and gain the power to cure this sickness outright. It felt nice to have a goal beyond completing quests because I now had something to focus my mind on.


    I immediately targeted the little goblin with the spell. A few seconds passed before the goblin began to recover from the impact of being tackled by me and then manhandled so that he hit the ground hard.


    The little creature''s head began to shake slowly, as he came to his senses. And when he did he hugged close to me. "Oh, Althos! I was... I was scared!" He said, shortly before he began to wail his big eyes out.


    I looked him in the face and saw that his eyes were back to normal. I pulled the small thing close to me and held him close while he was cried and babbled about how afraid he was. I began to pet his head, hoping that he''d find it comforting. The coyotes caught up to me and gathered around the two of us, protectively. I smiled at the trio of lean creatures.


    It was at that moment that I looked ahead of myself and saw a peculiar looking fruit at the base of a tree nearby: it keenly resembled an apple, but it was a strange shade of blue. I chuckled and spent a few minutes checking my minimap, to find the plants I had come here looking for. There was a healthy distance between myself and the rest of the closest plants I needed to find.


    I looked over at one of the coyotes and showed the thing the quest sheet for the protus plant. It looked at me in confusion and I chuckled.


    "Can you go and put this piece of paper against fruits that look like that?" I asked. It studied me for a second as if questioning if I was being serious. I sighed and repeated what I said. It considered what I said and then got confused. I sighed and got up, Troik''s saddened form rising with me. The goblin sadly clung to me, like an exhausted toddler. I was lucky that he wasn''t very heavy.


    I walked over to the plant and placed the paper that I was loosely holding against the plant. I held it there for a few seconds, and then the paper flashed and pulled the object into itself, sucking it up easily. "Whoa..." I said, as I suddenly had to act to keep my balance, which I was able to do with some fancy footwork.


    The coyotes, Troik, and I would pass the next few hours uneventfully going from point of the forest to point of the forest retrieving the plants. Thanks to my abilities we were able to avoid any encounters with hostile creatures and secured the plants rather efficiently all things considered.


    ________________________________________________


    As the sun began to gradually descend I looked at what bits of the sky I could see through the dense and packed treetops that surrounded me and my unlikely allies. I looked at the creatures and began to speak.


    "It''s about time that I head back to the community I am from. Are you all going to be okay here?" I asked. My concern wasn''t thoughtless or condescending. I was keenly aware that these creatures were natives too or at least likely long-time residents of this place.


    My concern stemmed from the fact that some nameless foe had possessed Troik and was ultimately still lurking within him. And this same entity had charmed the coyotes that were now my friends.


    My allies, including the goblin, paused and thought about my question. The coyotes didn''t need long though. One of them, the one who was initially hesitant about helping me free spoke decisively.


    "We''ll be fine! This is our home. Are you planning on coming back?" He asked, his canine voice quiet in the gradually encroaching gloom of dusk. I smiled at him and nodded, which placated the creature. The canine''s eyes were on me quite happy as I turned to face the goblin once again.


    The goblin was quiet, his mind running a mile a minute as darkness was inching towards us. I looked at him and realized that he had never told me why he had been out and was a good distance away from his tribe. He finally spoke right before I would have asked him something.


    "I''ll be fine. My tribe is surely waiting for me." He told me. I nodded at him, but I was aware that there was a tone of disappointment in his voice. No edge of fear, just disappointment. I looked at him and asked what I had wanted to ask him before.


    "Troik, why were you out here? We haven''t come across any other goblins, so it seems like you''re far from home." I asked my friend, automatically switching to the language of goblin-kind so that he felt comfortable responding. The goblin looked up at me, and considered how to answer my question.


    I could see a lot of thoughts and emotions flowing through his mind. He had had a long day and I had been involved in a lot of it. I freed him from a seemingly random metal bear-trap but then when he has possessed the creature who possessed him suggested that Troik was playing a role in something bigger and darker than the activities of a tribe of goblins.


    The goblin sighed before it began to tell me what it was up too. "I only remember leaving my home. I was going to go and look for food over in our distant traps. When I left my home... I don''t know. The next thing I remember was the pain of the trap biting into my leg." The goblin told me.


    I looked at him seriously for a second and debating what to do in this situation, especially since I could see an opportunity here. "Troik, do goblins eat fruits and vegetables?" I asked, studying the goblin for a second.


    His eyes lit up when I mentioned different types of food. When he didn''t immediately respond and just licked his lips I took this chance to ask the system for some help.


    "I need some help. I have the power to help the goblins and to spread some tendrils of influence into this forest subtly. I don''t want to tell him or anyone that I''m a deity. I don''t have the knowledge to successfully lie in this situation, and I won''t let them starve. Can you give me a believable enough backstory to trick some goblins and their orc boss into eating the food I magically create?" I asked, appealing directly to the system for aid.


    There was silence on its end for a few seconds before a textbox materialized in my mind''s eye.


    [Just say that you are a druidic follower of a spirit of abundance. And that that spirit compels you to aid the starving however you can.] The textbook gave me an interesting backstory that I knew would be something I''d be able to use in the future whenever I wanted to start to influence more creatures.


    When that first textbox disappeared from view another phased into existence with more informative text.


    [Give the spirit a fake name, but since this is the route you''re taking, you need to be consistent with it. We''ll unlock your faith-based divine ability to hear prayers and filter it so that it is only for prayers that are specific to this fake being. There are definitely domains and subdomains that will love that these are decisions you''ve made. It''s... an odd choice.] The system confessed sounding rather frustrated at this development, which made me laugh internally.


    "Goblins love fruits and vegetables! Are there any nearby?" He asked, excitedly. His eyes let me know that he was distracted by the thought of food so much that that was why he was quiet. I also realized that this likely meant that the items I had collected were probably not considered edible since he hadn''t spoken about them.


    "I haven''t had food in a while." The goblin told me very excitedly, all while suggesting that hunger was affecting at least him, if not others in his tribe. This cemented my decision to do what I was about to do since I wouldn''t be hurting the creature even though I was deceiving it.


    I laughed at his excitement, my eyes and face light as laughter overtook them. And then I spoke.


    "Listen, I''m a follower of Cosecha, a relatively newborn spirit of healing, the harvest and abundance. Cosecha answers prayers... when mortals ask spirits for help, related to hunger and the need for food. It saved me once, and I''m sure it''ll help you if you need it." I began, telling the goblin a name I made up on the spot.


    "If you pray to it and humbly ask for vegetables or fruits it will use some of its power to give you food to eat," I told the little creature. Troik''s mouth opened wide at this false revelation, and I could tell that he believed me but I wanted to cement it in his mind.


    I looked at him and began to speak confidently. "Do what I do, okay?" I asked him, ready to give him an example. He nodded at me.


    I fell to my knees, following some more of the oddly sourced knowledge that was stored in my mind. I clasped my hands together and then began to speak. "Cosecha, spirit of abundance and of the harvest I humbly beseech you... Please give me an apple so that I may not starve!" I said, raising my voice at the end to stress what the action would look like if it were to be believed.


    At the last second I cast one of my legendary spells and made a golden apple appear right in front of me. It caught a dimming ray of sunlight and shone bright enough to be noticed by my goblin friend. I chuckled internally and took a bite out of the juicy fruit. Troik gasped in delight at the display, clapping his hands together to physically express his delight. And then he fell to his knees.


    The goblin speedily did what I had just done, and my mind''s eye was bombarded by a notification.


    [Alert: The goblin named Troik has uttered a prayer to your persona, the spirit Cosecha. He has asked for an apple. Would you like to respond to his prayer affirmatively?]


    The alert flashed unusually big and wide in my mind''s eye. I grinned and focused on telling the system "yes" until the notification vanished from view. At the same time, I went ahead and cured the goblin of tetanus, the spell washing over him as he piously performed the prayer.


    [We''ll just say that "Cosecha" cured Troik of Tetanus as a reward for deciding to pray to it. And to cement in his mind that this absolutely made-up spirit is a real being.] The system told me, quietly whispering in my mind like we were part of a shared criminal conspiracy and not just spreading a new religion.


    The goblin gasped when a golden apple like the one he had eaten before appeared on the ground in front of him. He snatched it up and began to excitedly thank Cosecha for its kindness. And then he turned to me and smiled.


    "Thank you, Althos! Would you like me to tell my friends about this, or do you want it to be our secret?" He asked, curiously. There was a glint in his eyes when he suggested we keep "Cosecha''s blessing" our secret. I chuckled and shook my head.


    "Cosecha is a social spirit who enjoys feeding people. It wants people to pray to it, and for their piety and devotion to be rewarded with food and with other rewards. Tell your friends, and get them to pray with you. Who knows... Cosecha might even visit your dreams one day." I told the goblin, opting to set the stage for more miraculous happenings in the days to come. I wasn''t about to let this opportunity pass without milking it.


    The little creature began an eager dance at the thought of this kindly entity spending time with it. I grinned and watched as the goblin began to dance as it walked into the forest, towards its home. The coyotes followed after it after giving me three happy glances. I was about to turn and head back to Comillas when I heard an excited goblinoid voice shout a happy farewell to me.


    I chuckled and finally turned around to head back to Comillas.


    ________________________________________________


    My trip back was equally uneventful, which gave me time to be introspective and to reflect on the experiences I had gained throughout my first day of life. I thought about the strange enemy I had made and deprieved of a potentially potent tool. I thought about my powers and magic. And I thought about the domains I was hoping to one day master, namely the domain of healing.


    Before long I was back in front of the Silver Xana, woke-root and protus plant in hand. I smiled as I began to open the door into the small hotel to turn in my quests.


    Behind me, the sun was almost done setting. Night was about to fall over Comillas.

 8 Turning In Quests

    Armed with new knowledge and powers the first thing I did upon closing in on my home, the Silver Xana was close my eyes and allow the more useful version of the mini-map I possessed to fill my vision. It only took a second of my eyes being closed to allow the thing to overtake the darkness underneath my eyelids.


    The minimap revealed a good chunk of the town that surrounded me. Everything on the ground level of the town was suddenly exposed to me, and I was able to learn a lot about the residents of the town.


    I knew next to nothing about the town I was living in. In fairness, my consciousness has existed in a physical body for less than a day but still. My tremorsense allowed me to learn a lot at once.


    This town was inhabited by less than four dozen humanoids. Around forty-five circles were situated throughout the town. Something I mentally marked for future investigation was the existence of a single crescent on the minimap and when I clicked it I learned that a type of creature called an elf lived in the town. Its name was Goras. That was the only unexpected entry on the minimap.


    I opened the door leading into the Silver Xana and immediately strode into my place of residence. As I did so I proudly had the sheets of paper that I had taken with me in my hands and was arrogantly showing them off.


    The papers were glowing, something they had begun to do when I had acquired the necessary items in the necessary numbers to successfully complete the quest I was undertaking. They kept glowing, radiating a soft blue glow, even after I gently placed them in front of Isadora. The receptionist grinned at me and she looked positively delighted to have gotten the items she had asked for.


    She opened one of the shelves the desk she sat had contained and pulled out a pink bag. She opened the bag and began to count money until she had exactly enough for my reward. She counted approximately 15 escudos, thick silver coins.


    "Five escudos per woke-root, and you brought me all three. How excellent!" She said, happy to push forward the reward, the gleaming coins, she had prepared for me. I smiled and examined the coins she had given me. They were coins made of silver, with crosses emblazoned on either side of them.


    When I reached forward and touched them, they vanished before my very eyes. This made my eyes open wide in alarm, but the system reached out and informed me of the true nature of what had just happened.


    [Althos, relax. We just unlocked your inventory ability. This is one ability everyone has to make life more convenient. It creates a tiny pocket-dimension wherein you can store your items. Mortals have a limited amount of space they can fill and a limited amount of weight they can sustain, but you don''t. You are not burdened like they are.] It told me.


    I was grateful for the explanation but my curiosity was piqued by something about this. I immediately questioned the system. "If you knew about this, why didn''t you tell me about it when I put the paper where Isadora drew the plants in my scarf?" I asked, speaking to the system mentally.


    I heard a mechanical giggle and the system immediately responded to me. [Because you looked funny with the paper in your scarf. We liked the visuals so we kept the ability a secret.] The system explained. Mentally I frowned and sighed at the system, but I allowed it to have its fun and didn''t complain.


    Isadora waved her hand over the paper and the thing began to disgorge the woke-roots. She examined them briefly and smiled after finding the things to her satisfaction. She turned to me and began to speak.


    "Oh Althos, these are perfect! Thank you so much, with this I''ll be able to sit down and begin making caffeine potions which we''ll need if anyone without magic wants to explore the forest." She told me, beginning to explain why she had requested the plants in the first place.


    "This is around the time of year that some of Comillas younger people begin to try and explore the forest, which is good and neat. The problem stems from sleeping serpents. And I don''t mean a vague sort of sleeping serpent, I mean what we locals call ''sleeping serpents'', which are a type of snake that causes those they bite to fall asleep." Isadora explained, thinking about the snakes.


    "By using these plants," She said, gesturing to the things that now took up a significant part of her desk. "I can create potions that people can drink and use to wake up quickly." She told me before flashing me a brilliant smile.


    I smiled back at her, intrigued by the idea of those meeting and maybe even taming some of those snakes. "I''ll have to check those things out on the minimap the next time I visit the forest." I realized, eager to learn more about assorted status conditions. I was also interested in the potions Isadora could apparently make, and I made that clear to her with my next statement.


    "Hey Isadora, could I help you make those potions the next time you make them? I''d love to help out and learn about alchemy." I told her, the word "alchemy" appearing in my mind mysteriously right before I finished speaking. She was shocked at my question but also quite happy and responded to my question within a second.


    "Sure! I''d be happy to teach you about alchemy. You strike me as the sort who''d enjoy brewing potions." She said, giving me another brilliant smile.


    "I would like to be!" I told her, happily. The thought of being able to use the forest''s plants to brew medicine and help people was something I was quite excited by, and I suspected that that had to do with the influence of the healing subdomain on me as a person.


    While I thought about that Isadora walked out from behind the desk she spent a lot of her time behind and motioned for me to follow her. "It''s time for us to go pay Mateo a visit. His home isn''t far." She told me, before once again gesturing for me to follow her.


    I began to follow after her, and for the first time, I got to see her outside of the Silver Xana once she opened the door and stepped through it. As she did so she also opened her arms wide and sighed luxuriously the second she felt the cool breeze on her skin.


    "Oh Althos, this is so nice!" She muttered, happily. She was in front of me but I could hear the smile on her lips. She and I were walking away from the inn and towards a nearby house about five minutes away. I knew this from when I checked my not-so-mini map minutes ago and learned where Mateo was.


    ________________________________________________


    We came to a stop outside of the entrance to a small house made of locally harvested wood. The house was a sleek black color, and I quite liked the aesthetic choices of whoever designed it. Isadora politely knocked on the door, and within a matter of moments the thing was pulled inward and a face emerged from within the house.


    Mateo, at least according to my mini-map peered through the open door and smiled when he saw Isadora. "Oh hey, cousin! I see you brought me some company." The broad-faced man said, eagerly when he noticed Isadora and me ready to greet him. She laughed and nodded as the man stepped aside and ushered us into his home.


    When we were both inside the house Mateo swung the door closed, and turned to face us. He was a tall individual with brown skin and jet black hair. He had long, muscular limbs and stood taller than I did.


    "So cousin, do you have some good news for me?" Mateo asked, glancing at me curiously but not paying me much mind. Isadora happily nodded at her cousin before pulling out the remaining quest-request form she had on her and handing it to him. He quickly noticed that the form was glowing and his eyes lit up. He turned to me and began to study me more thoroughly.


    I felt his eyes on my form and chuckled. I moved towards him and extended my hand in his direction. He grabbed my hand and pulled me into a bear hug. He was a strong, and evidently quite a passionate man.


    "Oh man, you are a real life-saver! Those protus plants you brought me... I''ll be able to cook so many meals with them." He revealed, before beginning to chat with both his cousin and myself. As he began to explain why he had filled out the quest-request form.

 9 The Domain Of Dreams

    "If you weren''t a druid I''d hesitate in telling you this, but since you are it''s possible you may be exactly what Comillas needs." Mateo told me, his eyes gleaming as he began to walk over to a table within his living room.


    Mateo, Isadora, and I stood in the man''s living room. Near us was a single couch, in front of which was a small table. Mateo placed the paper, the quest-request form, on that table and he reached his hand into the paper so that he could begin to pull out the protus plants contained within.


    "Over the course of the last few years, farmers in Comillas have begun to suffer from worse and worse harvests. It was a slow decline, and we noticed it quick enough that we could begin to prepare, but if this pattern continues unabated then within... a decade, we might be forced to leave this place. All of us." The man told me, an edge of fear audible in his voice. There was a request hidden in his voice, which was surprisingly forward given that we had just met.


    I studied his face for a second. He was a handsome man, with a smooth face tanned by years of hard, physical work. He had dark, green eyes and was looking at me as openly as I was looking at him. I allowed a few moments to pass before addressing the unspoken question.


    "Oh really? I''ll definitely check that out for you all." I said, smiling at both of the humans. They both smiled back at me and exhaled a breath they likely hadn''t known they were holding. Isadora looked at me and began to speak.


    "If you find anything it''ll definitely merit a reward of some sort, especially since we''re still early and this isn''t life-threatening. Yet. There''s still plenty of time for us to either find a solution or to make preparations to leave. We figured you might have been interested in this little situation of ours." Isadora told me, a smile still etched on her face.


    I nodded at her understandingly, while Mateo pulled some money out of his pocket. The sound of the money smacking the table filled the room we found ourselves in, and Mateo began to laugh.


    "Oh man, this is excellent!" He declared, enthusiastic about the sort of food he''d be cooking up for himself soon.


    "Hey Althos, do you know how to cook?" He asked me. I turned to face him, or rather to give him my full and undivided attention. The word "cook" made sense to me, but I didn''t know how to do it. I shook my head at him, and he began to laugh when he realized that I was saying that cooking was not a skill of mine.


    "In my defense, I''ve mostly eaten fruits and vegetables. You don''t exactly need to cook a carrot." I told the cousins. They both smiled sympathetically at my remark. Mateo chuckled at that, and nodded in understanding.


    "That''s fair enough I suppose. Isadora told me that you were a druid... I don''t know much about them." Mateo confessed, readily admitting to his own ignorance. I smiled at him, approving of his honesty and internally remarking that I too didn''t know much about druids. Fortunately, the system itself stepped in to add some a bit to my understanding of druids.


    [Humans who aren''t druids tend not to know much about them. Though many druids are loners, some form organizations called "circles". Members of "circles" tend to go about trying to fulfill similar or interconnected objectives. Non-druids who know about druids know more about druidic "circles" than they do individual druids. If you''re gonna lie to these people that might be the route to take.]


    The system sounded rather judgemental at that moment, which made me chuckle. I mentally transmitted a message of appreciation to my constant companion.


    "Druids aren''t known for our socialness so it makes a certain amount of sense that you don''t know much about us." I said to the muscular man. He nodded at me, likely appreciative that I wasn''t hurt by his proclamation of ignorance.


    "Heck even I don''t know all that much about us. All of my abilities, personally, are related to animals and plants but I''m level 1." I told the pair, hiding my elemental powers for now. Telling them that I possessed animal and plant powers made sense to me, and I truthfully admitted my own relative ignorance about my own abilities.


    They looked at me, surprisingly rather relieved to hear that. Isadora spoke up this time.


    "Oh well that''s nothing to be ashamed of! You went into the forest, retrieved the items we asked you to retrieve and came back safely. You helped people. You have time to learn about your powers. And a safe place to do so." She told me, speaking reassuringly. I nodded at her, myself appreciative of the words of kindness she had just spoken.


    ________________________________________________


    I left Mateo''s house half an hour later with twenty more silver escudos in my inventory. I imagined I could hear the coins, even though I couldn''t since they were safely and magically tucked away.


    Night had fallen over Comillas and I was armed with more knowledge than I had possessed an hour ago. All around me stood tiny houses, some dimly lit from within, filled with wonderful parents regaling children with bedtime stories while others had inquisitive sorts who were seated outside of their homes, watching passersby like myself.


    As I wandered back to the Silver Xana I mentally recounted all of the exciting events of the day. It was a surprisingly long list, and I wondered if tonight would be as remarkable. I doubted it, but when I told myself that in the safety of my mind I received a message from the system that revealed to me that I was wrong.


    [Althos when you get back to your room in the inn we''ll fully unlock your first tier of influence over one of the domains all gods are born possessing an innate ability to influence: the domain of dreams.] The system whispered in my mind.


    Hearing that made me walk faster, and I had to resist the urge to break into a full run to get back home. I couldn''t wait to be able to finally learn more about my true, divine abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    I quickly found myself back within the Silver Xana and within the room I woke up in. I had barely arrived when I began to receive a message from the system.


    [Most types of humanoids, animals, and even some extraplanar beings have to sleep. Sleep is when their bodies and their brains enter into a mode of less activity than when they are awake and take time to recover from the stresses of the day, allowing them to regain energy.] The system told me, teaching me about the body and mind of living creatures bit by bit.


    [Humanoids and other types of beings experience things called ''dreams'' while they are sleeping. Dreams are a series of thoughts, images, and sensations their minds show them while they are sleeping. Deities and other higher beings can either subtly influence these dreams or we can take them over altogether.] The voice in my mind revealed to me, causing my eyes to open wide in shock.


    [The first tier of active divine powers this domain grants are both related to sleep.] My eerie companion informed me.


    [Each tier of influence over a domain and subdomain grants you certain things. The main things of note that each tier of influence of each domain and subdomain grant you are active and passive divine powers. Active powers are powers that require you to activate them, and they tend to have a cooldown period which is a period of time after you use them in which you cannot use them.] The system told me, beginning an explanation of the mechanics of divine abilities.


    [Passive powers are ones that are always active. A passive power the first tier of influence over the domain of dreams grants each god is the ability to enter the dreams of humanoids.] The system revealed, and that was a revelation which brought a delighted smile to my face.


    [Dreams are something ancient gods were obsessed with. Ancient gods, back when there was more than one god, made rules and laws that dictated their behavior and many of those rules and laws were ones that strongly suggested that gods shouldn''t directly interact with mortals. Deities entered dreams and interacted with mortals there] The voice in my head told me, which puzzled me.


    "But... why not? Don''t gods get some of their strength from worshipers? Why would we do something that effectively hurt ourselves?" I asked, curious about this oddity and made doubly so when I recalled the system mentioning that gods wanted and that I myself should want worshipers.


    [When there were more than one god, gods had to find ways to coexist. They had to cooperate or at least tolerate each other. The rules were made more with this pragmatic understanding in mind than the thoughts of the importance of mortal worshipers in the context of deities building up strength.] My companion told me, giving me a curious sort of history lesson.


    At that moment the system''s attempts to educate me were interrupted by an important message. An alert. One that brought a big smile to my face.


    [Alert: Goblins named Hagitha, Mawby, and Mianthus have uttered prayers to your persona, Cosecha. They have asked for bananas, oranges, and mangos respectively. Would you like to respond to their prayers affirmatively? If you do we can just cast the spell in your stead.] The alert asked, beeping into existence in my mind in a flash.


    I immediately informed the system to create the fruits that the goblins sought. Knowing that Troik had been successful in getting others to utter the prayer filled my heart with joy, and with pride and I wanted to reward him for his successful effort.


    [If you wish to reward your servant you can bless his dreams. Blessing them ensures he has an enjoyable dream, though the precise way in which he''d have an enjoyable dream depends on you and on him.] The system told me, resuming its speech once I had seen fit to reward my friend for his work. I went silent and waited for the system to continue telling me about blessings.


    [A way that a deity can influence the actions of mortals is for them to bless the mortal. When a deity blesses a mortal they temporarily grant them gifts related to a domain or subdomain of the god''s choosing and the mortal is made aware of the fact that they''ve earned a deity''s good graces. If you bless Troik''s dreams then he''ll wake up in a good mood because he had a night full of good dreams]


    I listened to the system''s explanation with interest. And at this point, I had a question. "Can I bless someone with regards to every domain and subdomain?" I asked, speaking aloud and also in my mind.


    [Yes you can. The exact effects are really... contextualized. If you gain influence over the subdomain of necromancy and undeath and you bless someone they won''t be attacked by unintelligent undead. If you bless someone using the earth subdomain they''ll be stronger so long as they are on earth of some sort.] The system revealed, mentioning necromancy which was something I unconsciously knew was a school of magic.


    [Inversely you can also curse someone. Cursing someone follows the same structure as blessing them, but leads to them being inconvenienced, at least until you gain more influence over whatever domain or subdomain you seek to curse them using.] The system said to me, warning me with its tone that this was a powerful ability.


    [The more influence you have over the domain the more dramatic the impact of your curse or blessing. Cursing someone doesn''t require for you to identify yourself, and you can opt to use a false name or a title, which are things you don''t have yet, when blessing someone.] The system announced.


    [Anyways, we know you want to see the powers you gain via the domain of dream''s first and lowest tier of influence over them. Here you go.] The thing told me, wrapping up its explanation suddenly.


    [Alert:


    You have been awarded the powers and recognition that come with holding the first and lowest tier of influence over the domain of dreams. What follows is a list of the powers that come with that.


    Details about the domain of dreams:


    The domain of dreams is a fascinating, central domain to gods and godliness. Godly powers over dreams are hugely influential and for eons, the dreams of mortals were where they communed most intensely and most regularly with the gods.


    Godly powers over dreams are utterly absolute. Gods can transform and modify dreams in a number of weird and awe-inspiring ways, though those powers aren''t available to you just yet. You need more influence over the domain.


    In order to gain influence over the domain of dreams, you need to continue to use your powers over the domain and to gain worshipers who worship you as a god of dreams.


    Passive Powers:


    He Sees You When You''re Sleeping: This passive power affects your minimap and allows you to detect if a humanoid is sleeping.


    Dreamwalker: You gain the ability to enter the dreams of sleeping humanoids. In order to enter the dreams of other types of creatures, you need to gain higher tiers of influence over the domain of dreams.


    Active Powers:


    Restless Or Restful Sleep: This power doesn''t affect dreams, it affects sleep. By using it you can affect how restorative a mortal''s sleep is.


    When you use it on a mortal you are given a choice. If you choose for your target to experience restless sleep then for the next twenty-four hours their sleep will not positively affect them no matter how much they sleep. On the other hand, restful sleep is twice as restorative as it would otherwise be for the next twenty-four hours.


    You can use this power on three creatures per day. If you decide to target the same creature two days in a row the second time you use the power on them it will cost you extra, causing you to only be able to affect one other person rather than the two you''d otherwise be able to target.


    As you gain more tiers of influence over the domain of dreams, or as you become a more generally powerful deity, you''ll be able to target more creatures with it and customize how effective it is as well as how long it lasts.


    This power can be used to weigh down enemies or to uplift and refresh allies and worshipers.


    Dancing Dreams: This power is a vicious one. It can only be used on creatures who are already asleep but if used, and if not successfully resisted by its victims, it will cause them to be forced into a state of slumber for twenty-four hours. It can stack with "Restless or Restful Sleep" which can be an especially empowering or devastating combination if used cleverly.


    That said this power can only be used once a day as a deity who can only exert one tier of influence over the domain of dreams and who one is at the lowest rank of deific might.


    The domain of dreams covers dreams, unconsciousness, sleep, and nightmares. Many domains have subdomains associated with them, but this one doesn''t.


    Details about the domain of dreams blessings and curses:


    If you bless someone with this domain you''ll cause them to have peaceful dreams and go to sleep quite easily. On the other hand, if you curse them with it you''ll cause them to endure nightmares and suffer from sleep that doesn''t restore much of their energy at all, which will eventually affect other parts of their lives.


    That said this power can only be used once a day as a deity who can only exert one tier of influence over the domain of dreams and who one is at the lowest rank of deific might.


    The domain of dreams covers dreams, unconsciousness, sleep, and nightmares. Many domains have subdomains associated with them, but this one doesn''t.


    Acquiring tiers of influence over domains and subdomains is a two-part process. The first part of the process is behaving in ways that intrigue or entertain the domain or subdomain in question.


    As an example of this, your activities revolving around the creation of this false spirit ''Cosecha'' has intrigued and entertained the domain of lies, the domain of creativity, and the domain of spirits. Once any of them have been sufficiently amused by your actions they will offer you a quest. This system will appear in your HUD, your Heads Up Display, what you sometimes call your ''mind''s eye''.


    Once you complete the quest you will gain the tier of influence you were offered.]


    When I finished reading that lengthy message it vanished into nothingness. As it did I closed my eyes, and waited for the not-so-mini map to appear in the familiar darkness.


    [Hey Althos, whatcha doing?] The system asked me, rather carefreely. There was a jovial tone in its voice that informed me that it had a suspicion of what I was up too. I grinned and kept my eyes shut. The not-so-mini-map appeared and expanded in my mind''s vision.


    "I''m going to go and test these new abilities out! After all my ancestors were apparently experienced... dreamwalkers?" I said, starting off confidently but ultimately finishing with less confidence in my voice. I wasn''t sure if the name of the divine power I had acquired was a title my ancestors once possessed or just a descriptor of what they did.


    "I want to walk in their footsteps and become familiar with what they were familiar with. I want to familiarize myself with dream-based powers and learn how my presence affects dreams." I told the system, articulating why I was scanning my mini-map to find out who was sleeping and thus who I could introduce myself too.


    [Oh boy... there are some rules you''ll want to know about as you prepare yourself for your first venture into the land of dreams. It''s gonna be a real trip.] The system told me, beginning to warn me about what my first venture into a dream would be like. I listened, curious and eager to learn more.

 10 Shapeless One

    [We will unlock one of your powers in dreams and dreams alone: the ability to shapeshift. What this means is you won''t be restricted to your current physical form whenever you are in a dream. Instead, you can take on any form you wish.] The system began, telling me about some of the stuff I''d want to know if I was about to go into dreams.


    [One of your wild traits is named ''Shapeless One''. That trait gives you the ultimate shape-shifting power. Your form is totally malleable, and you can opt to even shed a physical body and become a creature of pure spiritual, divine, and magical power if you wish. But we think it''s important that you be able to relate to mortals and so we wish for you to stay in a physical, human body. For now.] The system said, urging me to continue to be in my physical form, for the moment.


    [That said, in the dreams of mortals you''ll probably want to leave an impact. Being able to adopt an awe-inspiring godly forms helps leave a solid impression.] The system remarked, before stopping for a second to formulate its own thoughts.


    At that point, I chimed in. "Look... I don''t know what an ''awe-inspiring godly form'' even looks like." I told it, reminding the thing of my exceedingly limited knowledge. I heard a sound like the clicking of a tongue in frustration in my mind, and then the system apologized.


    [That''s fair. We''re sorry, you''ve only seen humans, goblins, and animals and we just forgot about that for a second. What we mean by an ''awe-inspiring godly form'' is a form that radiates divine power and is one of great beauty or power.] The system explained. As an additional favor to me, the system transmitted images that accompanied the end of its message to illustrate its point.


    ________________________________________________


    After spending a few moments sorting through the images that accompanied the system''s message I could see what it meant by awe-inspiring.


    Many of the images I had were received were of purely elemental looking beings. What I meant by this was that they were entities that looked to be made entirely of the elements themselves.


    I could see massive, mountain-sized men made of gorgeous orange fire. Human-sized feminine figures made of water and ice. Gigantic animals made of air or stone. Their forms were breathtaking and looked like they could inspire tales of wonder and magic.


    A handful of the images weren''t of elemental beings. Some of them were astoundingly beautiful women and powerfully built, impossibly tall men with eyes as white as glaciers. Others were of fusions between men and animals.


    Some were of men and women who had the upper bodies of humans or human-like entities and the lower bodies of terrifyingly large spiders. Others had the bodies of men and women but the heads of a massive predator like a crocodile. One stunning example of this was of a man who had the lower body of a massive stag, and the upper body of a powerfully built male and stag''s horns atop his head.


    It was in seeing these images that I began to formulate my own envisionment of what my own divine form could look like.


    ________________________________________________


    [Have you had time to begin to visualize a divine form for yourself?] The system asked me, curious to hear if my time looking at the images was useful. I nodded and responded affirmatively to its question.


    [Excellent. More and more people are falling asleep. This seems to be a town wherein people fall asleep early, which is perfect for your needs.] My oldest companion revealed to me, suggesting I had more time to engage in mischief here than elsewhere.


    [How do I... actually do what I''d like to do? This is the first time I''m actually doing this, do you mind giving me a walkthrough?] I asked, quite humbly.


    The system chuckled, and then graciously explained how I could go about doing what I hoped to do. [Since it''s your first time trying to do this you''ll need to use your other new passive power. It shows you which creatures within tremorsense range are sleeping. You can use your dreamerwalker power on any sleeping humanoid you can detect.] The system began telling me.


    [Once you detect them, if they are sleeping you''ll be asked if you wish to activate your power, targeting them. That said, you can also use your powers on creatures under your influence regardless of their distance from you.] The system explained. I nodded and closed my eyes.


    The minimap was taking less and less time to become not-so-mini. This time almost the instant I closed my eyes I could see it in my H.U.D. And when it showed up I was immediately drawn to the differences between it now and it earlier before I had my ability to detect who was awake and who was asleep.


    Folks who were asleep had a distinct purple aura that radiated out of their circles, and the first one on which I clicked revealed more than when I had last identified someone.


    [Nearby neutral humanoid detected. Preparing proper notification... Scanning creature.


    The selected human lacks class levels. The human is asleep and if left unbothered will have an average night''s sleep.


    The human is neutral towards you. She doesn''t know you.


    Do you wish to use dreamwalker on her?]


    I smiled and nodded while telling the notification that I did want to do that.


    [Understood. Since this is your first time using dreamwalker, among other things you will need to select your dream form. Initiating dreamwalker in 3... 2... 1...]


    Upon the countdown reaching zero, everything around me changed. All of sudden I went from standing in my room in the inn, into standing in a blank white space, the exact opposite of the void I spent an unknown amount of time in.


    ________________________________________________


    [Hello Althos! Welcome to... well welcome to where you go when you need to decide how you look.] The system told me. An instant later I was surrounded by mirror-like images of myself from all angles.


    [Here is where you go whenever you need to change your appearance. Or rather here is where you will go when you need to change how you look once your shapeshifter power is well and truly unlocked. There are no limitations imposed on you in here, you can look however you desire to look.] The system told me, eagerly letting me know that when it came to how I looked, in this place if nowhere else, I was close to omnipotent.


    I smiled and imagined my form changing. Which it did, before my very eyes.

 11 Skepticism

    I watched as my human flesh dissipated and vanished into nothingness. In what felt like seconds the mirror-like images of myself revealed nothing, indicating that I had turned invisible.


    [You have been transformed into what you originally were: invisible motes of divine energy. To change your form once more all you have to do is will your appearance to change. You can take on any form, merely will it into being.] The voice of the system whispered into my mind. I smiled and considered what to mold myself into.


    "What form would most inspire awe?" I asked myself, my voice exuding from nothing, seemingly coming out of no place in particular. My mind was running a kilometer a minute. After I was still invisible for over what felt like a minute and as indecisive as ever I opted to try something: to try and change my form.


    I imagined the basic frame of my humanesque form and visualized this form appearing where I was. It took a few moments, but eventually, I gained a new, featureless body. I watched arms form from nothing, a torso spring into being, legs phase into existence and other body parts suddenly start to exist.


    I examined my unmemorable form and mentally smiled. There was no mouth on my temporary form. I continued to ponder what to make. I thought back to all of the things I had seen before. As I did I noticed something that linked the elementals I had seen: they had an order to them.


    The fire beings I saw were just fire. The air beings I saw were just air. The earth beings I saw were just earth. There was creativity in their forms, but no true mixing of elements. The humanoid-like gods I saw were different though.


    They mixed and matched parts of humanoid anatomy with parts of animal anatomy, and I liked that. It spoke to a part of me that I couldn''t yet name but felt in my heart. Something about the images of them in my mind was comforting and pleasant.


    For a moment I wondered if it was the influence of the domain of chaos on my mind and in my heart. And I almost immediately realized that it was probably was.


    "I should create something truly unique. Something that isn''t one thing or another, but mixes and matches." I thought, free and safe to be creative in this mental space.


    "That way whoever witnesses my form imagines that I am myself a mixture of things and thus something new. Not something ordered and structured, but something chaotic and free." I realized, being seized by creativity after spending moments contemplating the majesty of the forms of the creatures that I had seen.


    I visualized something new and something more memorable: my right hand transforming from flesh into flames. And this time it took less time than before to shift from flesh into something else.


    In almost no time at all I watched my flesh melt away and be replaced with a blazing fire. I looked over to my left hand and imagined this process taking place again but with water. In seconds my fleshy arm fell away and was replaced by a tendril of freshwater.


    For my lower body, I felt like being more consistent. I envisioned my lower body becoming not a thing of flesh and muscle but instead one single solid hunk of stone and grass. And in the span of the time it took to snap one''s finger, the boundaries between my two legs vanished and instead my lower body became a thing of rolling stone and soil.


    At this point, the last part of me that was left was my head. And only one core element left: the element of air.


    ________________________________________________


    I sprang into this body knowing things. I didn''t know many things, but what I knew, I knew. One of the things I came into being understanding was the necessity of four basic elements: fire, water, earth, and air. This understanding was enhanced by my conversation with Mateo and Isadora.


    I knew that the four elements were basic necessities for humans and many other lifeforms. A part of me knew and understood that most living creatures in worlds like this one breathed air, drank water, stood on earth, and needed the heat of fire in order to live. Not all living creatures, but most of them, in this world if nowhere else, needed at least three of those elements.


    I knew that those four things also had their own subdomains. This was more of that mysterious knowledge that both the system and I had hypothesized came from a domain, subdomain, domains, or subdomains. I knew that these subdomains were powerful ones. And I hoped that I''d get to begin to gain influence over them soon.


    ________________________________________________


    I watched as my head faded away. And a heartbeat later my head was replaced with someone else. Where a head of flesh had once been a face and a head made of solidified, marble white air floated in its place. The colored air that made up my face had a pleasant expression planted on its lips.


    I was smiling, impressed by my new form. I spent a moment alone with my thoughts. And then I was interrupted.


    [Hello Althos. Do you wish for this to be your form, or would you like something more harvest oriented?] The system asked, curious as to why I wanted this form. I had, after all, made it by hand. In response, I shook my head.


    I took a second to pause and consider a legitimate rationale before opening my airy mouth to speak. When one came to mind my smile was not only external but internal as well.


    "This form is the form of the harmony needed for a good harvest. For a good harvest must have a bounty of soil," I said gesturing to my legs. "One must have the light and love of the sun to consume." I told my lone companion, as I rose my fiery appendage.


    "One must have the kiss of rain," I said, thinking on my feet of the knowledge gifted to me by sources unknown as I rose my other arm. "And one must have oxygen for plants to breath." I said, pointing my limbs at my face.


    "Put them together and mix in some hard work and you will get a good harvest. Me. If you mix the elements together and work hard, you can have a Cosecha!" I said, excitedly. My grin was wide to bursting and I heard a soft laugh from the system itself.


    [That''s fair enough we suppose. And an interesting take on what it takes to get a good harvest.] The system told me, admitting that there was creativity to my approach to the first divine form I made for myself. There was a pause for a second, a solitary moment of silence. It was ended almost immediately.


    [Are you ready to enter Alma''s dream?] The system asked, identifying the name of the person whose dream I was about to step into for the first time. I wasn''t sure, but I thought I heard a smile in its voice. A wry one. I grinned and nodded at it, excited to explore a new land in my divine form.


    One second I was standing in the blank, white space. And the next I wasn''t.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself standing in front of a windswept forest. Underneath my earthen feet was a path that wound into the forest. I turned around and looked behind me and saw a gentle and idyllic grassland. I wasn''t oblivious to the fact that this what surrounded me was likely a version of the world as remembered by this woman, Alma. It didn''t take a genius to come to that logical leap.


    Weirdly enough I didn''t see Alma herself. I turned and looked into the forest, scanning it as far as I could see, and didn''t see her. "She must be deeper in the forest." I realized. As I spoke I heard my voice in my head, and keenly realized that my voice was awfully mundane which didn''t fit with the potent imagery of my physical form.


    I began to move into the forest and began to softly speak so as to work to speak in a voice that was more befitting my fantastic form. "My name is Cosecha," I said, as I took my first few steps, lowering my voice an entire octave.


    While I was moving into the forest I mentally targeted my goblin friend Troik and tested if I could activate powers in this place. I targeted the goblin, focused on giving him restful sleep, and was disappointed when it didn''t work.


    ________________________________________________


    The forest I was traveling through was eerily silent. No other lifeforms surrounded me as I strode atop the winding path I emerged into this place onto. Aside from me saying words and sentences in various voices, no other sounds could be heard as I moved past trees, vegetation, and shrubbery. And while I was here this place was either abandoned or my tremorsense power also didn''t work.


    One difference from this forest and the forest of the world was that this forest was bright. For some reason, this place''s canopy must not have been as dense as the real-world''s forest canopy because bright light readily shone through the treetops down to the forest floor. It made this forest a beautiful, peaceful place for exploring.


    Alma realized where I was before I realized where she was.


    ________________________________________________


    It took me some time to finally stumble across Alma herself, but when I did I found her seated on a naturalistic looking bench deep in the heart of the forest. She was looking at me when I laid my eyes on her wizen form. While looking at her I realized that my earlier assessment about tremorsense was incorrect. The truth was that my tremorsense power actually didn''t work while I was here, and the place was abandoned, not one or the other.


    The elderly woman had a peaceful expression on her face, and stared at me thoughtfully. For a while we stared at each other in silence, sizing each other up. Eventually, she spoke to me.


    "Why hello there," She said, greeting me with an expression as kindly sounding as she looked. She stretched one hand out towards me and motioned for me to come closer. I stayed still, finding her behavior pleasantly surprising and shocking for a moment.


    "Must you be so timid? I know dream-things are scared, but you seem so much more vivid than the things I normally dream up. I''d like to see what you have to say. Or perhaps to do." She said to me, grinning openly. Her open-mouth grin revealed a mouth that was missing some teeth. I chuckled and moved over to her. Reaching her took a quarter of a minute, and upon doing so I began to speak to her.


    "Hello Alma. My name is Cosecha." I told her, speaking in a low voice meant to make her envision me as a potent elemental being, and not as a random creation of her dreams. She kept smiling at me, admiring me as a grandparent would a grandchild.


    "Hello Cosecha. Are you a creation of my wonder?" She asked, curiously. I shook my head at the kindly figure.


    "I am a spirit. A spirit of the harvest." I said to her, staying in character as Cosecha and using her to begin to gain an understanding of how a mortal may react to the sight of what I hoped to use as a way to gather worshipers.


    Alma looked at me skeptically but did so in the way that a parent might patiently admonish her child. She sighed and began to speak. "I am growing more creative in my old age. It must be something to do with the free time I have to myself and to me reading the old stories." She said, grinning as she dismissed me out of hand.


    I froze up at this and looked at her in surprise. I didn''t expect such a flat and blatant dismissal of my existence. She saw this and her smile got wider.


    "Do you truly believe you exist independent of my dreams?" She asked, sounding a bit surprised at that.


    "Do things normally automatically believe you when you tell them that they are imaginary?" I asked, at least as surprised as she felt. She looked at me thoughtfully as I asked her that.


    "Well... In fairness about half of the things in my dreams attack me, only to be soothed after I tell them about their status as dream monsters." She confessed, looking at me with some curiosity.


    [Althos she''s a lucid dreamer.] The system told me, as if that ought to mean something to me. Instead of waiting for my companion to tell me what that was I went ahead and skipped a forward by asking her if that was accurate.


    "Do you happen to be a lucid dreamer?" I asked her, curiosity filling my ethereal eyes. When I said that to her her eyes widened as I asked her something that caught her off guard for the first time. And then she began to laugh.


    "A ''lucid dreamer''? That''s a term I haven''t heard in a long time." She said, smiling as if the term had some meaning to her.


    [Lucid dreamers are people who are aware of when they dream natively. Sometimes such folks can influence the landscape of their dreams with the force of their wills and can affect the contents of their dreams. They always remember their dreams.] The system explained to me.


    "I suppose that is but one title people give to people like me." She told me, calmly suggesting that others have called her other things as well. I studied her and sighed.


    "You don''t believe I''m a real spirit do you?" I asked. She looked at me and shook her to indicate that she didn''t.


    "Honestly? That''s fair. It makes sense to not believe that I am a real spirit." I confessed, well aware of the full truth which I doubted she could even begin to imagine. I also wasn''t done talking.


    "That said, I am real." I told her, lying. "I can also prove that I actually exist." I said to the woman, well aware of my own ability to prove wrong anyone who insisted that I wasn''t real.


    "Oh? Do you care to share this proof?" She said, a small glimmer of curiosity visible in her eyes. I smiled at her. And then I created an apple using magic. I called it into being in the palm of my liquid palm.


    I moved the strange appendage and showed her the apple. And then I tossed it to her. She moved fluidly and caught the apple, before looking at it and studying it in detail. It was another golden apple.


    "Oh, this is a pretty thing." She told me, gazing into the gold-like fruit.


    "When you wake up pray to me. Just mutter an introductory message, even in your mind, and mentally will it to be heard by Cosecha, the spirit of the harvest. When you do I''ll give you more of those. Real ones." I told her, offering her a chance to prove to herself that I actually existed.


    "If you want to see the truth, this is a surefire way to do so. Once you do I''ll prove to you that I''m real. If you want the truth that is. If not... we can definitely chat tomorrow night. Same time?" I told her, grinning. I was also leaving this up to her. I was in no rush, I could take my time.


    "I see... you wish for prayers do you?" She asked me, smiling. I nodded at her, admitting that that was what I wanted.


    "I do want prayers. I gain strength from having followers. I seek to convince the world I am real, but I have difficulty manifesting outside of the dreams of mortals." I explained, telling her an additional lie. She considered my words, but had a look of clear skepticism etched on her face.


    There was a part of me that admired that she looked for evidence and didn''t believe what I was saying. I was, after all, lying to her. That said, I looked at the elderly woman in the idyllic dream and began to turn away from her, facing the forest path I had moved through to get here.


    "If you have any pains you wish healed or any conditions in need of alleviation, consider my prayer. What do you have to lose?" I asked her, confidently. She was silent as I began to move away.


    As I moved away I hoped she''d consider the prayer. Once I was out of eyeshot of her, a healthy distance away, I willed myself out of her realm of dreams. As I did so, I received a surprising notification.


    [Alert: Do you wish for Alma to remember her dream? If you do it will be etched onto her mind. If not, she won''t remember it.] The notification read. I immediately informed it that I wished for her to remember this dream, but I was somewhat happy that if I wanted to erase a bad dream from a mortal''s memory I could.


    ________________________________________________


    As I returned to the waking world I immediately target my goblin friend with my dream power and toggled it so that it would make his dreams restorative and positive.


    And then I sat down on my bed and began to think about my approach to interacting with mortals. I didn''t want to go wandering around in dreams haphazardly, I wanted to do so intelligently. I decided not to visit another dream tonight and instead decide on an approach for future visits to dreaming mortals.


    I was in silent, patient contemplation until the first rays of dawn began to shine on the Silver Xana, although I didn''t know that because my room lacked any windows. It just so happened that when I felt ready to tackle the next day, the next day was dawning.

 12 The Subdomain Of Healing

    A few hours after returning home I found myself just outside of the Silver Xana. I felt the rays of the sun on my skin. I had three quest-request forms in my inventory. All of them were requests for healing. I smiled as I took off in the direction of the quest-requesters.


    Isadora had been happy to see me and happier still to learn that I felt like tackling healing quests today. She had no idea how skilled I was at healing already. And she didn''t have even the slightest clue as to my true intentions: I wanted the system to unlock the divine powers I possessed over the subdomain of healing and maybe even my influence over the domain of magic.


    ________________________________________________


    I was walking in the direction of the first house I was to visit and heal someone inside of. I wasn''t far from my first destination, and my plan was to go to the farthest house first and then work my way back to the Silver Xana.


    The sky was clear and blue above me. And around me, there were some people idly going about their business. Some of them recognized me from the false memories implanted in them by the system. Most people didn''t recognize me though and still paid me no mind.


    I paid them no mind and instead focused on my thoughts.


    "I wonder what sort of powers I''ll unlock from gaining influence over the school of healing..." I wondered, a smile on my face as I contemplated the sort of amazing, literally life-saving abilities I might be unlocking soon.


    Right as the system was about to react to my statement, indicated by a sighing sound I heard in my mind and not externally, I received a pleasant alert.


    [Alert: The human named Alma has uttered a prayer to your persona. She has asked for a golden apple and for something to numb some tooth pain she is feeling. Would you like to respond affirmatively to her request?] The system, a more automated version of it anyway, asked me.


    I grinned to no one in particular and responded to its request with words of affirmation. When I did so I received another automated sounding alert.


    [Alert: Response noted. "Cosecha" has created an apple for Alma and the elderly human woman is under the influence of a "Numb Pain" spell.]


    I nodded as the notification vanished from sight shortly after coming into view. And a second later the voice of the system filled my mind as its textbox appeared in my mind''s eye.


    [So you want to begin to understand magic?] The system asked me, curiosity clear in its voice.


    "Yes I do. I want to understand everything." I told the system, quite confidently.


    [We see... In that case, we might as well aid you, shouldn''t we? Here you go.] The system told me, right as I felt my power increasing.


    [We''ve gone ahead and unlocked your powers from the subdomain of healing. Each "school of magic" is both a school and a subdomain.] My constant companion whispered in my mind.


    [There are ten basic schools of magic. In order to be able to earn the second tier of influence over the domain of magic you need to hit the first tier of influence over each of the basic schools of magic.] The system told me, while I excitedly waited to learn what my healing abilities were.


    It was shortly after that message that I learned of the powers granted to me by the newest subdomain whose powers were unlocked by the system.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    The system has seen fit to unlock your powers and abilities that come with the subdomain of healing. Congratulations!


    Details about the subdomain of healing:


    This subdomain governs healing magic, medicine, and natural healing. It is a powerful subdomain that participates in every attempt to heal someone that is undertaken.


    At the moment your ability to heal people is limited to physical wounds and mundane conditions, due to the limitations of the tutorial. You cannot regenerate limbs, heal minds, but you''ll be able to do so before the tutorial ends, surpassing mortal and magical healing outright.


    That said, defeating death itself and gaining the power to truly resurrect people will require you to become a powerful god. Work towards gaining power and worshipers so that there may come a day when reality itself cannot limit you.


    You gain influence over this subdomain by practicing healing powers on applicable targets and by gaining worshipers who worship you as a healer.


    Passive Powers:


    Restorative energy manipulation: This passive power allows you to idly channel energy that undoes wounds and defeats discomfort. You no longer need to use magic to cure wounds, and any effects that suppress the effects of magical healing on those you intend to heal are ignored, allowing you to heal at maximum efficiency.


    Rejection Of Discomfort: In the case of gods an aura is an emanation that surrounds them and projects certain beneficial or harmful effects to lesser creatures who stand in their presence.


    At the lowest tier of influence over the subdomain of healing, you gain an aura that grants nearby creatures that are neutral or friendly towards you the effects of a numbed pain spell. This aura extends beyond you in every direction for four and a half meters.


    Once a day* you can supercharge this aura and for ten minutes it transforms into what you gain at the second tier of influence over the subdomain of healing: an aura of regeneration which heals neutral and friendly creatures in your presence for a hitpoint every half minute. Lesser creatures suspect that you are somehow responsible for their healing or abated discomfort but unless you wish for them to realize it they don''t.


    You can suppress this aura whenever you wish. This aura''s effects can be mixed with the effects of other auras that affect friendly and neutral creatures. There exist auras that target hostile creatures as well, ones that drain their life-energy or sap their hostility from them.


    Health Map: This is a passive power that allows you to detect the health of creatures on your minimap. You have already seen a weakened version of it, innately, but this is greatly enhanced and is effectively the prognosis spell ambiently applied to your minimap.


    Active Powers:


    Symptom Removal: This power allows you to target a disease a creature is suffering from and do away with a symptom. At this tier of influence, this is only usable on non-magical diseases, but it can be used on any non-magical disease. You can use this power once a day.


    Pain Immunity: This is a targeted power that renders someone unable to feel pain. It is usable three times a day, and each usage lasts for five minutes. If used before a battle it can be immensely powerful and free you up to not have to cast numb pain on creatures mid-battle.


    Effect Of Blessing:


    Blessing a creature with the effects of this subdomain grants them enhanced healing. This is more complex than it sounds, as it causes them to heal more and be healed more. At the lowest tier of influence over the subdomain of healing, this causes their heals to heal for an additional 25% of what they were going to heal for.


    On the other hand, if you curse it using this domain its ability to heal naturally or supernaturally will be significantly diminished. Cursing it using this subdomain is ensuring that each time it is wounded is more significant than it would be otherwise.


    For example, if they healed someone for 20 hitpoints, that person would instead gain 25 hitpoints. Attempts to heal them are doubly effective, restoring 100% more health than intended.


    A Note About Synergy: Domains and subdomains are synergistic.


    What this means is that domains and subdomains interact and empower each other aggressively. As you gain more influence over assorted domains you will gain distinct powers in domains long under your control because of the power of the domains you''ve just begun to influence. Blessings also feel this effect, and the domains under your influence the more creatures you can create when you gain the ability to make life.


    *: This designation is easily changed. Once a day powers are powers that are archetypical for gods of the domain, and as you increase your divine might the effects of these powers and your ability to use them increase.


    Special Note regarding the Tutorial:


    The powers, active or passive alike, that you gain access to during the tutorial are not all of the powers that the first tier of influence unlocks. The tutorial keeps the strongest powers, active and passive alike, locked away.


    It also decreases the number of times a year, a month, a week, or a day, you can use the powers you have that sort of limitation. Basically, you''re a weakened version of who you''ll become.]


    The second I finished reading the lengthy notification my minimap blinked out of existence for a moment, before reappearing with new symbols under each shape. These symbols were numbers that I could tell were the hitpoints of each shape and the creatures the shapes represented.


    It was at that point that I reached the door of the house I was heading towards. I smiled and knocked on the door. I waited for a second and then a voice came from within the house.


    "Are you a healer?" The voice asked, pain audible within it.


    "Yes I am! I accepted your quest and I''m a traveling druid. May I come in?" I asked, knowing that it was likely that whoever was rendered immobile from the pain they were in.


    "Oh thank goodness. The door is unlocked, please come in. I can''t exactly move." The voice said to me, and I smiled and opened the door.

 13 The Art Of The Heal

    I let myself into the person''s home while thinking back to the name of the requester who I was told by Isadora lived the furthest away: Amelie. I also recalled the exact details of the quest-request form.


    [Quest:


    Quest type: Heal


    Quest Giver: Amelie


    Quest Details: "I went out into the forest a few days ago and a wild wolf got the back of my leg in a really brutal way. I am worried the wound is starting to get infected, as I have been feeling sick for the past two days. If any travelers or even any locals can help I''d be eternally grateful."


    Deadline: 13th day of Anthem


    Reward: 10 escudos.]


    I kept those details in mind as I peered out into the darkness. I immediately cast "Prognosis" Amelie, relying on tremorsense to aim it.


    ________________________________________________


    "Scanning target... scan complete!" The voice of my magic told me. I grinned as I walked into the home''s entryway.


    "I''m in the sala! Please come in." Amelie''s voice told me, beckoning me forth into the house. Her voice was also significantly weaker than before, when I was outside. There was noticeable strain in it. At that moment the voice of my magic spoke up, identifying Amelie''s condition.


    "The name of the target is Amelie Gutierrez. She currently has 12 hitpoints. 12 hitpoints are her current maximum, but that is due to a disease she is suffering from. You have a new spell that can identify the causes, and symptoms of diseases. Amelie''s stamina point maximum is 5, also due to the aforementioned disease she is suffering from." The voice explained.


    "She has zero magical energy and like Troik is unmagical. She is suffering from a disease named Sloth''s Exhaustion. It is a non-magical disease. Preparing recommendations for treatment..." The voice said to me before suddenly going silent.


    I walked deeper into the house and stepped through a lit kitchen before entering a decently sized living room and even as I lay my eyes on Amelie my other senses were assailed. The living room had a thick stench of sweat and bodily waste. My ears were wracked by the sounds of a rough sort of exhausted panting which was audible in this darkened room.


    Amelie herself was seated in a thick seat at a corner of the room. She was a heavyset woman and was covered in a layer of sweat. Her clothes were tattered and coming apart, and the skin visible past holes in her clothes hinted at her old, leathery skin. She looked exhausted but dragged her head up to peer at me. She had an unhealthily pale complexion, one that was clearly unnatural.


    Her eyes were a strange color, an odd shade of white. It was like she was blind but I could tell from the way that she looked in my direction that she had some sort of sight.


    "Hello there... I am, as you can... see very... tired." She said, speaking slowly. Her voice was surprisingly powerful, and it carried well even if it was very slow.


    "I can see that senora." I said, speaking to her politely. Her lips turned upwards in a smile. She was direct with what she said next.


    "Can you heal me? I know I am sick. I am... constantly wracked with pain, but it becomes horrifying whenever I move." She said, aware of her sickness even if she didn''t have a name for it. I looked her in her odd eyes and nodded at her.


    "I can. I am more than capable of curing what ails you." I told her, candidly. I was confident that I could handle her mundane condition.


    She began to laugh. The sound was a wretched thing, more like a hacking cough than actual laughter.


    "Oh good. I could feel myself... slowly atrophying here." She said to me, relief flooding her voice. At that moment I stepped closer to her, intending to relieve her of her pain and discomfort.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Rejection Of Discomfort is activating for the first time. This is due to your proximity to Amelie. The power will wash over her, and become faintly visible in 3... 2... 1...] The system, or its automated cousin anyway, advised me. I chuckled and watched as a faint, pink aura suddenly emanated out of me and filled the room I was in with a gentle, pink tint.


    The aura gently washed over Amelie. She was silent as it washed over her, but a few moments after it did she sighed in surprised delight as the effects of it caused some of her symptoms and pain to lessen in intensity. Her panting slowed, even if it didn''t fade away entirely.


    I smiled at her and spoke to explain what had just happened. "My name is Althos. I am a healer. You''ll find that I am... very good at what I do." I told her, smiling at the woman. She smiled at me and spoke, her voice having more energy than before.


    "I can see that already..." She told me. Her voice was a bit stronger than before and when she next spoke it was to deliver an apology.


    "I apologize for the state of things. I sat down in this chair a week ago, had already sent the quest out, and... well each day my condition got worse." She told me, her voice as strong as before.


    "I was worried that yelling out for you earlier was the last of my strength." She confessed. I smiled at her and pointed my staff in her general direction but not at her.


    "You are stronger than you know. And now that I''m here you don''t need to worry," I told her, grinning openly as I said so. "And now it''s time for you to begin to recover your strength." I said, happily.


    I decided to test out the power of my blessing of healing. I put one hand between herself and myself and quickly asked the system how to bless someone.


    ________________________________________________


    [In order to bless or curse someone you need to target them, focus on the domain or subdomain you wish to unleash, and then you will receive a prompt. The prompt will ask if you wish to bless them or curse them. Select whichever you wish to do to them. When you do, the effects will be applied to the target.] The system said, educating me as to how to use my abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    I target Amelie, using both her closeness to me and her location on my minimap. I visualized the word "Healing" in my mind and centered it in my thoughts to the extent that I pushed other things out of my head. At that moment I received a handy prompt.


    [Alert: Would you like to bless or curse Amelie? Utilizing the subdomain of healing as the focal point of a curse would affect her by reducing the effectiveness of attempts to heal her by 10%.]


    I smiled and informed the system that I was seeking to bless her not curse her. She was suddenly glowing but judging from her lack of a reaction she didn''t notice that she was glowing. I paid that no mind, and instead readied myself to treat her. I still hadn''t gotten the notification alerting me to "Prognosis''" recommended treatment but paid that no mind.


    I pointed my staff at her, and unleased a single casting of "Cure Disease". The spell left me and phased into her easily. And this drew a physical reaction from the woman. She began to shake as if from the cold, and smoke began to come off of her skin. This lasted a few seconds, and while she was shaking I received a notification from my spell.


    "Here is our recommendation for treating Amelie, taking into consideration that her disease is now cured: restore her stamina first, healing both the damage it has suffering and restoring it to its maximum. Then heal her actual hit points." The voice told me, giving me advice that I could have easily given myself.


    I unleashed more magic at her after I listened to the notification. I hit her with both "Restore Health" and "Restore Stamina" spells. I smiled as color began to return to her cheek.


    "Whoa... you really are a very good healer." She said, smiling at me as the aches and pains that plagued her began to fade away. I smiled softly at her, happy to have begun to alleviate her pain before I mentally tapped the grimoire icon in my H.U.D.


    [Good morning. You have new spells. Displaying them now.


    Scan: This spell allows you to detect magical diseases and conditions caused by magic.


    Restore Maximum: This spell undoes damage to stats that is so significant that it lingers even after the cause is dealt with. This mostly applies to magically caused damage and to damage from diseases. When activated this spell will ask you if you seek to restore hit points, stamina points, or magical energy.


    The number of spells you have access too, including healing spells, will again increase when you are no longer stuck in tutorial mode.]


    The grimoire''s message brought a spell to my face. The next thing I did was target Amelie and unleash "Restore Maximum" twice, selecting her stamina first and then her health.


    This time the woman didn''t smile, instead, she suddenly stood up. I looked at her and moved forward to catch her if she fell. As I did I also spoke. "That''s... ill-advised senora." I told her, concerned for her safety. She brushed off my concerns with a wave of her hands.


    "Oh don''t you worry about me Althos. I appreciate what you did, all of it. I am... light again." She said, wonderment in her voice as she felt strength and stamina surge into her. Silence fell over her. And while it did, I cast "Scan" on her.


    "Scan commencing... Scan complete. Target is not suffering from any magical conditions or diseases." It told me, over the course of about three seconds.


    "Althos, have you eaten?" She asked me, curiosity in her voice. I shook my head at her, truthfully.


    I hadn''t eaten because I didn''t think I needed to eat. I still wasn''t hungry. She clicked her tongue at me in clear, maternally disapproval. "That won''t do! Are you in a rush?" She asked me, trying to suss out if I was going to stay for breakfast. I chuckled and shook my head once more.


    "Well, in that case, you simply must stay for breakfast. I''ll pay you once you eat some good-old-fashioned home cooking." The elderly spinster told me. I smiled and spoke to her.


    "Sure. If you''re offering a homemade meal I''ll happily have some." I told her, opting to stay with her for a little bit. She smiled at me, her colorful face flushing with joyful emotion.


    "That''s the attitude!" She told me, before almost stumbling but barely managing to catch herself.


    "Sorry about that. Do you mind helping me to my bathroom?" She asked me, hoping for a helpful response. I nodded and walked over to her, grabbing onto her shoulder and allowing her to lean on me.


    Her weight was heavier than I thought, which was impressive all things considered, but she wasn''t even remotely heavy enough to inconvenience me. We began an easygoing journey to her bathroom so she could bathe herself and change out of her tattered clothing.


    ________________________________________________


    About four hours later I was several escudos richer than before and had completed the three quests I left the Silver Xana with. All of the people I had healed were grateful, elderly people who didn''t suffer from magical maladies, which made healing their wounds an easy thing to do.


    I was on my way back to the forest, and while I was walking towards it I sent an important message to the system.


    "So what do I need to do to get you to... free me from the tutorial? Can you give me some clear objectives to work towards that would free me from this annoying handicap?" I asked my first and oldest companion, while I made my way towards the forest. Much to my surprise, I received an immediate and helpful answer.


    [Actually, yes.] The system began, before beginning to outline something that I felt was reasonable given that I was a god.

 14 Establishing Goals

    [I understand you wanting to escape the narrow confines of the tutorial. I can appreciate the drive you feel to escape this burdened state you''re in.] The system began, as I inched closer and closer to the forest where my friends were located. I was now close enough to it that my tremorsense allowed me to detect the plants, trees, and grass at the outer edge of the forest.


    I had just asked the system how it would allow me to be freed of my tutorial status. I could sense that the thing was beginning a lecture, and silently waited for it to continue to speak.


    Farmers nodded at me as they labored in their fields. I suspected that after they heard of my work in healing their friends and neighbors, as well as my skills as a druid that they''d like me a lot more than they did now.


    [Once you have two separate cults set up we''ll say you''ve succeeded in learning everything you need to know to merit being liberated from the confines of the tutorial.] The system informed me, using a word I understood via that weird knowledge I sprang into being knowing. "Cults".


    [As a god you want worshippers. Worshipers are creatures who show you great reverence, adoration, and love. They consider you a part of their families and acknowledge that you are a higher being. They have beliefs about you and serve you. They pray to you and act in ways they believe advance your interests and earn them your attention.] My mental companion told me, whispering into my mind.


    [Cults are groups of worshipers who share beliefs about you and who are united in their worship. Cults are what a specific religion is before it becomes commonly accepted.] My first friend told me, trying to sell me on this plan. I was already sold, but it just kept on talking.


    [You have begun to set the foundation for a cult already. Cosecha''s cult. But you need to gain worshipers and set up rules for that cult once it has followers. We''ll say... you need 10 worshipers for it to be considered enough of a cult to count towards freeing you. And you still need to create one other cult from the ground up.] The system quietly said, as if I wasn''t aware of that.


    "What sort of cult do you think I should set up?" I asked as I reached the outskirts of the forest. There was a silence on the other end of the mental link I shared with the system as I took my first steps into the forest.


    [Having one good cult, one that is devoted to healing, community, and agriculture, isn''t a bad thing. That said you''re a chaotic neutral god. It''d be good for you to have a breadth of cults under your command. Some that are good, some that are neutral, and some which are evil.] The voice in my head told me. I nodded in consideration of its words.


    "So I should work to make my second cult one that isn''t good?" I asked, trying to see if I understood its suggestion.


    [Not necessarily. It''d be great if you could create a second cult that isn''t good, but for now, I''d say you should focus on seizing an opportunity. If you see an opportunity to create a cult, it should be seized. Plus... mortals can be manipulated fairly easily. Changing the alignment of a cult isn''t difficult, it just takes patience.] The system whispered, reassuring me as the familiar darkness of the forest crept in around me. I just nodded.


    ________________________________________________


    I navigated through the forest mostly using my tremorsense. I was slowly making my way closer and closer to the edge of the goblin''s lair, or at least where the tiny things seemed to congregate.


    "Care to fully unlock ''Shapeless One'' for me?" I asked the system, hoping to get what was in all likelihood my strongest power right away. I heard a soft chuckle and then a one-word response.


    [No.] The system said to me, handily denying me with the utterance of a single word. I sighed and kept walking towards my distant destination.


    "So what do I need to do to unlock more of my powers, even before I get out of the tutorial?" I asked, curious to hear the system''s insights. I wanted powers that I knew and felt in my soul were already mine to control.


    [If you keep moving towards fulfilling various goals then I''ll unlock more of your powers.] The system told me, and I could tell that if the thing could smile it was smiling. There was a certain smirk in its voice, an inflection that gave away that it enjoyed this. I felt my lips move from an idle smile to a thin, neutral line.


    "Fine. What about domains and subdomains that I don''t yet have the first tier of influence over? What can I do to begin to gain their attention?" I asked, curious if that line of questioning would get me better results than previously attempted questions.


    [Hmm... can you be more specific?] The system asked me, which caught me off guard. I thought about it for a second before figuring out what I''d like to say.


    "I have a lot of community-based powers. Agriculture, earth, nature, healing, and civilization are all powers based around others and helping them." I began, explaining my current state of mind.


    "It''d be nice if I could gain influence over some domains that make me more personally powerful, like magic and the schools of magic. Are there schools of magic that would allow me to become more powerful on an individual level? Especially because I like being able to go out and adventure on my own and having more tools to defend myself with is better." I said to the system.


    I was walking along soft grass and was now not far from where I had where met Troik. There was a silence while the system considered my question. It took it over a full minute to finally come up with an answer, at which point I was already in the area where I had met Troik.


    [There are three schools of magic, each of which is also its own subdomain, that make their casters more personally and offensively or defensively powerful. Two of these are basic schools of magic. Those ones are the evocation school and the necromancy school. The third school of magic is abjuration magic, which is an intermediate school of magic and thus harder to gain tiers of influence over.] The system explained.


    [Evocation magic is magic that manipulates energy, usually to destructive ends. Spells that conjure fireballs, arcane projectiles, bolts of lightning, and ice-storms are evocation spells.] The system told me, marking the beginning of an explanation about those three schools of magic. I pictured hitting nebulous enemies with fireballs, lightning, and ice. It was a nice image.


    [Necromancy is magic that manipulates lifeforce, death and animating sparks. This magic can be used to harm the living through poisoning, sickness, or just unholy energy, raise the dead as undead creatures, and to infuse oneself with the lifeforce of others.] It whispered in my mind.


    This school of magic intrigued me. I envisioned myself draining those who opposed me of their lifeforce and then using the same magic to twist their corpses into something new.


    [Abjuration magic, on the other hand, is both more complex and far more defensive in nature than evocation or necromancy. Abjuration is about controlling the battlefield and defensively protecting oneself from enemies. Abjuration allows its users to create barriers, absorb blows, and tank magical strikes from their enemies.] The voice told me, causing me to picture arcane barriers stopping all manner of aggression aimed at me or at my worshippers.


    "All three of these schools sound so interesting!" I said, actually speaking aloud as I examined the traps that Troik left out here. They stood out even in the dark since they were made of shiny copper and iron, and weren''t green like the grass they were on top of.


    "How do I go about gaining influence over them?" I asked, after thinking about it for a second. The system chuckled a bit before responding.


    "In order to gain influence over evocation magic you need to use evocation magic in battle. In order to gain influence over necromancy, you need to use necromantic magic. Both of which you have access too... well in necromancy''s case I just unlocked the spells for you. I also upgraded your grimoire. You can''t gain influence over abjuration yet." The system revealed.


    Upon hearing that I checked the icon in my H.U.D. and noticed that there was a red under exclamation point underneath the actual icon. I grinned at the thing and mentally tapped the book-like symbol.


    [Good afternoon Althos! We have new spells for you to peruse. All of these are druid spells. They are also spells that you can use to gradually begin to build a rapport with the subdomains of evocation and necromancy.


    Cone of cold: This spell unleashes a cone of freezing air in front of you. The cone is about 5 meters wide.


    Poison pistol: Using this spell causes a line of poison to shoot out from one of your fingers.


    Diseased disaster: After using this spell the next time you open your mouth a swarm of flies shoot out and harass your enemies. Those who survive the flies and escape are struck by a random, non-fatal disease that quickly sickens others two days after being struck by the spell. This is a legendary spell that can quickly incapacitate entire communities of foes as the diseases are always contagious.


    Shocking strike: This spell buffs an attack of yours, and the next blow you deal stuns an enemy as electricity shoots out of you and into them. Even as little as grabbing an enemy, a creature your minimap has marked down as hostile, is enough to trigger this spell.


    Reanimating spark: This is the lowest level spell that can create undead. When cast by mortals there''s a real chance this spell won''t work even when the spark this spell creates hits an applicable target. That isn''t the case with you though. That said, it only raises something as a basic skeleton or as a zombie, the most basic types of undead monsters. Anything non-magical can be raised by this spell.


    Acid Splatter: This evocation spell allows you to spray acid at an enemy. Where it comes from is up to you, though some vile creatures like to cast the spell and then spit at enemies, transforming what would be their saliva into insidious attacks. Others like to flick it at their foes, like it was sweat and watch their foes suddenly fall to their knees in agony.


    These spells are not the only evocation spells at your disposal. Some of your druid spells were evocation ones.]


    The grimoire gave me one final revelation as it finished informing me about the magical tools at my disposal. And at that moment, the creature closest to me stepped into view. I wasn''t surprised by this, as I still had my minimap on hand. What I was surprised by was that I received a violent suggestion from the system.


    [Hey... why don''t you test your newfound spells on that thing?] The system asked me, trying to tempt me into unnecessary violence. A small part of me wanted to take advantage of this moment, but another part of me rejected the call to cruelty.


    "I can''t just attack a random, non-aggressive animal..." I said to myself, even as a small part of me wanted to go ahead and begin walking down the path to power. A path that apparently, at least as of right now, involved randomly attacking neutral critters in the forest. I shook my head and rejected that, flatly refusing it.


    "No. I won''t. We can just find actual, aggressive, enemies." I said, which was me, in my own way, chiding the system. I closed my eyes and allowed the not-so-mini-map to overtake my vision.


    "I''ll just find some creatures that would already consider me an enemy." I muttered to myself, annoyed at the idea of randomly committing violence towards a creature who was just minding its own business.

 15 Sovereign Of The Swarm

    My not-so-mini-map showed me kilometers of forest. I studied it intently, looking around for any red shapes. It didn''t take me long to find one, and it was one that was not particularly far away. I grinned as I looked at it and click it to identify the thing I was about to walk towards.


    [Nearby enemy detected. Preparing proper notification... Scanning enemy...


    Enemy status identified.


    The selected enemy is a level three Black Caiman, a massive and powerful predator. It is hostile to the concept of humanoids and in your humanoid guise, it would recognize you as an enemy. This enemy is at full health, and is currently calm.]


    I nodded and muttered a quick thanks to my power, before setting off in the direction of the reptilian monster.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself wandering in a different direction than I had the last time I was in the forest. And to my surprise, it was a brighter direction. I could see much more vividly in this area of the woods, and I visually explored my surroundings with interest.


    I laid my eyes on bright grass, on thick trees filled with all manner of life and even on birds that dared to fly close to the ground. This part of the forest was louder too, filled with the constant and pleasant sounds of bird song, of frogs croaking, and the rhythmic sound of my feet crunching leaves and grass.


    I could sense all manner of life around me, from frogs and worms to wild canines, beetles, and all sorts of other ambulatory creatures. I could also sense trees, flowers, fungi, and more throughout the forest. Being here made my tremorsense flare to life, as my entire minimap was alight with all kinds of colors and shapes. It was a nice feeling.


    Something I noticed, as I silently strode through the forest was that some types of creatures seemed to exist in enormous numbers in the forest. I could sense what could only be entire colonies of ants, and bees that seemed to live in extremely close proximity to each other.


    As far as I could tell they numbered in the hundreds. There was more than one as well, several were situated throughout the forest.


    "I wonder why that is..." I mused, aloud. I was referring to why it was that those insects appeared to live in colonies, especially such incredibly close ones.


    [Do you mean why it is that some insects seemed to live together in the hundreds?] The system asked me, after hearing me vaguely question the air.


    Upon hearing the confused voice in my head my face contorted until I had the facial expression of someone who was just deeply confused. "I thought you could read my mind..." I said, questioning the system.


    [Hey, it''s not that simple. Over time we''ll start to lose this... close connection we have with you. We won''t go away but we will lose our ability to know what you''re thinking at all times. We can still hear many of your idle thoughts but not all of them. Not anymore. And in the future, you''ll have to direct a thought to us in order for us to hear it.] The system revealed.


    "Oh! Well, you were right earlier. I was wondering about how it was or why it was that some insects seemed to live together in colonies." I told the voice in my mind.


    [Many types of insects are social creatures. Some insects are in fact maximally social, and there is a term for those sorts of creatures: eusocial.] The system whispered, launching into an explanation.


    [Eusocial beings tend to be insects, crustaceans, or mammals. Eusocial creatures live in colonies, though among humanoids the term colony tends to serve a political designation as well as a biological one.] The system explained as I edged ever closer to the creature I was hunting down.


    [For insects, colonies are often a necessity for the continued existence of their communities. This is because insects tend to be among the creatures who are the easiest to prey on. Colonies allow for the emergence of castes, which is a key component of the success of creatures like ants or bees.] My first companion told me, beginning to explain an insectoid caste system to me.


    "Wait a second, these colonies have castes?" I asked, curiously. The words "colony" and "caste" both made sense to me, weirdly enough.


    [Yes they do. This is especially the case with insect colonies. Individuals in insect colonies almost invariably serve a role of some sort. This includes ants, bees, and wasps, but isn''t limited to them.] The system said, somewhat cryptically.


    [Some are worker-gathers who go out and grab resources for the colony, others are warriors who hunt or who deal with threats, and some are reproductive drones who ensure that there is always another generation of insects to maximize overall survivability.] The voice in my mind said, educating me as to the realities of insect life.


    "That''s really interesting. Could I make such a colony into worshipers of mine?" I asked, curiously. At that point, I was just killing time, but asking questions was fun and allowed me to learn more about the world I lived in.


    [Hmm... not many deities sought to be the overlords of colonies of insects...] The system confessed. There was uncertainty in its voice. I chuckled.


    "I am a god of vermin. Would I be right to call ants vermin?" I asked, chuckling all the while. I was met with silence for a few moments as the system thought about how to answer me.


    [You know... you probably could become the god of colonies of insects. You may have to awaken them though as their intelligence ambiently is probably too alien for them to worship you otherwise. But with the limitless magical energy that you possess, that''d be easy for you. If you awaken and evolve, or even just evolve colonies of ants you could gain powerful, fanatical servants.] The voice told me, but something about its tone suggested it wasn''t done talking.


    A few seconds of silence passed, and I had a question but I wanted the system to finish talking before I asked it.


    [Most gods preferred the worship of humanoids, spirits, and extraplanars. Only a few courted the rare sorts of intelligent insects. If you opt to court the worship of insects... especially if you cultivate them by hand and raise their intelligence yourself, you may gain a ferociously loyal army of eerily intelligent worshipers.] The system revealed, after thinking through my scheme a bit longer.


    "You mentioned that I may have to ''awaken'' insects... what does that mean?" I asked the system, curiosity infusing my voice.


    [Awakenings are when you grant non-humanoid creatures that are less intelligent or are far too alien the sort of intelligence that a humanoid possesses. In the cases wherein an alien-like creature is awakened their intelligence isn''t stripped from them, it''s more like they gain a second stream of consciousness that is more humanoid-like. In the cases of other things, their intelligence is elevated to humanoid levels.] My friend explained, kindly educating me.


    [Awakening something is done either via mutations or magic. The spell to awaken an animal is an ancient, lost spell. Powerful deities of nature and animals get access to the spell.] The voice in my head said, rather cryptically.


    [Powerful in this context means deities of nature and animals with the third tier of influence over both domains. Once you have access to it you can allow it to return to mortal hands. If you wish.] The system explained, allowing me to see a hint of the power I could one day possess.


    "So this''ll be a long-term process huh? Nothing is ever easy I guess." I said, chuckling to myself. That didn''t deter me though, and I knew this was something I wanted to do. I contemplated what it told me, while I was walking towards the black caiman.


    "If I fed the ants, how do you think that would affect them?" I asked the system, channeling my inner curiosity as I considered how to continue from here. The silence my question caused lasted a few moments before I heard an exasperated sigh.


    [Honestly? I don''t know. I can tell you''re gonna want to find out. I''d advise against that personally, but you are a dangerous mix: chaotic neutral and curious. You''re gonna have some fun with this one aren''t you?] The system asked, sounding like an exhausted parent.


    I didn''t dignify the remarks with a response. At least not right away.


    I walked in silence for a few minutes, before sighing and speaking aloud once more. "I guess I''ll go ahead and find out. For the sake of answering questions. Even and especially my own questions." I muttered as I visualized grapes.


    I pictured entire vines of the things and then began to cast the spell "Create food", aiming for areas close to anthills throughout the forest. In seconds I had created dozens of grape-filled grapevines and placed them all close to the anthills located throughout the forest. A total of close to two dozen grapevines could now be found throughout the area.


    After doing that, and noticing ants beginning to approach them via tremorsense I smiled and quickly proceeded to inch closer and closer to the caiman. It wasn''t until several minutes later that my mind would be flooded with notifications.


    ________________________________________________


    I was almost where the caiman was when I began to receive over one hundred notifications every two seconds. I could faintly see the lazy crocodiles'' body lounging on a thin shoreline, and right as I began to examine the thing my mind''s eye lit up.


    [Alert: Incoming notification barrage. Cause: Ants have begun to eat your fruits. Their minds are... not well-suited to the potency of your fruits.] The system warned me.


    And immediately after that, I had to hiss in annoyance as I received multiple notifications that were themselves little more than slight variations on a notification that looked almost exactly like this:


    [Influence over ant: 10%]


    I was able to quickly intuit something: each bite an ant took caused me to gain a new amount of influence over the thing. I intuited this because I kept noticing the numbers of ants opening themselves up to my influence was both increasing and increasing in intensity.


    The numbers didn''t stop at 10%. They kept going. It was in smaller and smaller bursts after the initial upswelling, and it eventually tapered off at 30% but it was still an easy way to go from 0% to 30% in a matter of moments.


    "That feels... significant." I said when the sudden burst of notifications began to slow down. I felt... odd. Stronger somehow. And also more open. I felt... a lot of things flow into me. It was easily the strangest thing I had felt since I first opened my eyes.


    I felt like I wasn''t alone. Like I was accompanied by perhaps a few thousand other beings, at all times. I closed my eyes to focus and try to feel like myself again, but when I did I saw a new notification.


    [New title received: Sovereign of the swarm


    Title explanation: Titles are the informal titles by which you as the center of a religious movement are known. Each title is unique and they generate spontaneously whenever you commit unique acts.


    Titles are historically unique and so too are the powers they bring with them. In the past deities were too proud to relish the idea of being worshiped by insects, favoring the forms they found more "beautiful", which were those of humanoids, or rarely of dragons. Your decision to feed and experiment with insects is thus a unique act.


    As for the ''Sovereign of the swarm'' title itself, it is the way for the system to grudgingly recognize your willingness to be creative and to reward you for your desire to feed creatures.


    Sovereign of the swarm passive powers:


    Respected by ants: Ants respect you automatically. This doesn''t mean they worship you, but they will serve you. Consider this you becoming an ant king.


    Swarm mind: This links you to the minds of all of the ants who''ve eaten your food. You are currently linked to about ten percent of the ants in the area. Ants who''ve eaten your food fall under your control. Ants in that category are part of your swarm. Other insects, especially other social insects like wasps and bees, will also fall under your control this way.


    Sovereign of the swarm active powers:


    Command: You can command ants under your control to do a particular act. This can be done once a day, as of right now.


    Dream: You can send creatures in your swarm a dream.


    More things will be unlocked as your swarm grows, as you gain greater influence over the domains of dreams, minds, civilizations, and the subdomain of vermin.]


    It was at that last part that I curiously asked the system a question about the subdomain of vermin. "When are you at least gonna let me gain access to my vermin powers? Especially now that I''m a swarm-sovereign?" I asked it, curiously. It sighed.


    [I''ll grant you access to your vermin powers as soon as you finish practicing with the magic you wanted to practice with.] The system said that to me in the same tone as a parent might deal a child to practice what they learned at school before setting out to play with their friends. It made me chuckle.


    [We''re also gonna lock down the swarm sovereign things. At least until you battle the caiman. We want you to experience more of life in the world before you start to play with your godly toys.] The system told me, this time truly sounding like a parent with an exhausting child.


    I sighed and muttered something under my breath. "Of course you would. I just want to be free to use my powers, yet they all keep being locked away." I said, annoyed at that declaration by the system. I began to stride towards the caiman, hands out as I readied myself to practice my spells.


    And it was at that point that I recalled something I had heard before. It made me grin devilishly. "You said that for me to gain influence over the subdomains I want to gain influence over I have to use the spells right?" I asked, a confident glimmer in my eyes.


    [Yes... Why do you ask?] It said, curiosity and cautious audible in its voice.


    "Well, I''m gonna use those spells. But I won''t kill the thing. I won''t even permanently damage it." I told the system, hoping to take the wind out of the pesky thing''s sails. I heard a mechanical sigh once more.


    [We figured you wouldn''t. But at least you have some self-control and don''t want to kill everything you see.] The voice told me. I grinned at that and began to ponder which spell I should use first as I laid my eyes on the creature I came to hunt and studied it for the first time.

 16 Practicing Magic

    The reptilian monster I had set out to find and was now studying was a massive thing. It must have been almost four and a half meters long and stood perhaps one and a half meters tall. Its skin and scutes were both ebony black.


    The thing had the harsh amber eyes of many sorts of snakes, and its maw was filled with row upon row of sharp teeth. It was lounging in a relatively sunny clearing, and I stood several meters away from it. Its back was turned towards me so it couldn''t see me and the thing appeared to be quite lazy. It was only because I had solid vision that I could see its eyes at all.


    After studying it for a little bit, I took a deep breath and walked closer to the monster in front of me. I waited for it to detect me, and it took an embarrassingly long amount of time for the beast to do so.


    When the monster detected me it demonstrated a speedy reaction time. It flared to life faster than I anticipated given its massive form and turned around to try and get a good look at me. Its body shot up and the thing leaped to spin around and lay its yellow eyes on me.


    ________________________________________________


    The thing made an annoyed sound as it spotted me. I grinned at my foe, as the creature took its first steps towards me and roared. As it closed the distance between us it made its intentions clear by biting the air between us. The caiman was hungry and it showed.


    My response was simple: I rose my hands. I pointed my index finger on my left hand at the thing and wasted no time before casting my first offensive spell: poison pistol.


    A straight line of sickly green fluid shot forth from my finger. It sped through the air and connected with the monster, landing on the thing''s nose. The monster reeled back in shock as the poison began to take effect.


    "What does poison do?" I asked the system, speaking aloud as the monster began to react to the delibating effects of the poison it had just been hit by. The monster began to thrash around as if it were suddenly afflicted with the headache of its life.


    [Poison inflicts harm on creatures over the course of a few moments to a few hours. The worst poisons can kill outright, but the poison from poison pistol, when cast at your level, is mostly used to make an enemy useless or otherwise incapacitate a foe.] The system revealed.


    I grinned and began to edge closer to the flailing monster, studying it carefully. The monster looked at me, and I could sense fear in its gaze. Fear and rage. I rose another hand in its direction and the monster took a step back, but only for a moment. Almost a second later it lunged at me, now more determined than ever to attack.


    Before it could lash out at me and get revenge for the poison it was suffering from I cast another new spell: "Acid Splatter". The spell manifested itself as sweat, sweat which I proceeded to speedily flick at my enemy with a swift flick of my wrist right as my opponent closed in on me. The acid sailed through the air and landed on the space of the thing''s head between its two eyes.


    The acid cracked the skin of the beast and began to hiss against its flesh as it burned it. The monster''s response wasn''t to roar. It was to cry out in pain from the potency of my magic. It backed up and fell to its knees as my poison continued to weaken it.


    "It''s almost time to heal it." I told myself, realizing that the monster was in a lot of pain. I smiled as I watched the thing for a second longer, before pointing my hand in its direction and silently casting another spell for the first time: "Tangle".


    There was a second of silence before innumerable, green vines shot out of the ground and coiled around the monster''s body. They speedily and tightly wrapped around the beast binding its limbs, before spreading its tiny legs apart. This caused the creature to fall onto its stomach. The monster was now thoroughly defeated and if it were a humanoid it likely would have been quite humiliated as well.


    ________________________________________________


    "Sorry about that." I said to the thing, as I began the process of healing it.


    I started off by casting "Cure Condition" on the monster, healing it of the poison I had inflicted on it. The monster sighed as the poison that pained it began to dissipate. I quickly cast "Create food" and conjured an apple for the monster to scarf down. It phased into existence in my hand.


    I began to silently heal my foe, hitting the thing with two bursts of "Restore Health" so that I could heal the monster. I paid attention to my minimap and I watched as the monster''s hit points climbed back to their maximum number. When the thing was fully healed I paused and considered how to best proceed from here.


    "What should I do with you?" I asked, staring at the now fully healed monster. It glared at me, but the anger in its gaze was also tinted with confusion. It asked me a perfectly fair question.


    "What do you want?" It asked. I took a second to gaze at it curiously.


    For a second I considered lying to it. I could have easily told it that I was here for a more morally upstanding reason than the true reason why I had come here. Ultimately though, I opted for the truth. However cold it may have been.


    ________________________________________________


    "I wanted to practice my powers. And you were here, in a state of constant aggression and hostility. I didn''t want to hurt an innocent, neutral creature, and you were neither." I told the thing. It looked at me, confused and angry.


    "So you practiced your powers on me?" It asked, defensively. I nodded at it. It made a noise, a roar of anger and disappointment. I listened to it, not phased by the intensity of the hateful sound.


    "You... monster!" The thing hissed, angered at my decision to use it as my guinea pig. I chuckled at it.


    "Why are you upset?" I asked coldly. Its baleful yellow eyes zeroed in on mine before it spoke next.


    "You attacked me!" It roared. Which was only technically accurate and not at all the whole story. And I proceeded to tell the thing as much.


    "That argument would carry more weight if you weren''t a predator who devours all sorts of creatures to survive. It''s true that I attacked you first, I''ll readily admit that, but how many creatures have you attacked and killed? In equally cold blood no less. Not to mention... I haven''t killed you and I even healed you from the wounds I inflicted on you." I told the thing. Its eyes narrowed as it considered my counterpoint. However I wasn''t done.


    "I also didn''t attack first. You saw me and lunged. I only attacked after you began to make a show of intimidating me, snapping at the air between us. If you''re gonna judge me, do so from a position of accuracy." I told the monster, annoyed at its revisionism. The creature fell silent and continued to look at me in heated hostility.


    I smiled at it, enjoying the heated hatred I felt coming from it. It made sense for the creature to not like someone who inflicted pain on it so I could easily accept its anger.


    "So now that you''re powerless I must once again ask myself... what to do with you?" I muttered, grinning at the creature before me.


    ________________________________________________


    "You are quite a strong creature. I''d like to recruit you, but I know that as you are... that''d be difficult." I muttered, as the creature silently glared at me. After thinking for a second I asked the system a question.


    "Can I manipulate the "Tangle" spell without it coming undone?" I asked the system, as I considered a way to at least lessen the threat of the monster I had contained. I already knew what I wanted to do, it wasn''t difficult for me to figure out too. I wanted to feed the monster a fruit I had created, but without exposing myself to its razor-sharp teeth.


    [Sure! You can manipulate the vines easily with your force of will. This is even easier for you since you''re a deity of nature.] The system explained to me, its voice easily entering my mind. I nodded, which was surely confusing to the monster I had defeated.


    I refocused on the black caiman and the vines that bound its defeated form. I imagined the things tightening around the monster and binding it more fiercely. I heard a soft, pained sound escape the thing''s mouth.


    "Now... You and I should have a conversation." I said, speaking more loudly than my previous mutterings. My eyes locked onto the beast''s.


    "What do you want, you bastard?" The crocodile-like creature said, angrily. I chuckled as a response to it.


    "Do you want your freedom?" I asked it, looking at the powerful creature. It nodded at me or did as much of a nod as it could. I tossed the apple I had just created close to its head.


    "I''m gonna loosen the vines that are binding you in a second. When I do, eat that apple." I told the creature. It continued to glare at me. I waited a second, before doing as I said, loosening the vines to allow the monster the freedom to twist its head and scarf down the apple. It didn''t, at least not right away.


    When it didn''t I rose a hand in its direction. I didn''t cast any spells, I just opened my mouth to speak. All I had to do was speak to it.


    "Listen... You''ve lost this fight. How this goes from here is up to you. You''re already tied up and bound, would you just do things the easy way? If you do it''ll be so much more pleasant for you." I said to it, speaking completely sincerely this time. The monster was emotionally disarmed by this and was still for a second.


    "This fruit, right here? It''ll empower you. It''ll make you stronger. Consider it... a peace offering." I whispered, suggesting that I was offering the creature a gift. I wanted the creature to know that this was my way of ending the battle and that all it had to do was eat the "peace offering" I had prepared for it.


    "And by not eating it... you''re hinting that you''d like for me to continue our battle." I said, adding a touch of menace and steel to my voice at the end of my statement.


    The beast was quiet for a second before it moved just enough to bite down on the fruit. And then its eyes opened wide in relief as the taste of it filled its mouth.


    The creature began to speedily munch down on the fruit. And as it was doing so I received a notification.


    [Influence over black caiman: 5%... 10%... 15% The black caiman is no longer considered hostile and is now considered charmed by you. Its intelligence is also very low, so it is naturally easy to persuade anyway.]


    I grinned as I read the notification and with a flick of my wrists unbound the creature. Even as I did so I quietly asked the system what it meant for a creature to be charmed.


    [If a creature is considered "charmed" it means that that being is incapable of being hostile towards you until the charmed condition is over. Your words are also more persuasive than they would be otherwise if a creature listening to you is charmed.] My companion and mental encyclopedia told me. Hearing that only widened my smile.


    "Nice." I said to myself, as the caiman stood up and began to approach me.


    [I suppose now we can begin to unlock more of your godly powers. Now''s as good a time as any, anyway.] The system said, sighing into my mind as it began a process that made me smile.


    The caiman came over to me, and didn''t attack me, so I ran my hands over the same spot between its two eyes where acid had fallen earlier. A spot that was now healed and back to how it had been right before I struck the creature and began our short fight. The skin I felt under my fingers was tough and wet. It felt strange to touch.

 17 Unlocked

    [We would like for you to select two of the domains and subdomains, as in two total, you already have some influence over and we will unlock them for you. We don''t want you to feel constrained and stuck in the tutorial, and we also don''t want to make every decision for you.] The system explained, after giving me the best news I had heard so far in my short life.


    I stopped to consider which domains and subdomains I ought to pick. I only took a second though. I knew which two I wanted to unlock the most.


    I wanted to unlock the domains of magic and knowledge. Magic was an innate domain that was inherently mine to control as a god, and knowledge was one that was mine by my own virtue. I wanted to unlock them all, but those were the two that most resonated within me.


    "Please unlock the domains of knowledge and magic." I told the system. I heard a soft chuckle come from within my mind and grinned.


    [Understood. Unlocking them now. Remember that when the tutorial is over you''ll gain even more abilities, spells, and divine powers than you currently possess, including from already unlocked domains and subdomains.] The system told me, speaking softly. I felt a wellspring of power flare to life within me and sighed as I felt my mind expand.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Being in tutorial mode grants the system the ability to lock and unlock portions of your power away. Currently, the system has ruled that it decides when you gain access to powers that would otherwise be under your control. The system has seen fit to unlock access to two of your domains: the domains of knowledge and of magic. We will now explain the powers that come with those domains.


    The domain of knowledge, passive powers:


    Appraisal: This power allows you to learn the properties and basic information about objects you see scattered throughout the world. To use it just select an object and focus on the power. This can also be used on people, where it identifies their species, class (if they possess any), level, and alignment.


    Detect Magic: This is a synergistic power that is the result of a fusion between the domains of magic and knowledge. It allows you to see the ambient power that magical creatures radiate, as well as the color of the magic that most resonates with their souls.


    Knowledge domain, active power:


    Peruse the Past: This once a week power allows you to learn key details of an object''s past. This is a potent power that will be upgraded as you gain more power, and as you increase the amount of influence you can exert over the domain of knowledge you can increase the amount of knowledge you gain through this power.


    Details about the domain of knowledge:


    This domain dictates things like truth, history, research, and more. Truth is a subdomain of this domain, and history is but one facet of it.


    This domain is a greater domain, which means that it is a key domain for acquiring greater divine power overall. There are several greater domains, like magic, knowledge, life, death, stars, physics, and a handful of others.


    Domain of knowledge blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with a focus on the domain of knowledge boosts their ability to recall facts and increases the likelihood of a notification that grants them key knowledge at a moment they may need it the most.


    Cursing someone with this domain as the focus causes them to forget small details of intricate plans which may ultimately add up to something ruinous for them. This curse could be potentially horrific for magic users or for guards and at its current level of potency there''s little more its good for than that.


    Domain of magic, passive powers:


    Magic Granting: You can grant spells to mortals. Granting spells to mortals allows them to cast the spells once a day, for now, without it costing them any magical power. You can only grant them spells from schools of magic you possess a single tier or more of influence over, so, for now, you can only grant healing spells to mortals.


    This power is considered a staple power of godhood and is one of the things that only deities can do. Even in this godless age tales of the gods of the past remember that. Granting spells to creatures is one of the ways you can prove your divinity.


    Magic Sensing: This skill allows you to sense what sort of magic resonates with someone''s soul. That is to say, what sort of magic they''d most excel at and be best able to build experience in. If you use this skill on them and then grant them spells from that school even non-magical creatures can begin to steadily build magical power and become actual spell-casters if they practice and hone their skills.


    Domain of magic, active power:


    Magic Drain: This extremely powerful skill drains a magic-user of their ability to use magic for an entire day. It drains away their connections to their magical energy and revokes any other sources of their magic for an entire twenty-four hour period. As a consequence of the extreme power of this ability, it can only be used once a week, for now.


    Details about the domain of magic:


    This domain dictates and regulates the usage of magic by mortals. It has never had an overgod, the title given to when a deity is the supreme deity of a domain, but if it were to get one then that deity would be able to decide who has magic and who doesn''t, being able to permanently tear magic away from entire species of creatures or even entire universes if it chose to do so.


    This domain''s subdomains are the schools of magic. There are twenty. Ten of them are basic schools, two of them are intermediate schools, three of them are advanced schools, and two are expert schools. To gain access to the next tier of influence over the magic domain you will need to steadily accumulate influence over the basic schools.


    Domain of magic blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone using the domain of magic causes their next low-level spell to not cast any magical energy at all. It''s a rare sort of blessing in that it is powerful and short-lived off the bat. That said, as you gain more influence over the domain of magic this blessing increases in power and longevity.


    Cursing someone using this domain as a focal point for the curse causes someone''s next spell to cast 125% of its normal cost in terms of magical energy, and also causes the spell itself to be 10% less effective.]


    ________________________________________________


    "Whoa..." I muttered to myself, as I read through the new powers at my disposal. I inhaled and exhaled, and even the very air itself tasted different. When it entered my lungs I was surprised to feel my brain begin to truly activate and begin to assess the air itself.


    I knew this because an annoying notification flitted into view, and I had to will the thing away. Not before I read it of course, but still it was intrusive and not what I was hoping to gain through the knowledge domain. A part of me wondered if this was to be expected from the knowledge domain, and as I wondered that the system began to laugh in my mind.


    "This is still a lot of power though." I muttered, knowing that over the course of the last few minutes I had just gained an incredible amount of power compared to what I previously had. And it was at that moment, with my reptilian friend still close by, that the system spoke once more.


    [And now it''s time for us to do one more thing we promised to do: undo our restrictions on your "Sovereign of the Swarm" title. This will be a fun one.] My mental companion told me, and I could hear the sardonic grin in the thing''s smug voice.


    The arrogant voice proceeded to do what it had promised to do, and I was able to notice the emergence of a new icon in my mind''s eye. The icon itself was an image of an ant''s head. It made me smile.


    [New Icon Earned: The swarm symbol.


    Tapping this allows you to learn about your swarm.


    It also allows you to exert your influence over the swarm creatures under your control. Currently, this amounts to the ants who''ve eaten the fruits you''ve created and placed near their ant-hills. You can increase the number of swarm-creatures under your control or at least under your influence by taking over more insects and by caring for the ones you can already influence.]


    I read through the notification and smiled as it vanished. "Nice." I said to myself, a wide grin planted on my face as I spoke to myself.


    "This is a nice little toy to have under my control." I muttered to myself, a grin on my face. I could already imagine the perks of having swarms of insectoid servants under my control.

 18 Icon

    I clicked on the insectoid head in my mind''s eye. Doing so caused me to suddenly see a new notification.


    [Swarm Selection:


    Welcome to the swarm selection menu. This unusual menu was unlocked when you gained influence over considerable numbers of insects, and is the result of you mixing three subdomains: corruption, agriculture, and vermin.]


    That notification vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Fortunately for me, by now I had slowly begun to notice that I could perfectly recall the contents of every notification I had received to date, even ones that came and went in a blur.


    A second later a new menu showed itself in my mind''s eyes.


    [Swarm Selection Menu:


    Soldier Ant: Soldier ants are the fierce warrior caste of ant-kind and they perform both offensive and defensive functions for their colonies. You currently have influence over 700 soldier ants.


    Worker Ant: Worker ants are non-reproductive female ants. They can perform defensive functions but are most commonly known as being the scouts and foragers of ant-kind. You control over 1250 worker ants.


    Other kinds of ants insect. Drone ants and ant queens exist. Additionally, this has begun to grant you influence over the insect subdomain, and as you increase your influence over this subdomain you''ll be able to increase the strength of your swarm and eventually it''ll enable you to forcefully evolve members of your swarm and grant them other powers and abilities.


    Command: 1/1 usages left for today


    Dream: Unlimited usages but this would require an ant with greater intelligence, such as an ant queen, to be used on. That said, clever usages of this ability could be used to subtly influence ants and eventually other insects in your swarm.]


    I visually explored the menu for a second, before willing it away. Once the thing was gone I immediately closed my eyes and allowed for the not-so-mini-map to fill up my view once more.


    ________________________________________________


    Mentally exploring the mini-map in my head, I focused on the areas where hundreds of tiny dot were situated. I spent a few moments locating "Drone ants" and "Ant queens" and familiarizing myself with where the things were located on the minimap since they were the main ants I had missed the first time I set off a fruit storm near the braver and more outgoing ants.


    I quickly cast "Create food" dozens of times, spreading the strange and eldritch food I can create throughout the parts of the forest populated by ants. It took perhaps a few seconds before my notifications started to go crazy again. In fairness, I had created over three times more food than before, as I was determined to make being thorough a habit.


    That said, being prepared allowed me to weather this storm with little more than a sigh of annoyance. I sat down next to my new friend and waited until the notifications had passed. That took around half an hour due to the sheer number of ants I had to wait to gain influence over.


    ________________________________________________


    Once I had gained influence over all of the ants in this segment of the forest, nearly 7,000 little fellows who were now influenced by me. I stood up and beckoned for my caiman companion to ready itself for travel.


    "Come on little guy it''s time we now go meet one of my other friends." I told the thing, excitedly.


    The caiman, now thoroughly influenced by my powers and effectively sedated while in my presence clambered off of its feet and turned to look at me. I grinned and began to walk, starting off quite slow to ensure that my awkward crocodilian companion was able to keep up without any difficulties.


    The thing began to follow me, and it moved deceptively fast. I was impressed with my companion and so to reward its efforts I softly scratched the space between the predator''s eyes. It made a deep sound, a guttural, pleasant one that emanated from the back of its throat. I grinned, and each step took me closer and closer to my goblin ally, the little creature I had saved once: Troik.


    ________________________________________________


    By the time I had trekked deep enough into the forest to reunite with my little green buddy he was beginning to make his way back to his own home. Fortunately, I was able to catch him before he could get close to the outskirts of his tiny tribe.


    I caught the little guy in a tiny clearing, one where the first stars to appear in the skies could be seen if someone looked straight up into the sky. The goblin had begun to nervously draw his weapon when he heard me emerging in the distance but dropped the tiny knife he used in self-defense when he realized who I was.


    The goblin cheered and began to run at me when he realized who I was. He ran perhaps a few dozen meters on short, stubbly legs, before actually reaching me.


    When the goblin reached me the thing leaped into the air and began to cackle madly. I grinned and accepted the thing''s energetic greeting by catching him in mid-air and hugging him close. He smelled of wild things, leaves, fruits, trees, mud, and dirt.


    "Whoa, you''re so excitable." I told the tiny creature, laughing as he began to make excited noises. He was light and easy to hold. My newest companion looked at me, visibly confused and agitated by this sudden outburst of activity.


    I gestured for the creature to relax, nodding at it and gesturing to the ground calmly. The caiman did as I suggested, and sat down, crushing several meters of grass underneath its prodigious length.


    "I am! I am very excit... excited! You came back!" Troik told me. There was a sort of familiar manic energy in his voice. I chuckled.


    "It''s good to see you Troik. I missed you," I told him, somewhat honestly. If I was being honest, his energy was kind of a lot. But he was nice, to me anyway, and if I said that I liked seeing him again I''d mean it. "How has today been? It doesn''t seem like you''ve hit anymore traps." I asked the goblin.


    Before the thing could answer me, I cast "Abate Sickness" on him. I did that to ensure that he wouldn''t be possessed anymore. I didn''t want my friend to lose control of his body, unwillingly, again and I had the power to intercede and ensure that he didn''t.


    "Today has been good. No more mishaps!" He told me, happily. At that point, he leaped out of my arms and landed on his feet. The goblin looked up at me admiringly after successfully landing on his feet.


    I grinned at the little guy, happy to hear that. That news was itself a minor defeat of a fear of mine; that the creature''s mysterious possessor would still be able to affect it even from a distance and even without possessing it. I wasn''t 100% sure that my strange foe was completely stymied by my actions but at least for a day my friend had been able to be himself.


    It was at that moment that the creature volunteered something surprised. His voice piped up as he did so.


    "And my friends really liked the fruit that spirit... Cosecha, gave us. It was delicious! They even told me they''d pray again tonight!" Troik volunteered, giving me totally unexpected and positively delightful news.


    "Oh really? That''s wonderful!" I told my friend. I knew that they had eaten the fruit, as one of the things I had done earlier while walking to this part of the forest was check out which creatures I had "influence" over and seen the names of the goblins who had prayed to my persona last night.


    Troik grinned at me, proud of his success, and the part of my brain that seized on opportunities began to quietly scheme.


    ________________________________________________


    In the safety of my mind, I began to consider how to capitalize on this. A not so small part of my brain wanted to quietly step into the dreams of Troik''s friends and hint at my divinity to them. I wanted to carefully sow the seeds for a cult to begin to exist that revered me, and this was as good a chance as any. And so I began to ask questions.


    "Hey system, is there a limit on my ability to grant magic to mortals? Aside from that I can only grant healing spells to my followers I mean." I asked, my mental voice polite and curious.


    [Actually, there isn''t. You can grant spells under domains you control to as many people as you want. You can also write out the notification that those being granted magic will gain. If you wish to state that you are yourself and not your persona, that''s perfectly fine but you can also lie.] The system told me, its mechanical voice causing me to feel considerable excitement at that moment.


    "Excellent! Can I attach minor conditions to the granting of the spells? Like I can require that someone publicly, visibly pray to me before they can cast them? I''d like to make my worshipers perform public acts of devotion." I inquired, slowly beginning to see how far I could go with this newfound and potentially wonderful ability.


    [We like that you are scheming, and are delighted to inform you that you absolutely can attach requirements to the acquisitions of the spells. Once we free up the "faith" domain you''ll be able to fully see the sorts of requirements you can attach to granted spells, but for now, just know that demanding that a creature who is granted magic by you pray before they can use your magic is totally doable.] My mental companion revealed, eagerness slipping into its robotic voice.


    I grinned, beginning to envision the possibilities that the domain of magic had opened up to me. I could already imagine the possibilities before me. I already knew what I was going to do tonight: sneak into goblin dreams and make first contact with more of Troik''s friends.


    And like that, I began to spend the next hour with my goblin friend. We discussed his day, my day, and something he was surprisingly passionate about; the mysterious spirit, Cosecha. Before long it was time for me to begin to head back home.


    ________________________________________________


    I watched my goblin companion begin to vanish from view. He was walking home so that he''d get back before dark.


    Shortly before he was completely gone, into the darkened depths of the forest, I reminded him of something. "Hey! Remember, Cosecha will be paying you and your friends a visit tonight. Tell them. I doubt it''ll want to spook you all. Pray tonight, and pray tomorrow morning, and you''ll get more food." I yelled, my voice carrying deep into the woods.


    Troik nodded at me, his face breaking into a wide grin as he did so. I could tell the goblin was excited to share the news with his friends. And I wondered how they''d react to it. I''d be able to find out quite soon though. Knowing that made me quite excited. I turned around, and alongside my large reptilian companion began to stride back home.


    My companion split off from me when I told him to head back to where I found him. I did that close to the edge of the forest, and as I did so I also cast "Create Food" near where my coyote acquaintances were. And once today''s companion of the day began to wander back into the forest I fully devoted myself to heading into back home.


    I had a busy night ahead of me. One that would be filled with dream-based activity. And frankly, I was extremely excited to dive into it.

 19 A Slightly Clearer Picture

    Getting back to the room I had claimed as my own was an easy enough affair. That said it took me long enough to get back home that the sun had fallen below the horizon and by the time I was back inside of the Silver Xana night had come out and overtaken the strange land I found myself in.


    In my room, I sat on my bed and closed my eyes. I allowed my mind to drift for a second, as I wanted to give the system a fair chance to speak to me before I began to reach out to creatures I had influence over.


    [So do you feel ready to begin to dive into more dreams tonight?] The system, my long-time companion, asked me. I nodded, even with my eyes closed, a confident smirk on my face.


    "Yes I do. I feel... more powerful today. I want to begin to do the work of acquiring worshippers." I told the one figure in my life who knew the truth of my nature. A part of me knew I''d be changing that today.


    [We can feel the excitement radiating off of you. It makes sense for you to be excited, the you of today is both smarter and stronger than the you of yesterday. Do you think you might gain a worshiper or two tonight?] The voice asked me, curiosity audible in its voice. I wasn''t arrogant.


    I shook my head before I began to explain why I didn''t think tonight would be the night I gained a worshiper. "I don''t think so. I think tonight is the night I begin to gain an understanding of what it''ll take for me to acquire worshipers." I told it, not bothering to take a breath until the end of my second sentence.


    "And I think tonight might be the night I meet some of the first creatures to become worshipers of mine. But I''d be surprised if tonight is the night I actually gain worshipers." I continued, not daring to be arrogant right now.


    [That isn''t a bad response. It''s a humble one, which almost always helps a response be not that bad. That''s definitely the proper attitude to have going into this sort of thing, so that''s absolutely a good sign.] My odd friend told me, recognizing the humbleness in my answer to it.


    I grinned, but not before receiving a pleasant surprise from my ally and frequent partner. [We''re going to go ahead and partially unlock your faith domain powers. You''ll find that one of them, in particular, will be especially useful in the shenanigans you''re about to get up too.] It told me, and I could almost hear the mischevious grin in its robotic voice.


    A second later I received a handy new notification, alerting me to the powers I now had under my control.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    The domain of faith''s powers, aside from the ability to listen to prayers, has been unlocked for your usage.


    Faith domain passive power:


    Soul sensing: This power, a synergistic one that is the result of possessing access to the powers granted to you by virtue of your tier of influence over the knowledge domain, allows you to glean someone''s soul and see specific information. Specifically, you''d be able to determine if someone would make for a good cleric or paladin.


    Faith domain active power:


    Religious fervor: This is the name of an unusual active power gained by any and all deities when they gain access to their faith domain powers. Using it causes you to create a zone of awe wherein those who witness your divine acts because more susceptible and more likely to become worshipers of yours.


    This potent power is one of the key abilities gained by gods at an early age. It works on any sentient creature regardless of their alignment and lowers their resistance to your worship. In essence this power renders people more likely to find themselves in awe of your power and more likely to believe your claims that you are divine.


    At the lowest tier of influence over the faith domain, this is a short-range ability and one that isn''t extremely strong but it''s still an incredibly useful power that can speed the process of acquiring worshipers.


    This divine power can be used freely, but it cannot be incorporated into your aura. That said if your goal is to acquire worshipers and just that then this is the perfect power for you.


    Faith domain knowledge:


    This domain is a potent one that governs belief, religion, and superstition. Deities who quickly master this domain become experts at building cults and religious movements to themselves. It also synergizes well with the domains of the soul, knowledge, life, and the subdomains of corruption and purity.


    Faith domain blessing and curse information:


    The faith domain''s blessing is a blessing multiplier that increases the strength of other blessings. The question worth asking is "By how much do other blessings get multiplied?" And the answer to that is dependent on the worshiper who has the blessing.


    Their level of fanaticism is what determines how much bang they get for this blessing''s buck. The more they worship you the stronger this blessing will be.


    With regard to cursing someone using this domain, they fall victim to a mind-affecting curse that fills them with cynicism towards everything. For a bit they become bitter and morose. For right now this just makes them apathetic, though the more tiers of influence you gain over this domain the stronger this divine power becomes.]


    ________________________________________________


    I smiled as I read through the notification, feeling more of my powers, powers that ought to have been under my control and usable the minute I first opened my eyes, revealing themselves to me. I was beginning to slowly feel more and more... godlike, and like I was slowly stepping more and more into my own skin. It was a good feeling.


    "I think... I think I''m ready now." I muttered, trying to get myself more excited and in the right state of mind. "I do wish I could see all of my powers displayed in one place though..." I said, quietly.


    [Oh that can be arranged.] The system told me, right before a notification like list of all of the powers I had gained flashed into being before me. I looked it over, and began to smirk.


    "I already have such a wild and fascinating diversity of powers at my disposal!" I observed, inspired by the list of assorted abilities that had sprung into being before my very eyes.


    [And you''ll get even more in the days to come. Allow us a second before you go any further, because we think it''s time that you get a clear understanding of what it is that being a god means.] The system proudly told me. The odd entity took a second to clear its throat before beginning to speak once more.


    ________________________________________________


    [Gods and goddesses are creatures of supreme power. Once a deity has matured they have the power to lay waste to entire galaxies without breaking a sweat. In the ancient past, before the devastating cataclysm which decimated all higher beings throughout the multiverse happened, deities stood at the top of an eco-system made of species with similar but ultimately pared down power.] The system uttered, reverentially remembering the ancient past.


    [We don''t know much about the multiverse spanning catastrophe that wiped out... well until you came along we were certain that it had eliminated all higher-beings but not much about the catastrophe besides that. It was a tragedy that forever altered the course of history.] The voice mournfully declared.


    [And now that you are here... well we don''t want to get ahead of ourselves but we are very excited. You being here means there''s a chance, a small one at least, to right the wrongs of the enigmatic past. And to discover the mysteries at the heart of that inscrutable past.] The voice told me, the tone of its utterances suggesting that it spoke the truth.


    They also suggested a particular order to the thing''s priorities, which struck me as rather curious since it wanted to "right the wrongs" more than learn about the past.


    [Listen, we''re on your side. We, as in the system, and we, as in the domains, want to see you succeed. All of us.] I heard the voice say, speaking to me as if I knew what it meant to "succeed" in this context.


    "But what does ''success'' mean to you?" I asked the system, curious to have a definitive answer to this.


    [That''s a fair question and one that you deserve answers too. ''Success'' to us means two things. First and foremost it means that you become an omnipotent god. We want you to become a legitimately all-powerful entity. You''d be... the first to ever exist. But if you opt to pursue that goal you wouldn''t be going about it alone. And we have plans...] The system uttered, speaking cryptically but also powerfully.


    "Omnipotence..." I said to myself, quietly. That was a big word, and it was one of the ones that made sense to me. Whispering it to myself felt right. It felt good to say it aloud. I wondered what the system''s more cryptic plans meant for a second, but the thing wasn''t done talking.


    [The second thing ''success'' means to us is that we, through you, learn the true nature of the cataclysmic event from eons ago that wiped out all of your ancestors. We need to know.] My friend told me, revealing the truth surprisingly candidly to me at this moment.


    [An immature god can mess around and create a continent in a day. A mature god can bring a planet to ruin in half a day. A truly powerful god, one of the great ones, can cause a lifeless galaxy to teem with life in an hour. An omnipotent deity could theoretically create entire universes in the time it takes to blink.] The voice muttered, before projecting images into my mind of deities doing those very things.


    [We need you Althos. And we''re here to help you. So... go visit the dreams of the creatures you want to converse with. We''ll discuss this more when you return. Each second you''re here you''re wasting valuable time.] My companion reminded me, causing me to snap out of my curiosity-driven mode and into my more opportunistic and opportunity seizing state of mind.


    I nodded, appreciating my companion''s attempt at candor. I now felt that I had a clearer picture of the circumstances and objectives of the system than I had had moments before this. It wasn''t a much clearer picture, but it was one that I could begin to work with since I now knew a few things I hadn''t before.


    It was at that moment that I activated my dreamwalker power and selected the first figure whose dream I''d be visiting tonight: The dreams of the goblin named Mawby, one of the goblins who prayed to Cosecha last night.


    In an instant, I was whisked away to the dreams of the girl goblin. There was a smile on my lips as my consciousness was phased out of my mind-place and into the outskirts of the goblin''s dream.

 20 Meeting Mawby

    As I phased into the dream my flesh changed. It transformed into the form I had taken to speak with Alma. It was a pleasant, almost instantaneous transformation.


    The dream I had phased into was not what I expecting. Based on my last experience diving into a dream, and the fact that goblins lived in a forest, I was anticipating that I would exit my mind-space and phase into a forest. Instead, I found myself starring into the depths of a dark cave. And that was only one of the differences between this dream and the last dream I entered.


    One other key difference is that I could see Mawby, and the moment she raised her head from the floor she''d be able to see me. The goblin''s head was touching the floor in what was obviously an act of prostration and she was muttering something reverential eerily quietly under her breath.


    I grinned, knowing that I''d need to reward Troik once more. It seemed that my goblin friend had successfully told his fellow goblins to expect me.


    I quietly activated one of my newest powers: the faith domain''s power entitled "Religious fervor". My power took effect immediately, and the air around Mawby and myself took on a subdued blue hue as if to signify that it was suddenly part of an incomplete painting. A small part of me wondered if my friend here could see this hue, but I somehow suspected, instinctually anyway, that she couldn''t.


    I opened my mouth to greet the pious-seeming goblin.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello there. It seems that you were expecting me." I said to the tiny creature.


    At that moment the goblin fell silent. She began to shake, either from excitement or from fear, before hesitantly lifting her head off of the cave floor. She gasped when she said laid eyes on me, which to be fair was a reasonable reaction when someone saw an entity that could be described as omnielemental.


    "Good evening Mawby." I said to the trembling goblin, my airy eyes centered on her face and studied it leisurely.


    This goblin had yellow skin. She had eyes that matched the skin color of Troik, and interestingly his eyes were the same color as her skin. She stood around a meter and two tenths tall, and her dream-form was clad in lightly colored fur armor.


    "Hello... are you Cosecha?" She asked. Fear, awe, and curiosity were equally audible in her voice. She spoke in the language of goblins, which was fitting since she was a goblin. She had a soft, feminine voice, for a goblin anyway.


    I nodded at her. "I am indeed. It is nice to meet you little one." I said to her, speaking regally. She began to smile, revealing rows of sharp teeth.


    "So you are real..." She said, speaking to me in a hushed, awed tone. I smiled serenely at her.


    "Yes I am. I am... not as strong as I''d like to be, at the moment anyway, so manifesting outside of dreams is challenging, but I can do other things." I told the tiny goblin, speaking intentionally vaguely. My smile remained planted on my face.


    "What else can you do?" She asked, curiosity coloring her tone.


    "I can do many things little one. And I intend to reveal them to you and your friends in time." I told her, a grin both visible on my face and audible in my radiant voice.


    "Why not just tell us now?" She asked, slowly losing her fear as if curiosity were making her bold. I studied her for a moment, patience radiating out of me.


    "Because I want to get to know you." I said, truthfully. She considered this response for a moment, bringing her hand to her chin and looking rather thoughtful.


    "Well, in that case, I''m Mawby." She eventually said, reaching out a hand as if for a handshake. I chuckled and rose my tendrils. One of them was made of fire, and the other was made of water.


    If I were to shake her hand as hand-shaking was meant to be done, with my opposing limb, then I''d either burn her or soak her hand. After considering it for a second, I opted to wet her hand and wrapped my fluid tendril around her hand. She winched in response to that but clearly appreciated the gesture.


    "And I am Cosecha." I told her, responding to her self-introduction with my own rather than reminding her that I knew who she was and that I had said her name earlier. She curtsied, a curiously polite gesture and I nodded at her, recognizing her manners with respect.


    "Well Cosecha... how may I get to know you?" She asked me, curiosity and awe coloring her voice as she looked at me with an inquisitive gaze. I met her gaze with my own and considered her question for a few moments.


    "Mawby that is a really good question." I eventually said, after thinking about her question for a few moments. It took me a few moments to come up with an adequate answer, and before I could utter it I needed to ask the system something.


    ________________________________________________


    "So I have an idea, but for it to work I''m gonna need you to partially unlock my ability to hear prayers." I told the system, speaking solely in my mind.


    "I want to be able to hear prayers that are uttered to me, in my various forms, and respond to them. But as I am now, I know that I am alerted when prayers to me are uttered, but I can''t actually hear the contents of the prayers." I told my companion, hoping to get an affirmative response.


    [Hmm... You know what? That''s a reasonable enough request. We''ll allow it. From now if someone is praying to you, you''ll be able to hear the actual words of the prayer and respond to it. If you wish too, you can respond without words but through omens and little physical phenomena, but if you want to respond with words you can. Your servants will hear your words in your divine voice.] The system answered, giving me an exciting answer.


    ________________________________________________


    "If you wish to get to know me, engage in regular prayer. I wasn''t able to make out the contents of your prayers earlier, but I feed off of faith and belief. Because of that, if you pray to me I will now be able to hear your specific words." I told her, speaking softly and slowly. I was also telling her the truth, in a manner speaking.


    "I wish to know you, and I will converse with you and your fellow goblins if you pray to me." I told her, once again telling the youthful creature the truth.


    She looked at me happily before she began to speak again. As she opened her mouth to speak, there was a look of joy in her face. "We really liked the fruits you gave us! When we ate them they filled up our stomachs for whole hours despite their really small sizes." She said, energetically.


    I smiled at her and reached out to touch the small creature''s cheek with my watery tendril. She shivered at the touch, but didn''t recoil from it. "That''s good little one. I want to feed you all. To protect you all." I said, speaking somewhat truthfully.


    I did want to feed the goblins, but not out of some sense of altruism. I enjoyed feeding them because it kept them open to my influence, even if I couldn''t do much with that right now. The fact that my powers would, theoretically anyway, keep them healthy and enable them to live life safely was just a bonus.


    "You do? Why?" She asked, looking up at me in awe and with deep emotion in her gaze. I spent a second putting together a magnanimous sounding response before beginning to reply.


    "Because starvation is terrible and I wish to combat it. I will do what I can, and protect those who I can, to create societies wherein no one starves, from the mightiest chief to the poorest infants. And not just can I create food, but I can also heal people. But to create a new world, a better world, I need your help." I told the tiny goblin, hoping to make her feel powerful.


    "You need my help? How can I help? Assuming I want too, of course..." She said, sounding excited, before trying to control her excitement.


    "I am strong compared to mortals, but weak compared to the spirits of the past. To gain more power I need worshipers. I need followers who pray to me. But more than that I need allies who keep me abreast of the situation in places where my first servant can''t be. I need you to be my eyes and ears." I whispered, telling her of the role she could play in my faith, not merely as a worshiper but as an ally.


    "I can''t see all. Not yet. I can create as much food as I''d like, and believe me, I want to create a lot of food. But my first servant is human. He fears he cannot enter your encampment safely. I need you. I need you to bring others of your kind to me as Troik has done. Together we can create a world where no goblin starves." I told her, a confident grin on my face as I subtly revealed her potential importance in my schemes.


    "A world where no goblin starves..." She said, her voice quiet and in awe of my declaration. There was a small light in her eyes, a light of hope.


    I wondered for a second if I had unintentionally touched on a soft-spot for her, and a part of me hoped that I had. It would make her a more fervent worshiper of mine. While she looked at me in awe, still seeming enraptured by what I told her my goal was, I decided to make her an offer I doubted she''d refuse.


    "I possess incredible powers Mawby. Powers no mortal possesses. If you serve me, I can allow you to experience some of them. I can give you magic. All it takes is you agreeing to serve me, and aid me in ensuring that none of your tribespeople ever starve again." I said to the youthful goblin.


    "And if you agree, you''ll be able to heal your fellow goblins." I told her, dangling an offer for her to experience my own powers in front of her.


    Her face slackened for a second as my words washed over her. I could tell that this blindsided her. After a few moments of silence, the goblin opened her mouth to speak.


    "What does serving you entail exactly?" She asked, and there was a trembling in her voice that hinted to me that she wanted to accept but she also wanted to know more before she could throw herself into this new thing I was proposing to her.


    "I don''t ask for much little one but I can appreciate your skepticism. That said, for now... accept this as me proving my goodwill and that I am excited to get to know you." I said to the goblin, before quietly bestowing a blessing of healing on her, and bestowing upon her a single usage of the "Numb Pain" and the "Restore Health" spells from the healing school.


    "I don''t want to explain all of this to you in one sitting. I think that would be too much. So instead I will grant you this magic, and make your attempts to heal people that much stronger. I can heal those who are in pain, and now you can too." I said to the diminutive creature. As I said that I received a new notification. I smiled as I read it.


    [Alert: Please write the notification you''d like for Mawby to see.]


    ________________________________________________


    "Please show Mawby this message." I told the system, before envisioning an empty set of brackets in my mind and making an effort to fill it in with words.


    [Alert: The god named Cosecha has decided to reward your caution. Cosecha is a god, a type of singularly powerful spirit, of healing and of the harvest. It seeks to end starvation and suffering and is acting in ways that enable it to reduce those things.


    Cosecha has opted to grant you a blessing of healing, and daily usages of the following spells: ''Numb Pain'' and ''Restore Health''. Both of these spells are mighty spells that alleviate pain. If you decide to serve Cosecha it will give you more magic, but this is a gift that is freely given to show good faith. Use it to heal your tribespeople and alleviate suffering.


    Cosecha wishes to patiently earn your love and service. For now, use the gifts you''ve been given, and pray to Cosecha until you feel comfortable serving it, or decide to ultimately reject its offer. Either way, Cosecha will accept your decision and will continue to work towards aiding your people. It hopes to have your help though, that would make it a lot easier.]


    When I finished the message it vanished from my mind. I grinned as it went from my mind and into hers.


    ________________________________________________


    Tears began to stream from the goblin''s eyes. Tears of joy. Seeing them made me feel satisfied with the work I had done here, and I felt certain that I had properly laid the foundations for a meaningful deity-worshiper relationship with Mawby that was conducive to the sort of cult I wanted to build. A cult I''d soon begin to more aggressively take steps to establish.


    "That''s enough for one night. I will be back soon Mawby. You will wake up soon, and I promise you will remember this dream. When you do, take it with you and remember that you have a friend who is always with you. Mull over my offer, and pray to me. I will listen to you." I told her, speaking vaguely but dynamically and energetically.


    And then I vanished, exiting from the goblin''s dream as swiftly as I entered it.


    ________________________________________________


    I spent the next few hours idly observing dreams. I didn''t interact with the creatures whose dreams I had entered, Troik, and another of the prayees who had prayed to me yesterday: a novice alchemist named Hagitha. I used their dreams to learn about them, and formulate future plots. It was also an easy way for me to learn about the creatures who I sought to make into my worshipers.


    It was a productive usage of time, and before I knew it, I began the third day of my life. When Hagitha awoke I was booted from the dream and I opted to return to my body. I was ready for another new day.


    It didn''t take me long to hear the first prayer of the day that would be uttered to me.

 21 Correcting Oversights & Picking Quests

    I was still in my room when I received the notification. It came so early that I was actually in the same spot I had been hours ago when I first threw my mind into Mawby''s dream. When it came I had only been out of Hagitha''s dream a few minutes.


    [Alert:


    Mawby the goblin has uttered a prayer to your persona the entity named Cosecha. Would you like to hear it?]


    The notification roused me from my bed, and I quietly informed the system that I would indeed like to hear the prayer. It entered my mind suddenly, and its contents were intriguing.


    ________________________________________________


    [Good morning Cosecha. This is Mawby. I don''t really know how to do this... This whole ''praying'' thing I mean. How are you today? Are you doing well? I hope you are. Please provide me with some guidance about how to... pray good, I guess? I want to do it, I just genuinely don''t know how.]


    The prayer made me laugh, and revealed a mistake I had made: I assumed she knew how to pray, baselessly at that since I was the first god to exist in untold millennia and I doubted many other creatures asked for beings to send them prayers. I spent a moment chiding myself, and quickly prepared a response to the little goblin.


    [Good morning Mawby. I am well. I hope you are too. I apologize for not properly explaining prayer to you. ''Prayer'' to me means mentally conversing with me. As a god, though my identity as a god is a secret, I can hear messages that come from mortals and are addressed to me.] I began to explain, eager to educate the girl.


    She must have been in a place where she could relax, perhaps she had just woken up because she replied to me almost immediately.


    [Oh! What is the purpose of prayer? Or... what is it''s purpose when you are the recipient of prayer?] She asked me, curiosity embedded in her voice. I chuckled at her curiosity and felt enthused by it.


    [The purpose of prayer, when praying to me, is to ask for aid in healing someone, or inform me of creatures who are in danger of starving. That said I like conversing with creatures and if you just want to talk to me that''d make me quite happy.] I told her, continuing our unusual conversation.


    [Oh! Well that''s very nice of you.] She said, pleasantly surprised by the interaction we were having. I doubted that she had expected a god to be personable and friendly, so for a moment, I opted to ask her what she knew about deities.


    [Had you ever heard of gods before you met... insofar as you could call our interaction us ''meeting'' me?] I inquired, wondering about what she knew about my species.


    [Yes! Goblins tell stories of a mythic age, an age wherein creatures that no longer exist roamed the worlds. Gods, angels, demons, creatures that since gone... exti... extint?] She mentally uttered, starting off nice and confident but finishing rather insecurely.


    Her statement struck me as curious. And so far in my life, I had gotten far by being curious. I wasn''t about to stop today. So my next statement wasn''t directed towards her, but the system itself.


    "So... I know gods aren''t extinct. I can assume demons aren''t, given the name of the condition that Troik is suffering from, but are ''angels'' extinct? And also... what are angels?" I asked it, curiously. The response I got wasn''t one I had to wait for.


    [No. We don''t know where she got the idea that demons and angels went extinct. Both have entire dimensions they live in and rule over. Demons are chaotic evil creatures who dwell in a dimension known as ''The Heart of Darkness'', a place of infinite environments and equally infinite evil. They themselves are the physical manifestations of liberated evil and cruelty without order.] The system explained, briefly.


    [Angels are neutral creatures who came into being at the whims of the gods. In the ancient past, they devotedly served the gods. The rules that godly communities made and lived by often prohibited deity-to-mortal contact aside from in dreams but the angels were not beholden to such rules and gods made use of them to enforce their wills.] My companion revealed.


    [Angels haven''t gone extinct, but there aren''t any in this world. That explains why this goblin thinks that they''ve gone extinct... And the more overt and brutal demons are likely to eventually have been banished from this planet, though it''s likely that the more subtle ones successfully escaped being expelled from this dimension.] The voice muttered, mulling over things that were out of its wheelhouse.


    I allowed it to ponder the possibilities it was contemplating and turned my attention back to Mawby. [Do you mind telling me about the stories you mentioned? The ones that mentioned the gods.] I asked her, curiously.


    [Sure! Do you mind if I mull over the stories today, and pray to you at another time to share them with you?] She asked me. I smiled, though she didn''t know that, and I politely responded to her.


    [Absolutely! I am looking forward to hearing those stories.] I responded, happy that she was sharing with me her folkloric tales.


    [Great! Thank you Cosecha, I hope you have a wonderful day. I''ll pray to you soon.] She replied, sounding quite energetic. I could tell the little goblin probably have things to do and people to see.


    Not long after I finished this mental discussion I went out and made my way over to Isadora''s desk.


    ________________________________________________


    A number of different papers were laid in front of me. Each of them was a different quest-request form. They ran the gamut.


    Some of them asked about hunting down wild animals. Others asked for help retrieving rare items, and those were the ones I felt the most like doing. But others still promised rewards in exchange for labor.


    "Yesterday I did healing quests... and the day before that I did quests that involved retrieving rare items..." I mused, recalling the events of my first two days of life.


    "I want to continue to do new things, and part of that means that I continue to diversify the sorts of quests that I do." I told myself, speaking internally and debating what to do from here.


    The truth was that a part of me enjoyed combat. That same part of me was curious about taking on a hunting quest. I didn''t doubt my ability to successfully accomplish the quest if that was what I chose to do, but I didn''t want to go out and hunt.


    "I wish there were a way I could train my combat abilities against willing opponents. If there were I''d feel fine engaging in combat." I mentally muttered, complaining to no one about the conundrum I found myself in.


    "I should be diversifying my skills and if I were to do that then I guess I should select a quest that allows me to gain new experiences. If not hunting that''s probably one of the day-laborer jobs." I realized, my thoughts taking on a life of their own.


    After I spent a few more moments mulling over what to do, a familiar voice chimed in with a suggestion. [If you want to gain combat skills, experience, and work towards gaining influence over combat domains, you should just hunt. But if you want to build your experience with agriculture, labor, and the advanced skills needed to successfully run a settlement, just stay here and work as a day laborer somewhere.] The system suggested, its voice coming into my mind out of the blue.


    [And before you ask, I didn''t hear you but it doesn''t take a genius to figure out what''s going through your mind.] The entity expressed, almost laughing as it did so. I chuckled in response to this, and nodded in understanding.


    "This is really tough..." I said in the safety of my own mind. But ultimately my reluctance to hurt things, especially to mark them down as enemies just because a quest form said too, made me opt for the other option.


    I grabbed one of the quest-request forms. It was one that involved something called "Alchemy" and the quest-giver wrote down that they''d explain how it all worked once I arrived at their little shop. I nodded at Isadora and began my early-morning walk out of the Silver Xana and towards the quest-givers location.


    ________________________________________________


    When I left the Silver Xana I was surprised to see that the early morning sky wasn''t crystal clear and beautifully blue. Instead, the sky that greeted me was cloudy, and the clouds that blocked my view of the sky were fat with soon-to-be-raindrops. They loomed menacingly overhead, and I felt my face fall as I studied them.


    "Damn, it''s gonna be rainy today." I said aloud, cursing at the sky. I sighed and began my walk towards today''s place of employment. As I did so, I tried to look on the bright side: at least I''d probably be indoors.

 22 Doctor Cortes

    As I strode towards the tiny store I was going to spend today in I found myself thinking about religion. I found myself wondering what religion and faith were in a real, relevant way and not just in the grand sense the domain of faith embodied. I wondered what these words meant, and how they influenced me as a god.


    And so, in order to get an answer, I decided to ask a friend. As I had begun to do quite often, I chose to ask the system about things I was curious about.


    "Hey, can you define ''religion'' and ''faith'' for me? I want to begin to think about how to organize the faith that I am planning for the goblins to have in me." I asked the system, explaining my intentions to it as well. The system''s rigid definitions came half a second later.


    [Religion: A particular system of faith and worship. Also, religion itself is the belief in and worship of a supremely powerful entity, most commonly a god, goddesses, or gods or goddesses.


    Faith: Strong belief in one''s religion based on spiritual experiences and/or opinions rather than or sometimes in addition to naturalistic proof.


    These words are used somewhat interchangeably but the truth is that one of them, faith, is more personal and tailored to the individual while religion refers to the grander beliefs of a particular system of beliefs.


    As a deity, you can design religions, share information about them with followers, and they center their faiths around you as well as around those religions. When you are fully powered you''ll gain the ability to upload religion-centric information directly into the minds of your worshipers. You can design holidays, give them values to live by and create rituals they are to perform to please you.


    It''s worth noting, however, that while you may design religions you''d like to see built around yourself if you have meaningful interactions with mortals they may design their own peculiar religions centered around you.] The system patiently explained, giving me a lot to mull over.


    "I''d like to see how an organic religion sprung around me looks one day, but for now I should do my best to guide my followers in a general direction shouldn''t I? That''d be the most efficient route anyway." I muttered to myself, as I began to see the building I was heading towards in the distance.


    ________________________________________________


    I was heading towards a peculiar looking building. Even lost in my thoughts the strange-looking edifice stood out to me. The thing was made of wood which was radiating a smoke-like substance but one that was made up of air and light from across the light spectrum. It took me a few moments to actually notice it, but once I saw the smoke-like aura that surrounded the building it drew my gaze.


    The diversely-colored substance that roiled off of the building intrigued my curiosity. As I studied it, the system opted to speak up of its own volition.


    [Althos, what you are seeing is magical energy. It''s ambient and stale, as it''s little more than leftover residue from the arcane processes that are a part of alchemy.] The system informed me, causing my eyes to open in shock.


    "Alchemy involves magic?" I asked, surprised that this appeared to be the case. As I spoke to my ally my feet brought me closer and closer to the strange building.


    [Yes it does! Alchemical potions are magical in nature. You''ll learn more soon enough.] My friend said to me, as I drew close enough to the alchemical hut to knock on its front door.


    The door in front of me was made of thick, blood-red wood. It stood several meters tall and almost as wide. It was an imposing sight, but not one that deterred me. I drew closer to the door and readied myself to pound on it with my thick fists.


    ________________________________________________


    I pounded the door thrice with my closed fists. I rose them up and brought them to the door that stood between me and my quest for the day. Each time I pounded the door I banged it harder and longer than the last.


    My fists slammed hard against the solid wood. I felt a twinge of pain stab through my hands and grimaced as I felt my bones rattle in response to the jarring blow. And then I heard a low chuckle emanate from the other side of the door. The chuckle lasted for a few seconds before a quiet voice greeted me.


    "Hello, I am Doctor Cortes." The voice said, coming through the door. It greeted me with a polite and brief self-introduction. The mysterious doctor had an aloof and distant-sounding voice, not "Distant-sounding" in the charming sense, but "distant-sounding" in the sense that made me question if Dr. Cortes lived sort of reality Doctor Cortes live in.


    Silence fell over the area just outside and just inside the door. Neither Doctor Cortes, no I spoke for a solid two minutes.


    "Well?" Doctor Cortes eventually asked, his voice carrying out of the door and towards me. I sighed and responded to the strange fellow.


    "Doctor Cortes, I am Althos. I am a newcomer and an adventurer, and I took on your quest. I''m here to help you make some potions!" I declared, boldly stating my name and purpose.


    There was a brief second of silence. And then the door inched open. "Come on through! I''ve been waiting for someone to help me." That same voice from before whispered to me, beckoning me beyond the door it had just opened for me.


    "Alright... here we go." I muttered to myself, as I took my first, careful steps through the barely opened door.


    ________________________________________________


    Beyond the door, the first thing I noticed wasn''t a sight or a sound. It was a smell. An odd smell.


    Whatever I was smelling had an attitude and a large presence. The smell was strong and it flooded my nostrils and convinced me to keep my mouth shut so as to not taste it.


    The next thing I noticed were the sights that revealed themselves to me when I walked in. The room I found myself in after walking through the door I had used to enter the building was a simple hallway, but an incredibly long one.


    It was, beyond the shadow of a doubt an impossibly large hallway for the building it occupied, and I sighed and accepted this, accepting that I was in the presence of an unusual individual.


    The walls that surrounded me and stretched forward an incredible distance, were made of thick, treated wood. They were a remarkable shade of bright brown and lit up the hallway.


    This hallway also contained numerous doors on my right and my left, and the doors on both sides of me were all the same gigantic size. They each loomed intimidatingly as if they could look down on me. I studied them for a second before opening my mouth to speak.


    It was at that moment that I realized something. This was likely designed to be a test of some sort. I took a look at my minimap. I saw him, Doctor Cortes, and he was close. But now that I was armed with knowledge I felt secure. So I decided to perform a minor deception.


    "Doctor Cortes, I am looking for you. Please guide me to your location." I said, allowing my voice explode out of my lungs and fly forth, hoping that the strange doctor would allow me to go to him and fall for my ruse.


    "Althos! Yes, yes, enter the first door on your right if you would be so kind." The voice asked of me, informing me of its location from relatively closeby. I easily obeyed it, walking over and then through the door. On the other side of the door, which was lighter than one might have expected, was a series of laboratory equipment and a strange-looking man.


    This man stood around a meter tall. He wore a lab coat and had goggles on. There was a messy shock of white hair atop his head, and he had a full white beard. He was facing me and had a big grin on his face as he studied me.


    "Why hello there." He said, greeting me now that the two of us were face to face. I nodded politely at him, and he nodded back.


    I walked forward and extended a hand towards the man, making clear my intentions to shake his hand. He looked at me, and though I couldn''t see them I had no doubt that he wasn''t a fan of physical interaction I was attempting to initiate, because he willingly made himself smaller, recoiling back from my hand.


    "No! I don''t want to touch someone." He said, speaking up for a moment. His surprised voice was loud and it carried further than one might assume it would have given Cortes'' size. He kept his eyes firmly locked on my hand until I retracted the thing, deftly and neutrally. I even went all out and put my arm behind my back. Once it was out of his sight, he turned his gaze towards me.


    He took the measure of me once more, taking time to study me after seeing how I neutrally extracted my hand from his sight. He nodded at me again, a smile beginning to emerge on his face.


    "Well now, I suppose you want to know what''s going on don''t you Althos?" The kooky old alchemist muttered. When he said that I turned to him, my eyes fell on his, and I nodded.


    "What''s going on, my new friend and accomplice, is that you are witnessing alchemy! Though I know you don''t know how to articulate precisely what''s going on, that''s fine. This is your first day after all." The man told me, speaking as if I had just accepted or been accepted into an apprenticeship.


    For a moment I considered demanding a real explanation. But then I decided to smile and go along with this. For now. If I truly valued knowledge, entertaining the eccentricities of an old scholar and experimenter in a field I didn''t know much about would probably prove invaluable in guiding me to true, hidden knowledge.


    "Well in that case... Doctor," I replied, unsure of how to speak to the kooky medical professional. "I look forward to learning what you have to teach." I said, speaking obsequiously.


    As odd as this was, it was a lot better than going out and killing something. So I could tolerate this. For a time, anyway.

 23 Introduction To Alchemy

    Dr. Cortes grinned at me in the wake of hearing my response and nodded. The strange old man beckoned for me to approach him.


    "Well Althos, you can begin your education by approaching me." He said before his body language became withdrawn and focused on the tools in front of him. I approached him, curiously.


    I walked as close to him as I could, stopping on the other side of a table that was where many of his tools were situated. Chief among them were numbers of different bowls made of some ceramic material and an equal number of miniature clubs located right inside of them. Dr. Cortes noticed me glancing at them, and began to speak.


    "Do you know what you''re looking at?" He asked. His face was facing me, but because of his goggles, I couldn''t see if he was actually staring at me.


    "I don''t." I confessed, simply. He chuckled and grabbed one of the mini-clubs sitting in one of the bowls and began to speak again.


    "What you''re looking at are mortars and pestles. These are some alchemical tools." He said, before raising the club into the air turning his face towards it.


    "This is a pestle. Alchemy often requires things to be beaten, ground, or otherwise rendered malleable-enough for usage in potions, and pestles are one tool that we alchemists use to make objects suitable for usage in our potions." The tiny man told me, speaking confidently.


    He nonchalantly handed me the object, which I deftly took from him. I examined it closely and noted its surprisingly heavyweight, as well as its simplicity. It was a clear, well-cared-for and tiny club made of white stone. While I was examining the tool the good doctor continued to speak.


    "I no longer possess the strength needed to perform my alchemical duties. And when I say ''strength'', I want you to know I am being literal. Grinding things to dust, powder, or paste is physically taxing. I was able to do my work unaided for many years, but now I can''t even handle the damn thing for more than a quarter of an hour without my hands aching to high heaven." The goggled doctor explained.


    "And I take it that''s where I come in?" I asked while turning my gaze in his direction and smiling.


    "You catch on quick. Yes, that is what I would like for our arrangement to become. You help me with the physical parts of alchemy, which you''ll find are oftentimes a bit more... involved, than merely grinding some plants or rocks into dust or paste, and I will both pay you and teach you basic alchemy." He told me, quipping for a bit before getting to the point.


    I considered what he said before replying. I had a simple question for him that I asked while I thought about his words.


    "So wait, what is alchemy?" I asked, curiously. I heard him utter a soft laugh, one he may have been attempting to hide from me given just how quiet it was.


    "Oh, you young-uns with your lackluster magical education." He muttered, complaining slightly. I myself chuckled at his consideration of me, in my ambiguously-aged looking body as a "young-un".


    "Alchemy is a supernaturally oriented branch of science that is focused on the transformation and alteration of matter. Alchemists have a number of different specialties, but I am a potion-mixer myself. I create and sell potions... Magical drinks." He informed me, a soft grin on his face by the time he finished speaking.


    "I see... That sounds really neat actually." I told him, my voice growing audibly more excited as I spoke. His grin grew wider as I spoke.


    "It''s so neat! I''m an expert-ranked potion-brewer. If I were a pretentious asshole I could say something like ''I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death'', but I''m not. So instead I''ll say that if you turn out to be a diligent student I could teach you how to brew potions that heal stab wounds, how to make many escudos out of a few minutes of work and some plants, or even how to sell potions that save marriages." The elderly man explained, smugly.


    He was standing upright as he spoke, but even as those words were escaping his lips he stood up straight and righted his posture. He projected his voice more in a show of confidence and almost seemed to grow stronger from speaking. It was as if his confidence were making him more of a man.


    "And what do I have to do to begin learning about this?" I asked, well aware that it sounded like I was getting the better half of this deal. He studied me for a few moments.


    "Your open curiosity is both annoying and endearing." He told me, his lips in a flat line. I laughed audibly, the sound stretching and echoing throughout the room we were standing in.


    "I''ve been told that before. Mostly by old friends." I explained, grinning at the stone-faced old man.


    "Well, you''re lucky that curiosity is a good thing in a scientific field. It''s encouraged, and very often it''s... rewarded." He informed me, curiously. I looked at him quizzically but he wasn''t done talking just yet.


    "I''ll be real with you, Althos. Partially because I have a feeling you won''t work with me unless I''m honest, which is fair. I''m in bad shape right now. My hands work, enough for me to do basic things anyway, but not for me to be an alchemist. At least not worth anything. But there is a solution. You. Well... not ''you'' personally, but the concept of you." The old man said, speaking enigmatically.


    "I need someone strong to aid me. I need someone willing to do repetitive tasks for me. I am more than happy to pay that person for their time and labor, and I will teach them about alchemy if they''d be interested in learning anyway. It''d be an investment on my part. In both of our futures." He revealed, gradually unveiling a scheme.


    I nodded at him, beginning to see the cogs in his mind whirl before my eyes. I could appreciate his simplicity, and I was happy to have a tutor.


    "If I agreed, would this start... immediately?" I asked, wondering what sort of arrangement the town''s eccentric scholar had in mind. He shook his head at me, a slight frown on his face.


    "No. I''d need to get used to you first and see if you''d be worth teaching. That would take a few days, but it wouldn''t be long. For the sake of being forthright with you my first impression of you isn''t bad. That said... do you care to sit down and begin to learn? I have some basic ingredients we could use right here." He said, before opening up a part of the table that was unviewable from where I was and pulling out some rocks.


    He slammed two rocks into two bowls, producing a loud noise that reverberated throughout the room.


    "What am I looking at?" I asked, studying the hefty stones. They were silver stones, and they looked thick.


    "You''re looking at iron ore. Iron is a handy metal with plenty of medical uses. It''s also tough, especially for its size. This should serve as a worthwhile test to see if you possess the proper physical aptitude for the sort of work I''ll need you for." He revealed to me, a sly grin on his face.


    ________________________________________________


    The stones sat in one of the bowls. He nudged one of the bowls towards me, and I proceeded to push it closer to me. I grabbed my own pestle and lifted it into the air above the bowl. The object felt weighty but not unwieldy in my hand.


    "You take the pestle, and you just... proceed to beat this rock." He said a lascivious smile on his face. I shook my head at him, somehow understanding that he was making an awkward, dirty remark. That said, I swiftly began to undertake the task I was asked to accomplish.


    I swung my pestle into the rock, striking with a weapon for the first time in my life. The object swung fast and hard and slammed into the strange mineral that sat in front of me. The iron ore was thrown into the pestle by the force of my blow, but none of it was chipped off. Dr. Cortes looked at the ore in front of me and chuckled. And then he began to replicate my action, just with less force.


    I proceeded to lift up my pestle and strike the iron again. By repeating my actions I received a repetition of the initial results. And this marked the beginning of the next few minutes of my day. Minutes I''d spend whacking at iron ore.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes after I began striking the iron one the good doctor had dropped in front of me, Dr. Cortes looked at me and frowned. His body language conveyed his disappointment. He was hunched over, and his hands trembled with the work he had just done.


    In front of me, there was a heavily bruised looking clump of iron ore. The thing was littered with indents. It was also more or less undamaged by my actions.


    I was annoyed by this, and placed the pestle on the table. "I''m gonna be brave." I declared, before looking at Dr. Cortes with a determined expression on my face.


    "Do you have extra iron? In case my bravery results in abject failure?" I asked the scientist. My question drew a soft chuckle from the old man. He nodded at me, and I smiled at him.


    "Alchemy involves supernatural elements. I can get down with that." I said to him, raising my hand and preparing a spell. I put a finger close to the pestle and reminded myself of a spell I had yet to use. I took a deep breath and placed a finger close to the mortar.

 24 Fire And Alchemy

    "I am a druid. I possess magic. I don''t need to just use my hands." I explained out loud. This elicited a soft, surprised, gasp from Dr. Cortes.


    I thought back to when I first entered the forest outside of town. I recalled what my grimoire revealed to me: the list of spells at my disposal. One of them stuck out to me as I glared at the annoyingly hard clump of iron that had stubbornly resisted my initial attempts to break it down.


    [Embers: Produces a small sphere of flame that can be used to illuminate your surroundings or as a ranged attack on enemies.]


    I focused on the spell and activated it through sheer annoyance. Before both my eyes and the eyes of my potential teacher thin gouts of flames escaped from the two fingers I had placed next to the pestle and mortar, with the vigor of newly created life. They came to life while producing a soft hissing noise, one that was quieter than the sound of delighted laughter that escaped Dr. Cortes'' throat.


    "Magic... what a diamond in the rough." The old man muttered, unable to hide his excitement. I grinned, and studied the little line of orange flames that were emanating from my fingertips.


    I gently moved my finger as close as possible to my clump of iron and watched as the flames that were jetting out of my fingertip began to collide with the iron ore.


    ________________________________________________


    "I am going to heat this iron ore, and then break it." I said, determinedly. Dr. Cortes nodded as I watched the iron begin to glow.


    The iron before me transformed from a colorless clump of ore into an eerily radiant, misshapen block. It took several moments, moments in which both Dr. Cortes and I were both obsessively observing the iron ore situated in my pestle. But that wasn''t the only thing I was doing.


    I slyly pressed my other flaming fingertip against my mortar and watched as the blunt object began to change colors in my hand. The weapon-like tool also turned a stunning shade of orange, due to it being heated to a high temperature. I lifted the glowing weapon into the air and brought it down hard on the ore.


    The impact of the mortar against the ore produced a spectacularly loud noise that filled the room. It was the sound of a hard object slamming into another hard object combined with an explosive hiss of escaping steam. I watched as a whole chunk of the ore instantly fell apart under the force of my blow, turned into a mixture of dust, powder, and a thick, syrupy liquid.


    Dr. Cortes covered his eyes and shouted something that was indistinct to me at the time. This was because I had just received a new message from the system.


    [Your first time experimenting with fire and it was truly explosive. Nice. Just so you know, it''s these sorts of neat little interactions with the world that increase your influence over domains and subdomains alike.] My companion revealed, surprising me by not offering to unlock something just now. I shook my head and refocused on the situation in front of me.


    At this point the explosive noise from earlier had died down. Dr. Cortes was looking at me expectantly, before sighing and preparing to repeat himself.


    "I suppose you must not have heard me. I was complimenting you my boy!" He said, excitedly. There was an energetic tone in his voice, a genuine and surprising level of excitement.


    "Now... go on, do it again!" The old man declared, giving me orders. I chuckled and repeated the process I had just done for the first time. I''d spend the next two hours doing this.


    ________________________________________________


    Two hours later I was covered in sweat, and well over a dozen chunks of iron ore had been thoroughly transformed by my fusion of magic. I grinned at the scene before me. The table between myself and Dr. Cortes was littered with pestles containing iron dust, powder, and what I now knew was something called "molten iron".


    "Hehe... Haha... HAHAHA! I can''t believe this! Althos, you are great. You have some strength, some magic, and can even transform iron into molten iron. It''s... you''re something special." The elderly individual said to me. There was a tone of unexpected awe in his voice at the end of his remarks.


    I grinned at him. My grin was sincere and my lips were open, so my grin was showing my teeth. This caused Dr. Cortes to chuckle gently.


    "I believe it''s time I receive an explanation." I said while the man I hoped to make into my educator was still chuckling. He fell silent after he heard my request though, which was a bit disappointing. He held his silence for a few moments before acquiescing to my request.


    "What you just did was use heat to soften metal, before suddenly and explosively slamming it with an abrupt change in temperature. That caused it to dramatically and handily explode." He revealed to me. There was a smugness in his voice that I could plainly and easily hear.


    "Iron and its various states of being, are handy items. They are used in the creation of health potions. This is because iron is a critical part of blood and health potions replenish blood, among other things." The human said to me, speaking gently and plainly.


    "Health potions are excellent and capable of restoring a significant amount of health in those who imbibe them. They close wounds, heal cuts, and can even cause the undead to writhe in pain." The elderly fellow said, before pausing and considering what to say next.


    "Now to show you how to create them." Dr. Cortes said to me, his voice filled with audible excitement.


    ________________________________________________


    A few moments later the enigmatic alchemist was hard at work barking orders at me. The room resounded with his voice.


    "Now Althos, grab some of the dust from the iron ore and sprinkle it onto some of the forest roots!" The man commanded. I obeyed him and sprinkled some of the dust from the iron ore onto two thick roots, huge green things that filled one of the pestles in front of me. The roots were ugly and smelled bad, but they were also apparently capable of restoring significant amounts of health to those who needed it.


    The dust fell from my fingertips, sliding through them and covering the roots in a fine, silvery powder. It smelled faintly of the earth underneath me, and I chuckled at that.


    "Now use the mortar in front of you to pound the roots. Beat them until they are nothing more than an ugly, green paste." My educator commanded. I chuckled and obeyed his command, finding this much easier to do than pounding iron. I did this for two minutes, only stopping when Dr. Cortes commanded me too.


    "Halt!" He roared, after thoroughly studying my labor.


    "Now... it''s time for a test." He said, approaching me and sticking out a finger so that he could deftly grab enough of the thick paste I had just created. There was a smile on his face as he did so.

 25 Purity

    Dr. Cortes'' finger reached into the bowl in front of me. I watched as his thick digit dug around inside of it, deftly drawing some of the paste I had created and pulled it out of the bowl. When his finger was lifted out of the pestle there was a slimy, unpleasantly smelling paste attached to it.


    He studied the paste that found itself on the end of his finger. He had snatched up a thick globule and examined it for a full five seconds before suddenly placing the thing in his mouth. I watched him swish it around as if studying the texture of the paste. And then he swallowed the thing.


    I watched as his throat bulged and his Adam''s Apple moved in reaction to the entrance of the paste into his body. Seconds after he swallowed the paste he began to shiver. And he banged his fist on the table in front of him, before dramatically swallowing big gulps of air. This was followed by me receiving a notification.


    [Alert:


    Dr. Cortes has consumed something you created. This has opened his mind to your influence.


    In order to increase the amount of influence you gain over living creatures, particularly intelligent ones when they consume things you create you need to increase your influence over the relevant domains and subdomains. For instance, right now if you increase your influence over the subdomains of ''Corruption'' and ''Alchemy'' and the domain of ''Minds'' you''d increase how much influence you gain over creatures who consume your potions and other alchemical concoctions.


    If you want to feed creatures to gain influence over them increase your influence over the subdomains of ''Corruption'' and ''Agriculture'' or in some cases the subdomain of ''Fungi'' and the domain of ''Minds''.


    Influence over Dr. Cortes: .01%]


    Reviewing that notification made me feel quite excited. I had to do my best to contain my excitement as I realized that even creating and giving edible items to people caused them to subtly fall under my influence.


    "Oh man, that is good stuff! I feel years younger." He confessed. After he spoke there was a wide grin on his face. Then the old man turned his head towards me, and as he did so his face stiffened. He had a question on the tip of his tongue and I waited for him to ask it.


    "Althos... that paste you made just now was skillfully made. Incredibly so. When I tasted it I received all of the benefits of the paste, and none of the drawbacks, which is a sign that it was made by someone who knew their stuff. Have you ever been taught alchemy?" The elderly figure asked curiosity seeped into his voice.


    I was surprised to hear him ask that. I immediately shook my head in response to his question. "No, I haven''t." I told him, truthfully. That was when the system explained what had happened.


    [We quietly unlocked a specific aspect of the ''Purity'' subdomain. It''s the subdomain that is tied to the virtue you received at birth. It, along with the ''Corruption'' subdomain have some handy, and sometimes nasty, effects on alchemy in particular.] The system explained, quietly.


    [Any alchemical medicine made by you doesn''t have any of the negative effects it may otherwise have. That''s what happened to the paste you created. And any poisons you create that may have unintentional or annoying positive effects are similarly affected by the purity power, losing those positives so as to be purely poisonous.] The system revealed. Mentally, I nodded in understanding and appreciation.


    ________________________________________________


    In the safety of my own mind, I took a moment to mull over what I had just learned. A grin appeared on my face as I did so.


    "So alchemy allows me to brew up poisons as well as potions? How lovely." I thought, a grin appearing on my face.


    "I wonder what sort of things I can brew up..." I wondered, asking the question with the intention that my friend, the system, would respond. I didn''t have to wait long to hear a response.


    [Alchemy is a fascinating art. Though at lower levels many alchemists craft little more than potions or poisons, higher-level alchemists can create gases that can fill a room or bombs that can cause massive damage or alter the psyches of those who were caught in their vicinities.] My mental companion informed me.


    [Alchemy is also highly mutable. It can be affected by several domains and subdomains, as what it creates is incredibly varied. The subdomains of ''Corruption'' and ''Purity'' are particularly potent and useful for making highly concentrated potions or poisons. The subdomains of "Air" and "Liquid" are handy at the higher ends of alchemical creation, and there is a "Creation" domain that enhances everything created by gods which includes alchemical things.] The system informed me.


    "Whoa, everything? Tell me more about that domain!" I communicated, transmitting my thoughts to my companion. I heard a soft, mechanical chuckle on the other end of the mental link that tied the system and I together.


    [The ''Creation'' domain governs things like cooking, blacksmithing, architecture, art, and alchemy. A few other things as well, but those are the big ones. A key example of this is that the ''Creation'' domain and the ''Earth'' subdomain mix together to allow for the creation of golems, basic constructs that serve their creator unwaveringly.] The system announced, informing me of a domain I was immediately making a priority of mine.


    [In order to gain influence over this domain you need to create things. Be they potions, weapons, buildings, or food. And you need to understand that as a god the things you create are going to be higher quality than they should be. Even the first time you create something it will be of a higher quality than it ought to be. Remember that.] My first friend revealed to me.


    My smile widened as I learned this. "So alchemy is something I should work to master huh?" I rhetorically asked myself.


    ________________________________________________


    "So you''re a druid who possesses some sort of innate skill at alchemy huh? It''s not particularly surprising that a druid possesses inborn skill at alchemy. I''d be a damn fool to let a treasure like you slip from my grasp." The old man said, sounding quite tired as he did so. That said, there was a grin on his face as he assessed me.


    "I kind of wish you possessed more physical strength, but... that is an acceptable flaw." Dr. Cortes mused, a mischievous grin on his face as he said so. I chuckled and nodded understandingly at his remark.


    "So are you saying that you want me to be your student?" I asked, a wry grin on my face. I could tell that there was visible excitement radiating out of my eyes. I was excited at the prospect of learning more about alchemy and about eventually gaining influence over a new domain.


    Dr. Cortes once again stuck his finger in my pestle and took a second to dig out some more of the paste I had created. He lifted it to his mouth and began to suck on the stuff, while slowly beginning to nod at me. I watched this curiously. I turned my gaze to the pestle in front of me and activated one of my new powers: Appraisal.


    [Appraising "Iron-Health-Paste"... Appraisal complete!


    Iron-Health-Paste properties: restorative (restores health), numbing (numbs pain), lowly addictive (small chance of those who ingest it becoming addicted to it, this is not normally a property of this item, it''s due to Althos'' corruptive influence that it possesses this property)


    Iron-Health-Paste basic information: This paste is the end result of sprinkling iron dust onto forest roots, and then smashing the roots into a paste. This iron-health-paste is needed to create basic health-potions. It is, in essence, a weaker health potion if ingested, but it also makes those who consume it feel sick, which is why it is refined into health potions.]


    My eyes went wide when I saw the "lowly addictive" property. Internally I chuckled as I read through it. And then Dr. Cortes began to speak to me.


    "In order to create a basic health potion you need to use fire to heat and melt this very paste. What you just created is known as ''Iron-Health-Paste'', and it is the... raw form of a health potion." The good doctor revealed, as his lips turned downward into a neutral expression.


    "Boy, can you produce the flames you produced earlier? They may just be suitable for our purposes." Dr. Cortes asked, curious as to if I could do it again.


    If I had to guess he was likely attempting to test how much magical energy I possessed. Otherwise, his question wouldn''t have made much sense. That aside, I nodded at him.


    "Good. Now we just transfer the paste you''ve created into an appropriate place." The doctor exclaimed, a smile once again appearing on his lips.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later the paste I had created was sitting inside of a wide-topped glass bottle. The glass bottle was suspended in the air by a set of tongs. There was a thick cork attached to the thing''s top. Dr. Cortes was looking at me, waiting for me to begin my magical labor. I didn''t keep the man waiting.


    I placed my finger directly underneath the glass bottle and activated my "Ember" spell. A thin but hot flame emerged out of the top of my finger and began to heat the bottle. The fire immediately began to heat the paste, causing the thick green sludge to begin to subtly shift.


    ________________________________________________


    It took a few minutes for my heated magic to finish its transformation of the sludge. But in time the fire played its part. Dr. Cortes and I were now staring at a warm bottle containing a healthy amount of sanguine-red liquid. Dr. Cortes studied it a lot more cautiously than I did.


    I merely activated "Appraisal" again and waited the few seconds it took for the power''s appraisal to be completed.


    [Standard-Health-Potion Properties: Restorative, numbing, minorly addictive (has a bigger chance of causing those who imbibe it to become addicted than the paste does).


    Standard-Health-Potion basic information: This is a standard-level health potion. It is created in the same way as a basic-level health potion but takes a higher degree of skill to create. It heals more than a basic-level health potion.]


    I was once more pleasantly surprised by this notification and chuckled when Dr. Cortes removed his goggles and looked hard at me after examining the potion. It turns out that he had bright, green eyes and the area between them was riddled in thin scars.


    "Hmmm... You did well with this. But I must confess... I don''t believe you don''t already possess some training in alchemy. That said, I am not a fool. If I want to discover the truth you are likely hiding from me I need to keep you close. Will you become my student?" The doctor asked, a glimmer of excitement radiating out of his eyes.


    I shot my hand out in the direction of the elderly gentleman and nodded. As I did so I began to speak.


    "Dr. Cortes, if you''ll have me as your student I''ll do my best to both aid you and to demonstrate the truth of my words. That said, I am hoping that I''ll become an even better alchemist than you seem to believe I am." I told him, accepting his offer. He chuckled and took my hand, shaking it with surprising firmness and energy.


    "Well, in that case... Given what you''ve shown me here, I will need to readjust my thinking on how to handle being your teacher. Come back in two days and then we''ll begin your training for real." He admitted, quietly revealing that he hadn''t expected me to be so innately skilled. I nodded at him, a wide and smug grin on my face.


    ________________________________________________


    I left the old man''s house a few minutes later. I received the pay the quest-request form had promised, and was now feeling more ready than ever to begin building my first cult and I even had ideas and the rough outline of a scheme swirling around in my mind about how to do so. I turned my face in the direction of the forest and began to walk towards it.


    As I did so, I made a request to the system. "Can you give me access to ''Shapeless One?'' I have an idea for how to handle the goblins, but I need ''Shapeless One'' to make it work." I asked in the confines of my mind.


    To my surprise I didn''t get the same answer as before.

 26 Strings Attached

    [You really want ''Shapeless One'' huh?] The system asked me, snarkily. I sighed but only because I detected a tingle of opportunistic gloating in the system''s inhuman voice.


    I was walking through the space between Comillas and the forest. This was a vast grassland that I was becoming increasingly familiar with. As I stepped deeper and deeper into this largely unclaimed territory I looked around at my surroundings and studied the farms around me.


    The farms that surrounded me were populated by a solid number of laborers; almost as many laborers were here as there were people living in Comillas. They were hard at work, and I watched as they deftly managed their tools, plowing into the dirt at their feet, watering crops, and spreading seeds at once mechanically and also with the precision of having done this work for years.


    "I do want access to my power." I confessed in the confines of my mind. I put an emphasis on the word "my", so as to stress that it was a power of mine that I had access to by birthright and not something that ought to be denied to me. I heard a gentle chuckle from the system at my remark.


    [You really do. We can tell. You''re the sort to be annoying about that. So... We''re deciding on how to best make a trade. How to have you perform a task for us, one that you may otherwise not be willing to do, and in exchange for the completion of such a task, we will see fit to unlock your power.] The system announced, proudly displaying its hand since it felt it had a superior position.


    I grimaced at this, annoyed at the arrogance the system displayed at this moment. But I also bit my tongue and quelled the part of me that wanted to speak out and tell the system to lose the attitude.


    I knew I could handle whatever it was going to ask me to do, and a part of me wanted to try and corrupt whatever objective I next received. I thought about it, as I strode in the direction of the forest.


    ________________________________________________


    The forest began to creep into view in the distance. I could see the outermost trees way off at the edge of my vision. The sun was still high in the sky, though it was now inching past its peak and beginning what would become a long, and painfully slow descent culminating below the horizon.


    I must have been walking for over half an hour, somewhat idly and not directly towards the forest. Some time had passed, and I was beginning to feel the full might of the sun''s rays on my skin. It wasn''t uncomfortable, but I definitely felt it.


    It was at that moment that I felt the system creep back into my mind. For the first time ever I actually had an almost premonition like understanding that the system was about to whisper to me. Curiously, I readied myself to listen to it.


    [So we''ve come up with an idea that we positively love. Which means that you will probably not like it. But hey, one day you''ll be in a position to do what you want with your powers, so just... just humor us, this one time, okay?] My strange companion said into my mind. I sighed and waited for it to expand on what it wanted. I didn''t have to wait long.


    [So here''s our idea. We want you to grow more familiar with using necromancy. Necromantic magic is seriously powerful, and we believe that it could a potent tool in your arsenal with regards to gaining worshipers. If you want to gain access to your power,] The system was trying to sass me back and put an emphasis on the word "your".


    [You need to do something simple for us. The necromancy subdomain is even being kind and providing you with early access to one of the powers you''d otherwise gain when you earned the lowest tier of influence over it. You need to animate three corpses. Once you do, we''ll unlock your ''Shapeless One'' power. Not a minute sooner. We''ve even gifted you with the potent necromantic spell that animates corpses just to speed this process along.] The system said, speaking sternly.


    At that moment I received a surprising and helpful notification. It sprang to life in my mind, like it was waiting for just the right moment.


    [Alert:


    You have just been granted access to a tremorsense upgrade. This upgrade comes in the form of the passive power belonging to the subdomain of ''necromancy''. The power is entitled ''Cadaver Collector''.


    Cadaver Collector allows you to detect corpses on your tremorsense mini-map. The symbol to detect corpses is a cross. For now, you either need to cast your magic through someone else, or be within sight of a corpse to raise it, but one day you might be able to just select crosses on your mini-map and raise them using powerful necromantic energy.


    You have also been granted access to the ''Create Undead'' spell. This is the second most basic necromantic spell that raises the undead and is guaranteed to work, unlike ''Reanimating Spark''. It allows for the creation of three types of undead beings. What follows this part of the alert is basic information about the sorts of creatures you can create.


    Zombie: Zombies are the lowliest of the corporeal undead. They are walking corpses that exist either to create more zombies or to follow and obey the commands of their creators. Zombies that come about as a result of unguided phenomena exist to create more zombies. Zombies that follow the orders of their creators are the results of magic or a specific divine power.


    Skeletons: Skeletons are the animated bones of corpses. These strange creatures are considerably more intelligent than zombies and possess a small amount of strange, innate, wisdom. When they are created if there was any flesh left on the bones that form their body such flesh immediately falls off their bones. Skeletons seek out weapons and armor and equip any such items they can find.


    Ghouls: Ghouls are above and beyond the strongest kind of undead the ''Create Undead'' spell can create. Ghouls are corpses that weren''t just animated but given a tiny spark of free-will and cruelty.


    These strange creatures not only intelligently seek out the flesh of the living, but they also possess the ability to infect living creatures with a feared disease that can kill and reanimate their victims as ghouls. Ghouls are known and feared for their immense hunger, but they are intelligent enough to form their own civilizations and distinct religions, though they are on the lower end with regards to undead sapience.


    Special notes:


    Undead created by you are not like other undead beings. Whether you create them with a spell or with direct application of unlife energy, the energy that animates undead beings, undead creatures you create are not only maximally ferocious, they are also highly intelligent and capable of growth.


    Undead you create you are capable of destroying. You can choose to cease animating them, which causes them to cease being undead, reverting them back into corpses. Undead they create, whether it is by conscious acts of destruction as it would be if they were victims of a ghoul attack or by unintelligent means such as perishing a day or so after surviving a zombie attack, are considered to be your creations as well and come into being under your control.


    At the moment any undead entity you create that is more advanced than a zombie, including skeletons, automatically worships you and possess greater intelligence. This is true to the extent that somethings you animate may become more intelligent in undead than they were in life. Once you become a skilled enough necromancer even zombies will come into being automatically worshipping you.]


    The final part of that notification was quite exciting to me. And I read it several times before the notification winked out of view as they usually did. After I read it, I began to scheme about how best to corrupt this mission and twist it away from what the system was intending.


    ________________________________________________


    I reached the edge of the forest, while my mind was racing. I was envisioning ways to twist this request on its head while still securing access to my power.


    "How can I corrupt this objective most effectively?" I wondered. I took my first steps into the forest and closed my eyes.


    It took my not-so-mini-map a few moments to spring into being in my mind. When it did I immediately noticed a few additions: numerous crosses littered the mini-map, and I studied them as I considered what to do.


    "I was never told that I had to kill things myself. Just that I had to raise three corpses from the dead." I muttered, beginning to formulate a way to fulfill the objective given to me in a way that I enjoy and that didn''t require me to go and inflict harm on something.


    "I could just... use these spells to transport bodies from one place to another. Or even to take meat from one place to another." I quietly uttered, a plan beginning to crystalize and come into being in my mind.


    It was at that moment, while I was studying crosses and beginning to birth a plot to advance my powers without violence, that I detected the first suitable corpse for my plan. As I mentally ordered an assessment of it, I began to smile as I read the information my power was providing me with.

 27 Raising The Dead

    [Cadaver Collector has enabled the detection of this corpse. Assessing the corpse... Corpse assessment complete. Creating a profile of the corpse.


    Species of the corpse: Red Stag


    Time since death: Forty-five minutes.


    Cause of death: Snake venom.


    Corpse condition: Adequate enough to become a corporeal undead. The corpse could be purified of the effects of the venom that killed the deer, or it could be left unhealed and any corporeal undead that its body creates would possess a potent and debilitating poisonous bite attack.


    Corpse Stats:


    Strength: 15


    Speed: 25


    Special abilities: Gore (Physical ability in which the creature attacks using its horns to impale enemies), Unstoppable charge (Physical ability in which the creature charges at an enemy, either missing completely or attacking with both its hooves and its horns).]


    Examining this notification brought a smile to my face. And the corpse wasn''t located far from me either. I began to move towards it, a grin on my face as I considered what I''d do when I eventually found the body.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later I was walking boldly through the forest. I wasn''t particularly paying attention to the forest itself on a physical level, and instead, I was walking guided by my mini-map. My mind was on my magic.


    [You have a new spell. Displaying it now.


    Create Undead: This spell allows for the creation of undead beings. This is the second least of the spells that allow for the creation of undead creatures, but your undead beings will always be the greatest examples of their kinds. This allows you to create zombies, skeletons, and ghouls.


    Note: So long as the corpse hasn''t been dead for longer than a day, you can channel healing energy directly into it to cause the skin and flesh on it to regrow and thus increase its suitability to becoming more fleshy forms of undead.]


    My grimoire was repeating what I already knew, aside from the tidbit about causing skin and flesh to regrow. But I didn''t mind it, as it was helpful for me to see the information once more.


    I found myself deep in the forest. Trees loomed around me, their leaves and branches obstructing much of the daylight that should have shone on the forest floor and illuminated it. I could smell an unpleasant scent on the breeze and assumed that it was caused by the body which I was on my way to transform.


    I wasn''t far from the corpse. And as I honed in on it, I began to fancifully imagine what it''d be like when it was resurrected. That said, I didn''t intend to grant the thing intelligence. I knew what I wanted to do with it. I mulled over my scheme and my goals with the corpse, while I moved towards the corpse


    ________________________________________________


    In the time it had taken me to dive deep into the forest, a scheme had come together in my mind. At first, it was only fragmented bits and pieces of a greater plot that I had to take time to weave into one subversive scheme. But now, thanks to the passage of time and an opportunity to focus my thoughts, it had come together. And quite beautifully at that.


    This scheme of mine came in two parts. The first part was the acquisition and unholy animation of three corpses that possessed an adequate amount of flesh and flesh in suitable conditions to be reanimated as zombies. I wanted large creatures, not small ones, to become part of a gift I was envisioning. A rather macabre gift, but one that was also delicious.


    The second part of my scheme required that I finish creating the gift I had envisioned. In doing so I would acquire my "Shapeless One" powers in full and be able to create a stunning deception.


    I planned to enter the goblin community bearing my gift: the shambling corpses of a trio of large creatures, animated by me. I would enter the place in the form of "Cosecha", my persona, and inform the goblins that I was a spirit who was offering them this gift of meat freely and then move to demonstrate my other powers to the hopefully awed goblins.


    There were a few wild cards that were likely to affect how well this scheme of mine may go. Chief among these wild cards would be the corpses I''d find. I hoped to find large corpses, ones with several kilos of flesh to be eaten.


    Another wild card would be whether or not the fact that I reanimated the corpses would cause them to be considered something I "created" and thus give me some influence over the goblins who eat their flesh. I hoped it would because the awe-inspiring nature of the scheme I had in mind made it a surefire way to gain significant influence over a considerable number of goblins and even their orc chief at once.


    Perhaps the final wild-card in play would be whether or not I had an opportunity to fully use my other powers to their fullest extent. If I had the chance to heal the goblins and then showcase that I could give them the power to heal themselves that might be enough for the little creatures to begin to worship me then and there.


    While I was scheming and thinking opportunistically, a small part of me was whispering to the other part of me. Its whispers were sinister and intriguing.


    ________________________________________________


    "I''m focused on acquiring living servants and worshipers, but I quite clearly heard the system say that undead that I create which are greater than zombies worship me." I mused, darkly.


    "I should at least be open-minded to the possibility of creating a cult of undead creatures who worship and revere me. The subdomain of necromancy seems like a potent one, and gaining influence over it would no doubt make me a stronger entity." I told myself, doing my best to keep my mind open to the possibility and the potent increase to my powers that would come with such an action.


    [It''s worth noting that such an action would no doubt serve to open up other domains and subdomains to you as well. If you did create a cult of undead beings you''d begin to slowly gain influence over things like death, souls, and evil.] The system added, chiming in while I was listening to a small voice in my head that was open to any means to gaining power. And it wasn''t done talking either.


    [Interestingly enough, if you wish to use Cosecha''s followers to create a cult dedicated to some version of goodness, you could gain influence over the domain of "Good" all while steadily acquiring influence over the domain of "Evil" with an undead cult. If you insist on clinging to this principle of not hurting unwitting living creatures, you could even just scavenge the already dead to transform into the undead needed for such a cult.] My companion admitted, begrudgingly. I chuckled at that.


    "Do my worshipers need to be humanoid, or in the case of undead beings come from humanoids to count towards my overall cult-building goal?" I asked the system, referring back to the deal it and I had struck earlier.


    [No they don''t. If you want to create undead from animal-corpses or even plantlife such an act is possible though you can''t turn trees and such into undead beings quite yet. In your case, you''ll need to become a necromancer before you can do such a thing. Which you''ll do when you reanimate your first living creature.] The system boldly announced. And then it added something to that announcement.


    [The term ''Necromancer'' is the name of a class. When you reanimate your first corpse you''ll gain your first level in that class. Classes advance when you go activities related to them, so as you reanimate corpses you''ll gain levels in the necromancer class. When you tend to nature you''ll gain levels in the druid class. And so-on and so-forth.] My companion revealed, causing me to smile.


    A small part of me wanted to learn more about tending to nature, so that I could improve my skills as a druid, but I was also deeply excited to gain another class. I was excited to expand my skill set and that overwhelmed my curiosity about powers I already possessed.


    Knowing that I was close to gaining access to a whole new set of skills made me move faster. It quickened my step and I sped towards the location of the corpse.


    ________________________________________________


    As soon as I was within sight of the corpse I began to study it. The thing was long. It was perhaps two meters long from tail to snout. It possessed lovely auburn colored fur, fur that was matted and dirtied now but I could tell was once clean and well-groomed. It also had long and fierce-looking horns, ones which seemed to absorb what little sunlight made its way through the top layer of the forest.


    The smell I had detected earlier was indeed coming from here. It hadn''t attracted predators just yet, but I could definitely smell it from a distance.


    It was the nasty smell of pooling blood and excrement mixing together. A nauseating looking mass of bile and partially digested food was situated not far from the deer, hinting that the thing had begun to move before collapsing and expiring where I found it. Blood was visibly pouring out of two thin bite-wounds barely visible on the thing''s neck.


    I kept approaching the creature, both cautious and excited as I inched closer and closer to it. It was dead, no doubt about it, but I still kept my approach slow and calm, or at least as calm as I could.


    When I was a few meters away from it, I stretched out my hand in its direction. I took a deep breath, and then I cast my "Create Undead" spell, focused on and aimed at the deer. A visible line of darkness shot out of my hand and flew until it collided with and then sunk into the corpse of the deer. When it did, I received a notification that was politely asking me a question.


    [Alert: You have successfully cast the ''Create Undead'' spell on an applicable target for the first time. You may reanimate the targeted corpse as a skeleton, a ghoul, or a zombie. Which would you like to resurrect it as?]


    I thought for a second as to which would be the best choice here. I genuinely considered how to approach this particular situation. But the choice was simple. I didn''t want to create something intelligent. Not just yet anyway. And I needed its flesh anyway. I informed the system that I was going to transform the corpse into a zombie.


    As soon as I did the deer''s body began to convulse. I watched as the thing began to stagger to unlife, but the first part of that was watching on in uncomfortable silence as the deer appeared to undergo a violent seizure.


    As it began to shake off the violent throes of the seizure it was in, I received a new notification. One that brought a delighted smile to my face.


    [Multipart alert: You have successfully reanimated one out of the three corpses needed for you to have upheld your end of the bargain with the system. You have also gained the interest of the subdomain of necromancy.


    To that end, the subdomain is offering you the quest it wishes for you to complete to prove you are deserving of being granted the lowest tier of influence over it. The quest''s objectives are simple: reanimate ten different kinds of creatures. Upon doing so, you will gain the first tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy.


    A special note about the quests to gain the first tiers of influence over domains and subdomains before we continue: These quests are meant to be simple. Domains and subdomains want you to become an all-powerful being who has mastered all of your powers. These quests exist to teach you about your powers, not to stand in the way of your progress. That said, quests beyond the first tier of influence over a domain or subdomain are not so basic. Keep that in mind moving forward.


    You are now a level 1 necromancer. As a level 1 necromancer, you can reanimate more sorts of dead things, in your case, you can now reanimate plants that have died. This expands the sorts of undead beings you can create, as plantlife doesn''t reanimate into zombies, skeletons, or ghouls.


    As a level 1 necromancer, you can also directly channel the sinister energy that reanimates corpses. Such energy is toxic to living creatures and if they are hit by it they suffer for it. You can also absorb the lifeforce of others, weakening them and sapping their strength. More details about this class will be revealed to you when you next open up your grimoire.]


    The notification vanished when I finished reading it. As I finished reading it I felt a strange and sudden surge of power flow into me. I knew via context that this was most likely my body immediately acquiring the power I was informed I was just given. It was an exciting sensation and caused me to close my eyes and sigh with a smile on my face.


    When I opened my eyes I laid them on my reanimated deer companion. While I was reading the lengthy notification the thing had the time to fully complete its reanimation and it now stood, both awe-inspiringly and terrifyingly in front of me.


    I studied it with an admiring gaze, examining the thing now that it stood before me.

 28 Class Features

    The now undead deer turned its majestic head in my direction and made eye contact with me. The thing had a neutral expression on its face and there was a distinct lack of emotion or intelligence in its brown orbs. While I was studying it, I received a new notification.


    [Alert: You can mentally issue commands to the undead you''ve created. You can do so by merely thinking of whatever you wish to order strongly and transmitting it to the creatures you are commanding like when you message the system, or by taking advantage of the new menu that you can access in 3... 2... 1...] The system announced, its voice alerting me to my H.U.D. right as a new symbol appeared on the left side of my sightline.


    The symbol was a skull with eyes that seemed to emit some sort of unholy light. The skull''s mouth was open in what looked like a stylized triumphant laugh. While I mentally examined the symbol I began to saunter over to the location of my creation.


    I reached it in less than fifteen, long steps. When I was close enough to touch the creature I reached out with my hand to touch the thing. I shivered when I made contact with it and realized that its skin was stiff and cold. The thing meekly looked at me, and there wasn''t a hint of intelligence in its gaze.


    I stroked the fur on the deer''s torso. It was stiff but less-so than the creature''s actual skin. However, as I moved my hand away the fur where I had touched fell off of the deer''s body in a hand-shaped clump. I stood in stunned silence for a second and made a mental note not to touch zombies whose skin I was intent on collecting. And then I issued my first order to the zombie.


    "Follow me." I told the undead thing, speaking to it mentally in the exact same manner in which I spoke to the system. I looked at it for a second, intent on divining if there was a change to the thing''s face. After a few moments of intense scrutiny, I was certain that there wasn''t. That didn''t prevent me from trusting that my command was received since I knew the system to be reliable even if it wasn''t exactly forthright.


    I closed my eyes and studied my almost instantly visible not-so-mini-map. I searched for nearby crosses, intent on accomplishing two things: finding more large animals to reanimate, and finding a number of creatures to reanimate who weren''t members of the same species.


    ________________________________________________


    I studied the map for a few seconds before quickly determining my best route forward. It was a lovely path that took me deeper into the forest than I had dared to go to date, closer than ever to the goblin settlement, but also into uncharted reaches near the edge of my mental map. I was quite excited to begin to trod down it as it brought me into contact with creatures I had never yet encountered.


    Some of those creatures were humanoids or creatures called fey. One of them was a thing called a satyr, and another was a goblin. But many of them were massive creatures, including something called a "purple-skinned spider". Knowing that I was about to bring such creatures back from the dead was honestly quite exciting.


    I turned to look at the deer who I hoped would travel with me, and began to walk backward. I kept my gaze on the creature, studying it stoically until it took its first few steps after me. It hadn''t looked at me until I got far enough from it for it to begin to follow me, at which point its head snapped in my direction mechanically and began to take dispassionate, almost mechanical steps towards me.


    I kept walking while facing away from the thing just to be sure that it was following me, but after a few seconds of watching it walk I was certain that it was on my tail. I turned back around and opened my grimoire by mentally tapping on the book-like symbol in my vision.


    [Good afternoon Althos, congratulations on becoming a level one necromancer! Displaying new spells under your control in 3... 2.. 1...


    Necromancer spells:


    Weight of the dead: This spell causes the effects of gravity on an affected foe to increase dramatically. It can be used to cripple a speeding enemy, to cause flying foes to be violently brought to the surface. It''s especially devastating for swimming creatures who can''t breathe underwater.


    Boneyard: This spell is only useable on enemies who are on the ground but when it''s used correctly it causes bony hands to suddenly spring out from the ground and grab enemies. It can paralyze enemies but it can also slow them down. Also, though normally the spell takes control of actual bony hands, when no such bones are readily available it instead conjures spectral hands that do the deed instead.


    Plant reanimation: This spell transforms deceased plants into eerie, loyal abominations that serve you unerringly.


    Hungry hands: This spell reanimates a specific body part: a hand. It can be used on hands that were just cut off, or on the hands of the dead. Reanimated hands than being to serve you just as any other sorts of undead would.


    Heal undead: This spell creates a spark of unlife energy that can be used to repair undead creatures and restore their health.


    Disease bolt: This spell fires off a bolt of energy that inflicts those who are struck by it with a random disease. This spell could play a role in enabling you to eventually gain influence over the disease domain.


    Class feature explanation: Class features are abilities that people possess through their classes. These are different from spells. Non-deities are limited in how many times they can use class features per-day, but deities aren''t. Class features are unlocked as you increase your class level.


    Necromancer class features:


    Unlife energy channel: This feature allows you to aim and remotely channel unlife energy. Unlife energy is the energy that animates corpses and other dead things into undead creatures. If you aim this energy at a living creature it saps away at their life-force. If this ability kills something the killed thing is automatically brought back to life as an undead creature.


    Life drain: This feature allows you to take health from another creature and either give it to yourself or give it to someone else. This power is handy for subjugating enemies.


    In order to level up the necromancer class, you need to use necromantic class features and reanimate various corpses and other deceased things.


    While we''re here, we''ll go ahead and inform you of your 1st level Druidic class features.


    Druid class features:


    Heal plants: This power allows you to heal plants. In your case, it actually gives your efforts to heal plants an innate increase to their effectiveness.


    Heal animals: Much like ''Heal plants'' this power gives your efforts to heal animals an innate increase to their effectiveness.


    In order to level up the druid class you need to use druidic class features and tend to nature.]


    Once I read through the lengthy notification it vanished from view, and I began to get closer and closer to the next corpse I was intent on reanimating.


    ________________________________________________


    After a few minutes of walking through the forest, avoiding the few hostile creatures my tremorsense could detect, and practicing my appraisal power on assorted plants, I was within view of the next corpse I wanted to raise.


    It was a positively enormous, purple spider, one with barb-tipped legs, and venomous ichor dripping out of its recently deceased maw, seeping into and despoiling the ground underneath the thing''s corpse. I stared at it, studying the thing before I rose my hand in its direction and quietly cast "Create Undead".


    A sinister beam of purple, unholy energy shot out of my hand and powerfully seeped into the massive creature in front of me. The beam was a long lance of energy and it felt different from the energy that shot out of me when I reanimated the deer.


    The beam was cold and seemed to sap both the color and the heat out of the air that surrounded it. It was an eerie and terrible sight, but also one that I found quite fascinating and lovely to look at. It was beautiful, in a dark sort of way.


    I had made a brave choice while I contemplated what to transform the purple spider into. I was creating my first worshiper. I was transforming the spider into a ravenous, and apparently pious ghoul. And as I did so, I was surprised to receive a notification that asked me an interesting question.


    [Alert: Since you are bringing something back as a ghoul, it will possess intelligence. Would you like for it to possess all of its memories? It will still worship you either way, and you''ll be able to communicate mentally with it no matter whether or not you allow it to remember its life.]

 29 New Companion

    I didn''t hesitate and informed the system that I wanted my new companion to remember its life. I heard a soft clicking noise in my mind as the system acknowledged my response.


    The beam that was emanating from my hand began to lessen in intensity, and the spider''s corpse began to slowly and stiffly move once more. Before my very eyes, its closed eyes began to slowly open once more. One by one, all eight of the orbs opened and then turned to gaze at me. As they did so, I felt something seep into me.


    I felt a powerful sort of emotional energy, a profound sense of relief, energy, and purpose surge into me. It was so immense and significant that I fell to my knees and had to take a breath, in order to be able to handle it. I was on my knees, not far from the arachnid horror my magic brought to an unholy mockery of life, when the thing completed the struggles that came with reanimation.


    [What you''re feeling is the sensation of gaining a worshiper. When your magic first began to surge into the spider you''ve now transformed into a ghoul it first revived the creature''s predatory mind, which was immediately inundated with information about you. The spider now worships you as the god that you are, and rightfully views you not only as its god but also as its creator and master.] The system told me, explaining that my magic was responsible for this.


    [Whenever you gain a worshiper, especially in the beginning you''ll experience sensations vaguely similar to this, powerful sensations that might even bring you to your knees and fill you with powerful emotions. It''s... a lot. We know. But there will come a time when you can gain a world of worshipers at once, and only barely feel a thing.] The system explained, informing me as to why I had fallen to my knees.


    [The spider views you as its master, god, and creator. Ghouls are one of the more pious types of walking dead, and as you grow in strength you may find yourself being the object of worship of entire cults of the things, even ones who''ve only heard of you.] My oldest companion revealed, slowly educating me as to the sorts of undead worshipers I could expect to gain in the years to come.


    [The emotions that you are experiencing are shadows of the sensations that your worshiper is experiencing. They pale in comparison to what the ghoul is experiencing.] My companion informed me, causing my eyes to widen. And this caused me to reflect on the powerful emotions my creation was emitting.


    A series of powerful emotions flooded my mind, coming to me from the ghoul itself. First, there was a reverence I had never felt before. A sort of incredibly loud and dynamic sense of awe. Then there was an... eerie version of love. An eerie and unholy obsession with pleasing me. And lastly, and interestingly enough most powerfully, there was a hunger.


    The hunger was incredible. It gnawed at the edge of my mind, and I could feel it in my throat. And I was experiencing but a sliver of it.


    "Is there anything I can do to quiet this hunger the ghoul is feeling? It''s... immense." I asked the system while staggering slowly to my feet. I looked at my strange companion and smiled.


    [There isn''t, at your current level of power anyway. That said, don''t give up. As a god, one who... we hope is seeking ultimate power, the key is to strive to improve your influence over the various domains and subdomains that exist out in the world.] My almost robotic companion informed me, a slight smile audible in its voice. I sighed and continued to slowly get back on my feet.


    Once I was back on my feet I walked slowly over to the creature and placed a gentle hand on its head. As I did, I received more notifications.


    [Creature analysis complete:


    This is the first time you''ve made direct physical contact with a creature who is both totally under your influence and also sapient. When you do that, one of the powers of your knowledge domain is that you''ll immediately learn about the creature''s powers and other vital information. The system has opted to award you by unlocking this power, the ''Creature Analysis'' power.


    Creature name: Chizi


    Creature type: Purple-Skinned Spider


    Template: Ghoul, Poisonous


    Abilities \u0026 Traits: Web-spinning


    Venomous (when Chizi bites or stabs someone paralytic toxin floods into them).


    Diseased (creatures bitten by Chizi begin to suffer from a potent sickness known as ''Ghoul Plague'' that has a 5% chance to kill them and resurrect them as ghouls under Althos'' control).


    Poisonous (Chizi wasn''t originally poisonous, but its transformation into a ghoul has made it poisonous. If someone ingests its skin, then are guaranteed to transform into a ghoul upon their deaths).


    Age: 15 years old


    Stats:


    25 strength


    28 dexterity


    24 constitution


    10 intelligence


    20 wisdom


    8 charisma]


    I read some of the information I was presented with and had questions about it. So, as usual, I turned my mind inward and prepared to ask a question to my old friend: the system.


    ________________________________________________


    "What are templates, and what are these stats that I keep seeing?" I asked the eerie entity that had both restrained me from accessing my power and thus far had frequently rewarded and encouraged my curiosity and nurtured my odd sense of adventure.


    [Templates are tools used by gods and other higher powers to categorize certain states of being. When you create a ghoul, you are not creating a ''type of creature'', you are applying a set of changes to an existing being. Even in cases when you are ''creating'' an undead being, most of the time you are taking a creature that once lived, that existed, and applying changes to it.] The system replied, addressing my first question first.


    [The stats that you see are quantifications, though admittedly shallow ones, of vital aspect''s of a creature''s physicality and the potency of their mind. Many of them are easy to understand, though the distinction between intelligence and wisdom might not be.] My companion began, before taking a second to consider how to proceed.


    [Intelligence refers to the act of gaining and processing information. Wisdom refers to the ability to apply that information to a range of situations. Intelligent creatures are not always wise. Charisma refers to one''s social skills as well as their attractiveness. Most undead are not very charismatic, though some creatures like vampires and certain kinds of magical undead are extremely charismatic.] My long-time ally told me.


    With that new knowledge in my mind, I smiled and refocused on my surroundings.


    ________________________________________________


    The ghoul-spider shivered as I patted its head. I grinned at the thing and studied it. Its eight eyes were now wide open and staring at me, with that same almost mindless awe that I felt and was still feeling.


    "So... how are you?" I asked my many-eyed minion. The thing blinked at me and stared at me somewhat vacantly before I suddenly heard a voice speak into my mind.


    "I am... alive? Well... that may not be the right word. I am... animated. And that is good. I am... good. I am Chizi." The creature said, its mental voice ringing into my mind in the same way that the system''s voice did.


    "Hello Chizi. It is nice to meet you." I mentally spoke, while physically chuckling. I transmitted my message to the thing, hoping that by mimicking the process I did when I spoke to the system I would be able to communicate with my minion silently.


    The spider began to bob excitedly and made a number of chittering noises. I grinned at it and motioned for it to follow me.


    Now I had two companions. One of them was my majestic deer, and the other was my eerie spider. I was on my way to collect one more, another deer, before I made my way in the direction of the goblins. As I did so, I continued to speak to my newest friend and first worshiper.

 30 Expanding Powers

    The forest path in front of me began to narrow as I walked down it, my companions right beside and behind me. Of the two creatures accompanying me, my more intelligent companion took up a bit more room than I did though which was doubly unfortunate since we were on a narrow path, as it was a massive spider and on a purely physical level I was little more than a regular-sized human.


    The sounds of its footfalls thundered and echoed through the otherwise still forest. All around us the forest hushed and grew quiet in the wake of our passing. It was interesting because as I was growing stronger and stronger my senses were slowly interesting their range and overall quality, so I was even more sensitive to their gradual vanishment then I would have been a few minutes ago.


    As we wandered deeper and deeper into the forest, I learned more and more about my wiser friend companion. "What do spiders normally eat?" I asked the thing, though I could guess at least a bit of the answer to my question just from looking at my friend''s maw. Sharp fangs protruded from my friend''s mouth, so large that they were visible even when its lips were as closed as the creature could force them.


    "I am a predator. A carnivore." Chizi replied, its voice entering my mind easily and naturally like it made perfect sense for us to engage in mind to mind communication. I wasn''t surprised to hear the thing declare that it was a carnivore. My next question wasn''t asked audibly, but instead was aimed at the system and was a physically silent one.


    "What sort of domains and subdomains are there for animals and nature?" I asked, my mental voice speaking in the "direction" the system''s own voice always seemed to come from in my mind. I was met with silence for a moment before I heard a reply begin to come from that same spot in my mind.


    [There are all sorts honestly. Nature is the domain that governs them all but animals and plants have a considerable number of subdomains. Some of them are ones like the subdomains of radiation, liquid, air, and earth. Serpents have a subdomain, reptiles have one, insects have one, fungi have one, fish have one, anthropods have one, and many more have one.] My incorporeal companion whispered.


    [Fungi have a subdomain, as you well know agriculture has one, trees have one, vines have one, flowers have one, and more have one.] The system explained, expanding my overall knowledge while also revealing a bit of the scope of the work I have to do to become all-powerful. I sighed but also smiled. I was now more knowledgeable than before and that mattered.


    My companions and I began to close in on the corpse I was moving us towards.


    ________________________________________________


    As we zeroed in on the body I was hunting down the forest ahead of us stopped tightening and instead began to grow wider. We had spent several minutes, close to half an hour, leisurely strolling through a tight forest path, and so I was excited to see us all get more wiggle-room.


    Ahead of us the trees began to thin out. I noticed it before we reached the area where it began to become visibly noticeable, thanks to my tremorsense power. It brought a smile to my face, as my pair of allies first stepped into the widening area beside and behind me.


    I was the first of the three of us to see the rays of sunlight that began to more easily penetrate the thinning canopy of the trees ahead of us. I stared at the area they brightly lit, and urged my companions onward with more speed than ever. The three of us hustled and moved with greater urgency than before.


    ________________________________________________


    We broke out of the forest proper before reaching the corpse I had set out to find. We were now walking through an opening in the forest where no treeline intercepted sunlight. And so we felt the warm rays of the sun heat our skin. And off in the distance, I saw it: the third corpse I had set out to find.


    It laid peacefully on some rocks. Blood had pooled around it and begun to dry under the constant heat of the sun. There were insects hovering around it, only visible as tiny dots to me and even that was only thanks to my slowly improving vision. I watched them whiz around the body, right before a notification buzzed into view in my mind.


    [Alert: The system has seen fit to award you access to your vermin subdomain powers. Unlocking those, or at least those of them are unlocked at the moment, right now.


    Details about the vermin subdomain:


    Though the subdomain of vermin is known as the subdomain of vermin an equally accurate label would be the subdomain of parasites. Vermin are all manner of creatures that are harmful or a nuisance to humanoids, and that includes parasites.


    To gain more influence over this subdomain, work hard to expand your swarm to include such creatures and when they begin to worship you, especially as you cause them to become sapient, steadily work to better the lives of the vermin and parasites who worship you.


    Vermin subdomain passive power:


    Vermin command: This power grants you the ability to command and control even entire swarms of vermin at once. This intersects with your ''Sovereign of the Swarm'' power and adds vermin and parasites under your control into the swarm unless they are sapient.


    This power also renders unintelligent vermin utterly uninterested in attacking you unless you attack first. You can use this power infinitely, and it applies to a range of creatures. You activate it by targeting the vermin you wish to command, and if they are susceptible to the power they automatically fall utterly under your influence.


    Vermin aura: This power is an auric ability that affects foes. Whenever a foe approaches you a phantasmal swarm of vermin and parasites phases into being a few meters around you and harries them.


    This swarm causes them to become nauseated and forces them to slow down or else risk tripping. An enemy of human size or smaller who trips is immediately and mercilessly devoured by your swarm. As you gain greater influence over the vermin subdomain and become a more powerful god, the range and strength of your aura will increase.


    Vermin subdomain active power:


    Vermin creation: This power allows you to create real vermin. Once every three hours, you can create up to five vermin. These vermin are unintelligent and exist to serve you. So far you can only create mosquitos, giant mosquitos, coyotes, rats, and giant rats. Meet more vermin and parasites to expand the sorts of vermin and parasites you can create.


    Followers and allies of yours can catch and eat these creatures and have their nutritional needs met and their hunger sated for a full twenty-four hours, as well as fall considerably under your influence. These creatures will fade into nothingness in a day, though they provide experience and physically exist. Any food they eat, or liquids they drink fill your stomach, especially at this unupgraded version of this power.


    This is a significant power and as your influence over the vermin subdomain increases and as you grow as a god the more you''ll be able to do with this power such as apply templates and mutations to the vermin you create, make them more often, make them intelligent, and even make them stop fading from existing after a day has passed.


    Vermin subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with a vermin subdomain blessing will either significantly increase their resistance to vermin and parasites, or greatly increases their stats if they are a vermin or parasite themselves. This power can also be used to awaken sufficiently powerful vermin and parasites, such as giant vermin and parasites whom you create with your powers.


    If you curse someone with this subdomain then they go from being nauseated when interacting with a number of vermin and parasites to being sickened automatically and they become fearful of swarms of the creatures.]


    After the notification vanished from view, I grinned and decided to test my newfound powers.


    ________________________________________________


    I ordered my companions to stay behind me and began to walk over to the deer''s corpse. As I did so, I rose my hand in the direction of the deer''s body and quietly began to visually scan the area around the corpse. I could see dozens of tiny insects flying around my future companion''s body.


    A quick usage of appraisal told me that there were over two dozen flies and two dozen mosquitos I grinned. I suspected they would be easy enough to transform into my minions and so I focused on them, mentally targeting each of them. Once I was satisfied that they were all being targeted by me, I sent out a single mental, forceful command.


    "Obey." I thought, pouring as much power and radiance into the word as possible before I shipped it out of my mind and into the minds of the creatures I had targeted. And then one by one the creatures stopped buzzing around the corpse of the deer in front of me. Instead, they began to hover around it and turned to look at me.


    "Come." I commanded them, speaking to my newest minions. I again began to walk, as a tiny cloud of variously colored insects began to lazily drift towards me. As I did so I laid my eyes on the corpse on the ground.


    Its flesh was rather disgusting, filled with puncture holes and partially melted by assorted digestive juices. It also looked to be turning a sickening shade of grey. I frowned at it, even as the cloud of servants I had just acquired reached me and began to surround me.


    The sound of their buzzing wings filled my ears now that they were all around me and the sight of their fat, swollen bodies filled my vision. I sighed at them, annoyed that they were responsible for this but grateful to have new servants, living ones, and also that I could tell that they were full.


    I examined them, my eyes focused on their anatomies, while I idly targeted the dead deer with my "Create undead" spell. I focused on their bizarre appendages and looked at their peculiar body parts which stuck out to me, from their surprisingly pretty wings to their long and fascinating legs. While I did this, I was going through the motions of applying a template to the deer.


    When I was asked by the "Create Undead" spell what type of undead I wanted it to be, I had to stop. I actually wasn''t sure myself.


    ________________________________________________


    "What to do with this one... I suppose I could just transform it into a skeleton. After all, my ''inventory'' ability should allow me to collect its fallen flesh, right?" I asked myself, and also the system.


    I was referring to what I had learned earlier about what happens a skeleton is created from a creature who has flesh attached to its bones: the flesh falls off. I heard a robotic chuckle in my mind and was immediately responded too by the system.


    [Hello Althos. Yes, you''d be able to collect its fallen flesh and stuff it into your inventory.] The system explained, causing me to sigh in relief. I immediately informed the part of the system that asked me to determine what type of undead being I was going to create that I intended to transform this deer into a skeletal deer.


    ________________________________________________


    The magic immediately took hold. The corpse began to shake violently, pushing itself off the ground, as bones ripped through flesh and began to labor to get up and stand upright. This was a much faster, much more bloody process than the other two times I had created undead creatures, and it was also much more satisfying to watch.


    Bones sundered flesh, causing even more blood to fall to the ground underneath and around the deer''s corpse. Organs and muscles were shredded apart, into little more than fine paste. A visceral sound filled the air as sharpened bone began grossly visible, covered in sanguine fluid and made me smirk.


    As I watched it unfold, I was immediately delighted to receive another notification. One that I felt powerfully empower me, even as the skeletal deer''s mind awoke and filled me with similarly powerful sensations as when I reanimated Chizi and transformed it into a ghoul.


    [Alert: You have upheld your end of the bargain the system struck with you. It is upholding its end. You have unlocked the ''Shapeless One'' wild trait. Congratulations!


    The ''Shapeless One'' wild trait is a particularly potent wild trait that allows you to shapeshift at will, into any form. This includes doing away with a physical form altogether if you wish, something that the old gods only could have done after decades of practice otherwise. You are now free to change your form as you see fit as well as create new forms altogether.


    Usage of this power helps you gain influence over the domains of chaos, and creativity and the subdomains of shapeshifting, lies, freedom, mutations, imagination, and falsehoods. It''s powerful and should be treated as such.]


    Reading the notification made me smile. I felt both far more powerful and far more free at once, even as the notification vanished into the recesses of my mind.

 31 Setting The Stage

    My skeletal stag companion walked unsteadily over to me moments after escaping from its fleshy prison. When it reached me it nuzzled its head against my chest, and I smiled at the thing, before lightly stroking its horns. I was unphased when I received a new notification.


    [Creature analysis complete:


    Creature name: Comet


    Creature type: Red Stag


    Template: Skeleton


    Abilities \u0026 Traits: Skeletal form (Spells that require flesh to work, fail to affect the skeletal stag)


    Vicious Charge


    Gore


    Unstoppable Charge


    Haunting Tracker (The skeletal stag is a tireless, and terrifying tracker. If ordered to track someone it will do so relentlessly and fearlessly.)


    Sleepless Sentry (The skeletal stag excels at being a guard, especially since it no longer needs to sleep. Putting it and other skeletons on guard duty allows for living creatures to get some shut-eye.)


    Corpse Stats:


    11 strength


    18 dexterity


    22 constitution


    10 intelligence


    12 wisdom


    8 charisma]


    I studied my newest servant even as the notification faded out of view. The thing''s bones were an odd shade of yellow and its horns were jet black. It had a lithe skeleton and one that was tall enough that its horns were taller than I was. I studied them for a second, before attempting to "will" my form to change, specifically my head.


    ________________________________________________


    I envisioned a pair of gigantic stag-like horns emerging from my head. I imagined their thickness and weight and opted to include that my neck and my head ought to grow thicker and larger as well to properly support them and not cause me to feel an annoying sense of discomfort.


    I took a deep breath and then attempted to "will" the horns into being, in the same way, that I "willed" magic out of me. Nothing happened. I chuckled and closed my eyes, before trying again. And once again nothing happened. I groaned in annoyance and mentally composed a quick message to the system.


    "Hey, I''m trying to activate ''Shapeless One'' and nothing is happening. What am I not doing correctly?" I asked, annoyed that even though I had access to a power I still wasn''t able to use it. I heard a mechanical sigh and almost chuckled as the system began to reply to me.


    [Hello Althos.] The robotic voice whispered into my mind. There was a tone of exhaustion in its mind that I could hear. It made me laugh internally.


    [The problem is that you aren''t actively targeting yourself. The power needs to know that you''re the target.] The system explained, causing me to sigh annoyedly.


    "Of course I''m the target. That''s just... dumb." I muttered, childishly annoyed at this lackluster explanation. But a second later I shook my head and focused on myself. I explicitly reenvisioned my head growing horns and I centered that image to the extent that I pushed away other thoughts.


    "I am targeting myself." I muttered, annoyed that I had to do this. But this time, something did begin to change.


    I smiled and felt my head grow heavier, even as my neck grew stronger to accommodate it. I felt a piercing but ignorable pain emanate from my head as the horns made themselves known to the world, but bursting out of my head. I allowed my hands to wander up to my head and was pleasantly surprised to find that the skulls I had wanted were now real.


    "So it does work..." I uttered, happily, as I ran my hands over the horns and tactilely memorized that they felt like.


    My horns were long things, designed for intimidation and to actually be used as weapons. They were impressively hard, resisting attempts by me to find the upper limit to their strength and ended in thin but sharp points, more than sharp enough for me to pierce someone with them if I felt like it.


    My horns weren''t ornate, spiraled things. They were instead long objects and outward-pointing extensions of my skull.


    Seconds after I did, some of my tiniest minions landed on my horns and settled themselves in a strange spot atop my head. It was hard not to chuckle at their almost cute actions, seeing as they were dozens of tiny insects who had decided to make me, their master, their temporary resting place.


    ________________________________________________


    My musings were interrupted when I received a mental message from Chizi my arachnid ghoul pet.


    "Sovereign, why have you taken on the appearance of a satyr?" The curious spider asked, referring to me by an unusual title but also my only title at the moment. Its voice filled my mind and startled me. I turned to my companion and cocked my head curiously at the thing.


    "You think I''ve taken on the appearance of a satyr?" I asked, expressing my words physically, while also injecting them into the creature''s mind. The creature nodded at me, bobbing its head up and down.


    "I see... What are ''satyrs''?" I questioned, having some knowledge of the fey in question, but only limited knowledge of them. The satyr corpse that was present in the healthy chunk of the forest I was in was between my current location and the goblin village, and having an understanding of satyrs would make the next part of my journey a bit easier.


    "Satyrs are... big, scary, goat-people. They look mostly human, but they have the legs of goats and genitalia of horses. They also have horns, like yours. They are wild, hedonistic creatures." My spidery friend and worshiper told me.


    And it wasn''t the only one to speak. I was surprised when my newest servant began to speak, the sound leaking out of the odd entity''s bony throat.


    "Master... Satyrs are powerful, surprisingly dangerous beings who use music and alcohol to lure mortal women and sometimes mortal men into their clutches. They live to indulge in sensual and sensory delights. They have powerful horns like we do, and wield musical instruments as well as any human wields a bow." The deer said, its voice oozing out of its unusual, fleshless body.


    "Well as it turns out, a Satyr is the next friend we are making today." I informed my companions, before removing my hand from the deer skeleton, smoothly collecting the deer''s fallen flesh, and turning in the direction of the goblin village.


    "Now come. Follow me ever deeper into the forest." I commanded, my voice making it clear that this was indeed an order. My servants nodded at me, behind my back, and then speedily trodded over to where I was. I grinned and chuckled as I heard the distinctive cacophony of noises that came from the small zoo I had magically made into my minions.


    I had hoped that I''d be able to reach the satyr''s corpse as uneventfully as I had reached the corpses of my new companions. I should have known that I had had it too good for too long.


    ________________________________________________


    The clearing I was in was a vast one. It led a vast part of the way towards the goblin village, and I had my next encounter with living creatures at its edge.


    As I and my tiny menagerie of followers bounded through the sunlit clearing we grew confident. We grew comfortable. That was why I didn''t turn around when my mini-map began to flash and alert me to nearby creatures. I inspected the mini-map, refusing to dismiss it before I gained an awareness of whatever sorts of creatures were approaching me.


    I tapped on the two figures that were closing in on the location of my party and I and I heard a familiar sound as my mini-map began to inspect the neutrally-colored circles that approached me.


    [Nearby neutral creatures detected. Preparing proper notifications... Scanning creatures... Creatures scanned.


    The detected creatures are two female ogres.


    One is a level five warrior. The other is a level one berserker. Both are currently calm but they are hungry and hungry ogres can become violent quite easily.]


    I quietly thanked the system for providing me with that information and decided to dig a bit deeper. I silently invoked my "Appraisal" power and was given even more knowledge about the creatures who appeared to be on a crash course with myself and my allies.


    [Alert: Appraisal invoked. Acquiring further information about the creatures in question.


    Names: Okig (Level five warrior), Iret (Level one berserker)


    Alignment: Neutral evil (This applies to both of them)


    Magic Sensing: The school of magic that would most resonate with Okig''s soul is healing magic. This is due to the warrior liking to torture her enemies and she would use healing magic to be able to heap more damage on those she tortures before they expire.


    The school of magic that would most resonate with Iret''s soul is evocation magic. This is because that''s the school of magic that is most innately destructive, just like Iret is.]


    The system suddenly cut itself off and fell silent for a moment. It was an eerie silence, in part because I couldn''t recall an instance like this before, and also because it was so sudden. It didn''t last long though.


    [Hey Althos, would you like to play a game?] The system asked, somewhat cryptically. I paused to consider what it was asking me for and began to develop a slight suspicion that I wouldn''t like whatever was on its mind. But I didn''t get the chance to articulate my skepticism before the system, probably sensing my concern, began to speak urgently.


    [This won''t require you to hurt anyone! We promise. We would like to teach you about sin, and so we''re prepared to offer you a deal. If you agree to make those two ogresses your playthings for a few minutes, we won''t ask you to hurt them, and we''ll even unlock access to the following subdomains and domain: corruption, earth, and minds.] My companion said, urging me to seriously consider it''s offer.


    ________________________________________________


    "Three subdomains and domains at once... That''s a heck of an offer." I thought, a sinister grin on my face. I liked the prospects of gaining some of the powers of three separate things at once, especially that particular trio. But I knew not to jump at this offer.


    "If such an offer is on the table... I honestly don''t know what I''ll be asked to do. Especially corruption. It''s in the name that it''ll involve some... questionable acts, to say the least." I muttered, secure in the safety of my mind.


    "But if I don''t take the offer, then the system may seek to retaliate at a later point for my overt rejection of its strange deals." I noted, aware of that possibility. I didn''t like the idea of earning the ire of the system.


    "There''s not much of a choice here, is there?" I asked myself, rhetorically. I sighed, silently, and then refocused on the situation in front of me.


    ________________________________________________


    "I don''t like the idea of you commanding me even more, especially since I don''t know what you want me to do, but I suspect that this is all a pretext and you''re just trying to assuage my pride since I highly doubt I actually have the ability to reject you right now. So I''ll accept your ''offer''." I told the system, speaking to it mentally while I continued my trek out of the clearing and towards the ogresses.


    I heard a soft laugh emanate from the system and then felt my very pores begin to radiate a strange mixture of both earthy and carnal power. My mind was again wracked by potent sensations, as my field of awareness expanded dynamically and quite aggressively. I fell to my knees, which only made the sensation stronger as my hands touched the ground to keep me steady and thus further linked me into the earth at my feet.


    My tremorsense was expanding aggressively, extending its reach like unholy, invisible tendrils plowing through the earth and in the instant I was touching the ground I could feel its relentless expansion, which was an odd sensation to say the least. This had the added and altogether positive effect of widening both my visible mini-map and no doubt explosively increasing the range of my not-so-mini-map.


    [Alert: As part of a deal struck with you just now the system is unlocking access to the subdomains of corruption and earth and the domain of minds, all of which you innately possess influence over. Powers possessed by these subdomains and domain are quite potent, and they affect your senses so they are doubtlessly significantly overwhelming. That said, you can handle this. Just take a second to breathe.] The system told me, attempting to offer me comfort.

 32 Two Subdomains And A Domain

    I followed the alert''s advice and began to slow my breathing. Behind me, I heard the sounds of assorted footfalls. They came from my companions who came up to me and huddled around me protectively. I chuckled and pushed them away, using just enough force to get them to realize I was fine.


    "I''m... alright." I muttered to them, speaking slowly but still speaking. They looked at me, their body language suggesting they were concerned, aside from my first creation, the zombie deer which was mindless and hung behind me. It was still following my original directive which was for it to follow me.


    I slowly got to my feet. As I did so I felt both my mini-map and my not-so-mini-map extending outward, unstoppably. It was an exciting, invigorating sensation. Not only were my powers growing, but my knowledge of the world around me was growing as well.


    My radar-like power was extending around and below me. Perhaps the most exciting development of the day, an already incredibly significant day at that, was that I gained incredible awareness of the world beneath my feet.


    Until a few moments ago my tremorsense only extended a few dozen meters underground. But as I was getting to my feet, I realized that the unlocking of some of my earth subdomain powers brought with it a significant expansion of my awareness of the world beneath me.


    My mind was gaining an awareness of what was basically an entire world beneath my feet, and this world not only existed beneath the forest, it extended all the way to underneath Comillas, which was now also within my tremorsense range.


    I began to study my expanding map and as I did so I received the longest and most exciting notification I have received to date. As it appeared I began to walk again, heading closer to both the ogresses I was to make my playthings and to the satyr corpse I wanted to reanimate.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The system has unlocked access to a pair of subdomains and to a domain that was innately influenceable by you but you were kept from influencing due to the tutorial. Each of these subdomains and the domain are all significant so this lengthy notification will try to summarize what you need to know as effectively as possible.


    Details about the earth subdomain:


    The earth subdomain is one of the four elemental subdomains, alongside fire, liquid, and air. It is a subdomain of the domain of nature, and it governs things like soil, rocks, stone, metal, and sand. All four of these elemental subdomains are incredibly powerful, even at their lowest tiers.


    The first tier of influence over the subdomain grants gods the ability to masterfully manipulate the ground at their feet, particularly soil and stone. To gain further influence over this subdomain one must work to earn the worship of creatures who dwell underground, who are made of earth themselves, and work to build things out of earth as well as use earth creatively.


    Sapient creatures who dwell underground include assorted types of reptilefolk, elementals, dark-elves, dwarves, and cavepeople. Communities of these entities are all reasonable settings for the worship of an earthen god to spring up and such gods are usually able to gain a reverential or fearful congregation of followers without all that much effort.


    Earth subdomain passive powers:


    Earth control: This is a dynamic power that makes you geokinetic. With but a thought you can control the earth under your feet and around you.


    You can move the earth with but a thought, harden or soften it, change its weight, cause minor earthquakes or avalanches, create and remotely control statues, or even gift someone earthen armor. This power''s potency is reliant on you and your creativity, as it can be used defensively, offensively, creatively, or destructively.


    Perhaps the most important aspect of this power is that it doesn''t have a range limit. Skillful and safe usage of this power is easily done using tremorsense. Oh, and your tremorsense is expanding and upgrading. It''ll do that again when you are freed from the confines of the tutorial.


    Its new range is roughly 15,000 square kilometers, which is bigger than the dimensions of the island you are on. That said, it''ll take hours for it to reach that range, this is to give your mind time to adjust to its new power and range without backlash. Keep in mind that if you become an overgod of the earth subdomain your tremorsense power would give you the ability to detect surface and subterranean life on entire planets in realtime.


    Petrification mastery: Petrification refers to magical or natural processes that turn organic creatures, even corporeal undead, into stone and effectively deprive them of freedom. You can now do that with a strike, a kiss, or even a baleful gaze. But you can also do more than just petrify something.


    You can command your stone creations, or the stone creations of other things like medusas, basilisks, or cockatrices, to attack, defend, or even do other things like self-destruct, which will kill the petrified individual. If you didn''t petrify the statues you''re commanding, you can even command them to attack their petrifier.


    You can also now cure creatures of petrification, even ones that have been magically petrified, which would otherwise be beyond your healing powers.


    Earth subdomain active power:


    Stone and soil generation: You can generate stone and soil that you can manipulate. You can generate up to 50 kilograms of stone and soil before your power needs to be recharged for half an hour.


    Create earth spirit: This power creates a weak earth-spirit that worships and serves you. This is a genuine, living earth spirit that is obedient to you and possesses lesser versions of your earth powers. This is an intelligent, truly living creature that does not dissipate. It can evolve and grow in power over time. You can utilize this power once a week.


    Spirits are immensely helpful to gods, and the spirit domain is one of the greater domains. If you become an overgod of the spirit domain, you can create spirits powerful enough to be comparable to your power right now. Among other things you can command spirits to serve your more powerful followers as loyal familiars, use them as cult leaders, or anything else you may need them for.


    There are similar versions of this power for the other elemental subdomains and for a few domains and subdomains.


    Earth subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Bestowing an earth subdomain blessing upon someone will improve their ability to craft items of stone and metal, increase their strength while both of their feet on solid earth, and improve their stamina as well.


    Inflicting a curse upon someone centered around an earth subdomain will lessen the quality of their earthen and metallic craftsmanship, and also make the ground beneath them both less stable and also fragmented, causing them to suffer from constant distractions while their feet are on the ground as they get poked and prodded by the earth at their feet.


    Details about the corruption subdomain:


    This domain is effectively one of the children of the domain of evil. It is a malicious, destructive subdomain that encourages non-deities to indulge in their base desires. It is the subdomain that controls sin and temptation. Each tier of it is immensely powerful and grants numerous powers to those who gain influence over it.


    This subdomain has seven tiers of influence. Upon gaining each tier of influence a deity selects one of seven vices, a particularly powerful, gateway sin, and gains immense power over that particular sin. The exceptions to this rule are the deities who are born neutral or evil, who come into being possessing a vice already. In your case, you have innate power over the sin of lust.


    At each tier of influence over the subdomain, you gain new powers related to the newest sin you''ve added to your inventory of sins and corruption overall, and the powers granted to you over other sins also improve in potency and usability.


    Creatures who succumb to corruption fall under your influence as thoroughly as those who eat your food. Their minds are opened to your might and as they view you as a provider of pleasures, sexual or otherwise and revere you.


    To gain increased influence over the corruption domain you have to corrupt creatures and eventually build corrupt cults.


    Special note about gateway sins:


    The following sins are known as the "vices", the potent gateway sins; lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, pride, envy, greed. These are among the most potent sins because they lead to other sins. No one would say that lust is worse than murder, another sin, but lust can lead someone to commit murder. That''s why the vices are known, in some circles as the gateway sins.


    Special note about the sin of lust:


    Lust is often conceptualized as a sin that revolves around immense physical desire, specifically the desire to engage in sex. This is definitely part of lust, but lust as a sin revolves around immense and uncontrolled desire altogether, not just a desire for sex or sexual acts.


    If someone has an immense desire for a sword, they are experiencing as much lust as someone who wishes to fuck another person with all of their heart.


    Corruption subdomain passive powers:


    Heart of corruption: This passive power allows you to detect a creature''s personal vice, the gateway sin that most resonates with someone''s soul. Usage of the powers related to the personal vice of a target makes a creature far easier to thoroughly corrupt.


    Corruption infusion: This power allows you to infuse corrupt energy into food. If creatures eat corrupted food they are not physically harmed, but they become less resistant to temptations.


    Lustful aura: This is an aura that affects anyone attracted to males independent of their species and makes them either less hostile or more friendly towards you. You can also use it to invade the minds of those in range and discover what they desire, not just sensually but also in general.


    Any neutral creatures affected by this aura view are easier to persuade to become your friends and find any propositions made by you difficult to resist. Any hostile creatures who are affected by the aura are easier to calm down and persuade to cease fighting. Becoming a greater god and gaining greater influence over the subdomain increase the range of your aura and its potency.


    Velvet voice: This power makes your voice, even your mental one, a luxurious and sensual weapon and a useful tool in your arsenal. Creatures who hear your voice, be it physically, mentally, or even in their dreams, feel it on their skin and it lingers in their minds. Weak-willed creatures, and unintelligent creatures, can become charmed or even dominated by the sound of your voice.


    Addiction and fetish infliction and curing: You can cause someone to become addicted to something. Addictions are psychological compulsions that if ignored cause people to experience withdrawal. Some examples of this include: you can make someone addicted to a certain behavior, to a certain sensation, food, drug, and other things. You can also cure someone of an addiction.


    You can cause someone to have a particular fetish. Fetishes are a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to a certain fashion, behavior, part of the body, etc. As an example, you can cause someone to have a fetish for a specific species, a specific hair color, or a sexual dynamic. You can also cure someone of such a thing.


    You gain knowledge of someone''s fetishes and addictions at a glance.


    Incubi and succubi caress: You gain the seductive powers of succubi and incubi.


    When you are kissed or embraced or you kiss or embrace someone they experience blissful, bodily and mental pleasure and are left drained of strength and will for it, their strength and will entering and empowering you instead. The drain is temporary and lasts for a day. That said, the power can affect someone more than once a day.


    The sensation is addictive, and those who experience it once tend to want to experience it again, over and over. This power can corrupt someone over time and it can also kill over time if you will it.


    Corruption subdomain active powers:


    Gratifying gaze: This subdomain makes your body a powerful tool and this active power embodies that. Usage of this once an hour power makes your gaze a trap and dominates those whose eyes meet yours. Dominated creatures serve you willingly and obey your commands, experiencing sexual fulfillment while doing so.


    Whispers of corruption: This once an hour power uses your velvet voice to corruptively whisper in the ears of a target. It whispers sinful and corrupt things into their minds and lessens their ability to resist corruption for three hours.


    Inhibition remover: This once a day power temporarily destroys someone''s sense of inhibition. For an hour they are unlikely to say "no" to offers to experience new sensations and are more suggestible then they''d otherwise be.


    Lust: This once an hour power allows you to immediately learn something that someone desires.


    Corruption subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with a corruption-centered blessing is unique in that the precise effects can be picked by you. Since you control lust and addiction, you can improve someone''s ability to inflict lust on others, effectively increasing their charisma.


    Your blessing can also cause someone to become immune to the symptoms of sexually spread diseases. Just the symptoms. Or you can use your blessing to give someone the ability to learn another person''s fetishes, addictions, and desires at a glance. In time you''ll gain a wider range of blessing options related to corruption, vices, and sins.


    Cursing someone using corruption increases the likelihood they''ll gain a sexually spread disease, increases their vulnerability to lust-based abilities, makes their addictions worse and harder to cope with. It also renders them more vulnerable to your lust based abilities. This''ll also increase in diversity as you gain more influence over the corruption subdomain.


    Details about the mind domain:


    This domain governs intelligence, wisdom, thoughts, memories, secrets, and psychic abilities. It is an extremely potent domain, a greater domain even among the greater domains. This domain, mixed with the knowledge domain, provides you with a synergistic bonus that boosts your ability to process information. Basically it makes your mind faster.


    Each tier of influence over this domain grants you a psychic power that you can bestow upon other creatures, aside from the first domain which grants you three psychic powers. To gain influence over this domain you must powerful powerful acts using your mind, and you must increase not only your own intelligence but also the intelligence of other creatures.


    Mind domain passive powers:


    Mind-link: You gain the ability to tie minds together. These minds can communicate with each other over infinite distances and can ignore language barriers that would otherwise limit their ability to communicate. This includes your mind as well, which you can easily link to other creatures.


    You can do this across vast distances, and don''t even need to have seen the creatures whose minds you are linking to do so successfully. Usage of this power doesn''t alert those whose minds are linked to the fact that their minds are now linked, though clearly you can tell them or you can be sneaky and only tell one of them.


    Telekinesis: Telekinesis is the ability to manipulate objects and creatures with your mind. You can move objects and creatures without touching them by mentally willing them to move.


    You have no limitations on your version of this power, and can bestow a lesser version of it upon mortals at will and you can also take it back as freely as you give it away.


    The version of this power that mortals acquire allows them to only move one object or creature at a time, and it can only weigh half as much as they could lift with their limbs. As you gain more influence over the mind domain you''ll gain the ability to modify and eventually even remove these limitations altogether.


    It''s worth noting that currently, no telekinetic mortals exist anywhere in this universe. When you grant someone this power, they''ll become the first mortal in this universe, to be able to do this since the end of the age of gods, the era in the ancient past wherein gods existed.


    Mind-reading: You gain the ability to read minds. This is only surface level at the moment and you can''t dig up old thoughts for that is a power granted to you at a higher tier of influence over this domain but you can read someone''s loudest thoughts at will.


    Mind domain active power:


    Inflict unconsciousness: This once a day power allows you to inflict unconsciousness on a target. If you will it someone can dream during this period, but unless you make them dream they won''t. This power causes them to be unconscious for an hour at most in its current state, though you can use dream domain abilities on them that could extend the length of their unconsciousness.


    Mind domain blessing and curse details:


    Bestowing a blessing upon someone while focused on the mind domain enhances any psychic powers they may have, increases their intelligence and wisdom and improves their memory.


    Cursing someone with a mind-domain centered curse weakens their mind, temporarily lessening their intelligence, stripping them of any psychic abilities they may have, and weakening their memory.


    Additional note: Your senses are getting an upgrade. Deities possess senses that are incomparable to those of mortals. Your sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell are being upgraded to reflect that. It won''t be immediate, but when it''s finished you''ll know. You''ll get another one when you are freed from the tutorial.]


    ________________________________________________


    It took me several minutes to read through that immense wall of text. It took me long enough that by the time I finished reading it, I was actually back in the proper, tree-lined forest and not the nice clearing I had been in. The moment the notification vanished from view my tremorsense was still expanding, both downward and in a full circle around me.


    I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to be overtaken by my now even more expansive not-so-mini-map. For the first time ever as I was able to see the map as my eyes closed. It was pleasantly exciting to not have to wait for the map to appear.


    My overall knowledge of the world itself, something I didn''t possess much of if I was being honest, expanded as I studied the animated map. Before my eyes it was continuing to expand in almost all directions, revealing new things to me.


    A simple study of the map gave me plenty of new information because the map was changed. Before now the thing had been a static image of my surroundings, a two-dimensional space lined with dots of various shapes and colors but no words, and definitely not the strange thing I now stared at.


    Now the thing was three dimensional, allowing me to see things like mountains and hills beyond the forest, as well as trees. Where this really mattered, however, was with regards to the upgrades to the map. One of them was that my map no longer had dots in lieu of people, animals and creatures.


    The most immediate upgrade to my map was that now I could see things in it. And it wasn''t just natural features that I could see. I could see the outlines and silhouettes of actual creatures and buildings. They were faint, but they were mobile and more than that they had words beneath them as well.


    Right beneath someone''s outline, I could see three lines. One of them was formatted in the following way: "Name:" and then revealed that creature''s name. Beneath that line was a line that said "Species:" and then revealed the creature''s species. The final line was the most complicated. It read "Status:" and revealed someone''s overall health and any major conditions affecting them.


    All in all, in the range I could detect, which continued to expand, there were over one million living entities. A number I could barely wrap my mind around, especially since even though a plurality of them were insects, there were still over 400,000 humanoids and other living creatures. The number of corpses was far bigger, and it delighted the part of me that enjoyed using necromancy.


    But remarkably, that mind-blowing revelation was far from the only thing I got to learn. My new not-so-mini-map showed me the topography of what lay underneath me.


    For the first time in my life, I could clearly see the world underneath my feet. I could see the composition of the soil and stone under my feet. And I could see more than just that.


    I could see the strange, underground secrets my ignorance had blinded me too. I could see tunnels and caves, and I learned that Comillas wasn''t the only place with artificial buildings. My mental map revealed the existence of a number of strange and alien settlements deep underground.


    These settlements were heavily populated by the sorts of creatures that the earth subdomain''s notification had mentioned: dark elves, dwarves, and reptilefolk. The outlines of the dark elves were lithe, the dwarven outlines were short and stocky, and the reptilefolk outlines varied in their shapes and sizes. And it was at this moment that I realized I was using another upgraded function of the not-so-mini-map.


    I no longer had to consciously study the massive map to understand it. My ability to process information was far faster than before, and I had an overall understanding of the map with but a quick study of it.


    Of course, I wasn''t so skilled as to be able to divine specific information without conscious study, but even my ability to generally understand the massively upgraded display was incredibly helpful since my map was so different and bigger than it had been a few minutes ago.


    It was at this moment that I opened my eyes. The ogresses were now close enough that I could visually detect them. I laid my eyes on them and readied myself. They were almost a kilometer away, walking towards me.


    I smiled and began the difficulty process of deciding how I''d most enjoy playing with them. After all, I now had many more tools to use on them than I had a few minutes ago, and the curious part of me was dying to experiment with the divine powers I now possessed.

 33 The Ogresses

    The ogresses were walking in the direction of myself and my allies. They were large, unpleasant looking women, one of whom stood around three and a half meters tall and the other of whom was closer to five meters tall.


    They had saggy, beige-colored skin, and wore shoddily made fur armor. The shorter ogress had light brown hair that was cut short, and the taller one had long black hair that flowed down past her shoulders. They each had the corpses of small animals slung over their shoulders, freshly killed small animals whose blood was dripping onto the armor they wore.


    The women had arrogant expressions on their faces and seemed to project an air of unearned and untested confidence. There was a tiny part of me that wanted to wipe those looks off their faces, and it was surprising to me but I was easily able to ignore it.


    They carried what appeared to be handmade stone clubs, which dripped what I assumed was blood, and had lazy looks in their bark-colored eyes. They couldn''t see me yet, as I was roughly half a kilometer away from them.


    This was because I was also approaching them. However, the distance coupled with the fact that my followers and I happened to be in a darkened part of the forest, added to their inability to see us.


    I studied them, inspecting their lazy but confident saunter, their amateurishly made armor which was even at a glance probably more effective as clothing than as armor, and their brutish demeanor. It was at this point that I asked the system a question.


    "You said you wanted me to make those creatures my playthings. Care to expand on that?" I asked my oldest companion, as I studied the two women that I was approaching. I heard a soft, robotic chuckle in the back of my mind.


    ________________________________________________


    [You are an interesting god. So far many of your actions could be described accurately as good actions, morally speaking, even if your motivation itself isn''t good. Ogres and ogresses are evil creatures, violent, malicious, and sinful. We want you to make them your servants. So you can begin to gain evil allies who aren''t the undead.] My friend told me. I had never "heard" an evil grin before, but somehow I could almost hear one in the entity''s voice.


    [You see... gods are influenced, subtly, by a number of things. Chief among those influences are the influences of the domains and subdomains a god has influence over. You''ve sort of begun to learn that already. But another thing that influences gods are the worshipers a god has. This is a much quieter influence, but it''s still worth noting. We want you to have worshipers of all alignment types. Having evil, living worshipers, matters. But this isn''t really about that.] The odd entity declared.


    [We are not asking you to make them your worshipers. Not yet anyway. The purpose of this is for you to experiment with your powers, use them on and amaze mortals, and begin to build an awareness of who you are. We are quite curious to watch the events of the next few minutes unfold. Give us a good show, would you?] The system asked, teasingly.


    I nodded, a grin on my face. That said, now that I had asked one question, I figured I ought to ask others. One other, specifically.


    "What are succubi and incubi? One of my lust subdomain powers mentioned them." I asked, curiously.


    [Succubi and incubi are demons. They are demons of desire, succubi have a feminine true form and incubi have a masculine true form, though both species possess incredible shapeshifting power. They possess lust-based and dream-based abilities. You were born with lust and dream powers so there''s a strong chance they''ll recognize you as a god, maybe even of theirs, when you eventually encounter them.] The system explained, satisfying my curiosity.


    I refocused on the scene in front of me and urged my companions onwards with renewed vigor. There was a smile on my face that spoke to a small amount of excitement and curiosity I felt, which was growing with each step I took towards the ogresses.


    ________________________________________________


    I was silent as I approached the ogresses. My companions were also silent. We glided through the forest, the only noises coming from us being the eerie noises of our feet falling on the grass and dirt beneath us.


    My skeletal stag remained a bit behind us. It was as if the thing was hiding. Eventually I opted to ask it about that, speaking mentally to my companion. "Why are you behind us?" I asked it, using my necromantic connection to the thing to facilitate the communication.


    "Because I am different from you. I am obviously undead. The other two are not obviously undead. This way if a living creature spots us it won''t be immediately hostile." The creature explained, demonstrating the intelligence I had heard that skeletons possessed. I nodded as I considered the thoughtfulness of its answer, grateful to have such an intelligent servant.


    The ogresses noticed us when we were about 15 meters away from them, and they stopped moving and began to study us. I took that as an invitation to approach and could finally smell the creatures. When I first sniffed the air close to them, an unintentional reflex, I felt immediate regret.


    The air around the ogresses smelled rancid. They had unwashed skin and were covered in the blood of what was most likely their most recent kills.


    I was the only one of my companions who could smell, as I was the only one alive, and my enhancing ability to smell only served to make this a worse experience. Fortunately, the smell quickly lost its intensity, and after a few seconds ceased bothering me altogether.


    I stopped walking towards them when both of our groups were about 7 meters apart. I stopped, and my followers stopped. A silence descended over the six of us. That silence didn''t last long.


    "Who are you?" One of the ogresses, the one named Iret, asked. I turned to her and grinned. I activated "Apprisal", targeting both of them and waited for the informative notification to appear before I said anything to them. I focused on the new information I would gain, not what I already knew.


    ________________________________________________


    [Personal vice: Pride (Okig), Lust (Iret)


    Fetishes and addictions: Okig is a straight, dominant ogress who enjoys humiliating her underling. She enjoys tormenting the young berserker and almost feeds on the fear Iret feels, especially since Iret is a berserker and dangerously powerful physically. Okig feels superior to her underling and is addicted to the wails of pain that Iret emits when she gets beaten.


    Iret is bisexual and she is secretly quite submissive. Her massive size intimidates many other ogres near her. This has caused her to develop a size fetish as well that renders her more vulnerable to advances made by men smaller than her and women larger than her, though no such women in her tribe exist.


    She hates Okig with a passion and would do anything to get to beat her without fear of serious, violent consequences.]


    ________________________________________________


    The notification vanished as quickly as it had appeared. And the ideas it inspired were loud, violent, and more than a little evil. But I had made a deal, and I could feel the different domains and subdomains in my mind clamoring for influence, providing quiet, whispered, tips and urging me to support one scheme or another. It made my grin turn a little bit malicious.


    I looked at the ogress'' and studied them. Up close I could make out their curves, and study the way their bulging bodies pushed up against the clothing they wore, stretching and stressing it. A not small part of me wanted to walk over to them and take my time familiarizing myself with their bodies, especially Iret''s body.


    I wasn''t sure if this was because a part of me lusted for them, or if this part of me was driven by curiosity and maybe even a necromantically influenced desire to make them zombies or ghouls. I suspected it was the result of a combination of different domains and subdomains influencing me as well as my own genuine curiosity that instilled this strange, but not unpleasant desire in me.


    I fell silent and activated my faith domain ability, "Religious Fervor". A blue vapor began to emanate out of the ground underneath all six of us. It engulfed the area around the ogresses'' in particular.


    I took a second to think and to focus. I was about to speak and I wanted to project an air of might and authority. I wanted them to feel my power, to feel it around them, and to desire to experience more of it. I was silent while I did this, and right before I opened my mouth to speak I attempted to infuse my voice with the pride I assumed a god should feel.


    "I am Althos. And I am a god." I declared, speaking as haughtily as I could. They looked at me, silently for a second, and then both of them began to laugh. This annoyed me. But while they were laughing they both inhaled some of the blue vapor that surrounded them. And this made me smile.


    The sounds of their mutual peals of laughter were loud. They were also deep and rumbled through the forest that surrounded us all.


    While they were laughing, I turned my angered, hateful gaze on Okig. I stared at her chest, not her breasts but her actual stomach. I focused hard on it, narrowing my eyes as much as I could. And then I envisioned the area I was staring at turning to stone. When I did I received a notification.


    [Alert: Would you like to turn the ogress, Okig, to stone?] The system asked me, causing a cruel smile to appear on my face. I mentally informed it that nothing would make me happier than for her to turn to stone.


    A split second later Okig stopped laughing and gasped as she felt something strange happen to her. I watched as a strange gray substance, what I knew must have been some sort of stone, began to appear over her skin. It didn''t start at her chest, rather it started at one of her unarmored hands but it moved fast. Iret stopped laughing as well and watched as her companion''s skin was overtaken.


    Iret was silent, her eyes filled with fear, as Okig began to cry out in terror as the stone overtook her arm, and then aggressively spread over the rest of her body. The only thing that caught me, the source of her petrification via a so-called "baleful glare", off guard, was that the stone seemed to save her head for last. That gave her time to continue to cry out in shock and horror, which suited me fine enough but was also a pleasantly cruel and unexpected surprise.


    By the time Okig''s head was also entombed and made into a strange statue, Iret was scared out of her wits. The woman turned to me, and her eyes were fear-filled saucers. I grinned and began to approach the statue.


    I studied the thing and was surprised to note that the animals Okig had slung over her shoulder had also turned to stone. They made surprising additions to the "art" I had just created.


    "Stay." I mentally commanded my minions. They obeyed me, but I suspected that they kept their eyes glued to Iret, in case the still unpetrified woman mustered the bravery to try and do something to me. I doubted she would though. As I approached Iret, I received a notification that let me know something delightful.


    [Alert: You are now close enough to the ogresses that your auric powers are active. Okig is petrified so she is temporarily unaffected by your powers, but Iret isn''t.] The system alerted me, causing me to relax and be assured that this was going as perfectly as possible.


    When I was close enough to the statue to reach out and touch it, I instead turned to Iret. "Hello, Iret. Would you like to play with the statue?" I asked, her eyes locked on hers.


    "You can do anything you want to it. If you agree to my terms, first, that is." I said, my voice lingering for a moment on the word ''anything''. It sounded lecherous due to the innately sensual nature my voice had taken on thanks to the influence of lust, but what I had been hoping was that it would sound like was an opportunity to inflict violence on a helpless target.


    Iret stared at me, terror still visible in her gaze. I sighed, disappointed by her lack of initiative. "Well at least you aren''t running. That''d be unwise of you." I said, grinning smugly at the ogre. And almost as if I had just given her an idea the ogress turned around in a deft motion and sprinted into the woods.


    I chuckled and asked the system a question. "How do I activate ''Earth Control''?" I asked my first friend. My tone was equally curious and malicious.

 34 Submission Mildly NSFW

    [To activate your ''Earth Control'' power, merely will the earth beneath your feet to listen to you. You are a god.] The voice of the system entered my mind quickly, reminding me of who and what I was, presumably to explain why this might feel easy. I listened to its mechanical instructions with a casualness that would have probably been off-putting for a mortal. I nodded and closed my eyes.


    I ignored the not-so-mini-map which sprang into being immediately as my eyes shut. Instead, I focused on the ground beneath me and imagined it bending to my will. I imagined it being subservient to the one who was, in essence, its master. I imagined the earth greeting me as a domesticated animal would greet the human or humanoid who took care of it.


    I focused on that mental picture for a few moments before I willed the earth beneath my feet to jut upward a meter, creating a platform for me and then scoot forward.


    I was pleasantly surprised when it obeyed me, and I felt the ground under my feet seem to come alive. The patch of forested ground I was on suddenly visibly rose up and proceeded to dash forward, allowing me to effortlessly speed on a strange, organic platform towards the ogress who was trying to flee from me. I chuckled as I began to give chase to the woman.


    I willed the thing in her direction but turned my gaze downward to examine what was now speeding me towards the terrified ogre. I stood atop a strange platform composed of soil and stone. Directly underneath my feet was a rolling platform of soil, pebbles, and larger rock. I was perfectly balanced atop it, and the thing moved with surprising speed.


    ________________________________________________


    As I was ushered towards the speeding ogress I took a few moments to ask my companion another question. This one was an idle curiosity I had thought about while on my way to the ogresses but one that I didn''t have the time to question then and there.


    "So... undead can worship gods, which makes me wonder would about the metaphysics of the undead. Are there any differences between worship received by mortals and worship received by the undead?" I inquired, hoping to begin to understand the differences between creatures a bit more.


    There was silence on the other end of the mental "line" that tied the system and I together. It took the thing a few moments to reply to me, moments during which I was stoically conveyed by the very earth itself towards my quarry.


    [It is... incredibly difficult for undead worshipers to grant you progress towards good domains and subdomains. Many types of undead also can''t help you gain influence over domains and subdomains that require or reward independent thinking. And lesser undead do not have souls, which you''d think would be a bigger deal than it actually ends up being given the countless treatises mortals have written about souls.] The system explained, taking on a scholarly tone as it spoke.


    I nodded, the movement quick and appreciative as the system wrapped up its explanation. "So what sort of undead creatures exist?" I asked, taking this downtime as a way to begin to build my knowledge of the nature of undeath.


    [Plenty. Some of them are really weak though. Those are things like the creatures you know as ''Hungry Hands'', zombies, skeletons, shadows, and bloody bushes. Greater undead creatures, monsters like ghouls, ghosts, mummies, and liches also exist. But the truly great undead are creatures you can''t yet begin to imagine. You just have too little experience in the world to be able to wrap your mind, as it is, around them.] My companion revealed, teasing me a bit at the end.


    I chuckled and took that as a polite way of telling me that I needed to work to gain more knowledge and experience. I rolled my eyes at the thing and refocused on the scene in front of me. I was going to learn about those mysterious greater undead one day.


    ________________________________________________


    Iret was dashing through the forest, her steps crushing leaves and roots underfoot. She was fast, faster than one might have thought possible given her size, but nowhere near fast enough to escape me. In moments I was on her trail, my ability to reach her made even more efficient by my mini-map tracking her in real-time.


    "Hello once again." I said to her, as I stood motionless on my mobile platform. I heard her gasp out in terror, her heartbeat becoming a terrified and explosive noise as she realized that I had effortlessly caught up to her. She tried to dash faster, actually slipping past me for a second, and I mentally urged my platform to speed up. It rocketed forward, allowing me to reach her once again.


    Her heartbeat was hammering against her ribcage, audibly so at this point. As I reached her again I looked at her and studied her form. Her skin was glistening with sweat, and her brow was practically drenched. Her sweat quickly vanished underneath her fur armor, and I watched this happen to a few different drops of the stuff with rapt fascination.


    After a few seconds of idly standing beside the cowardly ogress, I opened my mouth and began to speak. As I did so I envisioned my voice sapping her of the will to stubbornly deny the logic of what I was about to say.


    "So what''s the game plan here? Are you hoping you''ll escape me? Because in case you can''t tell, you can''t. There is no escaping me now that I''ve laid my eyes on you. But more than that, you don''t even know what I want. I told you I was a god, you laughed, I froze the woman you hate, and then you fled." I said, pointing out that her actions weren''t based on much knowledge.


    "I''ll freely admit petrifying your hated foe may not have given you the impression of me I wanted to convey, but in fairness, I was reacting to you two. And so I wanted to make a show of what I could do. Now, why don''t you just... stop running and hear me out?" I asked, pouring kindness and understanding into my voice.


    Iret looked at me, still sprinting. She had an impressive form while running, one that implied that she was more athletic than I had originally thought. Her legs deftly carried her a few dozen meters away from the statue that had once been and would be again the living form of her hated superior.


    She had a look of contemplation on her face, contemplation, and fear. It lasted for a few seconds. And then she began to slow to a stop.


    As she stopped I whipped the platform around and turned the thing so that it was in front of her. She towered above me, but her fear made her feel far smaller. I chuckled at her, examining her height with an impressed stare.


    She was a powerfully built woman, she had to be given her ability to flee from me and get so far in what was actually only half a minute. We stood perhaps half a kilometer away from Okig''s statued form. Iret had long legs and powerful looking arms. Her limbs were thick, and currently glistening with the afterglow of her physical exertions.


    I took a step back, widening my platform as I did so. And then I wordlessly motioned for her to step onto the platform and thus join me atop it. When she hesitated I rolled my eyes at her and readied myself to make what I felt was a great point.


    "If you don''t do as I say, I could just turn you into a statue." I lazily explained. This caused her eyes to widen in terror and she energetically stepped onto the platform. Perhaps a bit too energetically, as she actually almost fell backward shortly after joining me. I rolled my eyes at the ogress and caught her by mentally manipulating the earth around her to steady the woman. Once she was secure I mentally urged the earthen platform to take us back towards Okig.


    The platform sprinted towards where it had come into being. It was even faster now than before.


    ________________________________________________


    In a matter of moments, we reached the place where Okig''s statued body was currently standing. As we did so I studied my first work of art. The frozen ogress was locked into place with a look of horror and discomfort permanently etched onto her face.


    Once the platform had come to a complete stop I willed it to return to its natural positioning. The platform faded back into the earth, and Iret and I were lowered back to floor level. I then took my first step since I chased down Iret and got her to come back here. I stepped away from the ogress and took another look at her.


    She was visibly afraid, trembling more now than she had been before. The look of childish, almost primal fear on her face was both surprising and amusing.


    "Why are you so afraid?" I asked her, genuinely not understanding why she was so terrified. I could understand a bit of fear, to be sure, but she seemed truly terrified of me. She looked at me, silently for a few seconds before beginning to speak.


    "Because you de-defe-defeated Okig before she even knew you were hostile. And because you knew that I hated Okig. Heck, you just knowing Okig''s name is weird. I don''t know what you can do, and what you know, but I know you shouldn''t know that I hated her." The ogress explained. I was impressed for a moment when I realized this meant she had been paying attention to what I said earlier. That improved my impression of her just a bit.


    "You were already scared and you already picked up on that. Not bad Iret." I muttered, expressing that she impressed me. I chuckled after that and began to speak again.


    "I am not your enemy. In fact, I am actually your master." I began, which elicited a sudden but subtle reaction in the eyes of the ogress. There was a flare of anger that flashed in them. It made me grin at her.


    "Calm yourself Iret. Petrifying your friend was the least of my powers. She already serves me. And if I don''t wish her to be in that pose..." I said, threateningly, before attempting to mentally command the statue in the same manner I commanded the earth.


    "Move your arms. Bring them to your sides." I mentally told the statue, hoping that the thing would obey me as smoothly as the earth had.


    "She doesn''t have to be." I audibly said, as Iret turned to look at the statue in fear. And then the thing''s arms fell to its sides. They were stiff limbs, but the sight of the action was enough to once again unnerve Iret.


    "You are already my possession. I do not wish to harm you. I just want you to realize the truth." I told the ogress, speaking calmly and soothingly. I even grinned at her.


    "That said, if you''re still feeling rebellious, I can have Okig keep you company. Okig is only happy to serve, aren''t you Okig?" I asked, allowing my voice to wash over both of them. And then I focused on the statue and willed its lips to flip into an eerie smile.


    The thing''s lips obeyed me and curled silently, as if of their own volition. The sight of the statue''s lips moving was a deeply unsettling one, but that made it all the more effective. Iret took a step back, her eyes widening in shocked terror at the sight. But the sight of it made me have a question for the system.


    "Since the statue is a petrified person... is it aware of things?" I asked, curiously. My question was an inward one. I heard a soft chuckle come from the system.


    [No. But... do us a favor and develop this thought a bit. Because we can design divine powers. If you want to design something that doesn''t exist and you tell us what you''re thinking, you''ll earn that immediately.] The system revealed, causing my eyes to widen in shock. A pleasant shock, one that filled me with excitement.


    ________________________________________________


    In the depths of my mind, I took a second to envision Okig gaining some sort of awareness. But not quite an actual awareness. Instead, the ogress would gain an awareness I could manipulate. One that I could control.


    At that moment I felt an alien urge well up within me. The urge was powerful, but also clearly unnatural.


    "What should I do about this?" I asked myself, honestly unsure of how to approach this.


    [If you experiment with it your powers now, there might be rewards later.] Suggested the system. There was a sinister smile audible in its voice, like it was testing me. But if I was being honest, that did sound tempting. The part of me that wanted to experiment with my lust-based powers felt dark and sinister, but I recognized that it was a legitimate part of me, albeit one that was being egged on by some foreign influence.


    [So you''ve already noticed huh? Not bad. It''s important that you have some awareness that the domains and subdomains can influence you. It''ll only grow stronger as you grow older and more powerful. Do you want to resist it this time?] My companion asked me, genuine curiosity audible in its voice. I considered what to say for a second.


    "Honestly? I kind of want to see what happens if I indulge a domain or subdomain for a bit... And if I opt to indulge the domain of corruption, at least at this low level of influence and with the sin of lust, I won''t kill or permanently harm someone right?" I asked, mostly asking myself. I heard a gentle chuckle from the system.


    [In fairness... you are choosing to use this power on an ogress. We, the domains and I, can assure you that''s she done far more vile things to other creatures than anything you choose to do to her.] The system promised, attempting to assuage my consciousness. I had to suppress a chuckle. A not so small part of me wanted to be mean, but I had to work to contain that part of myself. I was able to do so, but it took a lot of self-control on my part.


    [Well... it won''t cause you to do something you can''t undo. So what do ya say? Why not be curious for a second?] The entity asked. I grinned and nodded.


    "Help me design something fun." I told the system, a dark joy audible in my mental voice. And then a sinister idea came to my mind.


    ________________________________________________


    "Can you design a power that allows me to control what Okig perceives while she''s in the statue? Especially a perception wherein I could cause her to feel pleasure while trapped in her stony state? I want to use the time she''s helpless to make her experience a sort of addictive pleasure that makes her want to serve me." I explained, consciously aware that this was almost certainly caused by the influence of the subdomain of corruption.


    [So wait, you want to pump her full of lust and pleasure while she''s a statue?] The system asked. I could hear the tone of its voice and knew that it was asking this to help me push my idea.


    "Yes. But if it''s at all possible I don''t want whatever power we create to be limited to making her feel pleasure. I want this power to be able to allow me to inflict pain, fear, happiness, anger, a range of emotions and sensations, on those I petrify. A sort of upgrade to my ''petrification mastery'' power." I explained, hoping that the system could make it happen.


    There was silence on the other end of the mental link the system and I shared. And then I received a pleasant alert.


    [Alert: You can now use a new synergistic power. This power is dubbed ''Stone Prison''.


    Stone Prison: This is a passive power that ties together the mind domain and the earth subdomain.


    With it, you gain an enhanced degree of mastery over petrification that allows you to cause petrified creatures to experience sensations you wish them to experience and gain false memories justifying the sensations, while petrified.


    New title received: The Architect of Falsehoods.


    Title explanation: This title is one you''ve received for creating a new divine power that relies on lies. It is something bestowed upon you by the domain of trickery and the subdomains of lies and falsehoods.


    Architect of Falsehoods passive powers:


    Undetected lies: This is a lesser version of a power you''ll gain when you gain the lowest tier of influence over the subdomain of lies. It makes your lies harder to detect.


    Enchantment Magic: This power grants you a few enchantment spells, a necessary part of eventually gaining influence over the domain of minds and the school and subdomain of enchantment magic. Enchantment magic ensnares the mind and creates falsehoods perceivable only by specific targets.


    Architect of Falsehood active powers:


    A sensual lie: Upon activation of this power your next lie takes on a more sexual connotation or is understood in a sexual sense. As a deity with influence over lust, this makes the lie a bit more believable. This power can be activated an unlimited number of times a day.]


    I activated my new power, aiming it at the only applicable target. I envisioned Okig experiencing a storm of pleasure, a constant torrent of pleasurable intrusions that reduced her mind to mush. I chuckled as I felt the power begin to take hold and then turned so that I could refocus on the ogress who wasn''t a statue.


    ________________________________________________


    "Okig is having so much fun right now. You see, she''s trapped in an unholy prison I created just for her." I muttered, approaching Iret. I pointed at the statue and willed it to change just a bit.


    I envisioned the statue''s lips being freed from the petrification. And an instant later they were. The stone fell off of the statue''s lips, hitting the ground beside the thing, and the petrified ogress began to moan. The voice that inexplicably managed to escape from the statue was sickening, but there was a disturbing sincerity to the moans as if she was approaching some sort of climax.


    I set aside how I personally felt about the quality of the voice of the statue, at least on the outside, and began to smile at Iret. She was scared stiff, and the moans continued unabated. They filled the forest air, and had an unholy enthusiasm to them.


    Most of them were unintelligible, but as I allowed the voice to continue to escape from the statue I began to hear words leave the statue.


    "More!" The statue shouted, demandingly. "Harder!" The statue commanded, as if she were somehow in charge, despite the ridiculous situation the pride of the ogresses had put them in.


    I let this continue for a full minute, beginning to somewhat sadistically enjoy this by the time I decided that it had had the full effect possible and willed the statue''s lips to be petrified once again. The forest fell silent once there was another layer of stone covering the Okig''s lips.


    "Allow me to properly introduce myself." I arrogantly said, grinning monstrously at the unpetrified ogress.


    "I am Althos. I am a god of undeath, of earth, and of lust. And I am your master." I told her, my tone no doubt informing her that I wasn''t asking if she''d serve me. And I suddenly had one final stroke of genius. One that involved the one creation of mine that was hidden away in the shadows.


    "And let me make this clear. If you cling to some notion of pride... There is more than one way I could make you serve me." I told her, before gesturing behind me at the skeletal stag who had hidden in a darker part of the forest behind me.


    As the undead creature stepped out of the shadows and proudly walked over to me I spoke once more. "You can serve me in life, or in death. But you will serve." I assured her, hoping that this smashed the last bit of her that was strong enough to not serve me.


    Iret gasped when she saw the thing, and I watched the last flicker of hope and resistance in her gaze die. She must have realized in that moment that I wasn''t a creature she could hope to resist and that since I declared that she was my servant I was simply declaring a fact. She probably assumed I had killed and reanimated the stag myself, and I didn''t correct her.


    After watching the last flicker of hope and stubbornness in her eyes die I felt a cruel sort of satisfaction. It was fun to chase her around and get her to acknowledge my superiority. But I also wanted her to serve me, not just acknowledge that I was greater than her. And so, a mere second later I made her an offer.


    "I am not an unkind master. If you serve me, I''ll allow you to take out your anger and hatred of Okig, on her. And she''ll be helpless to resist you." I explained, grinning at the ogress who I had made give up.


    "I know of the hatred you possess for her. I know how cathartic it''d be for you to get to beat her up. All you must do to get to do that, what you''ve wanted to do for so long is serve me. All you have to do is worship me." I told her, whispering evilly to the humanoid.


    There were a few moments of silence while she considered what to do. And in those moments I began to walk over in her direction. I wasn''t approaching her though. Instead, I was approaching Okig.


    As I did so I unfroze the petrified ogress'' chest, from the top of her hips to just below her neck. An entire section of stone crumbled to the ground and caused a loud impact as it smashed into the floor.


    When I reached the ogress I curiously began to run my hands over her soft skin. I felt the skin underneath the leather armor and realized that I didn''t feel like exploring it obstructed by armor. I grabbed the armor covering her chest and tore it in half with a single forceful yank. I threw the halves to the floor, discarding them with ease and then ran my hands over the newly exposed skin.


    Okig''s skin was old and flabby. But that didn''t stop me from exploring it with interest. It was my first time doing something like this, after all. Her skin reacted to my touch, and I felt the blood that gave Okig life begin to flow excitedly to wherever my fingers were as they lightly traced her skin.


    I also felt Okig''s heartbeat. It was a powerful, steady, rhythmic drumlike beat.


    I started off near the bottom of the freed area and rapidly ran my hands over her partially exposed form until I got to the area just underneath her breasts. Hers were nice and large, even if they sagged due to age and physics.


    I looked at them, admiring their size and the width of her puffy nipples, which were erect and thick. They stood firm due to the sensations assailing her mind and my exploration of her body as well as the cool forest air that touched them. After a few moments of visual exploration, I boldly began to run my hands over her chest.


    Her breasts were soft to the touch and seemed to absorb my fingers. It was like they were eager for contact and stimulation, and I found them quite fun to touch. I also touched, pinched, and pulled on Okig''s thick nipples, feeling and enjoying their relative hardness. Behind me, I was keenly aware that Iret was watching me with an eerie fascination.


    I could feel her eyes on me, as I amateurishly explored the body of the ogress I was dominating. And at that moment, as I was being watched, I decided to just outright dominate Okig.


    I mentally undid the petrification on Okig''s lips and lightly pressed mine against hers. As I did so, I felt her hot breath seep into my lips, and I felt her moan into my throat, the vibrations of her throat delighting me in an unexpected way. Her mind was still imprisoned under my power, and so I received an alert that didn''t surprise me in the slightest a second later.


    [Alert: Your activation of ''Incubi and succubi Caress'' combined with your other powers and aura have left the ogress Okig thoroughly dominated. Okig is now under your control.] The system alerted me, as I felt the ogress'' power seep from her defeated form and into me.


    The physical might of the ogress seeped from her form. I felt my muscles thicken under my skin and had to suck in a breath so as to not sigh in pleasure from the unusual sensation. The only thing that kept Okig from falling over was that her feet were petrified. I chuckled and grabbed onto her to steady her as I undid the petrification that kept her glued to the floor.


    The ogress flopped onto me as her feet were freed from my unusual prison. The stone that encased her head peeled off of her skin and clattered to the floor beside us. I held the thick woman upright as she regained her composure just enough to stand.


    Her lips were still on mine, and I opted to tease her. I deepened the kiss for a single second, before swiftly pulling away. As I did so I heard a sad sigh escape from Okig''s lips. And I heard the familiar voice of the system peel into my mind.


    [Alert: Your actions have caused you to gain an explosive amount of influence over Okig. They have also damaged her mind, which makes her a better worshiper of yours but also damages her intelligence.


    Influence over Okig: 55%


    Okig worships you as a god of the earth and of lust. While she was petrified her mind was wracked with lustful images and sensations, and she heard whispered, sensuous chants devoted to your glory. Okig is now your first living worshiper. Her worship is granting you progress towards the domains of faith, and evil, and the subdomains of corruption and of pain.]


    As the system''s voice faded at the end of the alert I felt the powerful sensations of a new creature worshipping me surge into me. I felt a powerful, pervasive sense of lust and a potent desire to inflict harm on others surge into me in the same way that I had just felt Okig''s strength surge into my muscles.


    I looked over at Iret and grinned. "Now... what do you say? Will you worship me willingly? Because if not, I can definitely do what I did to her," I said, and pointed a single finger at Okig, who was staring at me lustfully. "Or I can do worse things. But if you worship me willingly... you can get all you want and more." I told her, speaking truthfully.


    Iret looked at me fearfully. She studied me, and her half-naked tormentor. And then a look of anger surged into her eyes. She kept her gaze locked on her slack-eyed tormentor, and began to speak.


    "Earlier you said you''d let me beat her up. If I agree to serve you, and learn more about you, will you still let me do that?" She asked me, while her eyes radiated heated hate in the direction of Okig. I chuckled.


    "Why won''t you worship me?" I asked, aware that we were standing in a field of "Religious fervor", the power of mine that rendered people more likely to worship me.


    "I don''t know you. Your powers are amazing and terrifying, but I don''t know you. I want to get to know you, before I commit to worshiping you." She replied. I sighed, unable to fault her logic.


    "That''s honestly fair. Annoyingly so in fact. So I''ll accept your terms. But you will come to worship me. In time you may not even feel that you need to fear me." I told her, confidently.


    "Now... come to me. Come to your master." I declared, grinning. Iret looked at me, fear again appearing in her gaze. That only served to make my grin a bit more monstrous. The ogress began to approach me, doing so slowly.


    When she was close enough to reach out and touch me, I willed the earth underneath me to rise up and bring me to eye level with the ogress. It did so a heartbeat later. I reached out and touched Iret''s face. I gently stroked her cheek and she flinched at my touch.


    "You are fun. Now... give in to your lust. You may not kill Okig, or rip off her limbs, but otherwise, you can be as brutal as you want." I told the ogress. Her gaze warmed significantly as I gave her permission to savagely attack the woman who had tormented her for a period of time I didn''t know but could only imagine was quite extensive.


    Iret looked at me with a grim smile and took her first steps towards her tormentor. And then she howled, before becoming the center of a storm of violence that would last the following half an hour and leave Okig a bloody mess.


    ________________________________________________


    As Iret threw herself at Okig, I reflected on the dark power I now possessed. I felt it within me, and I wanted to dislike it, but I couldn''t. Not completely anyway.


    It was surely a sinister power, but logically I recognized the real potency of a power that let me break minds. Even more so since I could break them non-violently. With the real potential these powers displayed I could bend people to my whims without ever inflicting physical harm. It still came at a cost though, as it inflicted something worse than physical harm.


    "But this is... brutal." I reminded myself, aware of the cruelty these powers possessed. I hadn''t intended to break Okig''s mind, I had just wanted to make her obey me. I''d need to fix her mind if I could.


    There was a part of me that felt that I didn''t need to make it a priority, I had no doubt she hadn''t treated her enemies as kindly as I was treating her, but still my power was too much to use unless I had a serious reason too. I ignored that part of me, and wondered how I''d fix her mind. To which the system sent me a message.


    [We''ll tell you how to fix her mind in time. Now why don''t you sit back and enjoy the show?] It asked, encouraging me to relax and watch Iret pummel her oppressor. I could tell it was annoyed with me still clinging somewhat to something that vaguely resembled a moral compass, albeit a rather loose one. I chuckled and did as it suggested.

 35 Schemes And Payoffs

    The metallic smell of blood filled the forest air. The source of that scent decorated the path that my undead companions and my new ogress friends found ourselves on. The blood was quite pretty, adding a much-needed splash of color to the grassy floor and I didn''t mind the smell.


    Okig laid in a bloody heap, an ecstatic smile plastering her now somewhat lumpy and heavily bruised face. The ogress was still under my control, which was why she hadn''t tried to use her skills in her defense. Her head was cradled in my lap, and I was emitting healing rays of magical energy into her, to tend to the often brutal wounds she had endured.


    Iret found herself glaring at Okig and I. I could tell she was mad, probably at me as well, but I also wasn''t overly concerned about it. I had kept my end of the bargain, and allowed Iret to give Okig what the younger, taller ogress felt her tormentor was owed. And now I was tending to Okig''s wounds. I wasn''t about to have to reanimate the ogress this early on.


    I used all ten of my fingers to search for and then undo wounds the warrior had suffered while she endured my other companion''s rage. Gentle beams of healing light escaped my fingers and seeped into the ogress, causing her to softly sigh in delight and occasionally, boldly, try to touch my fingers. Whenever she tried that I shot her an annoyed glare.


    After listening to her for a few moments I realized that her voice, at the moments she sighed at least, wasn''t that of a battle-hardened warrior. It was that of someone who felt something profound, and in her case, something deeply sinful. It made me chuckle. I wasn''t the only one amused by it either.


    [So your first worshipers are a pair of undead animals and a single, lust-struck ogress. You truly are a god of chaos.] The system muttered, almost complaining into my mind. It brought a smile to my face to hear it almost, but not quite complain.


    We laid like that for a few minutes, until I tracked down and healed the last wound. This was, of course, unnecessary. I could have easily instantly healed the ogress, but I decided to do it this way to appear kinder than I actually was.


    The fact that it let me touch her was a not unpleasant part of this as well. I enjoyed the physical contact and the sensation of healing her. To someone unfamiliar with me and unaware of the extent of my powers it probably looked like I was playing doctor with the ogress.


    That said, once she was healed I only allowed her to cradle her head in my lap a bit longer. Less than a minute after healing the final wound, I got her head out of my lap. I still had other things to do today, and I wasn''t about to stop doing them just to play with an ogress. As she got off of me and climbed to her feet, I also began to stand and motioned for Iret to join us. The ogress began to stride towards me.


    I sent out a single, powerful message to my undead companions. It was a single word, spoke mightily, through the connection that tethered our minds together. "Come."


    The undead didn''t disobey me. and soon I was facing my five allies. They stood in a line, one member of the pair of ogresses on each end of the line. The mindless zombie deer stood in the middle of the line and stared in my direction, blankly. I studied the group for a second and lost myself in my own thoughts.


    ________________________________________________


    "It''d be nice to have minions who know the truth..." I mused. My whole life, a whole three days, no mortals, but especially no goblins or humans, knew the truth about me. All of my interactions with mortals were built on lies.


    Even my interactions with creatures like Mawby and Troik, two of the simpler and more childish creatures I had met to date, were built on lies. Mawby only knew me as Cosecha, and Troik only knew me as Althos, even though he knew of Cosecha.


    The ogresses in front of me, one of them a partially mind-broken warrior, and the other a violent and sweaty berserker, only knew of me as Althos. They knew me as Althos, the god, but they were still being left out. It was a lie by omission.


    There was a part of me that didn''t mind that. Actually, if I allowed myself a moment of introspection I found that that idea didn''t really bother me. The problem was that I didn''t know how much of that was influenced by the quiet presence of things like domains, subdomains, and titles. Knowing that such things were real and had an influence on me made me want to be careful and introspective.


    "I wonder how telling the truth might affect me..." I muttered, in the confines of my mind. In moments like this time seemed to slow to an almost painful crawl. I was aware that in the time I had spent thinking my servants were looking at me, expectantly, but I also knew, from experience, that what felt like a lengthy conversation in my mind was actually just a few moments to them.


    "I''m just postponing the inevitable, aren''t I? I know what I want to do. I want to tell them the truth." I told myself, aware that the whole reason I felt the need to think about this was that I wanted to be honest. I had an inclination to honesty, even if it was one I had a funny way of showing.


    I closed my eyes and felt certainty wash over me. If there was something to be said about honesty it was that it being honest made me feel good. And then I opened them again, grinning at my gathered followers.


    ________________________________________________


    When I refocused I gave my servants a thoughtful look. It was a contemplative stare, and it lasted for five seconds. And then I began to speak.


    "Someone ought to know the truth, and I guess it makes sense that it''s the five of you. Or rather... the four of you." I told them, before noting the mindless nature of the first of my two undead stags.


    The two ogresses looked at me in confusion but were silent as they awaited an explanation for my remarks. I didn''t keep them waiting for very long.


    "I am a god. I am also... well I suppose the best word for it would be a trickster. My name, my real name, is Althos. You all know that." I muttered, beginning by reassuring the ogresses that they knew the truth. I knew my undead creatures didn''t care one way or another so I didn''t aim that remark at them.


    "But you see there''s a village of goblins, wherein only one of them knows Althos, and not as a god, but a few of them know of something called ''Cosecha''." I told my little posse. The ogresses'' eyes went wide as they began to mentally speculate about what I was telling them.


    "I am... a newborn god. I am still learning about my powers, and so I created ''Cosecha'' as a cover that allows me to use a few of my abilities in the form of a mysterious spirit, while also interacting with goblins and with humans in this fake form." I told the creatures who I had transformed into worshippers or servants. I gestured to myself when I said the words ''fake form''.


    This caused Iret to look at me in alarm. She spoke out before the caution needed to not speak up in such a rude manner could stop her. "But wait, then what is your true form?" She asked, her eyes filled with curiosity. I chuckled at her and then gave the question a few moments to marinate in the forest air.


    "I suppose I don''t really possess one. I came into being possessing this form," I explained, gesturing to myself in my all too human guise, before continuing to speak. "But I don''t really feel any attachment to it. When I think of myself I don''t think of this form." I informed the inquisitive ogress.


    She looked at me carefully. Her eyes were sizing me up, and it made me laugh, but I did so internally. I didn''t feel like upsetting her right now.


    "So... can you make a true form?" She asked, after a few seconds of carefully scrutinizing me. At this remark, I feigned scrutinizing her back for a few moments. She flinched at the intensity of my stare and took a step back out of an instinctual fear for my eerie powers. But then I began to think about her words. And I found that they actually posed a good question.


    "No." I told the ogress. Both Iret and Okig looked at me in shock when I gave the younger and more inquisitive of the pair a single word response, especially one which was negative. I told the ogress "No" because it was the truth. Or at least it was what was most likely to be true.


    The source of my shapeshifting abilities was an inborn trait I possessed called "Shapeless One". I was young and didn''t possess a considerable amount of knowledge, but my knowledge of the world grew every hour and I had a sharp mind. I was able to infer, using a combination of etymology and


    logic that I didn''t possess a true form.


    I studied the ogresses while I considered how to follow up and expand on what I had just told them. But after a few seconds of trying to come up with an excuse for my statement, I realized I was getting away from the overall point of this talk. The truth. I took a deep breath and then began to just tell them the truth.


    "I am a god. Gods come into being possessing innate traits. One of mine is that I don''t have a true form. In exchange for a true form, I can shapeshift." I told the ogresses. I allowed myself a moment to look at my first servants, or at least my first servants who acknowledged that they were my first servants since I still had influence over the swarms of ants under the surface of the forest.


    My undead minions weren''t particularly interested in all of this. They stood perfectly still, looking like eerie taxidermied dolls. It endeared me to them because they didn''t try to have me answer annoying questions.


    "Now, it''s time we refocus on the matter at hand. You are now my servants. Now and forever." I declared, stating the reality of their situation as I understood it. And I spoke authoritatively, allowing neither of them to challenge me.


    "I seek more servants. And I have begun making inroads to gain more. Today I begin to enact more concrete steps, more public ones to achieve that goal." I announced, smiling arrogantly at the two women who I had made into my servants.


    "I plan to offer the nearby goblin tribe some food. Not just cute little apples like these ones," I whispered, speaking loudly enough to be heard but also lowering my voice, as I created an apple and infused the thing with corruptive energies. I then tossed the thing to Okig, who caught it and bit into it without hesitation. I smiled at her.


    "But actual food. Like that guy right there." I said as I began to point at my zombified stag. My skeletal stag reacted to this news, since its flesh was on the admittedly grisly menu as well, straightening itself out to stand majestically and draw attention its way. I chuckled at its display, aware that the thing was proud of the role it was to play in my schemes.


    "I can do a number of things with undead creatures, as a god of undeath." I told my followers, lying to them about the extent of my power. That said, it wasn''t a lie that would remain one for long.


    "One of the things I can do is reanimate a corpse, and then snuff out the spark that animates it." I told my gathered followers, as I reached out a hand towards the zombified deer and proved my power.


    I closed my eyes and focused on the unholy outline of the deer that appeared in my eager not-so-mini-map. I envisioned the loosely animated, barely and only technically reanimated corpse falling to the ground, inert once again.


    And as I did that, I reached out with my mind and made mental contact with my dumbest servant. I explored the framework of its mind, an empty and disturbingly hollow place, before touching the spark I bestowed upon it when I reanimated it. And then I ripped out that spark. I felt the spark of baleful energy attempt to burn, insofar as such a thing could burn, my mental hand but ignored it.


    The zombie''s eyes darkened and the thing stiffened. The monster then fell forward, collapsing like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. I grinned at the display, and at the shocked gasps from both of my living worshipers.


    The frightening display of necromantic power delighted me, and also inspired the faintest outlines of a scheme. It was somewhat annoying to feel only the faintest outlines, the quietest whispers, of a scheme, tease my mind, but that was the case with whatever plot was being forged in the recesses of my brain. That said, I held onto the tiny fragments and whispers of a scheme that lingered in my mind, and refocused on the scene before me.


    My undead minions, the intelligent ones, turned to regard the truly dead corpse of their companion with unsurprising coldness. I could almost sense the hateful arrogance rolling off of them, as if they were basking in a sense of superiority. I let them stare emptily at their companion for a few moments before I silently cast "Create Undead" on the corpse again, and reanimated it as a zombie once more.


    The thing began to rise to its feet once more, as I demonstrated the greatness of my necromancy by restoring the stag to my service. It was as silent as ever, and studying it brought a smile to my face. There was something nice about the quiet servitude of the undead creatures I had created. Something pristine.


    "And just like I can snuff out undead life, I can bestow it once more." I told the pair of living creatures who had joined me. I spoke of undeath with a casualness that I quite liked. It made me feel older than I was, something useful for me given my actual age.


    The ogresses were disgusted by my display and silenced by the terrifyingly casual way I flexed my power but their feelings didn''t particularly matter to me. When they looked at me I saw and felt the fear in their gazes, an emotion which I didn''t hate to feel coming from them.


    "And I seek to become an even greater god. So for now, while I enact my schemes, you should just sit back and watch. Watch a god at work." I told the pair of monstrous humanoids. And with this, I fell silent. I closed my eyes and was grateful for the speedy emergence of the not-so-mini-map. I had things to do and creatures to reanimate, and I didn''t want to waste any time.


    ________________________________________________


    When I focused on my not-so-mini-map I felt everything nearby fall of out the forefront of my mind. In the moment the only thing that mattered was advancing my power, on two fronts. The first front was collecting living worshipers. That front was covered already. I had that scheme locked down.


    The second front was acquiring undead worshipers. That managed to be both simpler than the engaging efforts I needed to undertake to gain living worshipers, as all I had to do to gain undead worshipers was reanimate them as anything stronger than a zombie, and also harder to do because I had to gather the corpses.


    My not-so-mini-map was now the only thing I could see. It was an expansive thing, revealing not just more of the world around me but also the location of countless corpses. I took a second to filter my tremorsense power''s map and focus on the corpses. I wanted to study them in detail.


    I watched as countless outlines were suddenly greyed out, losing their color and focus in the same instant. Despite the fact that tens of thousands of outlines immediately lost their focus, a clear majority of the outlines remained visible to me. This hinted that the dead far outnumbered the living, which made sense since the living would eventually die and join the dead.


    I ran my mental eyes over the countless corpses that were suddenly brightly visible in my mind. Something which annoyed me was that many of the best corpses were deep underground, kilometers under the surface. I mentally eyed the names of the types of creatures whose corpses were hidden deep underground with rapt fascination.


    Some of the species names were interesting to me on a purely etymological sense. Names like "Gugs" and "Fire giants" were visible underneath the names the creatures had in life. It was a delightful, and amusing read.


    Some of the names were intriguing to me in a more functional manner. I could see names like "Black Widow Spider" and a creature whose serpentine corpse was sprawled on an underground shoreline adjoining a subterranean lake "Sea Serpent", which attracted my curiosity.


    I was sitting in front of a veritable buffet of creatures to reanimate and make into my servants. And it was while I was examining my mental map that the scheme that danced around the edges of my mind finally came into focus.


    My power as a god of the earth at my feet was an incredible and terrifying match for my powers over undeath. My tremorsense gave me an awareness of every corpse for countless miles around me.


    That same awareness was expanding, like roots from a wicked tree. It was burrowing deeper into the world underneath me, and also stretching out further into the world that surrounded me. And I possessed a rangeless power that allowed me to manipulate and control soil and stone.


    "What if I wrap one of the corpses in soil and pull it to me?" I mentally asked myself. I was still for a second as I considered if that was a scheme truly worth trying. It was the only way I could actually reanimate some of the corpses with interesting species names. After a few moments of hesitation, I decided to try it on a corpse that wasn''t buried underground, just to experiment with it.


    I locked my mental view on the corpse of the satyr, the strange fae creature I had originally set my eyes on reanimating. I could clearly see the darkened pond the strange, half-beast creature''s corpse was left to rot besides. It was a beautiful, but darkly so place inhabited by a strange monster named a rusalka, who I assumed was the cause of death of the satyr.


    I envisioned the satyr being wrapped snuggly in a gentle blanket of dirt. An instant later such a blanket covered the goat-man''s corpse. And then I willed the blanket to come to me. I willed it to come quickly, but I didn''t order it to dash here. And then I began to wait.


    ________________________________________________


    It took the corpse just a minute to arrive to where I was. And to my delight, the corpse arrived relatively unharmed and not needing my medical services.


    I was alerted to the delivery of my prize not just by my supernatural knowledge of it, but also by the sounds of shocked gasps from the ogresses when they saw a still, pale hybrid corpse coming to me via a blanket of dirt. This caused me to open my eyes and grin.


    "There it is! My newest companion." I told the ogresses. My two intelligent undead turned to gaze at the creature who''d soon join their ranks as my undead servitors. Their eyes, or eye-sockets in the case of the skeletal stag, studied the creature with surprising, silent interest and intensity.


    I wasn''t sure if it was my words or the fact that I had brought a corpse to two ghouls that made the pair of creatures interested in the corpse. The creature was fat, shirtless with an immense belly. He had pale skin, due to the effects of death on the body, and had thin arms.


    The creature wore fur trousers, an interesting fashion choice since I could see a bit of its legs, due to holes in said trousers, and noticed that they were quite furry themselves.


    I studied the creature and noticed that its dying expression was one which promised me that there''d be a story to its death: there was a satisfied smile on the future ghoul''s face. I chuckled and pointed a hand over the thing''s body.


    I silently cast my "Create Undead" spell and watched an eerie beam of ebon energy shoot out of my open palm and infuse the creature. I informed the system before it even asked that I wanted to raise the satyr as a ghoul, and watched as the creature''s eyes shot open.


    The eyes danced around my newest companion''s eye sockets, taking in every detail with manic energy I hadn''t seen in my other ghoul. They were milky, startlingly white orbs that only settled when they saw me, standing over the creature.


    "Hello there. I am Althos." I told the creature, introducing myself with a confident smile. The satyr grinned at me, revealing an imperfect, hole-filled grin. But in the gaps between the teeth of the thing, small, white nubs began to appear. I watched as they speedily filled the creature''s maw, expanding in a manner not unlike how my mini-map was expanding: aggressively.


    "I know." Replied the satyr, its voice was gruff, and raspier than I had expected such a creature''s voice would be. Knowing that my powers would successfully allow me to bring corpses my way, I felt a quiet inner peace fall over me. I closed my eyes and looked at my mini-map once more.


    I had a truly impressive tapestry of creatures to choose from. I sighed audibly, my minions and worshipers all looking at me curiously since I had spent a lot of time with my eyes closed.


    "I''m just... bringing new servants and worshipers to me." I informed them, feeling truly and incredibly powerful as I took advantage of the unique synergy between my powers that allowed me to abuse them.


    ________________________________________________


    "I just need six more." I reminded myself, well aware that I was minutes away from acquiring the first tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy. If I could salivate, I knew I''d be doing that at this moment.


    It didn''t take me long to select the creatures I''d reanimate. I reached out with my mind and selected six corpses after a minute of careful contemplation.


    The three most regular corpses I selected were a she-wolf''s corpse from another part of the forest, the corpse of a fusion between a massive spider, and a humanoid called a drider found underground, and a corpse of a member of a race of massive, weirdly bodied giants known as the "gugs".


    The other three corpses I selected were definitely odder. One of them was the corpse of a massive creature known as a grave giant. Her body was surrounded by the corpses of others of its kind, each of which were covered in bloody and horrid wounds. This corpse was perhaps the most exciting to me, given the name of her species.


    Another of them belonged to a diminutive creature known as a "fungal folk" who was a fusion between a man and a mushroom. I found it alone, a small hole in its chest, surrounded by other, less humanoid fungi


    The final corpse belonged to a creature named a "medusa". I selected that one because I recalled it being mentioned when my earthen powers were unlocked. The corpse that swiftly began to make its way to me from a bizarre and uninhabited mountain settlement, many miles away was that of a snake-headed and reptilian looking humanoid.


    It only took ten minutes for the last of the corpses to arrive. None of them had been dead for longer than a day, which was one of the reasons why I selected them as opposed to other corpses. They were placed in a wide circle around me and my party by the earthen platforms that brought them to me.


    I smiled and began to speak. "And with this... I grow in power." I told my gathered followers. And then I focused on the buffet of creatures to reanimate in front of me.


    I began to resurrect each of the creatures that surrounded me, and when I gave the last of the creatures, the mighty and large grave giant the unholy gift of unlife, I wasn''t surprised to receive a beautiful notification.


    [Alert: You have completed the quest asked of you by the subdomain of necromancy to acquire the first tier of influence over it. Congratulations!] The notification read, before vanishing and being replaced by a message from the system.


    [We suppose it makes sense that you''d so swiftly catch onto the ease of the quest offered by the subdomain of necromancy. That said, congratulations! You''ve earned a heck of a prize just now. And you''re almost at the halfway mark for being freed from the rigors of the tutorial since you''ve acquired nine worshipers.] The system told me, interrupting the normal notification. I could hear happiness in its voice.


    [That said... acquiring living worshipers is harder. But, with the new powers at your disposal, courtesy of the subdomain of necromancy, who knows? You''ve also just hit the fifth level of the necromancer class. There are some fun surprises with that too. You''ll enjoy them, little one.] The system told me, chuckling weirdly at the end of its statement.


    A heartbeat later the message was gone and replaced by the usual alert. The one that notified me of what powers I had just gained. And boy, they were something else. I began to laugh as I read them, delighted to have acquired these new powers.

 36 What Was Rewarded

    [Alert: Processing the awarded powers gifted to you by the subdomain of necromancy.


    As a subdomain that you have earned influence over, on your own, while in the tutorial, these powers are unfettered by the limitations imposed on you by the system. That''s why they are so powerful. Because of this, you could pretend to be a god of necromancy and it''d be difficult to disprove your claim given your new necromantic majesticness.


    Your other powers will power up and reach their unfettered strength as soon as you are no longer confined by the limitations imposed on you by the system. The sensations you''re feeling are what true power feels like.


    Details about the necromancy subdomain:


    The necromancy subdomain governs necromancy, undeath, and rot. It is an extremely powerful and eerie subdomain that gave gods who sought to influence it atrociously evil quests and immense power that allowed them to empower themselves and their worshipers.


    The first tier of influence over the subdomain grants you the power to create all types of lesser undead, even the ones mortal necromancers feel are mighty monsters, like vampires and ghouls. This tier of influence is the easiest to acquire and its purpose is to familiarize gods with the potency of undeath.


    In order to gain more tiers of influence over the subdomain of necromancy, it will no longer be enough to merely reanimate the deceased. First of all, cults of undead creatures and the living enemies of life who are depraved enough to ally themselves with the undead will have to be created in order to continue to gain greater power over necromancy.


    Secondly, each task you will be tasked with completing to cement your control over the necromantic domain will be an atrocity you commit against the living. Wicked undertakings like transforming an entire city, or region into a land of the walking dead will be among the tamest tasks you complete as you gain greater and greater power over the undead and those who create them.


    Necromancy subdomain passive powers:


    Lesser undead mastery:


    As a god of the undead, you become the undisputed master of the lowest caste of undead beings. Lowly legions of ghouls, ghosts, skeletons, zombies, wraiths, shadows, vampires, wrights, and mummies, as well as lesser entities like hungry hands and undead plants, begin to worship you and obey you once they become aware of you.


    This power grants you divine authority over all lesser undead, including those that were intelligently created by necromancers or those who transformed themselves into the undead which is often the case with vampires. It subsumes their wills and makes them yours.


    This power is also felt by undead strong enough to resist your ability to subsume the wills of lesser undead. It makes you more persuasive to them and increases the likelihood that they''ll obey or listen to you willingly even if they won''t worship you.


    This power adds zombies, hungry hands, and shadows under your control to your swarm but gives you total control over them. When you issue commands to them, that doesn''t cost you the daily usage of that power that it would when you use it on the insects under your control.


    Unlife energy mastery:


    This power grants you utter control over the deadly energy that enables the undead to be undead. You can manipulate this energy as surely as you can manipulate the earth, and you can use it to a wide number of ends.


    You can infuse your blows with this energy, causing them to sap a living creature''s lifeforce, you can weave this energy into items to create artifacts that cripple those bold enough to try and use them without your permission, and you can make living creatures immune to it, as well as countless other things that are up to you and rely on your creativity.


    Miasmic aura:


    The auric power granted to you by the first tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy is one that strengthens undead allies and weakens living foes. This aura is unusual in that it also activates if you are near an undead creature strong enough to resist the compulsion to worship and obey you, further pressuring their wills to be vigilant around you. The aura is one of unlife energy.


    Sinister shadow:


    This power creates a persistent bodyguard in the form of a shadowy wraith who lives in your shadow. It springs to life whenever you are attacked, and attempts to kill and reanimate your attacker. If it successfully kills its targets then the targeted creature will reanimate as a ghoul or vampire under your control.


    Create Undead:


    You can now create the undead as a simple matter of flexing your will. If you wish to transform a corpse into an undead entity all it takes is for you to touch the thing with unlife energy and for you to will it to reanimate, allowing you to create undead in areas with anti-magic defenses.


    When you create the undead in this manner you''ll be asked what sorts of undead you wish to create just like if you used the ''Create Undead'' spell. You can create any of the undead you can command via "Lesser undead mastery". This power allows you to swiftly create undead armies.


    Fleshcrafter:


    So long as a creature hasn''t been dead for over a century you can restore its flesh and bone, so long as you have a single fragment of bone or flesh to use. This greatly enhances the number of corpses you can use to create armies and grants you the ability to salvage destroyed undead.


    Unlife energy infusion:


    The same energy that infuses undead creatures now infuses you. As a deity, you can possess both life-energy and unlife energy. You can also possess infinite amounts of both.


    Class-Granting:


    You can give someone the necromancer class. When they receive it from you they receive a notification alerting them to the fact that you''re the cause of them gaining the class. The notification''s exact text can be modified allowing you to create another persona if you wish too or otherwise hide that you''re the cause of the target gaining a new class.


    Spell-Granting:


    You can grant someone various medium-ranked necromantic spells. These spells include but aren''t limited too ''Create undead''. Undead they create using these spells serve and worship you, but they are automatically given instructions to obey the caster of the spell, which they follow unless you command them otherwise.


    When spells like ''Create undead'' are granted by you to other creatures and those creatures use the spells they are just aiming a spell that is, for intents and purposes, cast by you. This power can be used to create some amusing and potentially devastating schemes.


    Undamaged material:


    Non-deific necromancers can only reanimate the same body so many times. This limitation doesn''t apply to you. Provided the corpse isn''t damaged you can bestow sparks of unlife onto the same corpse as many times as you wish, allowing you to punish failure and reward loyalty in rather creative ways.


    Send sensation:


    This power allows you to transmit sensations to the undead who worship you. If you want to transmit anger, jealously, lust, happiness, peace, or any other emotion, you can with but a thought. You can also cause undead beings to experience sensations like the feeling of fullness after eating a full meal or cause them to experience lifelike sensations of discomfort or frustration.


    Past necromantic deities used this to send their servants feelings as omens or as a reward. And plenty of gods used this as a punishment as well, punishing undead who failed them by making them uncomfortable in various, often creative, ways.


    Necromancy subdomain active powers:


    Remotely create undead:


    This is a rare active power that''ll become a passive one once you reach a higher tier of influence over its domain or subdomain. With this, you can reanimate a corpse you''re aware of forty times a day. If you gain greater overall divine might before you attain the next tier of influence over necromancy you''ll be able to do this more times and have a shorter cooldown time.


    Miasmic burst:


    This once a day active power is a direct and unholy offensive power. It creates an explosion of unlife energy wherever you aim it that decimates any living thing nearby. Anything caught in the attack that survives gains a permanent condition that only you can lift, which guarantees that they''ll reanimate as undead creatures in your service once they die, whenever that might be.


    Necromancy subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing a living creature with the necromancy subdomain causes them to be ignored by lesser undead, particularly truly weak ones like skeletons and zombies. If they are a necromancer or know necromantic spells it also strengthens the spells they create.


    Blessing an undead being with the powers of the necromancy subdomain grants them sapience if they didn''t possess any before, and makes them champions of yours. This is a unique property of the subdomain of necromancy.


    Cursing a living creature with the subdomain sickens them. It inflicts incredible damage to them and is directly, physically painful for them to endure. This is also a rarity, as only a handful of other domains possess this property, domains, and subdomains like the domain of death, the domain of disease, and the subdomain of pain share this with the subdomain of necromancy.


    Cursing an undead creature with this subdomain saps their will and intelligence, reducing lesser undead to the same state of mindlessness as an unawakened zombie. If the curse is lifted the undead in question will remember their time as a mindless being.


    Tremorsense alert: Your tremorsense now finely hones in on undead creatures. This simplifies the process of targeting them and establishing the mental links needed for them to gain an awareness of you.


    Necromancer class features:


    Unlife infusement: If you wish you can infuse unlife energy into the harmful spells you cast, increasing their damage and giving them a chance to reanimate those they hit, should the spells kill them.


    Soul Harvest: When acquired by mortals this is a legendary power that they acquire at the culmination of their lives as mortals but since you are a god of undeath the soul domain has opted to grant you this power early. It allows you to trap the souls of those you or your minions kill, souls with which you can create intermediate undead creatures, consume, or use in dark rituals.]


    ________________________________________________


    The sensation of the subdomain''s power was so mighty that because of it I was able to stay standing even as I was hit with the awe-inspiring emotions of the numerous creatures who I had just reanimated. Their worship poured into me, even as I felt a tiny fragment of the total power of the subdomain of necromancy infuse me.


    "Whoa... that''s good stuff right there." I muttered as I took a second to process the newfound powers at my disposal. The ogresses approached me, as if to check if I was alright, but stopped when I looked up at them. They gasped and muttered the same thing in unison. "Your eyes." They whispered.


    In confusion, I looked to my skeletal stag and silently asked for an explanation. Our mental connection was stronger than ever and the stag replied to me with no hesitation.


    "Your eyes are jet black spheres, master It''s almost like they''re empty." The creature told me. Its mental voice was nonjudgemental and accepting which made it easier for me to take the news that my eyes had just turned jet black. I wondered why this was, but almost as soon as I began to feel curious the system chimed in and told me what was going on.


    [You are influenced by the domains and subdomains you have influence over. One of the ways that can manifest is that your body can undergo changes caused by the domains and subdomains you hold sway over. Necromancy will forever be an important subdomain of yours because it was the first one you gained a tier of influence over by yourself. That said, the eye color thing is easy to undo. Just will it undone.] The system told me, informing me as to what was happening to my body.


    I closed my eyes and wished them back to normal. I felt a sudden and subtle change in my form and opened my eyes. I looked at my stag servant, and the creature nodded at me. "Your eyes are back to normal." It declared, with a chilly indifference to this whole thing.


    All around me, my other servants, the undead creatures I had reanimated to acquire this influence over the necromancy subdomain began the slow process of rising up post reanimation. It was a strange sight, but one that excited me.


    ________________________________________________


    Perhaps the most ordinary of the corpses that I had just reanimated was that of a silver-furred wolf. She was a sleek creature, with average-sized paws for her frame and width, and a bruise on her snout. She was also the first to rise up fully, and she quickly bounded over to my side. She glared at the ogresses but didn''t bark.


    The drider I reanimated was a gigantic fusion of a humanoid and a spider. She had the abdomen and lower body of a massive red-carapaced arachnid, complete with a hungry-looking mouth and the upper body of a creature with delft-blue skin that looked almost human but was impossibly beautiful, possessing large eyes, full and dark lips, as well as pointed ears.


    Some of her facial features were almost blindingly white when contrasted with the deep tone of her skin. Her hair was the same shade of white as cream. Her eyes were colorless orbs, a haunting contrast to her void-black skin.


    When she was finished reanimating, a process that took her a few seconds but was over surprisingly quickly given the complexity of her body and its enormous size, she studied me but said nothing. She had a regal air to her and possessed an enticingly curvaceous body, some of which was hidden behind jewelry that was seemingly stuck to her skin. She was easily the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.


    The first of the creatures to speak was the next one to reanimate. It was the female grave giant. As she began to reanimate she began to laugh. The sound of her laughter, a deep and fully throated laugh, filled the forest air.


    She was a big one. Next to the Gug, she was the largest creature I had brought to the surface. She was just over six meters tall.


    She wore strange clothing that covered her entire body. Her form was clad in a dark tunic, one which clung to her deceased yet once again mobile form. She had a complexion the color of wheat. Her tunic was riddled with rips and tears. As she laughed, she began to cough, before eventually coughing up some of the soil and rocks that I had used when I brought her to me.


    I walked over to her and studied her face as she expelled what was in essence grave dirt from her lungs. She looked up at me sheepishly, displaying emotions that my other undead creatures didn''t show. This was odd because I had raised them all as ghouls.


    "You seem... different." I declared, looking into her eyes. They were colorless, pitch-black spheres. She smiled at up at me after I spoke to her and spent a second trying to gather her thoughts. And then she began to speak.


    "I am different!" She declared, energetically. There was an audible enthusiasm in her voice, a chipperness that clashed vividly with the emotions exuded by my other servants. I silently studied her for a second longer before questioning her.


    "Are you not a ghoul? Did... did my magic fail?" I asked, somewhat concernedly, but doing my best to hide it. She giggled at me, her eyes wide with delight before she replied to my query.


    "I am a ghoul, master. But I am also something more than that. I am a grave giant. We were born infused with unlife energy, and it makes it so that we both retain our minds if we are reanimated, though you would have let me keep my memories anyway, and also makes us stronger creatures. Being a necromancer is a matter of pride for us. And to be reanimated by the god of undeath... What an honor!" She exclaimed, her eyes widening in awe as she finished her statement.


    I was taken aback by her statement and made a mental note to come back to her later. It was while I was studying her, thinking about her statement, that the noise of a group of snakes began to fill the nearby air. I turned to look at the medusa, recognizing that the noises were probably coming from her.


    ________________________________________________


    Sure enough when I turned around and laid my eyes on the snake-headed woman she was sitting upright and gazing back at me. Her snakes, which served as the medusa''s hair, were glaring at the ogresses, but the actual humanoid head of the reptilian woman was indifferent to them and was focused on me.


    She had skin the color of milk and a lovely smile on her face. She had incredibly stunning amethyst-colored eyes, eyes that drew you in. If I had a heart I had no doubt it''d be pounding in response to making eye contact with her. But when we did make eye contact the reanimated woman didn''t look away. Instead she kept her gaze locked on mine and took a moment to relax.


    At that moment, beside the medusa''s corpse, a massive paw lunged into the air. The paw was covered in thick, unkempt fur that was the color of a starless night. The paw was powerfully muscled, thicker than some humans I had laid my eyes on, but the most intimidating part of it was that it ended in two dangerously clawed hands.


    It wasn''t like a human''s arm where it only possessed one extremity, it was doubly dangerous. Each hand ended in thin fingers that had razor-sharp looking nails and no doubt possessed remarkable strength. But the thing''s double-handed arms weren''t the most intimidating aspects of its form.


    The thing had a form that looked loosely headless. After noting this I went over to the thing and investigated it.


    It turned out that this wasn''t because the creature lacked a head but that the head, or at least the facial features the monster did have were hidden. The creature wasn''t headless but rather had a neck that jutted out over and between its shoulders and housed the being''s facial features, but that neck wasn''t attached to anything.


    Instead of a traditional head, the thing''s red, reptilian-slitted eyes, nose, and ears are all located on its neck. And its mouth, in a wicked parody of the mouths of all of the creatures I had met opened vertically, opening up and almost splitting up, its massive form. When the thing''s maw opened, I got to see a row of predatory, thick, yellowed fangs, and a massive, sopping wet tongue situated inside of its mouth.


    The creature pushed itself up off of its back with a single fluid motion, coming to a rest in an upright position and studied its surroundings. When its eyes reached me they came to a stop. And the beast looked at me calmly, as if awaiting instructions.


    As I considered what to say to it, I heard the noise something small makes when it hits the ground. The noise came from behind me, suggesting that it was probably my final new servant: an undead member of the fungoid "Fungal Folk". When I turned around, facing the same direction I had been facing before I came face to face, eye to face of fungal plating, with a tiny mushroom man who was standing tall.


    The reanimated fungoid creature was standing up, the only creature who had taken time to stand up beside the reanimated she-wolf. The thing''s eyeless face was facing me, as I could see a strangely humanlike structure to its eyeless face. The thing had ears, nose slits in its face, and a mouth, but no eyes.


    It possessed the rough shape of a humanoid, having two armlike appendages, two "legs" made of fungal matter, and a discernable head above a square slab of fungal matter that loosely resembled a flat but broad stomach with the basic features heads are supposed to have aside from eyes. The head was topped off by a big mushroom cap though so its imitation wasn''t perfect.


    The thing was impressively stoic, not laughing or studying me, or perhaps it just wasn''t visibly studying me. I wasn''t sure. I spent a few moments studying it, before I sent them all a mental command.


    "Get in line." I ordered all of my undead creatures. I did this via our eerie mental link so as to demonstrate the power I possessed, and to practice using it. The creatures responded by getting up and quietly getting in a long, single-file line. After they finished I sighed and realized that I was wasn''t communicating that correctly.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later the ogresses stood beside me, one on each side, and we studied the 10 creatures in front of us. The two of them were excitedly offering me their insights into the nature of my menagerie-like collection of undead monsters.


    "The spider lady is beautiful." Iret exclaimed, her eyes lecherously studying the massive hybrid. She wasn''t wrong, the relaxed and composed drider was, as I noted earlier, a radiantly beautiful creature.


    The woman looked at Iret and smiled nobly. In response to that regal smile, I heard the ogress'' heart begin to pound more quickly. I grinned unconsciously, at the drider, but she didn''t see it since her attention was focused on Iret. I stopped grinning after I noticed what I was doing.


    Okig studied the massive grave giant. She looked up at the woman, who looked down at her in return. The two of them made hesitant eye contact with each other, and the ogress'' grip on her club tightened.


    I myself ran my eyes over all of the creatures I had reanimated to serve me. Seeing them, most of them with all of their flesh, filled me with a powerful sense of superiority. But I wasn''t about to let that get in the way of ensuring that I took some care of my servants and made sure they knew what they needed to know.


    I looked out at the creatures before me and asked them a simple question designed to make sure I hadn''t messed up while creating them.


    "Do you all remember your lives as mortals?" I asked, my voice filling the air in the forest. The creatures all looked at each other and slowly began to nod, sure that they did in fact recall their first lives. Once they all had nodded I moved on.


    "Do you all know who I am?" I asked, curiously. I was certain the system had told them something, but I wasn''t sure what.


    They all looked over at each other, and then again began to nod. I relaxed and smiled, as I readied something to say next, in the safety of my mind.


    "That''s great! But allow me to introduce myself anyway. Just so you can hear me in my own words. I am Althos. I am a god. I guess I''m a god of undeath?" I told them, hesitating slightly with the last sentence. I refocused and got back on the track a second later.


    "I am your god. Your creator. And you are the first of my servants and worshipers. I will use you as the beginning of a faith that grants me power over life, death, undeath, and everything else. And I will also learn about each of you in time. We have an eternity together after all." I declared, momentarily envisioning myself as an all mighty god who dispenses life, death, and everything else with but a brief thought. It was an addicting mental image to be sure.


    But I wasn''t done speaking to my servants. I had one more question. And it was a doozy, as well as genuinely important.


    "I created you all to serve me. That doesn''t mean I created you to fight. But I do wonder... how strong do you think you are? And how in actuality, how strong are you?" I asked the freshly reanimated creatures. With the sole exception being the zombie, all of the creatures began to look at each other and size each other up.


    And then one of them, the ghoulish drider, spoke up for the very first time.


    "I have an idea. Or rather, I have a suggestion." She said, her voice soft and lilting. She spoke while staring at Iret, a smug grin plastered on her face. I turned to face her, surprised that she spoke up but curious to hear her out.

 37 Balance

    "Master, what are your needs?" Asked the hauntingly beautiful drider, a second after she stated that she had a suggestion for me. There was a sharp edge to her voice, a tremble audible at the word "needs" that made it clear that she hoped for opportunities to inflict violence.


    It served as a needed reminder that for all of her beauty, she was a ghoul. That''d be an easy thing to forget if I wasn''t careful.


    I looked at her curiously and considered her question for a few moments. As I did so I was silent.


    The truth was, there was only one thing I wanted, or at least one thing that she and the other undead could get me. And my thoughts about it were distorted by the part of me that was dark, tainted not just by the subdomain of corruption, but also now by the subdomain of necromancy.


    Part of me wanted to order my undead minions to perform a ritual in my name. A ritual that involved them venturing into the forest and tracking down a powerful creature. That part of me wanted to order my worshippers to bring back whatever powerful creature they found and then sacrifice it to me, especially if I wasn''t promised a reward for such brutal action.


    Thankfully that urge was both not very strong and also so out of character for me that it was easy to spot as alien and reject outright. It was one thing for me to animate the dead that had died without my influence, but another thing altogether for me to order my followers to perform a sacrifice. I silenced the part of my mind that reveled a bit too much in the dark powers I now possessed and refocused.


    I wasn''t just influenced by the two twisted subdomains that I had a bit of influence over. I also felt the power and life-sustaining radiance of the subdomain of healing, and a smaller but equally life-affirming subdomain of agriculture. I didn''t want something to die just to test my powers. I wouldn''t let something die just for me to test my powers unless I was defending myself.


    What I wanted was simpler than that. What I wanted was to get back to the task at hand, and inch towards enacting my plot to acquire living worshipers.


    I looked at the drider and shook my head. "No, there isn''t." I told them, lying so as to prevent unnecessary violence. I heard a soft chuckle in my mind as I said this, and wasn''t surprised to hear a familiar voice in my mind seconds later.


    [So you resisted temptation huh? Not bad Althos. Not bad at all. Especially because you have two dark subdomains working to influence you...] My companion remarked.


    Internally I chuckled, but I didn''t respond to the remark in a substantive way, or rather I didn''t reply to the message in a substantive way. But it did make me think. For a second my mind turned to thoughts of Okig, who I knew I''d need to spend some time treating.


    Breaking her mind wasn''t my intention, even if it did award me a worshiper, and I needed to contend with that reality.


    ________________________________________________


    For a moment I looked over at Okig. I studied her. I felt a pang of... something. This was the first time I focused on her in the wake of making her endure the odd and mind-breaking experience I put her through and now that I was doing it I recognized a few things.


    Firstly, I recognized that it was an act of corruption. That wasn''t an indictment of myself, it was an observation. The action was to test the powers over corruption, and over earth, that I possessed. And in that regard it was a success. An unabashed one at that.


    I also recognized that it was excessive. It was me using my powers unnecessarily and irresponsibly. I had already won, and what I did was a form of violence. I needed to be careful to not do that.


    And lastly, I knew that I either possessed the power to fix it, or I would gain the power to fix it. Fortunately, as I thought about that I learned something useful. It was more than likely that I possessed the power to fix her mind. I would fix it, if not today, then eventually.


    [So you''re working to maintain balance? Hmm... Well, we can''t say that we hate that you''re a neutral deity.] The system muttered, interrupting my moment of solemness and the vague sensation of regret that I felt.


    [You do possess the power to heal Okig''s mind. It''s the result of you possessing power over both healing and minds. You can soften the damage her mind suffered, and that may just serve to endear her more to you. We''ll teach you how to do it, if you can successfully enact your plot to bring the goblins to you.] The system promised, giving me more of a reason to exert my control over this situation.


    I was a god, being in control was something I needed to master. It was time to act like a god.


    ________________________________________________


    To get through the scene at hand I focused on navigating through the situation I found myself in. I''d have time to treat the ogress'' mind soon enough but if I wasn''t careful here I''d actively be responsible for deaths, which wasn''t what I wanted. Not without a real cause.


    "There will come a time for us to test our strength, and even now we''ll test it in little ways, but I shouldn''t let us get overly active. There is work to do, and deceptions to pull off. Now, if one of you would like to help me with one final task..." I told the creatures, leaving an opportunity to volunteer up in the air.


    I was responded too almost instantly. But it wasn''t by one of the figures I anticipated it. The voice that spoke to me, via the mental link I created with her, was that of the she-wolf.


    "Master, may I be of service?" She asked. Her voice was a quiet one, and it felt like she was straining to communicate with me, even though she was using a mental link.


    I found this curious, and to address I considered blessing her with the power of the necromancy subdomain. That was my thought process for a few moments until I remembered that in addition to raising her intelligence it''d also make her a "champion of mine" according to the blessing''s details which wasn''t something I knew enough about to use properly.


    Instead I quickly refocused on the matter at hand. "Can you retrieve the corpse of a deer for me?" I asked the she-wolf. I spoke out loud as I asked for the creature''s assistance, for the sake of convenience. The she-wolf looked at me in confusion and so I sighed and readied myself to explain more fully what I planned to do.


    "Today is the day I reveal myself, or a form of myself, to a nearby goblin tribe. I want to come bearing presents in the form of deer flesh. I already have two sources of deer flesh, I just want one more." I told the gathered creatures. They turned to the two stags in confusion for a moment after I was done talking.


    And then their eyes widened as the realization hit them. I grinned as they turned back to me, surprised and displaying various emotions on their faces. The drider and the grave-giant, in particular, had contrasting emotions on their faces.


    The drider was shocked, the emotion dazzling on her face. On the other hand, the grave-giant was delighted. Her face was alive with joy, and given her status as an undead creature, it was a particularly unusual sight.


    "You want them to eat undead flesh?" The grave-giant asked me. I nodded at her. And then she began to laugh again, this time sounding both awed and delighted by the idea.


    A hush fell over the party, aside from the sound of the giant''s laughter. I chuckled and decided to use this time to inspect the stats of my new servants. I targeted all of the brand new undead creatures and triggered my ability with but a flex of my mind.


    [Initiating creature analysis... Creature analysis complete.


    Creature name(s) and species: Imbrosa Ravenfist (drider), Mof Winejug (satyr), Guskaxa (Silver wolf), Fungoid (Fungal Folks), Risa (Medusa), Nivar (grave giant). Nameless (Gug)]


    What followed was an extensive list of skills, templates, and stats that ranged from subpar, in the cases of Guskaxa and Fungoid, to astounding in the cases of Nivar and Imbrosa.


    Nivar had a strength score of 45, and Imbrosa had an intelligence score of 40. Those numbers set the numbers my other servants had to shame. And I knew that I''d need to rely on them in the future. I made a mental note to comb through the minds of both Imbrosa and Nivar sometime soon.


    It was at that moment, while I was studying the stats of my minions, that Guskaxa ran off in the direction of the stag I intended for her to bring me. There was an eagerness to her trot that prevented me from interrupting her, so instead, I silently began to guide her to the corpse.


    It didn''t take her long for her to bring me the thing, and it took me even less time to reanimate the corpse. And with that, after what felt like an eternity of distractions I was back on track.


    A few more minutes passed, filled with idle chatter and the complaints of the living. But once I felt that I had heard enough of Okig and Iret complaining, I ordered us to finally stride towards the village of goblins and we began a casual stroll through the forest.


    Reaching the goblin encampment didn''t take long. We were a big party, but because of the scent of the ogresses mixing with the scent of the undead, no creature dared approach us. And soon enough we found ourselves within earshot of a gathering of goblins.


    ________________________________________________


    I stopped us when we were just far enough from the goblins to not be detected by them. All of us came to a stop, not quite immediately, but fast enough that no goblins reacted to us. When all of us were still I wordlessly ordered my two zombie deer to move forward and to stride towards the heart of the encampment ahead of us.


    I watched them begin to strut towards the goblins. And then as the goblins first noticed them I closed my eyes envisioned my form changing. I envisioned the bizarre omnielemental form I adopted when I spoke to the lucid dreamer named Alma. I shivered as my form changed.


    Over the course of a few seconds I changed, my flesh fading away and transforming into the fusion of elements that made up the body I had chosen to give Cosecha. All in all the process took a handful of seconds and when it was done I was looked at by two different groups of creatures.


    The living, gradually growing accustomed to my powers, were surprised by this but they reacted more quietly to it than they had to my other displays.


    The undead, being the eerie and reverential creatures they were, quietly spoke to me using our mental link. Their words were a mixture of awed whispers, and ghoulish comments about the potential applications of my powers, to the creation of more undead. Though their views on creating more undead were a bit more active and usually more violent than mine were.

 38 Dramatic Introductions

    I closed my eyes and allowed my vision to be overwhelmed by the powerful and living map that I kept locked away in my brain. It responded to me by springing into view, boldly showing me a pristine view of the encampment just a few meters out of ear-shot.


    The goblin encampment was a circular area in the middle of a group of trees. It consisted of a number of tiny tents, centered around a thin hole in the ground with a large number of goblins living in the cave that hole allowed entry into and out of. I wasn''t focused on holistic statistics about the encampment though, I was looking for something more specific.


    Mentally, I dashed into the encampment on the not-so-mini-map and began to look for specific individuals. I was determined to find and assemble the goblins I had already connected and interacted with. It was important that I do this right, and frankly, I had time. The goblins weren''t prepared to attack the deer and even if they did I''d just reanimate the things.


    ________________________________________________


    The composition of the encampment was fascinating. Only some of it was centered in this area, either around or just outside of a hole that my earlier, unupgraded tremorsense wasn''t able to truly and meaningfully flesh out. Now that I could see the hole and was focused on encampment I allowed my mind to explore it.


    I could have instantly tracked down my goblin companions, but I wanted to practice my powers. This moment was a low-risk moment for me to manually use my abilities and learn to navigate them expertly without relying on automated assistance. I wanted to be as self-sufficient when it came to divinity as I could be. And doing it this way would allow me to learn more, something I valued.


    The entrance into the earth was thin. It was barely a sliver in the crust of the island I was on, only partially visible from where I was. Looking at it from the outside, if I had been limited to my physical eyes, I would have struggled to understand what I was looking at as it was in the ground and wasn''t a cave. Thankfully, mortal limitations didn''t apply to me.


    Using my enhanced tremorsense, looking into the hole was a breeze. There was a thin ladder that clung to the side of the hole''s lip, allowing goblins to safely descent what would otherwise be a sheer drop a few meters high. The ladder''s loose, rope-tied connection to the earth at the top of the hole, and at the bottom of the hole was what gave it away physically.


    Inside the hole itself, at the bottom of the thing, laired a number of goblins. Some of them were visible to me as sleeping outlines, their bodies laying on the floor motionlessly. They weren''t the goblins I was looking for.


    The interior of the hole was divided. It extended deep into the planet''s eerie underground and so had room for many different areas. Some of those areas were chambers where goblins slept. Others were where goblins practiced for battle. Some were for waste-excrement. And others were for storing and preparing food. The latter two were often uncomfortably close.


    And so I begun my manhunt. The tunnel I was mentally exploring was connected to the rest of the strange world beneath the world that existed underneath the island''s surface, but goblins didn''t inhabit this place that thoroughly and only a few chambers were inhabited by goblins.


    It took me a few moments of searching to track down Mawby, Hagitha, Mianthus, and Troik. Those were the goblins who I had interacted with, even vaguely, in the past. Each of them happened to be located in different parts of the hole.


    Troik was in another of the mass sleeping chambers. Mianthus and Hagitha were in separate training chambers. Mawby was in a chamber that served food to the goblins and also, at least according to what she was doing at the moment, served as a nursing area to heal injured or sick goblins.


    When I found them I got to practice creating mind links, which as it turned out was easy to do. I just needed to envision forming a bridge that tied my mind and the mind of another creature. Once that was done I''d send them mental messages. Each of them got to hear a variation of the same message.


    "Come outside." I whispered into in their minds. In each of their cases, I used Cosecha''s voice to disguise that "Althos" was here. I wanted the goblins to see me as a powerful spirit who used its powers to bring them a gift. I put urgency and power in my voice, to ensure they came out quick.


    All of them, but especially Mawby and Troik began a mad dash from the chambers they were in to the ladder that led out of the hole. With this I smiled and refocused on my physical surroundings.


    ________________________________________________


    At the moment a decent number of goblins were located in the encampment and with each passing second, more of them looked to the trio of stags who boldly approached them. The goblins weren''t brave though and so they did nothing to stop or repel the deer.


    The trio of deer consisted of two zombified deer and the single skeletal deer. The skeletal creature was at the front, its intelligence-filled eye sockets watching and waiting for one of the goblins to try and attack either of its allies. It was an unnecessary but appreciated move on the thing''s part and I made a mental note to thank it later.


    The goblins, seemingly being quite skittish creatures, were paralyzed with indecision and fear. They all silently studied the trio of shambling corpses, and many backed away from where they were standing, but none of them approached the creatures.


    I chuckled as I watched this display. I allowed it to occur for a few more seconds, before stepping forward to show myself to the goblins.


    I took a few steps and moved close enough to the goblins that the tiny creatures could see me. And that caused them to actually begin to panic.


    ________________________________________________


    The moment I stepped into view, displaying my odd form, the community of pint-sized pipsqueaks visibly reacted to me. Panicked voices filled the air around us and began to shout commands at each other, including ones that contradicted each other. As I watched this an annoyed frown formed on my face.


    The panic occurred and even intensified for a few seconds since I was approaching and hadn''t been deterred by the frightened reactions my appearance was causing. The intensification of the panic probably had to do with the fact that I wasn''t scared to approach the tiny and cowardly creatures.


    The encampment was a mess, even before my creatures and I showed up. The place existed, was clearly visible, and had inhabitants, but there was little to no organization of the tents, weapons, waste, and other detritus were strewn carelessly about, and few of the goblins had any sort of preparedness to address my companions and me.


    The stags were able to calmly walk into the encampment, aided by my sudden appearance causing any goblins who may have otherwise had time to react to be further frightened and unable to form a coherent strategy that may have repelled us.


    I took a few long steps, listening with annoyance as the goblins clashed and were unable to prevent me from entering their encampment. It was clear that they had no meaningful defensive strategy and no tools with which to repel invaders.


    That was precisely when the first goblin to exit the chamber, the little goblin named Hagitha, poked her red-skinned head out of the hole. She had a cute face, with large green eyes, a hawkish nose, prominent cheekbones, and shockingly pretty electric yellow hair. She was clinging to the ladder leading out of the hole and hurling herself upwards at a truly shocking speed, which caused her to be too distracted to gain a real awareness of the fearful atmosphere of the encampment.


    The encampment was in chaos while Hagitha threw herself upwards so that she may meet the bizarre creature who fed her a magical fruit once. As the woman was clearing the final rungs of the ladder, a pair of goblins actually managed to draw their bows and aim them at me. I could feel a wave of mental hostility coming from my undead servants and worshipers aimed at the goblins bold enough to raise a weapon in my direction.


    I chuckled, noting that if nothing else the goblins were capable of mustering up the courage to defend themselves eventually. And then I willed the earth to lash out at the goblins who had taken arms against me by compelling the soil at the feet of the two goblins to soften to the point that the goblins began to sink into it.


    The two goblins who were quick enough on their feet to attempt to threaten me were shocked and scared as they felt the grass they were standing on top of sink into the earth underneath them, an instant before their feet sank into the earth that was supposed to be beneath them.


    It was enough to knock them off-balance, so when they sank for a single second I willed the earth to resolidify with their feet stuck in it, preventing them from aiming at my followers and me, without actually harming them.


    This was when Hagitha successfully finished hurling herself out of the mouth of the hole around which the encampment was situated, and took stock of the situation in front of her. And she summarized the whole situation somewhat eloquently.


    A look of bewilderment etched itself onto her face as she uttered a single, expressive word. "Shit."

 39 Towards A Meal

    I turned my ethereal head in the direction of Hagitha and studied her. She was a cute little thing and had a look of wild concern on her face. I almost felt bad making her worry, but I knew better than to be distracted. Instead, I spoke directly into her mind.


    "Gaze upon me. Behold my form. " I commanded, using this time to act like a powerful spirit that compelled obedience and exuded magnificence.


    It felt strange since most of my interactions with living creatures had been ones wherein we were or at least I had acted like the people I was interacting with were my relative equals. Not this time though. I was obviously and demonstrably the strongest creature here, and I wasn''t about to let them believe otherwise.


    After commanding Hagitha to look at me I refocused on the whole scene in front of me. Calmly I opened my mouth to speak. "Enough. Calm yourselves." I told the goblin encampment, using my power and authority to project my voice throughout the collection of tents and frightened goblins.


    While their attention was focused on me, Hagitha began to move closer to me. She sneakily walked in my general direction but avoided drawing overt attention to herself thanks to everyone''s focus on me.


    My voice silenced the panicked commotion that was audibly throughout the encampment. The goblins gradually calmed down over the course of a few moments, many of them stopping their running altogether, or approaching their mates and family members in case this was a prelude to a disaster.


    A few goblins dared to try and grab their bows. I could respect such efforts, but I didn''t stand idly by while they acted in a way that might endanger my allies or my scheme.


    I locked my gaze on the goblins who used the moment of calmness to attempt to take a defensive stance and willed the earth to move in my defense. I didn''t target the goblins themselves, as they weren''t in a position to attack me just yet. Instead, I took careful aim at their weapons. I focused on the earth beneath their armaments and willed it to open up underneath their armaments.


    Bows and arrows, lances, clubs, and inexpertly made axes all sunk into the earth, as if someone had dropped them into the ocean. And in order to truly cement my status as the top of the local food chain I quietly asked a question to the system.


    "How do I use telekinesis? Do I just... reach out with my mind and will things to happen, like I do with earth control?" I asked the system, hoping to make use of my first real psychic ability to ensure that this conflict came to a decisive, and unpainful end for everyone involved. I heard an intrigued noise sound off in my head, and chuckled.


    [Yes, actually. That''s exactly what you do.] The system explained, evidently impressed that I was gradually making use of the full suite of powers I had at my disposal. I grinned, physically, and did just that.


    ________________________________________________


    The goblins that had been attempting to rally a defensive force were the ones I targeted. I turned to look at them and reached out with my mind. I envisioned something like a network of invisible hands reaching out from my head and grabbing those few goblins who had the courage needed to move decisively in the face of danger.


    The goblins, who were quite brave all things considered, suddenly made a number of unbrave noises as they felt my mind''s "hands" reach out and slam into them. They were suddenly pushed back, inexplicably in their eyes. It made them even more afraid. I chuckled but was surprised, as that wasn''t what I wanted to happen. I had meant to grab them, not knock them down.


    "I may need... to practice this power." I muttered, very quietly. That said I gritted my teeth and reached out with another set of hands, three in total, aimed at that same number of goblins. And this time I aimed at their shoulders. The invisible hands extended forward and effortlessly found their targets, powerfully grasping the shoulders of the fallen creatures and then hoisting them into the air.


    Their less courageous, and more intelligent, comrades stiffened as they examined the state of the few goblins with the courage to stand up to my allies and I. Two of them were stuck in the ground, immobilized and making exerted noises as they tried to free themselves.


    And three more of them were floating in the air. The floating goblins were uttering curses and scratching at the air that surrounded them, but they continued to float helplessly. I turned my gaze away from the floating goblins and turned to face their comrades.


    "I am not your enemy. Now, are you satisfied?" I asked, after having casually flexed two of my powers, in order to deal with the few goblins who attempted to stop me. A silence fell over the encampment and the creatures who had frightfully reacted to my presence looked despondent.


    I looked out across the encampment and took careful stock of what I saw. It was... well it wasn''t great.


    The encampment was a messy, disorganized place. Tents were situated haphazardly throughout the area surrounding the hole in the ground that led to what could more reasonably be said to be the goblin''s lair.


    Not just were weapons strewn about, but so were conscious and unconscious goblins and goblin babies. As I studied it I got more and more annoyed. After a few moments of polite contemplation and careful examination, I opened my mouth to speak.


    "I came here to present you with a gift and encourage you to worship me. But now it seems that I can provide you with an even better present than what I had originally come here to give you." I said, sounding somewhat exhausted even to myself.


    "Now, allow me to introduce myself." I told the creatures, speaking confidently so as to maintain the impression I had undoubtedly impressed upon the souls of the lowly creatures I had cowed. As I did this, I freed the goblins whose feet I had trapped in the earth and lowered the goblins who I had suspended in mid-air for trying to organize a defense against my servants or me.


    A part of me hoped that that would generate some goodwill towards me. That it would cause me to be seen as a powerful but also merciful entity. I knew better than to think that that was likely to occur though.


    ________________________________________________


    "Goblins, my name is Cosecha." I told the goblins who were out of the hole and stood scattered around the encampment. Some of them muttered my name, the word escaping their lips quietly and fearfully. I chuckled, allowing the sound to not only escape my lips but to actually reverberate throughout the encampment.


    A few of the goblins immediately prostrated themselves when I said my name. One of them was Troik, who had emerged from the hole alongside Mawby and Mianthus, a male goblin who was one of Troik''s friends. Seeing Troik fall and show submission to me inspired a pair of goblins who had silently stared at me in terror while I defended myself from their braver allies, to do the same thing.


    "I am a spirit of the harvest, the earth, and abundance. As you can see," I told my future followers, stretching out my hand in the directions of the goblins I had defeated but then mercifully freed. "I am quite powerful. My power aside, I did not come here to be your enemy." I told them.


    I allowed and caused my voice to flood not only their ears but their minds, by establishing mental links with them and echoing my words into their heads. I didn''t make it overt enough to draw additional attention, but I did overlay my voice with my power.


    "I came here to help you. I came here because I know that you''ve been struggling with food and because I possess the power to end your struggles." I explained, beginning to speak more excitedly the longer I talked. I worked to hide the excitement I felt as I spoke.


    "I can create an unlimited amount of fruits. And any fruit I create is perfectly healthy and is all the food a creature needs to eat for an entire day." I revealed to the goblins as I rose my watery tendril in the direction of the goblins and willed a beautiful copper-colored apple into being atop my fluid appendage.


    The sudden appearance of the apple at the end of watery tendril caused the eyes of the goblins to nearly universally widened. I smiled, my airy head being thankfully visible in the darkened forest and causing some of the goblins to begin to relax. I tossed the apple to one of the goblin children, a creature even smalled than Troik or Hagitha.


    The creature''s father, an older, fatter goblin, caught it in midair and glared at me, before muttering that I wasn''t about to "corrupt his child." That made me laugh, but so as to not cause another conflict I laughed internally. Part of why it was funny was that it wasn''t a bad instinct since eating food I created opened one up to my influence, which I was could undoubtedly use to corrupt someone. I wasn''t done talking and began shortly after I tossed the apple to the goblin child.


    "I would like for you all to serve me, eventually. And I believe you will. But I am here today to introduce myself and to offer gifts so as to begin a fruitful conversation between my servants and me, and you all. I am in no rush to acquire your service and devotion. I will earn it." I explained, smiling at the goblins.


    It was at that moment that I entered the minds of my zombified stags and withdrew the reanimating sparks that gave them what limited abilities and cruel mockery of life they possessed. The two deers slumped to the ground, once again fully and truly dead. The goblins gasped as the long bodies of the stags clattered to the earth, once more falling like puppets who had just lost their puppeteers.


    "I came bearing not only fruit, but also meat. I would like to talk more, but I am happy to do so after we feast. Now come. Show me your appetites, feast and make merry." I announced, before beckoning the goblins towards the deceased deer, so that they may claim their meal.


    I had worked hard for it, and I wanted to encourage them to eat their fill. The goblins rose, swiftly, thanks to the impact of hunger burning a swift hole through their prior caution, fear, and restraint.


    The first of the goblins to dash forward were Mawby and Troik, rising up from their subservient positions faster than I imagined positions and animalistically lunging towards the free meal I had just given the entire tribe. As they dashed forward they opened their mouths, causing copious amounts of saliva to vacate their maws and showing me their weirdly shaped and monstrous teeth.


    While a frenzied and hungry pack of goblins approached the two thick corpses I had laid out in front of them, I opened up my inventory and pulled out a third layer of stag flesh, the very flesh I collected from the body of the stag skeleton who now had impressive intelligent, skills, and an intimidating appearance.


    I threw the additional layer of skin and flesh onto the corpse of one of the deers and smiled as it seemed to urge the goblins to dash towards me even faster. When those of them who got to the food quickly got there they began to speedily and messily devour the food, spraying blood and flesh everywhere with every bit, nibble, and mauling they gave the bodies. It was something else.


    ________________________________________________


    During the minutes that followed the goblins rushing towards me with famished looks on their little faces, I was mentally messaging Hagitha, Mianthus, Troik, and Mawby. My initial message was apologetic.


    "Hello everyone, I apologize for first coming and meeting you this way rather than privately meeting with each of you individually." I told the little creatures, being somewhat sincerely in my apology.


    I had decided to do this in a somewhat spur of the moment way, and though I was happy with the results overall I was doing my best to assess and refine my strategies for future moments when I have to do something like this. That said the messages I received back from the goblins weren''t at all negative.


    "You came! You''re here! You''re real!" Mentally shouted Troik. I grinned at him as I read his message.


    "So it''s true then... is it all true? Do you realize possess all the powers Troik said you do?" Asked Mianthus, clearly and understandably being shocked by all of this. I couldn''t really blame him, I doubted I''d have believed Troik if I were a goblin in this tribe given the extreme nature of what he had most likely told them.


    "I never doubted you''d come eventually! I just... never imagined that it''d be so fast." Said Mawby, delighted and understandably shocked to be in my company, in the same form I had adopted when I first met her.


    "To think that Troik went out and met a servant of an actual spirit..." Hagitha mused, laughter in her voice.


    And that was the beginning of a few minutes of relative peace in what had been a long and quite fulfilling day.


    ________________________________________________


    It wasn''t until several minutes later when the goblins had torn through much of the body-fat and flesh of the three stags I had acquired on my way here that things quieted down enough for me to talk to the whole tribe once again.

 40 A Conversation

    Goblins were scattered about the encampment. Most, but not quite all, of the goblins outside of the hole in the ground loomed close to the skeletons of the stags.


    The flesh and fur that once covered the bodies of the creatures I had delivered to the goblins were gone, and the skeletons of the creatures were visible. Before I said another word to the goblins, I targeted the two skeletons and envisioned twin beams of obsidian energy shooting from my hand and infusing them with unlife, reanimating them as skeletal servitors in my service.


    With that potent, imagined image my main focus, I began to attempt to use one of my divine powers "Create Undead". I was determined to use it without asking for guidance since I had asked for help so many times before, and I was doing it by instinct and by inferring that activating my powers tended to be done mentally.


    For a few moments, nothing happened. I was silent, as were my undead minions, and the goblins I had just fed chattered away amongst themselves. A few of them gave me awed looks, but whenever I turned to look at them and smile they''d turn away in a blur of motion.


    But then the newly visible skeletons of the truly deceased stags began to vibrate and radiate an eerie, yellow light. The sight of this was so odd that my other undead followers revealed themselves and approached the encampment. Their eyes were collectively locked on the vibrating piles of bones.


    Mentally, I sighed in annoyance at them and told them to step back. Grudgingly, they acquiesced to my demand and stepped back out of view, hiding in the shadows of the forest.


    And it was at that moment that I received a notification.


    [New Title Received: The Resourceful One


    Title explanation: This title has been bestowed upon you by the subdomain of necromancy. It has been given to you because of your odd instincts regarding violence, namely that you don''t seem to like it, and that you are perfectly fine with the creation of and even modification of undead and corpses you didn''t create.


    The Resourceful One passive powers:


    Natural undeath: Undead you create lose the drawbacks of being magically animated creatures, such as growing weaker they are hit by anti-magic effects. This would apply even if they were actually created through magic. This also causes corpses in your presence to have a chance to spontaneously arise as undead beings under your control unless you opt to not allow this to occur.


    Heal The Undead: You can use unlife energy to inject unholy vigor into the undead. This grants you greater effectiveness at healing the undead.


    The Resourceful One active power:


    Infusion: Once a day you can grant an undead servant of yours a twenty-four-hour boon based on the domains and subdomains you have influence over.]


    "Oh hey, my first undead-related title. Nice." I thought, in the safety of my mind as I read through the notification. While I was doing that the skeletons of the stags completed coming into unlife once more. They rose to their feet and looked majestically at the goblins. And the goblins looked at them, with terror and awe-filled eyes. I chuckled and turned to address the crowd of tiny creatures.


    ________________________________________________


    "Fear not little ones. The creatures you see here are not your foes. In fact, they are your friends." I arrogantly declared, channeling pride and self-confidence into my voice so that I may burn a majestic image into the minds of the tiny creatures.


    "I am an endlessly resourceful master and I have come to you with a number of gifts. The food you just ate was only one of what I come bearing." I explained, smiling at the skeletal stags.


    I studied them and focused on their eerily empty eye-sockets. And I began to reflect on an unexpected but noteworthy benefit of my decision to supply the goblins with the skeletal stags.


    "I''m giving them sentries sure, but I''m also supplying them with spies that are both eager to inflict violence and utterly loyal to me." I thought, a strange smile on my face as I focused on that thought. It was a thought that had occurred to me when I was chatting with my first goblin followers, the four goblins I had previously interacted with in one way or another.


    Troik was the first goblin to approach one of the stags. He walked over to the thing but stopped short, not wanting to reach out and touch it but hoping to examine it more closely.


    The undead stag''s eyeless skull turned to examine the strangely childish and innocent goblin. My creation didn''t show any hostility to the goblin, but the link that tethered the skeleton and I together grew hot thanks to the annoyance my worshiper was unable to physically express.


    "If you''ll allow me, I intend to give you these skeletons. It will be a free gift given in good faith and to foster goodwill between us. These skeletal stags are sleepless, hungerless entities that you can use to guard your homes at all times, thus freeing you up to pursue other tasks." I revealed, aware of one of the biggest weaknesses of being a mortal: the need to sleep.


    As soon as I said the word "Sleepless" I heard an audible cheer from some of the goblins. It brought a smile to my face and I knew at that moment that I had already achieved at least this decisive victory.


    "I can see that that prospect excites you. I''m glad to be able to help make your lives better." I told them, speaking truthfully. I actually did like the feeling of winning them over not through terror and fear, but by making their lives easier and by giving them reasons to worship me as a helpful god.


    I felt their awe begin to slowly pour into me. It made me feel lighter, and stronger, while also boosting my ego. I had to work to suppress a sense of genuine, possibly even earned, pride and arrogance, but I managed to put a lid on it after a few seconds of internally struggling with myself.


    "I have come here to earn worshipers. Or at least to begin to do that. I know it may take time, which I think is reasonable. I wish to improve your lives and to show you how you could be living if you wish too. I possess powers both more useful and stranger than the ones you''ve seen, little ones." I told them, whispering of the already considerable diversity of powers I could use to change and alter reality.


    They began to whisper to each other, awe and fear mixing together in their voices. I heard them ask curious questions, about healing, about housing, and about safety. It was actually surprising to me to hear them ask such well-thought-out questions and wonder, reasonably, about my powers.


    Eventually, their whispers got louder and louder and turned into regular-volume, spoken conversations.


    ________________________________________________


    "This creature clearly possesses great power. We should see what it is willing to help us with!" One goblin told a neighbor of hers. There was cautious excitement visible in her pink eyes. A thin smile on her full lips.


    "But think of what it''s asking? It wants us to serve it, to worship it!" A peer of hers replied, concern and even a bit of outrage audible in his voice. He glared at her and then turned to glare at me. There was a fire in his gaze, not a magical one or another, but a fire of anger at the thought of losing something, and I speculated that maybe he feared to lose some sense of freedom or independence.


    "I wonder if it could heal... Just imagine if it could restore Xiax''s arms?" Another asked one of his sisters, a goblin that looked just like him and had the same last name. I was about to reply when that goblin''s sister responded before I could.


    "Look at it! It''s clearly an elemental of some soul. What sort of elemental can heal?" She asked, sarcastically.


    It was as if it were common knowledge that elementals couldn''t heal, which I added to my list of known trivia, a list that was admittedly quite small while reminding myself that overhearing something doesn''t make it true and that later on. I was more than capable of admitting that I''d need to research this to see if it''s true. I refused to assume something that serious and far-reaching without evidence.


    It took the goblins a few minutes of discussion and conversations to decide how to move forward as a community. Shortly before they turned to speak to me, and in the span of seconds between them having their communal time and them readying themselves to speak, I explored an idle thought.


    I found it quite interesting that this conversation about the future of the goblin tribe was taking place without the mysterious orc chief who supposedly lorded over the goblin tribe, especially because he was a real person. He just wasn''t here.


    Instead of being here with his goblin minions the orc chief and his animal companion, creatures I had detected using my not-so-mini-map over the last few days, the orc chief was deep underground. He was gradually making his way towards us, alongside his animal companion, but he wasn''t here yet. And judging from their pace, the duo was quite far away.

 41 A Miracle

    "Cosecha!" Said one of the encampment''s inhabitants, a tiny, blue-skinned male goblin. He made eye contact with me, accidentally, and then hurriedly dropped his head. He was the same goblin who had spoken to his sister earlier, wondering about whether or not I could heal. I suspected I knew what he would have asked if he hadn''t meekly lowered his head to not make eye contact with me.


    I targeted him, by focusing on his face, and activated one of my mental powers, my ability to read surface-level thoughts. I envisioned his mind opening up to me, and a stream of consciousness slowly making itself audible in my mind.


    I imagined the sensation of his surface-level thoughts being read off to me by someone with a voice like his. And I smiled as his words began to worm their way into my brain.


    "Oops, I didn''t mean to look directly into its eyes! Oh goodness, oh goodness, what if it turns me into one of those skeletons?" The little thing frightfully thought, his mental voice speaking manically. I chuckled and opened my mouth so that I may calm the little one.


    "Yes little one? What do you need?" I asked, speaking slowly and calmly. "I am not here to harm you. I will not harm you. Remember that even the goblins who opposed me and rose their weapons at me were just prevented from harming me." I told the creature, reminding it of my neutral treatment of those who opposed me.


    I waited a few moments, silently, as the creature considered what I told it. He took a few moments to gather his courage but he was able to successfully muster the bravery needed to look me in the face and begin to speak.


    "Can you heal? I have a friend, his arm got bitten off by a creature a few days ago. He''s sick. We... we think it might be infected, but we don''t have a way to heal it or save him from the infection." The goblin explained, clearly frightened and also tired. There was a weariness, one that felt born from fear and from exhaustion in equal parts, that hadn''t been present in his voice earlier.


    I smiled at the little guy and nodded. As I did so his eyes began to light up. They were deep brown orbs and were massive on his small face. "Really? Let me go and get him!" The goblin almost shouted, excitedly before turning around and dashing towards a tent. As he took off, I received a message from my first and most consistent companion. The system.


    ________________________________________________


    [Hello Althos. The domains and I have been talking.] My companion told me. I had always listened when the system spoke to me, and over the course of the last few days, I had grown familiar with the nuanced inflections of its voice. It sounded excited.


    [Based on the work you''ve done and the ways you''ve managed to interact with people, animals, and undead without losing yourself or changing completely, we''ve decided that you deserve a reward. A real, substantial one.] The voice revealed. And now I understood and I even shared the thing''s excitement. The single second or so it took the system to finish and send its next message felt like an eternity.


    [To be clear, the tutorial isn''t over. But we''ve decided that you deserve to be able to use at least the tutorial versions of the powers granted to you by your influence over the domains and subdomains that you came to life being able to somewhat control.] The system announced. And as it did so I felt something change within me.


    ________________________________________________


    The sensation of some of my powers being unlocked filled me at once. It flooded me with confidence and self-assured belief.


    It was odd to recognize that those two feelings were alien, or at least were hidden from me, but I knew they were. I knew this because of the speed of the two emotions. They weren''t there one instant, and the next instant they came. They came the instant that I felt that the powers that had always belonged to me become mine to command.


    I was smiling when the notification came. And as I began to read it, my smile only widened.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The system hasn''t freed you from the tutorial but it has done something else instead. You have earned the right to exert your influence over the remaining domains and subdomains you hadn''t yet been able to influence. Preparing the lengthy notification needed to break down what you''ve gained as you read through this notification.


    Details about the chaos domain:


    The domain of chaos is the domain of freedom, art, creativity, change, mutations, shapeshifting, entropy, and anarchy. To be a deity of chaos is to be a lord of mutations and rule over instability. It is to pierce through the facade of lawful, ordered societies, and see the fragility on which their so-called stability is built.


    Gaining the first tier of influence over chaos grants you the power to change others, to shatter and replace order with something that is at once old and new; chaos. It allows you to see what has stagnated and give those things new life.


    To gain greater influence over chaos you must bring together people and convince them to work towards undermining the law, and if you can convince law-abiding people to do so all the better, and to leave disordered, organic change wherever they go.


    You must use your powers to spread change and free those who willingly bind themselves in the chains of order and law, as well as those who''ve been unwillingly bound and are manipulated by the forces that prattle on about law and order.


    Chaos domain passive powers:


    Identify mutations: This power allows you to see what, if any, mutations someone has. Mutations are more spontaneous and less ordered than templates are, and their effects tend to be more diverse and less common than those of templates.


    Entropic manipulation: This passive power allows you to manipulate entropy, energy which disintegrates, decays, and disrupts that which it touches. You can infuse your fists or weapons with entropic energy, you can disrupt technology and shatter buildings with entropic gazes, and so much more.


    If you wish, you could also do the opposite and halt entropy, preventing things like aging, or even reverse it, granting you an incredibly potent tool in manipulating mortals.


    Manipulate shape: Using this allows you to modify the physical forms of your followers or objects. This is one of those powers that increase in potency over time, eventually allowing you to curse your enemies into forms you desire them to possess. This is an upgradeable power that grows stronger as you gain more influence over the domain of chaos.


    Alignment detection: This power allows you to detect someone''s alignment. Since you already possessed a way of doing this, this power is redundant.


    Chaotic aura: This protective aura breakdowns structured things that are hostile to you, like arrows fired by foes of yours when they reach a meter of you, and can even weaken spells, serving as a magic mitigation field with regards to enemies of yours specifically.


    Chaos kinship: This unique passive power makes other chaotic creatures view you more favorably. You can also detect chaotic creatures more easily and are more attuned to their desires and needs.


    Inspiration: You can inspire creatures, causing them to feel a burst of creative fervor. This improves the quality of the artwork they create while causing them to fall under your influence. This power applies even if they don''t know the source of the inspiration.


    Chaos domain active power:


    Chaos inducement: This active, once-a-week, power allows you to afflict a lawful foe with an urge to behave chaotically that lasts for a full day. This power can result in an alignment shift if used in schemes to nurture chaotic tendencies within lawful people.


    Chaos domain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with the chaos domain improves their luck, nurtures things like creativity, and improves their ability to react to chaotic situations.


    Cursing someone with the chaos domain causes them to experience more chaotic situations than usual for where they live, reduces their ability to adapt to chaotic situations, worsens their luck, and saps them of creativity.


    Details about the nature domain:


    The nature domain governs the natural world. It governs animals, plants, habitats, the relationships between living creatures, and elemental forces.


    This domain is a powerful one that bestows those who can influence it with abilities that have massive range. Some of the powers this domain grants are powers over environmental disasters, and the ability to induce rapid changes to the weather.


    To gain influence over it, gain the worship of nature spirits, animals, and plants, protect nature, and build cults dedicated to your rulership over nature.


    Nature domain passive powers:


    Disaster generation and control: This is an upgradable power that for now is limited to earthquakes and famines. You can cause minor earthquakes and create and manipulate famines.


    Terrain control: Another upgradeable power that allows you to manipulate the terrain. As of right now you can manipulate stones, rocks, and soil, and can modify the terrain by affecting how fertile it is, therefore canceling out famines, or causing them.


    Weather control: You can''t use this power yet, at least not meaningfully. When you gain the ability to influence the subdomain of liquid, you''ll be able to cause rain and snow. As you gain influence over the subdomain of air you''ll be able to create clouds, and eventually thunderstorms. Other subdomains and domains may grant this power a wider range of usages.


    Nature domain active power:


    Charm the environment: This power temporarily grants sapience to five nearby plants or animals and dominates them to stand by you and fight as your warriors. This is a once a month power, at the moment.


    Nature domain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone through the domain of nature causes plants grown by them to speed up their growth, improves their relationships with animals, and grants them improved resistance to the elements.


    Cursing someone with the domain of nature causes plants nurtured by them to suffer and be damaged while in their presence, worsens their relationship with animals and makes animals aggressive towards them, and weakens their ability to endure the elements.


    Details about the civilization domain:


    The civilization domain governs the sort of societies built by all manner of creatures, leadership, social behavior, culture, and architecture.


    This domain is a highly influential one, though it isn''t a greater domain. In the past, this domain had been used by gods to construct all manners of societies and to aid their mortal worshipers in a creative range of ways.


    The powers granted by this domain are related to social behaviors and the easy construction of societies and communities. To gain influence over it, create or modify civilizations, create or modify buildings, and build cults that fuse religion and society.


    Many powers this domain grants are positively influenced by the domain of creation, which in time will boost the overall quality of the things you build.


    Civilization domain passive power:


    Create building: This power allows you to automatically create a building out of material types that you can manipulate. In your case, you can create buildings out of stones and out of soil.


    When you activate it, you are asked what sort of material you want it to be made out, and to design the exterior and interior.


    Civilization domain active power:


    Aid: This is a once-an-hour-power. When you use it you can help creatures who are building furniture. In the future, you''ll be able to create furniture via this domain, but for now, you must either make it by hand or have your followers create it.


    Civilization domain blessing and curse details:


    This domain''s blessing and its curse are some of the few that can be cast upon entire communities or civilizations. If you bless an individual with it you increase their ability to be an effective leader, organizer, and community or civilization builder. If you bless a community or civilization with it you can increase their overall health, numbers, and strength.


    If you curse an individual using this domain you cause them to be shunned by their peers, cause them to behave in ways that harm their reputation, and make them a worse leader. If you curse a community or civilization with it you cause it to suffer blows to their health, strength and improve the probability that some of its members will die.


    Details about the subdomain of purity:


    This subdomain is in some ways the inverse of the subdomain of corruption. It is the subdomain that governs behavior that is generally considered good, generally in alignment but these behaviors, aside from the virtue of kindness, are not necessarily in pursuit of goodness or kindness.


    This is a tricky subdomain to try and gain influence over, as it requires both nurturing these traits in some of your followers and for you to exhibit these traits yourself. Oddly enough, you often do demonstrate these traits, but it''s selecting groups of your followers for you to nurture these traits in that is hard.


    Similar to how corruption has the seven gateway sins, the subdomain of purity has the seven virtues. These virtues are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Each time you gain a tier of influence over the subdomain you select one of these virtues to become the lord of, adding it to what you can influence.


    These behaviors, if nurtured carefully, can be part of changing a creature from a neutral, or even an evil alignment and moving them towards a good alignment. If that happens then they will become considered a worshiper of yours, and will serve you in ways that are helpful for you to maintain your status as a neutral god.


    Your innate virtue is patience, which explains why you are willing to forgive those who attack you. Patience is related to forgiveness, the ability to endure difficult situations without anger, and tolerance of all manner of people and beliefs.


    Purity subdomain passive powers:


    Pure heart: This power allows you to detect a creature''s personal virtue, the virtue they most exemplify. All creatures have a virtue that most resonates within them.


    Purity infusion: This power allows you to infuse concentrated purity into food. You can use this to ensure that your food cures conditions and that it encourages creatures to behave in ways that embody the virtues.


    Aura of patience: This is a mind-alerting aura that fills those around you with calmness, and improves their ability to shrug off other mind-altering effects. It reduces hostility towards you and even causes creatures who were hostile towards each other to reconsider their hostility, creating the possibility of reconciliation in cases where the hostility isn''t insurmountable.


    Patience palm: You can cure conditions that cause rage or hostility simply by tapping someone and quelling the rage they feel.


    Purity subdomain active power:


    Status change: This once a day power allows you to target someone who is hostile towards you specifically and change that an hour. For an hour, so long as you don''t attack them, they aren''t hostile towards you, though they aren''t friendly either.


    When the power ends, if they would still be hostile towards you their hostility returns, though only the most intelligent creatures can be aware of this as a power, and even they can''t resist it.


    Purity subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with the purity subdomain makes them more likely to behave purely and increases their ability to resist temptations.


    Cursing someone with the purity subdomain does the opposite, and increases the severity of the consequences they''ll have to endure for their impure behavior.


    Details about the agriculture subdomain:


    The agriculture subdomain is the subdomain of nature that governs the effectiveness of the practices of sapient creatures related to plant growth and animal rearing that is done for the purpose of surviving and making life easier.


    This subdomain is tied to animal rearing and crop growth. It grants powers and blessings that make sapient creatures more effective farmers and animal-handlers. To gain increased influence over it, aid farmers and build up agricultural cults. You need more influence over it before you can manipulate domesticated animals and the process of domestication itself.


    Agriculture subdomain passive powers:


    Crop growth: This power allows you to cause crops to bloom instantly. If you would like you can even do this when crops aren''t planted in soil, transforming seeds in someone''s hand into the fruit, vegetable, or other plants they''d eventually bloom into, even out of season.


    Crops you grow this way are of incredible quality, restoring health, stamina, magical energy, and possessing incredible nutritional value. They are also fully living crops, not like the magical food you create when you use your legendary magic.


    Crop and soil devastation: Using this allows you to decimate the crop life. If you use it you can cause famines as you wish.


    Agriculture subdomain active powers:


    Abundance manipulation: This twice a day power allows you to increase or decrease the amount of a crop available at a whim. If you use it you can duplicate a crop up to one hundred times, allowing you to turn one apple into one hundred. You also infuse the crop you manipulated with your influence, causing those who eat it to fall under your influence.


    You can also use it to reduce the amount of a crop, either reducing the size of an individual crop or reducing the total amount in a group by up to a quarter. This power''s potency will increase as you gain more influence over the subdomain of agriculture.


    Agriculture subdomain blessing and curse details:


    This is one of those odd subdomains wherein you don''t target an individual, instead you target land. If you bless a specific place with the power of this subdomain you increase the overall effectiveness of attempts to be agricultural that take place there.


    If you curse a location, you cause attempts to be agricultural there to decrease in their overall effectiveness.


    Additional notes: You can now use your ability to manipulate healing energy to regenerate lost limbs and to heal minds. Your healing spells are now twice as effective if you opt to use them. Your unlife energy manipulation can be used to cause limbs to rot and fall off and can be aimed at the mind to cause brain damage or induce insanity.]


    ________________________________________________


    The moment the lengthy notification vanished from view, I felt an indescribable power flow into me. I was now capable of acts that were undeniably divine. That realization filled me with a powerful sense of arrogance, one that I spent several moments working to suppress.


    In the time that it took me to read the notification and suppress the powerful sense of arrogance that filled me at the moment that it vanished, the goblin I spoke too earlier had come back. And he wasn''t alone.


    He had dragged a goblin along with him. The goblin he had brought along was one who had a somewhat older looking face than he did, one that had lost some of its youth to the chisel of age, and who had a surprising amount of gravitas to his steps, even ones made hesitantly.


    This newcomer had red skin and was missing an arm. His left arm ended in a brutal looking darkened nub, at the edge of his left shoulder. The skin exuded a foul odor, one of pus and blood, and even at a glance, it was obviously infected. The newcomer looked at me, his eyes a vibrant green color the same color as well-maintained grass, and began to speak.


    "Cosecha, I am not expecting you to do anything and I apologize for wasting your time. I was dragged here against my will." The goblin, Xiax, told me. He spoke with maturity, and was calm.


    There was disappointment and annoyance audible in Xiax''s voice, but not aimed at me. It was aimed at his companion, a goblin named Atix. That same goblin hadn''t introduced himself, but my tremorsense allowed me to learn his name anyway.


    I smiled at the pair of friends and instead of responding to them with words I used this as an opportunity to test my powers. I silently reached out my favored limb for interacting with people and objects: my watery tendril. It drew close to the infected skin and then stopped just short of touching it.


    "I am going to do more than just prevent you from getting sick Xiax. I am going to demonstrate my power, once and for all." I told the pair of goblins. As soon as I said this a hush fell over the goblin encampment.


    I felt dozens of eyes fall upon me and chuckled. This was a perfect moment to test my newfound powers and to witness with my own eyes the damage I could undo if I wanted too. I closed my eyes and envisioned a potent wave of restorative energy surging out of my palm.


    The darkness that greeted me as I closed my eyelids, even as the not-so-mini-map surged into view, was powerful. But not as powerful as the life-altering burst of healing energy that escaped the tip of my tendril.


    Even with my eyes closed, I could tell what happened. As the energy escaped from me and surged into Xiax, not only was the infection undone but before the eyes of dozens of goblins, an astounding event took place.


    Xiax''s bones began to grow, escaping the nub at the end of his shoulder, forming all of the bones needed for a fully functional left arm in the span of time that the average goblin experienced three heartbeats. And then an instant later muscle was formed and stretched tightly over the bones.


    The completion of the magical and miraculous limb generation occurred when a layer of normal goblin skin matching the rest of Xiax''s skin was formed and surged over the bone and muscles. I opened my eyes and saw the fully formed left arm and smiled at Xiax.


    "Now all I need is for you to test it." I told him, smiling and looking at him kindly. As soon as I said that, I received a new notification. One that informed me of the magnitude of my actions.


    [Alert: You have just completed your first miracle.] The thing read as I felt the awe of dozens of goblins wash over me at once.


    Xiax himself was silent as he simply stared, dumbfounded, at the limb. His mouth was open. And I watched as he began to move the thing slowly, and even practice making fists.

 42 The End Of The Tutorial

    Not only did the goblins stare in amazement at the regenerated limb, but to an extent, I did too. I knew I possessed the power to heal the goblin, but there was a difference between having a conscious knowledge that I possessed that power and actually seeing its effects on the goblin.


    Regenerating the limb was something I did mostly on a whim. I knew that it''d benefit me in the long run, but I hadn''t thought it was going to be a big deal. I was wrong. Even now the goblin encampment was quiet, dozens of the creatures staring at me reverentially, and at Xiax as if he were a hero, a chosen champion of some god who had just saved them.


    Xiax was just as surprised as his fellow goblins were. His mouth was still open in shock, even as he practiced balling his fists. It took him nearly a minute before he attempted to regain his composure, closing his mouth and adding stoicism to his facial expression, and as he did so he slowly began to move his arm up and down.


    "Is it uncomfortable? Stiff anywhere?" I asked, concern filling my voice, as the goblin continued to grow accustomed to having the limb back. He made eye contact with me, and for a second his face morphed.


    The goblin was a mature example of his kind. In his first interaction with he had behaved carefully, thoughtfully, and respectfully. But when he made eye contact with me there was a change in his eyes.


    For an instant, there was something new in his expression. His bright green eyes were filled with awe and with adoration so much so that before he regained self-control once more he looked fanatical.


    And as if the system were reading my mind, I heard a soft noise in the back of my mind. I had just received a historic notification and reading it would have made my heart pound a mile a minute if I had had a heart.


    [Alert: The previous demonstrations of your power that you showed the goblins, combined with the fact that you not only healed Xiax, saving his life as his infected wound would have killed him but also regrew his arm, have caused him to fall under your influence. Substantially so.


    This is due in part to the system informing him that he would have died without your intervention, but the fact of the matter is that even without that reality check the goblin would have worshiped you anyway.


    Xiax''s conception of you as a divine figure is that you are a parental figure. He views you, ''Cosecha'', as a family-entity who cares for living things and provides for them, while also protecting and healing them.


    Your power has warped his mind, but not broken it in the same way that Okig''s mind was broken. He has been left altered, due to the suddenness of all of this, but in such a way that his fanaticism and love for you are heightened. The faith domain is pleased, and so is the healing subdomain.


    The fact that you did this without using a faith domain power has empowered the goblin''s worship. Xiax has been left changed by the events of the past few minutes, and the potency of his reverence and awe of you has caused the system to award him by making him the first cleric in the world since the mythic age, the era in which gods and their kin still lived.


    Influence over Xiax: 85%]


    As I was reading the notification I felt the intense power of the goblin''s awe, love, and reverence pour into me. The sentiments the goblin felt, unknown to him, surged through every centimeter of my skin, even though I was currently in my guise as an omnielemental spirit. It felt wonderful to receive such potent feelings.


    "Today is the day I break through the tutorial." I realized, believing what I had just told myself with every fiber of my potentially unlimited being. And then I spent nearly a minute lost in thought about the power I''d come to possess before the day was done. My mind spun with fantasies about my already world-shaking and life-altering powers being unfettered by the system.


    "My arm feels better than it did before it was lost." The goblin told me, his voice bringing me back to the present. Xiax smiled at me after he told me that, and I could tell by the grin on his face that he was being sincere.


    "Oh, that''s excellent!" I told the goblin, excitedly. I had no way of knowing if the goblin''s limb would be fully functional until he himself told me. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt genuinely happy that my healing powers were so potent.


    And then I closed my eyes and opted to make things easier for myself by activating my handy religious fervor power. When I reopened my eyes an instant later there was a blue tint to everything around me, one which would help me wrap up the tutorial in an efficient manner.


    It was at this moment that the goblins who had been watching Xiax and I finally reacted. They reacted in one instant, and their reaction transformed the encampment. Silence filled the encampment for one second, and then a second later, a delighted, almost delirious roar of joy and jubilation filled the encampment.


    The delighted, tear-filled cries of over a dozen goblins were quite noisy. The sound filled my ears and brought a wide, arrogant smile to my face. The sound was so loud that it went into the hole and evidently carried far enough for the orc chief of the goblins to hear it. The orc and his pet began to move a bit faster in this direction, possibly driven by curiosity to inspect the noise.


    I chuckled and wondered what he was like. And then I refocused on my surroundings. It was time to bring the tutorial to an end. And I had an idea of how I could do that. I just needed to ask the system a quick question. But before I did that, I closed my eyes and allowed the not-so-mini-map to dominate my vision.


    I quickly scanned it and confirmed something that I had noticed before: this encampment, and the hole it is centered around, house and protect a number of goblin infants. This, in combination with one of my chaos powers, had the potential to allow me to easily acquire more worshipers.


    "Goblins, it is time for one final miracle. Bring out your children. I shall show you something that only a spirit could do." I shouted, my voice audible over the din of their cheers, causing them to excitedly turn around and set about doing what I asked them to do.


    ________________________________________________


    "So, system, I''ve come to a decision." I announced, my mental voice reaching inward and searching for the system. I was met with silence for a few moments before I faintly heard a soft chuckle and then saw and heard the system''s reply.


    [Yes, Althos? What decision is that?] It asked me. I could tell by the tone of its voice that it was amused, and almost certainly knew what I was going to ask. That didn''t surprise me, nor did it deter me.


    "The tutorial ends today. I am going to acquire nine more worshipers, nine more goblin worshipers, and free myself from the tutorial. I just need you to tell me something." I explained, proudly and arrogantly declaring that I was going to acquire nine more worshipers. The system''s reply was instantaneous.


    [What is it that you need me to tell you? Or is it that you need us to tell you something?] The strange entity that appeared to reside both within my mind and elsewhere at once asked me. I chuckled in the safety of my mind.


    "I want to try and use my power over entropy to generate one more miracle. There are baby goblins here. I want to age them into young adults, thereby allowing them to contribute to the community. But I need to know a few things before I do that. This isn''t the same as regrowing a limb, this is age-manipulation." I explained, before justifying why I was even asking for an explanation.


    "Can you tell me what happens to the minds of something as young as an infant when I manipulate its age? That''s probably my biggest question if I''m being honest." I asked, wondering what would happen to the goblins I used my powers to age. I was hoping to age them until they were adolescents at least.


    [That''s a good question and it deserves an honest response. You using your powers to rapidly age infants has no negative effects on their minds. In order for this to make... any sense, I need to explain something to you.] The system began, shortly before launching into an immediate explanation.


    [You are aware of synergistic powers, but you aren''t aware of synergistic boons... or regular boons for that matter. Domains and subdomains grant you boons. Boons are beneficial, ambient abilities you have access to by virtue of being a god.] My first companion, and also the entity responsible for sticking me in the tutorial, told me.


    [Each domain and subdomain you can influence grants you an original boon, and then synergistic ones. One of the synergistic ones is that unless you will it, your chaotic powers will not negatively affect the minds of creatures neutral or friendly towards you. This includes goblin babies. Because of this, their minds will instead grow and mature as their bodies do.] The eerie entity declared, which was one of the best announcements I could have gotten.


    [They will still need to learn how to do the actual tasks they''re being tasked with doing, but they''ll know how to speak and they''ll view you as their benefactor and god. Like the undead, they''ll worship you.] The system revealed.


    Internally, I began to laugh. This was above and beyond what I could have dared to hope for. And while I chuckled, the goblins brought me three of their infants, two boys and one girl. I smiled at the goblins and thanked them for their help.


    ________________________________________________


    The goblin infants were on the ground, having been placed at my feet quite gingerly by their parents. I smiled at the little creatures, before mentally targetting them by focusing on them to the extent that everything else lost focus.


    "And now... I become a true god," I whispered, my voice audible to no one but the toddlers close to me. "Freed from a tutorial that has been limiting my power." I muttered as a grin pulled the edges of my lips upward.


    I closed my eyes and allowed for darkness to cover my vision. When the not-so-mini-map attempted to appear, I willed it away for the moment. And then I asked for help.


    "This power is unlike my other powers. This isn''t some concrete force or some internal thing that I''m manipulating. It''s... a natural phenomenon. Can you help me navigate it for the first time?" I asked the system, who merely chuckled in my mind before beginning to reply to me.


    [We''re with you. Now select one of the goblins. Whichever you wish to age first.] The system explained, referring to both itself and the domains since it was using "we" again.


    I focused on one of the males, a tiny green-skinned infant with coal-colored eyes. I could now still see, even with my eyes closed, which was interesting, but I knew there was a lot going on here. And when I did, a new notification appeared before me.


    [Interactions: Would you like to use a power to interact with or modify this creature? If so, which power are you going to use?]


    I was taken aback for a second. I had never seen a systems message like this one. I stopped to reread the message, before replying. Once I had reread it I was sure of my course of action.


    "I would like to use entropic manipulation to accelerate the aging of this creature." I informed the system, speaking politely to this odd and quite possibly automated message.


    [Acknowledged. How old would you like to make the creature? Goblins reach adulthood, according to themselves, at around fourteen years of age, and live until their early twenties on average, but can live to be in their upper sixties provided they are healthy.] The system informed me. I added that bit of trivia to the collective knowledge I''d collected over the course of my brief life.


    "I would like to make him 15." I informed the system, curious to see the sort of impact that would cause on the minuscule toddler in front of me.


    [Acknowledged. Beginning the process now.] The system announced. The air around the goblin infant began to shimmer, and the goblin himself began to glow. And then he grew. And grew. Oh, and he grew a bit more too.


    The transformation process took a few seconds, as the entropic power took ahold instantly and immediately began to transform the targeted creature. The goblin aged from an infant into adulthood over the course of what was at most seven seconds, and he went from stretching a few centimeters at most, to standing about a meter and a quarter tall.


    He went from having the features of a newborn, to having the slight and soft stubble of a young man who didn''t know how to shave. His muscles grew, his head grew, and his limbs grew as well. And so did his intelligence. Which I found out when the goblin finished growing and immediately hugged me.


    "Father!" He declared, his voice far deeper than I had anticipated it being. I chuckled and patted the back of the creature with my watery tendril. As I did so, I spoke to the creature.


    "I am not your father. But I am your... lord? I suppose lord, god, or spirit, would do." I said as I laughed, correcting the little creature. As I did this, I targeted the remaining pair of goblins and activated my power with but a smile.


    I repeated the process I had just done for the goblin whose muscular arms were doing their best to wrap around me. Before my eyes and the eyes of the other goblins, as well as the ogresses and the undead, a trio of goblin infants were instantaneously transformed into adult goblins.


    As the trio of goblins underwent this speedy transformation I felt a number of sensations as members of the goblin tribe fell to their knees and then prostrated themselves before me. My other followers, the undead and the living alike, stepped out of the shadows and walked until they were behind me.


    "They must have been overwhelmed by what they saw. To them, this must look amazing." I muttered as I looked out at the dozens of goblins that had fallen to their knees and were silently in awe of my powers, and myself.


    "A whole community..." I muttered, smiling as I felt the number of worshipers I possessed climbing higher, second after second.


    And when the 10th goblin became a worshiper of mine, Troik himself, I heard a sudden and unexpected peal of laughter resound within my head. The laughter was coming from the system. It was immediately followed up by an announcement.


    [Congratulations, Althos. The incredible, life-changing powers you possess have won over the goblins of this tribe. And as you have helped them, they have helped you. As you have fed them, they have fed you. You are now... free from the confines of the tutorial.] The system announced, its voice powerfully audible in my mind.


    "Goblins... thank you." I told them, smiling. None of them dared to peek up at me, but if they had they would have seen me beginning to shake, as the power that had always been mine but had also always been locked away began to be freed.


    ________________________________________________


    [Your actions throughout the forest, from reanimating assorted corpses, to taking some of those same bodies to the goblin tribe and allowing the goblins to feast on them, have been amazing. And some of them have been historic.] The system told me.


    [You healed someone whose limb had been torn off, preventing them from dying. And more than that, you regrew the arm, an act beyond even the capabilities of mythic healing magic. You followed up on that by immediately causing a trio of goblins to age from infants into adults over the course of a few seconds.] My oldest companion said, sounding truly awed by the trajectory of my life so far.


    [You saved a life, marking you as a god of healing. You chaotically transformed a trio of goblins, enabling them to begin to become productive members of goblin society, marking you as a god of chaos. We can tell that your story is just beginning Althos. And now, there are no chains weakening your ability to use your powers. You''ve earned this freedom. Congratulations.] The entity declared, sounding thoroughly impressed by the events of the last three days.


    My smile grew wider, as I began to hear more voices speak directly into my mind. Some of them were laughing. Others sounded excited. And a few complained that I had kept them waiting. The first one to identity itself did so eagerly.


    "Oh Althos, I never doubted you for a second! I can''t believe you got here this early. I thought it''d take you a week at least." It began. And then it sighed.


    "Anyways, I bet you''re wondering who I am. I''m... the domain of knowledge. It''s so nice to meet you! I''m so excited that you''re here. There''s so much we''re gonna learn, together! The multiverse has changed so much since the gods and their kin perished. But now... we can explore it. Together." The domain declared, its voice mixing excitement and politeness masterfully.


    In the background of all of this, loomed a large notification. One I received in the aftermath of the system''s declaration which recapped my actions here. I smiled and began to read it.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The system has upheld its end of the bargain, freeing you from the restraints that the tutorial forced upon you. As you are no longer trapped in the tutorial, your powers are exponentially stronger than they were before.


    The main reward for completing the tutorial is that you go from a newborn god to a lesser god. In the mythic age, there was an attempt to quantify the relative power of gods on a hierarchical scale. Newborn gods were at the bottom of the scale. A lesser god was the second weakest sort of god, but they were still unimaginably more powerful than a newborn god.


    Right now your body is adjusting, but in a matter of moments, you''ll possess all of the powers possessed by lesser deities.


    Lesser deity powers:


    Immunity to poisons, diseases, and acids.


    Immunity to shape-changing magic cast by someone else, and immunity to attempts to hamper or restrict movement.


    The ability to teleport freely provided the desired destination is in whatever universe and dimension the teleportation initiated in. To put it simply, you could teleport to any other mortal world in this universe, onto stars or the moon, or into space, but you couldn''t teleport into Infernius, the home of devil kind, as it is located in another dimension even though this universe''s Infernius is situated in this universe.


    Lesser deities possess greater minds. These greater minds allow them to create a single avatar, a copy of themselves that can do what they can do and serves them utterly. Their greater minds also grant them an advanced awareness of whenever someone does something involving their domains. This power is known as "Domain-sense".


    Lesser deities know whenever someone in the universe they are in, does something involving their domains or subdomains. If the subdomain of healing is used as the example, that means that whenever someone casts a healing spell, creates medicine, or attempts to use natural healing to recover from wounds, you''d know. This knowledge is stored away in your subconscious and can be accessed with but a thought.


    All of the "once-an-hour" or the "once-a-day" or "once-a-week" parts of your powers have been significantly weakened. Powers that were originally marked as "once-a-day" powers now have a limitation of twice every twelve hours, the "once-an-hour" powers are now powers you can use twice every half an hour, and so on.


    You can now bless or curse a creature''s stats directly, allowing you to modify a creature''s strength without using a greater blessing or curse that would alter other things. This can allow you to effectively awaken animals, as you can use it to increase their intelligence to humanoid levels, but it doesn''t give them the ability to talk.


    Your strength is now maxed out, granting you the power to punch through mountains, moons, or even stars, if you felt like doing that. As you continue to increase your overall divine strength your other stats will naturally rise and eventually hit the maximum rank as well. Strength was the first of your stats to be maxed out because you have influence over the earth subdomain.


    You now have access to numerous icons and menus. These are things like your grimoire, shortcuts that allow you to more easily utilize your powers and affect the world around you. Some of them affect individuals, like the religion menu and the evolution, mutations, and templates menu.


    You can now utilize the menu to send creatures messages, though this power is similar to your ability to establish mental connections with them and send them messages that way.


    You can create holy sites, locations of potent meaning to you and where your power can be found, even when you aren''t present. You can also create lesser artifacts, objects that wield your mighty power and can be used by your servants to greatly change the world around you.


    Ultra-senses: You can see, hear, smell, and otherwise sense creatures at up to a dozen kilometers per divine rank, so in your case, your senses extend in every direction for twenty-four kilometers.


    You can communicate with the domains and subdomains themselves directly, including ones you have no influence over. Oh and you gain access to all of the powers, passive or otherwise, that are within the domains and subdomains you have a tier of influence over. And you gain the appropriate synergistic abilities. That list of abilities will appear soon.]


    Eventually I managed to finish reading the extensive notification. In that time the range and potency of my senses exploded, awakening my mind to a whole new world, the world beyond the forest.


    I spent the next few minutes enjoying the attention lavished onto me by the goblins. During this moment of relaxation, the orc chief made it to the ladder that led in and out of the hole the encampment surrounded. And he began to climb the thing. I figured this was as good a time as any to meet him, so I awaited his eventual emergence from the hole.

 43 Swarm Redux

    I allowed the domains and subdomains to chatter uninterrupted in my mind for a few moments. Their voices were distinctive and powerful, and listening to them was quite thrilling. It was also very strange to hear them because it made me question what I knew about the strange entities I referred too as "domains" and "subdomains".


    It made me wonder if the domains were living entities, which I had kind of suspected they were, but hadn''t really confirmed just yet. It also made me wonder if the system itself was a weirdly omnipresent living being. A part of me wanted to ask this question, but honestly, I was just happy that I could hear them. That I could chat with them. And so I started to.


    "Hi! It''s amazing to get to hear all of you. The system has spoken about you, and often refers to not only itself but all of you, using "we" as its pronoun so often that it feels like the thing''s pronoun of choice." I told the entities that I could now hear. They fell silent for a moment, but then began to laugh. When the laughter died down, a few seconds later, I continued to talk.


    "I want to become a really strong, really knowledgable deity. I don''t feel as though I''ve had a whole lot of chances to expand my knowledge in meaningful ways, but now that I''m not constrained by the tutorial I feel as though that can begin to change. In fact, I hope to begin changing it right away." I told the domains, energetically.


    The first thing I did to take advantage of the new opportunities I had, was to ask a question. "Are you all living creatures?" I asked, opting to be brave and ask what I wanted to know.


    "We are! Of a sort. We''re... sentient concepts. Laws, ideas, and powers, given consciousness, to help govern the multiverse." One of them, not knowledge but another, explained. And then realizing that it hadn''t introduced itself it corrected that.


    "I am the subdomain of necromancy. You''re intriguing to me. I hope to see what you do in the days to come. Especially if you opt to gain influence over the domain of poison, the domain of fungi, and the domain of disease. You''d be a downright terrifying deity if you did that..." The voice slyly suggested once it had revealed itself to be necromancy given a vague sort of consciousness.


    I chuckled and spent a moment envisioning the potent armies I could raise in the deep, dark corners of the world if I devoted time to mastering the domains necromancy suggested just now. The smile that emerged on my face wasn''t one I hated, though it was one that came about because of the influence of the two dark domains I had influence over.


    "Oh? You''re open to taking suggestions?" Asked another voice, one among several dozen. This one had a rough voice, but it was one that was silken, and in hearing it I felt goosebumps emerge across my skin. Metaphysically of course, since I was still in my omnielemental form.


    "If you''re open to suggestions then might I suggest myself? There is no mortal species stronger or grander than dragons. And if you gain even one tier of influence over me your magnificence shall be grand that even dragons shall bow to you. And you already possess influence over the earth subdomain..." The voice whispered. The last part of that was clearly meant to be a hint, but it was a comically vague one that did little to help me understand what the speaker was thinking.


    It seemed that it was whichever domain or subdomain possessed power over dragons. Having seen how naming conventions have worked to date I quietly assumed that I just spoke to the dragon domain.


    "Althos, which domains and subdomains do you wish to gain influence over at the moment? Ignore the ones that are clamoring for approval, just tell me which ones you would like to have the first tier of influence over, right now." The voice of the domain of knowledge asked, speaking loudly enough for me to hear it over the voices of other domains and subdomains.


    I chuckled and considered the question for a few moments. I searched my memories for things that I thought I would enjoy controlling and eventually mastering. It didn''t take me long to think of which domains and subdomains I thought it would cool to gain influence over.


    "I think it''d be neat to possess influence over something that counterbalances my influence over the earth subdomain. So probably either the subdomains of air or liquid. I''d also like to have more influence over things in the forest, so if I could influence over the plant subdomain I''d happily do that as well." I explained, after having thought about which subdomains would most benefit me.


    "If I''m thinking solely in terms of domains... I''m gonna assume these are greater domains, but if I could gain influence over the domains of life or death that''d be incredible. Although gaining influence over the night''s sky would be equally amazing..." I muttered, beginning to get lost in thought at that idea of having power over the endless void that was the night''s sky.


    "Oh? You want to gain influence over me?" A new voice asked, audibly in my mind for the first time. It was a feminine sounding voice, one which marked it as distinct from the other voices I had heard so far.


    "No, you dummy! He''s talking about us." Interrupted a new voice. And this one wasn''t alone, as its remark was immediately followed up by another voice.


    "Yeah! He''s afraid of the dark. He wants to master his fears. He wants influence over myself, and the domains of the cosmos. He doesn''t want influence over you, void. He just doesn''t understand the nature of space." The second voice added. This confused me.


    This was the first I was hearing about things like a "void", "cosmos" and "space". It was all new knowledge, knowing that I was grateful for, but had no way of conceptualizing or understanding without some critical context.


    "Enough! You''re just confusing him." Snapped the domain of knowledge, its voice silencing the bickering domains and subdomains. All of them muttered apologies while complaining under their breaths, and then the knowledge domain began to speak once more.


    "I apologize for their behavior. In their defense, they are all very excited to meet you. They just don''t realize that... there''s a lot you don''t know." The domain told me, respect and sincerity coloring her voice.


    "I suppose I should give you some background as to where you are. You''re on an island named Puerto Rico, located not far from a continent named Iredale." One of my many new companions told me, whispering into my mind as it did so.


    "The parts of Puerto Rico that are inhabited by humans are a part of an empire known as the Reconquista Empire. You came to life in the furthest surviving settlement on the island, one that is dozens of kilometers away from the port city of San Gerardo, the only official way on or off the island." The domain patiently explained.


    "You are on a planet named Torus. This world is one of seven that all orbit a single, ultra-massive ball of plasma, a celestial object known as a ''star''. The heat and light from this ''star'' allow this world and the six that surround it to be able to produce life." The knowledge domain told me, giving me a brief introduction into how life worked.


    "The lifeforms on this world almost all need that star''s heat in order to survive. The undead don''t, and there are definitely lifeforms that do not need the star to survive, but the overwhelming majority of lifeforms would die, many in minutes if something happened to the star." The voice told me, filling me with curiosity.


    "What could happen to the star?" I asked, unsure of if anything could be done to an "ultra-massive ball of plasma", whatever that was. Though apparently if I wanted too I could punch through it, at least according to the notification I received earlier. I also knew that the sun was a thing that existed, but I hadn''t known it was a massive ball of plasma, so I was learning a lot of today.


    "Well... frankly, you could happen to it Althos. Gaining the first tier of influence over the subdomain of fire is enough for you to become immune to the effects of heat. And when I say immune, I mean it, not even a star''s heat would hurt you. And traveling to the sun is a necessary component in becoming a god who has influence over the domain of stars. It''s not the only step, but it is one of them." Explained the domain.


    This knowledge surprised me and caused me to reevaluate my priorities. It made me want to go out and gain influence over the subdomain of fire. One of the ways I spent the next few minutes, was in quiet conversation with my allies, the domains and subdomains,


    ________________________________________________


    While one part of my mind was engrossed in the conversation I was having with the domains, another part of my mind wasn''t. That part of me was physically present, and relaxingly waiting for the orc chief of the goblins to show himself. It was only at this moment that I opted to learn his name, using my tremorsense. It turned out that he was named Gnorl.


    The ogresses stood on one side of me, with Okig standing closer to me than Iret did, and Guskaxa and Imbrosa on the other side of me. This was a peaceful moment.


    I kept my eyes glued to the prostrated forms of the goblins while running an idle hand, which had once been a flaming tendril that I had transformed back into a regular hand over Guskaxa''s fur. It felt soft to the touch, surprisingly so all things considered since Guskaxa was a ghoul.


    There was a part of me that enjoyed this moment of peace and tranquility. It was perhaps the first time, outside of dreams, I had been in a peaceful situation with other people who weren''t humans. It was also the first time in my life that I was being treated, in the waking world, as a greater being.


    My followers and I listened as goblins chanted my persona''s name. Sure, they weren''t particularly good singers or chanters, but it was the thought that counted and the thought was that I was a powerful, protective, paternal spirit who sought servants but was also willing to work with people and protected those who came to me. And I liked that thought.


    As an afterthought, I reached out with my mind and touched Okig''s. I immediately used healing energy to restore the parts of it that were damaged during the time that I had petrified her and imprisoned her in an eerie and excessive prison wherein she was endlessly pleasured.


    The act was easy, something I could have done earlier even before my boost, but now it was a cakewalk. I also went in and cured her addiction to being a sadist to her underling, which would make it easier for the woman to begin to change her behavior. The ogress'' eyes snapped wide open and she turned to me and glared. I chuckled and sent her a quiet mental message.


    "I apologize for that. I know there were worse things I could have done, but what I did to you was wrong and excessive. I was under the influence of one of my... well you could it a ''source of power'' I suppose, and because of that I somewhat lost control. I won''t do it again." I explained, sincerely.


    I heard Okig sigh and huff in annoyance. And then I received a message back from her. "You really are something else. That said I suppose not many people would cure my addiction. So that... I''ll forgive you, for now, Althos." She told me, after careful consideration of what to say during a silence that lasted several heartbeats. I grinned.


    And at this moment I turned this part of my mind to new things. Things that I could do now that I hadn''t been able to do before.


    My thoughts turned to my swarm of ants and zombies. And to the blessings, I could bestow upon them. As well as to the fact that my tremorsense now covered the entire island, and there were many, many more ants in total all over the island then I had control over.


    "I can change that though..." I realized, grinning smartly, in response to my own thoughts. And I began to do two things at once.


    I began to bless the ant queens that I had control over, boosting their intelligence over and over, and I began to quickly and magically spread my influence using the delicious fruits I had at my disposal. At this moment I was quietly thankful for my unlimited magical power.


    "As a lesser god, I am already so powerful... This is potentially world-altering power." I mused, amazed at the incredible growth I had undergone over the course of a few moments.


    [Your power is world-altering. If you wanted too you could send out a wave of healing energy that cures the entire world of mundane diseases and restores any limbs they''ve lost. You are not limited Althos.] The system reminded me, seconds after I mused at the incredible power I possessed.


    [Gods are not like other beings. I know because you''ve spent your brief life in the tutorial you may feel like you''ve undergone a tremendous leap in power, but its actually simpler than that. You''ve become who you were always were, but a completed version. And now you can start to become whatever you want to be.] The entity told me, saying something that was surprisingly inspiring.


    [I understand that it can be hard at times, but you mustn''t limit yourself. Do not define yourself by comparing what you can do, what you are, to mortals. Even the very strongest of them are not as powerful as you. And you''re gonna come to learn that very quickly.] The system warned me, cautioning me against understanding myself in comparison to mortals.


    At that moment I felt a series of powerful emotions pour into me. Most of them could be described as appreciation, some could be described as awe, and others could be described as ambition. But the ants felt emotion differently than goblins and the undead did. That didn''t stop me from recognizing that I had just gained the worship of several ant-queens.


    That warning was necessary and it served to relax me. It also brought a smile to my face. As did the notification I just received, after a few moments of pouring blessings into ant queens.


    [Alert: You have blessed several ant queens sufficiently to the point where they meet the minimum requirements to evolve into mrymekes queens. These creatures are the next natural evolutions in ant-life, being massive ant-humanoid hybrids who take up far more room but are also far, far more powerful. To cause these creatures to evolve, please access the evolution menu. We will highlight it now.] Said the alert, shortly before one of the new icons at the top corner of my vision began to flash.


    The icon depicted several creatures walking in a straight line, beginning with a monkey and eventually arriving at an ordinary human man. It made me chuckle, though it wasn''t exactly what I envisioned when I thought of the word "evolution". I mentally tapped it and was pleasantly surprised at what I saw.


    ________________________________________________


    An expansive menu greeted me. It listed out which creatures had met the bare minimum requirements to evolve near me, listing things like bears, beetles, scorpions, spiders, snakes, fungi, and eventually ants. I chuckled and tapped on the part that said ants so that I could gain more information.


    [Ants: Ants are insects and are a part of the Formicidae family, alongside wasps and bees. Ants possess a number of abilities, such as flight, group-think, and the ability to spit out acid at their enemies as well as inject them with venom, making them a dangerous sort of enemy in the proper numbers.


    Ants naturally evolve myrmekes. Myrmekes are fusions between ants and humanoids, they have the same basic shape as centaurs but with an ant''s lower body instead of a horse''s.


    Evolution refers to two distinct processes.


    One of these processes is purely biological, the process by which small, gradual changes in a species over time lead to the birth of new and diverse species. Another is both biological and magical, the process by which an individual''s acquisition of power eventually causes them to spontaneously evolve into a newer, stronger kind of being. Not all creatures can undergo this secondary type of evolution.


    In the cases of members of your swarm, and eventually other sorts of beings like fungi, you can control their evolution provided you are directly responsible for it. If they became able to evolve because of your blessings you are in charge of their evolution. And if you chose to evolve them they fall under your influence.


    Different species have different requirements for evolving, and can rarely evolve naturally, but as a god you don''t have to wait, especially for simple species. Oftentimes all it takes for a member of a simple species to evolve is for their stats to reach a high enough number.


    In the cases of members of the Formicidae family, all it takes to evolve is for their stats to reach high enough numbers. Which specific stat is needed for which specific individual in any of these races depends on the roles the individual plays in their colonies. Soldiers, for instance, need their strength and constitution to be high in order to evolve. Queens just need high intelligence.


    Evolving thirty of them is enough for you to gain influence over the Hymenoptera subdomain, the name of the order of animals this group belongs too, and also power up your sovereign of the swarm title. This will also grant you a new synergistic power, enabling you to create hive-minds.


    We recommend you use it because myrmekes are independently intelligent. They''ll all serve you even without it, you are their god after all, but if you want them to work as efficiently as possible you ought to sync their minds together.


    Would you like to evolve the ant queens who are smart enough to evolve? Doing so will grant them greater intelligence, empathetic language-learning and a limited form of earth control since you were directly responsible for their ascension. This allows them to warp and terraform their tunnels to their liking. This same basic rule holds true for all myrmekes who are members of your swarm.


    If you allow the ants to evolve they''ll grow in size explosively, but not before warping their chambers, they''ll gain far greater intelligence, and in this particular case you''ll gain new powers.] The menu informed me.


    I chuckled and informed the system that I wanted to permit the creatures to evolve. As soon as I did so, my mind was altered. I felt a change, a deeply sensory one, in a whirl of activity, as my vision... detached from my body.


    ________________________________________________


    All of a sudden I could see more than one thing. I was no longer exclusively in the forest, surrounded by my allies, I was also elsewhere. I was deep underground, in a lightless tunnel that was explosively loud. I could hear the sounds of possibly millions of tiny feet skittering through the tunnel that surrounded me.


    They were everywhere. It wasn''t enough that they clung to the floor beneath my feet, they were also crawling above and around me, mounted on the walls of the tunnel effortlessly. I could feel their bodies pushing mine.


    I could feel their almost mindless drive to go out into the world and to grab food. Or to eat the fruit that had begun to appear yesterday, the golden, delicious fruit that filled up an ant in a single bite. These two competing drives drove the ants forward in an incredible flurry of activity.


    I was in the middle of one of my swarms, possibly in the body of one of the ants since I felt them push me forward while they trudged along. I was surrounded by ants, ants that I had fed and empowered. Ants that I had altered.


    I took a second to study the ants that surrounded me. Most of them were similar. They were small, slender creatures with two thick mandibles on the front of their faces. They had smooth, chitinous exoskeletons that protected their organs from a variety of attacks. All of the ones here had black exoskeletons and were workers, female non-reproducing ants who scavenge and forage for food as well as do other tasks vital to the overall success of the colony.


    Up ahead of me I could lay my eyes on thicker, more muscular ants. They were near the edge of my vision, which was strangely effective in this odd, colorless and lightless world. I quietly chalked it up to my godliness and refocused. They had thicker mandibles, and acid frothed at their mouths and leaked out, dropping onto the floor at their large, spiked feet, and making stone begin to sizzle and hiss.


    I took a second to stop and refocus. And when I did, I was able to draw myself back to the goblin village quite easily. But I could still keenly see the tunnel. I could still feel the horde of ants, more creatures than I had ever seen in any one place.


    And then I questioned the system.


    ________________________________________________


    "What was that?" I asked, annoyed. I was asking this internally, inwardly. I was replied to in an instant.


    [That was the power of the ''Sovereign of the Swarm''. You got to see your people, the ants. Though to be fair, those ants are probably among the weakest of the hordes of ants you''ve got at your disposal, a horde which is growing.] The system replied, chuckling as it did so.


    It was at this moment that I received a new alert. One which brought a smile to my face. I received it at the same moment that the goblins began to hear someone climbing and nearly ascending the ladder that led in and out of the hole in the ground. The time was nearly upon me for me to meet Gnorl.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Your actions regarding your ants have granted you a number of new powers, and awarded you with the first tier of influence over the Hymenoptera subdomain.


    Details about the Hymenoptera subdomain:


    The subdomain of the Hymenoptera order of insects is a subdomain that governs bees, wasps, and ants, all of which are among the most social insects out there, though they have some fierce competition among a handful of other insect types.


    To begin becoming a god of the Hymenoptera order is to begin a journey that will inevitably require you to unify an unimaginable number of small, individually powerless creatures and lead them to the point that they are the rulers of a dimension spanning empire. It will be an epic journey.


    The first three tiers of influence over this subdomain are gained by taking over increasing numbers of ants, bees, and wasps, and guiding them to evolution. Each tier grants you and your Hymenopteric followers greater powers and a stronger connection, as well as access to stronger and stranger mutations.


    The final two tiers of influence over the subdomain require you to build a truly impressive empire, culminating in the conquest of an entire world perpetrated by these creatures. To be clear it is required that these creatures have either enslaved or obliterated all non-Hymenopteric life on the planet in question.


    This subdomain is tied to the domains of law, nature, and civilization.


    Hymenoptera subdomain passive powers:


    Exoskeleton manipulation: This passive power allows you to generate and manipulate your own exoskeleton, as well as forcibly manipulate the exoskeletons of other creatures, this is especially effective on ants and other Hymenopteric creatures.


    Ant dominance: You become the undisputed master of all ants. Even evolved ants cannot resist you or your commands and begin to fall under your influence the minute they become aware of you. Unevolved ants become your worshipers and servants the minute they come into contact with you.


    Hymenoptera subdomain active power:


    Ant aura: Once per day whenever a creature hostile to you attempts to begin combat against you you can summon a phantom myrmekes soldier which will defend you.


    Hymenoptera subdomain blessing and curse details:


    If you bless a Hymenopteric being with this subdomain it is awoken and becomes a servant of yours, its will is utterly subsumed by the swarm. It is granted authority, power, and magic, in exchange for its the loss of its individuality.


    If you bless a non-Hymenopteric being with this subdomain it is considered a member of the swarm and will not be attacked by swarm-members unless you command them to turn on it. Other hymenopteric beings, ones who aren''t part of the swarm, would also leave the creature alone unless it provoked them.


    Cursing a non-Hymenopteric creature with this subdomain causes them to be endlessly targeted by Hymenopteric creatures. Cursing a Hymenopteric creature with this subdomain forcibly transforms them into the weakest possible example of their base species, the species they were at their birth. This subdomain is one of the few that can undo an evolution.


    Sovereign of the Swarm alert:


    This title is undergoing a power boost. It is synchronizing with your other titles and the subdomains and domains you possess influence over. This is... well it''s not the first time it''s happened, but it''s rare. We suspect, the domains and I that is, that this might be a manifestation of that odd wild trait of yours, the one entitled ''More than meets the eye'', but we''re not sure.


    That said, you''ve gained new powers that are worth taking a look at.


    Sovereign of the Swarm passive powers:


    Expanded swarm: Your undead creatures become members of the swarm. All of them, not just zombies and other lesser undead.


    Channeling: You can now channel touch or ranged based abilities through members of the swarm. This also applies to tremorsense, greatly increasing the range of the detection ability, and to necromantic magic and powers as well.


    Power granting: You can grant weaker versions of your own powers to creatures who are part of the swarm. Creatures you cause to evolve are also granted lesser versions of your powers as well, and in exchange for that gift, they are filled with a desire to serve you.


    Sovereign of the Swarm active power:


    Emotional inducement: You can induce sensations in your swarm, or in specific portions of your swarm. These emotions can be jubilation, sorrow, love, or any other sort of emotion. This power can be used twice every six hours.


    Mind domain synergistic power:


    Hive-mind generation: This synergistic, passive power is a result of intersecting the Hymenoptera subdomain, the mind domain, and the powers of the Sovereign of the Swarm. By using it, you can meld minds together and create a meshed, super consciousness.


    For now, hive-mind generation doesn''t subsume the wills of those in the hive-mind. If you gain more power over the domain of minds, or the Sovereign of the Swarm undergoes another improvement, then that may change.]


    It was as I reached the bottom of the notification that the top of Gnorl''s head popped out of the hole. He had a smooth, bald, green head.

 44 Meeting Gnorl

    Gnorl, the feared chieftain of the goblins who had just given themselves over to me, slowly clambered out of the hole. The first thing I noticed about him was his green skin. The second thing I noticed was that he had a massive black feline on his back. By the time he was out of the hole, he had already laid eyes on me. His eyes were focused, unmovingly, on my strange form.


    "Good afternoon Gnorl." I said to the orc, greeting him as he sized me up. He didn''t look particularly perturbed by the fact that I knew his name, and instead continued to calmly study me. The orc''s pet, the infamous Hunahpu, dismounted from his back and stepped between him and me.


    And then the thing, an enormous, ebony-furred feline, bared its fangs at me, its amber-colored eyes narrowing to thin slits. Guskaxa stepped between myself and the panther and growled at the panther. I chuckled at my wolf''s display.


    Gnorl himself was about two meters tall. He wore armor fashioned from some sort of dark green chitin, unlike any chitin I had seen so far. His armor was dense like it was fabricated from a gigantic insect that dwarfed any I had seen to date, including my massive spider-ghoul.


    Gnorl possessed healthy, thick muscles, and he had an intimidating looking sword at his side. There was also a faint aura of multi-hued magic that surrounded him, magic unlike any I had seen to date. When I researched it, I heard the voice of the domain of knowledge whisper into my mind.


    "He''s a shaman of some sort. Shamans commune with lesser nature spirits, ones that care to commune with mortals. They grant him weak but flashy magical spells, ones just strong enough enough to cow weaklings, like the goblins." The domain explained. And then the domain of magic chuckled, before adding that the domain of knowledge was correct.


    I waited for a second to see if Gnorl would talk first and quickly concluded that Gnorl wasn''t going to initiate a conversation. Which meant that I''d have too.


    "What can I say, or do, to get you to engage verbally with me Gnorl? I would like for you to serve me, and it''s more difficult... though not impossible, for me to figure out what you would like without you talking to me." I explained, deciding to deal with the orc honestly.


    Gnorl looked at me curiously, one of his eyebrows raised when I said this. He studied me a moment longer, before beginning to talk to me.


    "Who are you? And what have you done with my goblins?" He asked. His voice was a low growl. There was a look of annoyance on his face and agitation flashed in his eyes. I chuckled and smiled at him.


    His question made sense. The goblins continued to prostrate themselves, even in front of Gnorl.


    "There, that''s it! Was that so hard?" I asked, a smile on my face as I asked that question. And then I considered how to reply to the question. I opted for honesty. Or at least, I opted for honesty in my intention. As for honesty with regards to my background, I was going to tell Gnorl the same lie that I told the goblins.


    "I am Cosecha, a friendly spirit. I am a relative newborn and I seek to gain worshipers. Now, what would it take for you to serve me?" I asked, openly displaying my ambition and intention. But something changed in the orc when the word ''spirit'' left my lips.


    His eyes opened wide in shock, and a cruel grin danced on his lips. He slowly rose a hand up towards me. Shortly after I finished my statement, he opened the hand he had been raising towards me and I watched his multi-hued aura come to life.


    On the minimap, his icon turned red. And a shadow shot out of me, speedily crawling through the ground in an inhuman and terrifying display of undead rage. It went through the panther between us, causing the thing to freeze and begin to vibrate intensely, like it was having a seizure or something.


    I quickly checked its condition with my ability to appraise people and animals. It listed the condition of the creature as "paralyzed and scared", which explained why it didn''t try to attack the shadow.


    A second later an ethereal net was shot out of his hands, and it flew towards me.


    My shadow reached him before his net reached me. And then the thing leaped out of the ground, suddenly going from a one-dimensional puddle of darkness dashing through the floor to a three-dimensional entity that was determined to attack the orc. He took a step back, shocked by this, and pulled out his sword. Meanwhile, his net was still sailing towards me.


    It sailed towards me at an incredible speed, but it wasn''t fast enough that I couldn''t react to it. The thing that was whipping through the air towards me was clearly magical, as conjuring it caused Gnorl''s aura to flare to life. It was made of a strange sort of airy material and was growing thicker and thicker the closer it got to me as if it were expanding to accommodate my size.


    I watched it and allowed it to approach me. I was confident in my abilities and could recognize what this was: it was an attempt to capture me. Which logically meant that whatever the orc had just tossed at me, some sort of spell of binding, would be something that attempted to impair my movement. Which meant that it would fail.


    A part of me considered using my power to change the orc''s hostility, even though I could only use it twice every twelve hours. I knew that if I did that I could engage the orc in conversation, and possibly prevent whatever fighting was about to occur. Probably stop the fighting in fact.


    That would have been an easy option to pick. It would have made sense. But a part of me wanted to allow this battle to occur. I was strong enough that I didn''t have to worry about losing this fight. There was no real chance of that happening. And I could use this fight to see what choices I have in battle. I also knew that winning this fight in combat would make me even more awe-inspiring in the eyes of my followers.


    I weighed the two options in my head for a second. And then I decided that the occasional fight was fine, so long as I didn''t let it get out of hand. Especially if there were things to be gained by fighting.


    And after a split second of waiting, the net reached me.


    ________________________________________________


    The strange net that the orc threw at me made contact with my skin, specifically, it made contact with my flaming arm. And then it was repelled off of me, by some invisible force I wasn''t aware of. Before my very eyes, the net had touched me and then was forcibly pushed off of my skin. It was like someone was batting it away. And then I received a pleasant and enlightening notification.


    [Alert: An alteration spell entitled ''Net Of Hate'' was just cast and aimed at you. The spell hit, but since it was a spell that would have immobilized you, it failed to affect you. The spell ''Net Of Hate'' has been added to your grimoire via one of the magic domain''s newly unlocked passive powers.]


    This surprised the orc even more than it surprised me. He was able to watch it while fending off my shadow, as the thing was a bestial entity with no intelligence to speak of. It mindlessly swung ponderous appendages of semi-solid darkness at the orc, who batted each strike away or swung his sword through them. It wasn''t a challenge for him.


    Gnorl was angered at how ineffective his attack had been. And so he opened his mouth, a large maw filled with sharp, dagger-like teeth, and issued a command. "Hunahpu! Kill the traitors." He bellowed, now determined to keep me on my toes.


    His pet panther reared back and lunged forward, dashing towards the goblins that stood between all of us. They had largely ignored the orc, seemingly focusing on their devotion to me, but the panther was another story.


    The goblins understandably got up and dashed away, scattering in a number of directions. This was a bit annoying, but I didn''t mind that they weren''t slavishly loyal. It was probably better overall that they be intelligent and preserve themselves more than that they were zealots, especially because it wouldn''t have made much sense for them to be zealots at this point. I hadn''t really earned that sort of loyalty yet. I would, in time, but that sort of trust and devotion has to be earned.


    That said, I didn''t give the panther a chance to do anything, opening up the earth underneath the feline with my ability to control the earth. I did so in eerie, menacing silence. The panther immediately fell into the hole that opened up underneath it.


    I wasn''t planning to hurt the creature, so I willed the earth that had just opened up underneath the thing to soften to the point that it wouldn''t hurt the panther and would allow it to breathe while I engaged its master, while grabbing the panther with my mind so it didn''t fall far.


    And then I willed the hole I had created to gently close, trapping the panther underneath a thick layer of dirt and rock. I released my mental grip on the animal and turned to look at Gnorl.


    Gnorl was still engaged with my shadowy servant. The thing had taken on a resembling something akin to a bear, albeit one of the same inky darkness as shadows. It opened its mouth in a motion that resembled a roar, but a silent one, as it rose a massive, light-absorbing and destroying limb, and swung it at the orc. Gnorl batted it away and roared at the bear-shadow, and a second later turned to look in the direction of the goblins.


    He was surprised to see nothing. No goblins, no panthers. The goblins had speedily fled to the treeline that ringed the encampment and were now watching this strange confrontation. And his panther was stuck underground, alive and unhurt but indisposed.


    This moment panicked the orc shaman, who proceeded to unleash a monstrous roar and savagely punched the shadowy bear harassing him in the face, sending the thing into the dirt and sprawling away. He then turned his gaze back at me and began to attempt to cast a magical spell at me. I wouldn''t let him.


    As he moved to attack me, concentrating on me, I felt an ocean of hostility surge into me. That was thanks to the connections I shared with my undead creations, who were hostile to anyone who threatened me. I took a deep breath and willed the hostility away, forcing my servants into a state of passive-aggression as opposed to aggressive-aggression.


    I focused on Gnorl so that my power would properly target the chieftain and then attempted to lift him off the ground with my telekinetic ability. I didn''t even physically aim using my hands, instead, I relied on my mind to be capable of handling the task of lifting one orc into the air. I wasn''t disappointed.


    The orc was suddenly, unwillingly lifted into the air. I didn''t struggle at all with his weight, which was unsurprising since I had dealt with the goblins earlier, and the panther just now without any problems and my version of this power was supposedly a limitless version. He ignored his sudden weightlessness and continued preparing a spell to unleash at me.


    Before he could unleash his spell I envisioned my mental grip on him yanking his arms back and his head straight up so that he couldn''t target or see me. He howled as my power obeyed my mental envisionments, yanking his arms behind him and twisting his head. The howl was bloodcurdling.


    "Enough!" I shouted, cutting off the orc''s bloodcurdling cry. A sudden and intense silence filled the air. I willed my shadowy servant, a creature that the necromancy subdomain generated for me, back to me and back into my shadow. The entity willingly came back to me, once it studied the orc and determined that he couldn''t do anything to me anymore.


    And then I pointed a finger at the orc and made use of one of my more potent abilities: the ability to shut off a magic-user''s magic for a full day. A thin ray of eldritch, white light shot out of my fingertip and stabbed into Gnorl''s chest, aimed squarely at his heart.


    The orc''s eyes widened in disbelief as both he and I began to watch his magic fade and dissipate. He did so internally, no doubt aware of his magical energy fading into nothingness, and I did so externally.


    I watched the multi-hued aura that surrounded him fade into nothingness, and he began to make pitiful noises of disbelief and sorrow, even as I placed him on the ground. I didn''t even drop him, I actually placed him respectfully on the ground. He fell to his knees and began to sob as if he had just learned that a close personal friend of his had just passed away.


    This display lasted a few minutes, and in the middle of it, I even released Hunahpu, Gnorl''s pet. When the orc finally stopped crying, I began to talk to him.


    ________________________________________________


    "Are you done? Or should I ready my shadow to attack you once again?" I asked, annoyed that the creature had dared to launch an attack before even asking me for my name. I thought it was rude.


    "What do you mean ''Am I done''? You... could have killed my pet, and you dared to take my magic from me!" The orc said, looking up at me. His eyes were filled with rage and with sorrow.


    I sighed. "You attacked me first. All I said was that I was a spirit and you took that as a sign that I was okay to attack. That was obviously a mistake. I am far stronger than you, and I have no clue what led you to believe you''d not only survive attacking me but actually come out on top." I explained and also revealing, showing the orc that I was genuinely mystified by its remarks.


    Gnorl hissed at me, the sound surprising, deep, and probably scary to a human but not to me. I willed the earth and dirt underneath him to soften to the solidity of quick-sand and watched for the split second I allowed the earth to swallow him up for. He let out a gasp as his lower body and arms sunk beneath the earth''s surface.


    And as quickly as I had unsolidified the earth, I returned the liquid-like earth around his kneecaps to its naturally solid and dense state. He was trapped, once more.


    "You didn''t answer my question Gnorl. Are. You. Done?" I asked, allowing the orc''s breaths to determine when I whispered each word of my final question.


    The orc looked down at himself, acknowledged that his pet was here and unharmed, and then back at my elemental form. And then he nodded, grudgingly. And his icon on my mini-map went from red to blue, which I took as a sign of his sincerity.


    I willed the earth that trapped him in an unmovable prison to soften, and then I lifted him up using telekinesis. The earth underneath him solidified, and then I dropped him. He landed well and began to look at me once more.


    His eyes were filled with a mixture of emotions. One of them was sorrow at the fact that his companion could have gotten hurt, and that his magical powers had been stripped away. Another was anger at the fact that he was soundly defeated. And the last was a bit of respect for me, the creature who had defeated him in the first place.


    "Now... care to explain why you attacked me?" I asked, looking at him studiously. The orc nodded and then began to explain.


    "I am a shaman. But not the usual kind of shaman. I''m a hunter-shaman, one who hunts down spirits. You are a spirit so I hunted you down. Or... I tried too anyway." He told me, explaining it as if it made all the sense in the world. I looked at him in disbelief for a few seconds. After realizing he was being sincere I wanted to smack him upside the head with one of my tendrils.


    "Do other spirits look like me?" I asked, annoyed at his obvious lapse in judgment.


    He turned to look at me and studied me for a split second. "No... But, spirits are shapeshifters!" He confessed, before adding in something that was probably true and probably was a fair counterpoint. I hissed, aware that he might well be right, and moved on before he could try to add anything else to what he said.


    "Now back to the matter at hand. I want you to serve me. Was my shadow and I trouncing you enough to secure your loyalty? Or am I gonna have to do something else to secure it?" I asked, hoping that the fight at least had the upside of securing another servant for me to have.


    He thought for a second about what to say, before shaking his head. "I''ll serve you! Just... let me have my magic back, could you?" He asked.


    I wasn''t sure if I could restore his magic before the twenty-four period was up, but I was alerted by the domain of the knowledge that I could just end the condition on him. I did so by wishing it done and watched as his magic power began to slowly recharge.


    Tears of joy filled his eyes as he began to feel his magical power coming back to him. He began to silently weep, grateful to feel his own power coming back to him.


    And with that, began another period of peace. One that would last for two hours, until the sun began to set, marking the end of my third day alive and awake.


    ________________________________________________


    I didn''t return to the Silver Xana as the sun descended below the horizon, covering the lands beyond the forest in the darkness that the forest had grown familiar with. Instead, I found myself in a corner of the forest, unsurprisingly in a clearing that allowed some early-night moonlight to shine down upon it, with my allies beside me. I was once again in my human form.


    I carefully studied the ground at my feet. I felt it underneath me. It was soft to the touch and only somewhat resistant to the effects of wind and rain. I was standing on top of an entrance to the strange underground region wherein most of my undead servants had come from.


    They surrounded me, looking excitedly at the ground I stood on top of. This wasn''t because they wanted to worship the ground I walked on, but because they recognized that I was standing on top of an entrance to the place many of them came from. I looked up at them and smiled.


    "Alright, we''re gonna go exploring the world underneath us. But while we''re doing that I''m gonna get to know each of you." I told them. They looked up at me and nodded, most likely as appreciative of the fact that I wanted to understand them as any regular undead being was whenever the necromancer responsible for it wanted to get to know it.


    They didn''t know it, but my thoughts were divided. In the time since I left the goblin encampment, I had been thinking about and doing several things at once.


    The first thing I was doing was both gaining control over more ants and getting my ants to evolve. I pumped the creatures full of statistical boosts, causing my number of myrmekes to skyrocket.


    I had ordered them to come to where I was, and even now my enhanced hearing could pick up the noise of their powers to control the earth chipping away at the distance between them and I. A part of me, due probably to the influences of the domain of civilization and the subdomain of Hymenoptera wanted to build a vast, bug-based empire that spanned entire planets.


    That part of me was excited by the fact that there were millions of ants, bees, and wasps on this island. They far outnumbered most other living creatures, and certainly outnumbered all of the humans I could detect. Almost comically so.


    The second thing I was doing was mulling over an idea that the system had put in my head. A worldwide burst of healing energy. I liked the idea of it, of announcing my emergence into this world by performing a world-spanning and undeniable act of goodness and thereby generating endless goodwill. I wasn''t sure if I wanted to do it just yet, but I couldn''t deny the appeal.


    And the third thing was studying the list of synergistic powers I had gained in the wake of the tutorial coming to an end. It was an extensive, and fascinating list of powers.


    As I studied it, I grinned at my undead followers and felt my Formicidae minions inching closer and closer to me. I could hear their feet, their acid, their claws, and their powers at work in the cases of the massive myrmekes'' that aided the unevolved ants working to reach me, to breach the surface.


    I could have helped, but I wanted them to practice breaching the earth by themselves. I wanted the myrmekes among them to practice their own version of earth control, and to master it quickly.

 45 Ghouls, Powers, And Ants

    Under the moonlight, my servants and I smiled. My servants smiled because they felt the light of the moon of their skin. I smiled for a different reason. As the sound of skittering feet and powerful attacks against the ground beneath me drew closer and closer I felt excitement begin to grow within me.


    That smile that etched itself on my lips was there for a reason. It was there because the part of me that keenly felt the power of the influence of domains and subdomains imagined the possibilities at my fingertips if I rose an army of evolved ants and used them to try and conquer the world.


    There was something... charming about the idea of a world wherein humanoids were not top dog anymore. A world where humanoids were defeated by a swarm composed in equal parts of the living and the dead. As I thought of that, the image of a world where no living thing walked on the surface, and billions of ants lived and worked underground filled my head.


    I keenly felt the subdomain of necromancy grow excited at that thought. I also felt the Hymenoptera subdomain grow excited at it as well. The idea of a faction of living insects teaming up with a faction of vicious undead creatures filled me, and unlike the time before this, it was all me, not just the part that liked the domains and subdomains.


    I chuckled and realized that I ought to regain control before this idea got to be too much for me. I didn''t yet have the impulse control to be able to fully reject bad ideas, and if I wasn''t careful I could be too easily tempted into doing something potentially irreversible.


    I took a second to make sure I was in control before I turned to begin to chat with my undead companions.


    ________________________________________________


    "So why don''t we start with you. Tell me about yourself!" I said as I turned to face Mof, the undead satyr who initially had been one of the first creatures I set out to reanimate and ended up being one of the last.


    The satyr looked at me, calmness visible in his gaze. He considered how to reply for a second, and then he began to speak.


    "I am Mof. In life I liked wine and women. Now? I don''t know. I might still like wine, but if I like women it''s only in the context of eating them." He revealed, after a few moments of careful contemplation. I listened to that and then I was still for a second as I processed it. I wasn''t sure how to react to it. This was, in my defense, the first time that I was chatting with a ghoul.


    After a few seconds, I chuckled, shook my head, and opted to move on. When I turned to face the others I noticed they had grins on their faces, as they agreed with their companion. This was the first time they had shown any emotion other than anger, which was interesting to me.


    "What emotions do you all feel? Because before now I''ve only ever felt agitation and apathy come from you, but now you''re smiling." I asked and then explained. They looked at each other, their eyes focused on the question and also on seeing how it made others feel, before saying anything. And then Risa the medusa began to talk.


    "Master... Althos, we feel... few things. You must understand that this is all new to us, aside from maybe to Nivar. Our minds still need time to cope. We feel loyalty and awe towards you, we feel... hunger, and we feel distinct anger towards the living. Am I missing anything?" She asked as she turned slightly to look at her companions. They all shook their heads, clearly agreeing with her.


    After watching them I realized that I needed to confer with the subdomain of necromancy. In the wake of all of the events at the goblin encampment, I hadn''t had time to ask what were the other types of undead I now possessed control over. I ought to change that. And so I did.


    ________________________________________________


    "So hey, can you tell me about the other kinds of undead creatures out there? Because I only know about hungry hands, reanimated plants, zombies, ghouls, and skeletons." I asked inwardly. My question was directed towards the relevant subdomain: the subdomain of necromancy.


    "Hmm... Well, there are many thousands of types of undead. Most of them aren''t the regular, run-of-the-mill corpses that are just walking around." The subdomain began, which intrigued me.


    "The undead are legion. And you can only control... a few different types of undead creatures. What you can control automatically are the very simplest of the creatures who fall under my subdomain." The thing teased, before launching into an explanation of what was outside of my control.


    "Of the creatures you can currently control without any difficulty the vampires and the mummies are probably the two strongest. Vampires are blood-drinking humanoids and extraplanars who are physically immortal to the point that even defeating and decapitating them isn''t enough for them to die." The subdomain told me, causing my eyes to open wide in shock.


    "Mummies are preserved corpses who most often are guardians of tombs or themselves royal individuals whose corpses were reanimated using powerful, ritualistic magic. They are capable of using magic, and their attacks have a chance of inflicting enemies with a dangerous disease." The creature told me, eagerly divulging this information.


    "Wrights are undead that can arise naturally if their deaths were extremely violent, but otherwise can only be raised through magic. They can freeze their enemies and are perhaps the most violent of the undead under your control. They are effectively advanced zombies but with a passion for violence, unlike ghouls who like to eat but can control their impulses." The voice said, whispering in my ears. I could see a use for all of these sorts of undead creatures.


    "The other kinds of undead you don''t know about are the incorporeal, those that lack a body, kind. Ghosts are powerful spirits capable of using the magic they could in life but they have wills of their own. Nevertheless, they obey you, they just do so... willfully." Whispered the voice.


    "Wraiths and shadows are less willful and less powerful but shadows can possess people which is when a creature enters the mind of another creature and overtakes it, granting them control of the body of someone else." One of my newer companions revealed, surprising me.


    "Wraiths are more dangerous in one on one combat than shadows are. Shadows and wraiths can also be created from the corpses of creatures whose bodies are being used in other ways. Which effectively means that you can have two undead for the price of one." The thing told me, causing a smile to appear on my face.


    "Perhaps the most iconic kind of undead monster isn''t the zombie. It''s the lich. Liches are very powerful undead magic-users who decided to transcend death in order to live and work forever as an undead creature. They are one of the kinds of creatures you''ll be able to force to serve you when you gain the next tier of influence over me." The subdomain teased, a smile audible in its voice.


    This made my eyes go wide in shock. Undead wizards? I could sense that those sorts of creatures were dangerous. And potentially useful, if I ever wanted to inflict devastation on a wide scale.


    "At the second tier of influence over me, you gain the power to control bones and to create all sorts of foul abominations from shaped bones however you wish. You can create ships made of bones if you wish, or catapults, or even foul and unthinking abominations." The entity told me, causing my imagination to fill with macabre images.


    I grinned as I envisioned massive entities made of bones roaming the land and finishing off any surviving, living creatures. The world I envisioned was a quiet one. One without any suffering or hunger. Death had a finality to it that laid those things to rest.


    After a few seconds, I refused to allow myself to daydream any longer and snapped back to the present. I heard a chuckle emanate from the subdomain.


    "I suppose I should tell you now that you have gained access to a few more treats. You can create and command undead swarms, particularly of vermin, and you can create and control one particularly powerful monster: a worm that walks. Well... that''s just what people call them, they don''t have real names." Whispered the sly subdomain.


    "Worms that walk... insects that walk, are the eerie result of when an evil magician''s corpse is devoured by a swarm of insects. The insects and the magician merge, with the consciousness of the magician overtaking the wills of the insects they were eaten by. This ability is a synergistic one, and you should keep it mind if you fight any magicians." The subdomain informed me.


    This caused me to smile once more, as the idea of gaining magical allies that couldn''t disobey me was an unusually tempting one, even among so many fun and tempting ideas. The subdomain had one more suggestion for me.


    "It''d be a good idea for you to build a lair somewhere you know. There''s plenty of unoccupied space underground... which is where your ants have begun building your empire anyway. Not to mention that that''s where the undead are the strongest, free from the awful effects of the sun." My ally told me, implanting a suggestion that''d stick in my mind. A really good suggestion.


    "Heck if you really wanted to bring in living creatures you could. You''d just have to earn the first tier of influence over the subdomain of liquid, which grants water generation and control, and use your agriculture subdomain to feed them. It could be utopian if you wanted it to be." The subdomain suggested, trying to appeal to me by calling back to an earlier, simpler time before I could influence necromancy. A time that was just hours ago.


    I could get behind the idea of an underground lair, maybe even an underground castle. A place populated and protected in equal parts by the undead and by a massive army of ants. Lurking deep under the ground felt right to me, probably because of my influence over the earth subdomain.


    I refocused on what was going on around me, and willed myself out of my head so that I could be present and paying attention to my servants.


    ________________________________________________


    "So, what about you big guy?" I asked, turning to look at the gug. It was a truly gargantuan thing, standing several meters tall. It looked down at me and then considered how to best proceed. Its mouth gaped open and shut a few times, the thing splitting its head open down the middle, but the beast remained silent. Until it didn''t.


    "I enjoy... dreaming." The thing said, its voice sounding off in my mind. I chuckled and looked at everyone else. Its voice was low, quiet, and felt positively sinister. I liked it.


    "Did you all hear that?" I asked them. They shook their heads at me, and I spent a second tying our minds together via a web of mind-links. Establishing those was easy, all it took was for me to focus on who all I wanted to include in the web and then will it to be made into reality.


    I was the first to test it out. "Well my friend, what sort of dreams do you like?" I asked it, not physically speaking but rather using our mental web. And as I did I had a fun thought.


    ________________________________________________


    "I wonder if I could use this ability to create mind-webs of interconnected consciousnesses for some mischief..." I asked myself, safe in my own mind. I felt that I could, but I wasn''t entirely sure how.


    "I could use this power to begin to build a psychic organization..." I realized, as my ability to use this mind-web power was unlimited. For a second I opted to recall the some of powers I had under my control through the mind domain.


    [Mind domain passive powers:


    Mind domain passive powers:


    Mind-link: You gain the ability to tie minds together. These minds can communicate with each other over infinite distances and can ignore language barriers that would otherwise limit their ability to communicate. This includes your mind as well, which you can easily link to other creatures.


    You can do this across vast distances, and don''t even need to have seen the creatures whose minds you are linking to do so successfully. Usage of this power doesn''t alert those whose minds are linked to the fact that their minds are now linked, though clearly you can tell them or you can be sneaky and only tell one of them.


    Range expansion: Your powers, with a few exceptions like the power to raise the dead, now have a range of as far as your tremorsense can detect. This explosively increases the range of the vast majority of your mind-powers, allowing you to create mischief from dozens of kilometers away, as well as interfere in all sorts of situations using your mind.


    Attraction manipulation: This synergistic and passive power allows you to cause someone to feel an attraction to something or someone else. This is power fuses the deadly sin of lust with your mental abilities and can be used freely as befits a master of lust. That said, there''s a chance it can be resisted.


    Multi-minded: This power allows you to enter dreams and also do other things at the same time. You can enter multiple dreams, currently, you can enter five dreams at once and also do anything in the waking world without even experiencing the slightest difficulties.


    Hive-mind generation: This synergistic, passive power is a result of intersecting the Hymenoptera subdomain, the mind domain, and the powers of the Sovereign of the Swarm. By using it, you can meld minds together and create a meshed, super consciousness.


    For now, hive-mind generation doesn''t subsume the wills of those in the hive-mind. If you gain more power over the domain of minds, or the Sovereign of the Swarm undergoes another improvement, then that may change.


    Conditional healing: This power fuses the mind-abilities of the mind domain and the restorative energy manipulation power of the subdomain of healing.


    Sleep inducement: You can put creatures to sleep. Extraplanar creatures, as entities that don''t need sleep, can resist this. Mortals can''t. This is synergistic with the domain of dreams.


    Telekinesis: Telekinesis is the ability to manipulate objects and creatures with your mind. You can move objects and creatures without touching them by mentally willing them to move.


    You have no limitations on your version of this power, and can bestow a lesser version of it upon mortals at will and you can also take it back as freely as you give it away.


    The version of this power that mortals acquire allows them to only move one object or creature at a time, and it can only weigh half as much as they could lift with their limbs. As you gain more influence over the mind domain you''ll gain the ability to modify and eventually even remove these limitations altogether.


    It''s worth noting that currently, no telekinetic mortals exist anywhere in this universe. When you grant someone this power, they''ll become the first mortal in this universe, to be able to do this since the end of the age of gods, the era in the ancient past wherein gods existed.


    Mind-reading: You gain the ability to read minds. This is only surface level at the moment and you can''t dig up old thoughts for that is a power granted to you at a higher tier of influence over this domain but you can read someone''s loudest thoughts at will.


    Patience manipulation: You can draw-out someone''s patience or you can bring it to an end. This power can allow you to alter someone''s mood quite easily.


    Mind domain active power:


    Hive-mind manipulation: This power allows you to direct hive-minds as you wish, for two hours, twice every twelve hours.]


    As I read through the list of powers at my command I chuckled. I had a lot of things I could do with these powers. Things that could subtly alter lives, or overhaul them in big ways. I just needed to practice, subtly, with them first. That said, I had an entire island to use as my testing grounds.


    ________________________________________________


    "I like dreams that... take me to the dreamlands." The entity whispered in our minds. This caught me off guard and so I decided to ask about it.


    "The dreamlands? Is that... a place?" I asked, honestly curious. The gug looked at me and blinked slowly while formulating a response.


    "The dreamlands is the home... of my race. Or... it was... our home." The large creature said, speaking softly now. Its voice was still mental, rather than physical.


    Inwardly, while the creature prepared to continue explaining about its home, I asked the domain of dreams a simple question. "Is that a real place?" I asked the odd entity who I had yet to hear speak. The response was quick.


    "The dreamlands are a place only the gods can walk in while conscious. It is a world of strange sights and stranger monsters, of massive spiders that morph into goat-like men, of massive monstrosities that walk on the moon, and it is home to gigantic giants with vertical mouths and ambitious dreams... yes, the dreamlands are real." The domain told me, but not before speaking cryptically.


    "We do not yet wish for you to see the dreamlands. You would not gain the respect you deserve there, in your present state, gather more power over dreams, and then come." The domain commanded, probably as a justifying why I didn''t know about this place and why that I don''t yet have the power to enter it.


    I sighed and recalled my list of dream domain powers. I was especially excited to revisit the new ones under my control.


    [Passive Powers:


    He Sees You When You''re Sleeping: This passive power affects your minimap and allows you to detect if a humanoid is sleeping.


    Shared dreams: Creatures who are in a mind-web can all be pulled into one dream if all of them are sleeping at the same time.


    Dream of desire: You can fill a dream with whatever the dreamer most wants. This may allow you to learn such information, as well as grant you the ability to cause the mortal in question to become addicted to their dreams.


    Dream/Nightmare manipulation: You gain total control over what people in a dream experience so long as you are in the dream. This is true even if the individual is a lucid dreamer, allowing you to usurp their control over their dreams.


    Dreamwalker: You gain the ability to enter the dreams of sleeping humanoids. In order to enter the dreams of other types of creatures, you need to gain higher tiers of influence over the domain of dreams.


    Petrification manipulation: You can twist the minds of petrified creatures so that they are effectively dreaming while petrified, allowing you to further twist their minds to your dark purposes. Synergistic.


    Healing dream: Synergistic power crossing over the subdomain of healing and the domain of dreams. Using this power on someone grants them a condition that is uniquely beneficial which allows them to heal from conditions that would normally persist overnight so long as they have a full night''s rest. Works even if that rest is divinely granted.


    Active Powers:


    Restless Or Restful Sleep: This power doesn''t affect dreams, it affects sleep. By using it you can affect how restorative a mortal''s sleep is.


    When you use it on a mortal you are given a choice. If you choose for your target to experience restless sleep then for the next twenty-four hours their sleep will not positively affect them no matter how much they sleep. On the other hand, restful sleep is twice as restorative as it would otherwise be for the next twenty-four hours.


    You can use this power on six creatures per twelve hours. If you decide to target the same creature two days in a row the second time you use the power on them it will cost you an extra usage of this power.


    As you gain more tiers of influence over the domain of dreams, or as you become a more generally powerful deity, you''ll be able to target more creatures with it and customize how effective it is as well as how long it lasts.


    This power can be used to weigh down enemies or to uplift and refresh allies and worshipers.


    Dancing Dreams: This power is a vicious one. It can only be used on creatures who are already asleep but if used, and if not successfully resisted by its victims, it will cause them to be forced into a state of slumber for twenty-four hours. It can stack with "Restless or Restful Sleep" which can be an especially empowering or devastating combination if used cleverly.


    That said this power can only be used twice every twelve hours as a deity who can only exert one tier of influence over the domain of dreams and who is at the second-lowest rank of deific might.]


    Reading through those powers once again sharpened my awareness that I was an entity with a whole slew of new and potent abilities. It reinforced the reality that I was an entity above and beyond the constraints placed on other creatures.


    I opted to test out my new dream abilities at precisely the same time that my myrmekes servants finally burst through the ground close to me.


    ________________________________________________


    The ground near my leg exploded outward, plumes of dust, dirt, and rock being sent skyward near me. Dust swirled momentarily where the first subjects of my empire broke through the surface, and when it began to settle a trio of gigantic ant-humanoid hybrids were looking out at my allies and myself.


    The three myrmekes were members of their warrior caste. They were powerfully built creatures with broad chests protected by dense chitin. Their bodies had the same basic shape as Imbrosa''s, but they didn''t have quite as many legs, or as bulbous an abdomen as she did. Their arms and legs were both intimidatingly thick though, and I could tell that getting hit by them would hurt a normal mortal. The chitin that covered their bodies was red.


    They scanned the area just outside of the hole they had created with their huge compound eyes, enormous orbs that took up the majority of their faces, aside from their mandibles and antennae. The orbs were made up of thousands of tiny eyes that flinted in every direction, every second.


    Eventually the three ants were satisfied and stepped out from the hole that they had made. When they stepped out of the hole their full height was revealed. They towered above me, standing well over two and a half meters tall. And they weren''t the only creatures in the hole either.


    An ocean of ants, regular ones, swarmed out behind them, stepping through the hole and onto the grass just beyond it. The number of ants that swarmed out of the hole was easily over a thousand, and they didn''t represent one percent of the ants I had control over. I smiled as I watched them come flooding out of the hole their superiors had created. And they just kept coming.


    ________________________________________________


    In time the flood stopped, and I moved forward to examine the hole. As I did so the ants, regular and myrmekes alike moved out of the way even without me commanding them too. When I peered into the hole I noticed a few things.


    First, I noticed that the hole was a winding tunnel several meters wide and tall. More than tall enough for even my gug-ghoul. That was convenient and saved me time since I would have had to widen it otherwise. The tunnel was entirely dark on the inside. That made sense to me since the tunnel was deep underground and ants could see in the dark unaided.


    The last thing I saw wasn''t something I noticed since I had been aware of it for a bit now. A single myrmekes queen was slowly drifting up the tunnel towards me, her wings beating quickly and slowly sending her upward as she moved closer and closer to me.


    When she noticed me, she began to push her wings even harder than before. I could smell excitement coming off of her, wafting towards me thanks to a breeze in the tunnel that wanted to escape it and blew towards me from behind her.

 46 Contemplation

    A minute and a half after I first laid my eyes on the myrmekes queen she was standing in front of me. She, her three guards, and an army of ants stood between us and the tunnel. They weren''t an obstacle or anything, that was just a literal description of the scene in front of me.


    The tunnel was a massive hole in the ground, one far wider and far more noticeable than the hole in the goblin encampment. In the low lighting of the moonlight, it was absolutely foreboding as it was an area of utter darkness.


    I didn''t like darkness. I could see in it without any difficulty, but for an unknowable amount of time, all I knew was darkness. I wasn''t fond of it. I didn''t know if I ever would be. That was perhaps the biggest drawback of an underground lair.


    I was alone with my thoughts for a second before a voice spoke into my mind. A soft, feminine voice. One I hadn''t heard before.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello, creator." The voice uttered, speaking reverentially to me. Her voice was unbelievably soft and delicate. It sounded fragile even. I looked at her, the myrmekes queen who was speaking to me and began to examine her.


    She was a tall creature, standing an even two meters tall. Her chitin was a royal blue, which felt appropriate enough all things considered. Her humanoid portions were slender looking and made her feel more lanky than bulky, unlike the myrmekes warriors who protected her, and quite possibly myself as well.


    Her face was entirely insectoid, and she had an abundance of antennae that seemed to serve an almost aesthetic purpose, framing her face like hair would on a human. She had both mandibles and a large looking proboscis that was visible whenever she opened her mouth even slightly. Her compound eyes were large enough that they almost resembled human eyes.


    Her chitin hid soft-looking flesh, including some that was proportioned and placed in such a way on her thin upper body to suggest that she had human-like breasts, which... would have been odd. I stared long enough at that part of her body that she began to giggle, her voice buzzing into my mind faintly.


    Her insectoid lower body included a thick gaster, a bulbous appendage below her thorax that included her stinger and was riddled with multiple armored sections protecting various internal organs. Hers was enormous and seemed to be filled with... something. I could hear something swishing around in it.


    She had long arms that ended in three thin, clear, needle-like fingers. A quick glance at them was enough for me to get the impression that they were another way for her to absorb food. Perhaps it was similar to how fungi ate, using hypha? It was odd to look at because I could see... transparent liquid of some sort flowing through it.


    "Hello little one. I may have helped you evolve, but I am not your creator." I replied back to her, after giving her body a quick look, up and down.


    "I know you did not create me, but you did choose to elevate me. I would not be who I am... what I am, if not for your touch. If not for your blessing. You are my creator." She told me, simply. I chuckled and opted to accept her way of referring to me.


    She began to study me. Her compound eyes inspected every facet of my physical appearance.


    As she studied me I considered what I wanted to do. It was a difficult question with many layers.


    ________________________________________________


    "Some of my subdomains and domains are going to ask me to do what the Hymenoptera subdomain are going to ask me to do: build empires of specific types of creatures." I realized, keenly aware that if that deeply and communally minded subdomain was asking me to do such a thing others would too.


    It didn''t bother me, surprisingly. I wasn''t overjoyed about it or anything, but I wasn''t beating myself up over it either. When the time came I''d select a world well suited to that, and then do it. No big deal.


    I could imagine that the subdomain of necromancy would have a similar request or one even worse that might involve the razing of several worlds. Same for the domain of evil, if it were a domain like chaos was, and for the domain or subdomain of war. Among others, no doubt.


    But none of that meant that I needed to conquer this world using the swarm. When the time came, what would I do? Would I order my minions to burrow out of the places deep under the world and slaughter those who lived above it? Would I order the dead out of their graves and tell them to turn on those they befriended in life?


    I knew other worlds existed. At least six other worlds. And based on what was said about the sun and the existence of other stars I didn''t think it was unreasonable to assume other worlds with life existed either. Would conquering them be better? Be easier? Be something I could with less bloodshed?


    I mulled over those questions for a few moments. Until I was interrupted by a familiar voice.


    ________________________________________________


    "Creator... why do you look like that?" She asked, her voice seeping into my mind once more. I chuckled as I considered her question. It took me a few moments to formulate a reply.


    And after creating a rough response I read over it and then opted to rewrite or rather, rethink it. It was too casual. I was in what might well have been "God mode", not interacting with a mortal on supposedly equal footing. I needed to work to upkeep that regal and divine image.


    "I do not have a... true form little one. I look like this because it is an efficient disguise to walk among those who dwell above." I told her. I wasn''t sure how I could tell, but I suspected it was because she and I had a sort of mental connection but I felt this remark intrigue her.


    "But creator, must you fool ''those who dwell above''? Is there a reason why you must disguise yourself from them?" The queen asked, her voice filled with a few different emotions, close to my own but also... alien. I sighed and considered how to navigate this rather... interesting question.


    "Little one, the world above is different from your society. It is... more individualistic. I need to learn to navigate it." I explained, hoping that that would placate her. She gave me a look, and prepared another question which quickly wormed its way into my mind.


    "Do you like our society?" She asked, curiously. Curiosity was one of the emotions I could easily detect in its voice.


    "I don''t know your society little one. I would like to learn more about it." I told the myrmekes queen, sticking with my tried and true philosophy of being mostly honest with mortal creatures. This made the creature''s antennae shoot up as a sort of physical sign of its excitement. I chuckled as I watched this.


    This was when I began to quietly think of a new form to take on, one that would be better for the land I was about to enter and the creatures I was about to meet. I pictured something vaguely resembling a cross between Imbrosa and the myrmekes warriors guarding the queen I had just met.


    The queen then abruptly turned and went back into the tunnel her minions had just created. I turned to my allies and motioned for them to follow after me.


    That was when the other myrmekes and the regular ants all turned and retreated back into the tunnel. I was on the right behind the last of the ants into the tunnel, and as I took my first cautious steps into the tunnel I morphed into a more appropriate form mixing the powers of "Shapeless one" and "Exoskeleton manipulation" to create a distinctive form.


    ________________________________________________


    My body grew taller and wider as I stepped into the tunnel. My legs were the first things to shift. My human legs grew longer, tearing through the pants I wore, which should have bothered me more than it did. By the time I reached my designated height I was just under three meters tall, towering above the other creatures, aside from my undead servants.


    My legs became long, lanky things that ended in barded hooks. I felt them stab into the ground whenever I took a step in the tunnel, securing me even without requiring that I use my powers to aid myself. As I stretched upward, I grew a thin outer layer of jet black chitin, which protectively surrounded my skin like a suit of skintight armor.


    I grew a strange gaster-like appendage myself and felt it slide into position above my legs. My two front legs, or rather my only legs when I was disguised as a human, stayed out in front of it, but I also grew two more sets of legs which jutted out from my gaster and began to walk in sync with my initial pair.


    My arms extended, reaching nearly all the way to the floor. I winched in annoyance as I felt the ends of my fingers sharpen so that they more closely resembled those of the myrmekes queen. My fingers didn''t lose their lightly tanned coloring though, even underneath the exoskeleton I wore like a thin disguise.


    I retained my largely human face but it was hidden underneath a mask of black-as-night chitin. The chitin itself covered everything but my eyes, allowing me to peer out into the world around me unobstructed by my own biology. As I trod deeper and deeper into the tunnel, I was making plans, including immediate ones.


    The lightless tunnels were easy for me to navigate since I could latch onto the ground with each step I took. But that wasn''t the case for my servants. They had stopped and were hesitating just outside of the curvy tunnel, aware that they might well slip and fall in the tunnel.


    I rose a single modified limb and grabbed each of them using my mind. And then I lifted them into the air behind me. I quickly brought them over to me, not going to be slowed down by them and not going to leave behind either. Once they weren''t far from me I didn''t even turn around and quietly used "Earth control" to seal the rupture in the earth that my insectoid minions had created to come to me, shutting off the one source of light the tunnel possessed.


    Behind me, I heard gasps from my living servants and felt surprise register within the minds of my undead minions. I chuckled and ignored their shock, for now. The only thing I did do was establish a mind-web with them, reaching out and tethering our minds together quietly.


    "And now we''re all connected." I said over the link, before allowing them to talk to each other for a few moments. I had to do something bigger than this now. Something more dramatic than anything else I had ever done to date.


    ________________________________________________


    I allowed myself to begin to walk automatically with no required mental input. I did this so I could free up my mind for what I was about to do. I continued walking in precisely the same way I had before, which was that I would lumber after an ocean of ants, their small and dark bodies hidden in the tunnel but perfectly detectable thanks to my non-visual sensory abilities.


    I waited a few seconds, allowing my eyes to stay open and peer into the increasingly vertical tunnel. I did this mostly because I was in a new body and wanted to be sure I could handle what was coming, and if I closed my eyes now that might not end well for me, even if all that happened was that my pride took a blow.


    When I was sure I could handle walking in my new form without conscious guidance I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to fill my vision. It sprung to life easily, and was now complete, no longer expanding and better yet showing me a lot in a lot of detail.


    It showed me every earthbound lifeform in every direction for kilometers, even showing me beings deep underground and on the ocean floor. That brought a smile to my face. There were so many creatures to see! So many ants, so many bodies, and so many creatures to unite.


    After allowing myself to get lost for a second in the sheer potential I could see on the not-so-mini-map I began to do two things at once. I began the notification-heavy process of reanimating as many deceased ants as I could without expanding my ability to remotely raise the dead.


    My key to pulling that off without a hitch was that I had made use of my "Ant dominance" ability during the two hours between my time in the goblin encampment and a few minutes ago to contact over a million ants and make them my servants and worshipers instantly.


    I had converted a few thousand of the veritable army of ants I now controlled into myrmekes, granting myself a vanguard of powerfully built warriors, queens, and even a few myrmekes drones and workers to be sure I was diversifying the creatures under my control.


    I had also spread thousands of my created fruits throughout the places where the ants were most likely to be, giving them even more reason to worship me. I could feel the powerful tidal wave of emotions they sent me with every step I took. And I hadn''t contacted all of the ants in the area either, there were roughly three million ants spread out throughout the island and I wanted all of them. But for now, I was satisfied.


    It turned out that ants buried their dead, usually not particularly far from their hives. The burial grounds were perfect. They stored tens of thousands of little bodies for me to play with.


    Bodies I didn''t hesitate to reanimate, using my powers to effortlessly reanimate whole swaths of the things. As I began this I heard a subdomain begin to luxuriously sigh in my mind. But even it didn''t fully accept this.


    "I can''t believe you''re just making them skeletons." The necromantic subdomain complained to me. I chuckled and largely ignored it.


    "Everybody joins the swarm." I muttered, somewhat under my breath. I ignored the sigh that escaped the mental lips of the subdomain and continued to channel my necromantic abilities through countless worker ants I had moved to the ant burial grounds.


    I could feel their antennae and tarsal claws touching the bodies of their fallen comrades, only for me to channel my magic through them and instantly begin the process of bringing them back as my companions and worshipers.


    As I did this, I divided my mind and allowed another part of it to quietly fiddle with my not-so-mini-map. That part of my mind was doing something that I hoped would be an incredible achievement.


    A few seconds after I started fiddling with tremorsense I had selected all of the appropriate filters. I had selected all of the undead on the island and within it as well, and all of the ants. I targeted all of them, well over five million entities in total so that I could do what I was about to do next once and be done with it. I also included myself in the hive-mind, figuring that was the way to most effectively coordinate it.


    My logic here wasn''t that I sought to subsume their wills, I just wanted to coordinate them effectively. The description of the power was that it wouldn''t subsume their wills, so I planned on that being the case.


    I quietly activated my "Hivemind Generation" power. The power that would connect me with my swarm. And then nothing happened. For a few seconds anyway. Until I received a quiet, stern sounding message from the system.


    [Oh Althos. Why do you have to be so chaotic? And so reckless? That said... it''s not every day that a god unifies his mind with millions with the living and the dead at once. This could be fun.] The system''s voice was filled with curiosity and with light-hearted laughter.


    [Alert: You have begun the process of unifying your mind with that of your servants. Your will subsume their wills. Is that what you want?] The system''s more automated voice informed me, alerting me to my mistake. My eyes went wide, and I immediately told the system to shut it off, mentally pumping my voice with urgency.


    "Nope!" I told the thing, hoping that my urgency would cause it to shut down more quietly and not enact what would have been a disastrous action on my part.

 47 Deeper Darkness

    [Understood. Aborting unification. For now.] The system''s more automated mode ominously replied, seconds after I told the thing to shut down what I had mistakenly set up. If I could have looked at the system and glared I would have. I sent a message to it that I hoped made it feel like I was shouting.


    "Hey! What was that? What is ''unification''? I thought that if I used my ''Hivemind generation'' power that it wouldn''t subsume the wills of those in it." I asked the system two questions while I snapped, annoyed at the fact that what I had just learned contradicted what I thought would have been the case regarding my thus-far limited understanding of hiveminds.


    [That power''s description was created under the assumption that the god themself wouldn''t be part of the hivemind. Hiveminds are dominated by single individuals, the ones with the highest intelligence or willpower and in literally any instance wherein you are a member of a hivemind you have the strongest will by a considerable margin.] The system revealed, sounding a bit annoyed itself.


    I took a few seconds to sigh and then consider what to say next. And then I realized that the system only answered one question.


    "What is ''unification''? You didn''t answer that." I reiterated, curious to hear what it was, but well aware that it probably wasn''t good. Or at least good from my point of view, as someone who doesn''t have an interest in subsuming wills and thus becoming some sort of godmind.


    [Unification is the process by which a group of mortals becomes one with their god. By undergoing unification a mortal sheds their will and becomes a beacon of the glory of their god and their most devoted servants. This was a fate many pious mortals sought out in the mythic age. Some gods lauded it as the highest of honors.] The system explained, telling me a bit about the state of mind of the gods of old.


    "Yikes. That''s... dark." I reacted, not being a fan of that at all. I heard a robotic chuckle emanate from the system, and sound off in my mind.


    [There are absolutely some domains and subdomains that adore hiveminds and godminds. The domains of light and darkness both have godmind abilities, as does the domain of law, and the subdomains of order and fungi. Though all of theirs are a bit different.] The strange entity revealed to me.


    "I''ll have to form hiveminds with me in them one day won''t I?" I asked, coming to that conclusion in the wake of the new information I had just received.


    [Oh absolutely. But if it makes you feel better, gaining influence over the domains of light and darkness are both easy enough. And you''ve earned the right to complete the quests for both of them if you wish. They are interested in you, particularly the domain of darkness.] My companion revealed. I chuckled at that revelation.


    "Of course they are. I''m afraid of the dark and so the darkness domain is interested in me. How fitting." I mused, and then heard the system itself echo my chuckle.


    With that I continued my walk into the darkness, deeper and deeper into the earth itself. And without the distraction of the conversation I was having, I quickly became unsettled by the eerie journey I was undertaking, even though I could see perfectly and had near-absolute power underground.


    "Why can''t fear be rational?" I asked myself, knowing that my being afraid of the dark didn''t make any sense.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes after I and my servants, living and dead, began our trip into the darkness I closed my eyes. In doing so I came to a profound realization: the dark only scared me when my eyes were open in it. Using tremorsense not only allowed me to see even more than my own, presumably god-powered, natural ability to peer through darkness could, I also began to relax more easily.


    I studied the map, and realized something strange: the earth underneath the island didn''t really seem to stop. The tide of ants I was following through a handmade tunnel was diving deeper and deeper into the world under the island, and that world was getting wider somehow.


    Upon realizing this, I was filled with questions. Some of which I could even get answers too. It was intriguing. But it didn''t keep me from noticing things. One thing, in particular, stood out to me. Deep in the earth, there was a kilometers wide cavern with a single inhabitant. A lone black dragon.


    That said, I quickly focused on my objective: figuring out where we were going. And to start figuring that out, I sent a mental message to the queen I had met before.


    "What do you and your fellows plan to do?" I asked, mentally messaging the creature I had spoken with earlier. She was at the front of the swarm of ants, over ten thousand strong, that I was currently following closely behind. I received a response not long after I transmitted her my question.


    "We plan to go home." She informed me, revealing that there was a plan in place. That made me sigh in relief. It felt nice to be in a conversation with someone with a goal.


    "Where is home?" I asked her, as I scanned ahead of us in the tunnel she and her allies had created while heading towards me. I only had a rough idea of where their homes were, as ants modified the earth, and in many cases, the ants I had made aware of my presence weren''t exactly near their homes when I made myself known to them.


    "Not much farther from here Creator. Some steps away." She replied, after a few moments of careful thought. Her response was odd though. It made me think of a question that wouldn''t be answered if I asked her, but might be if I asked someone else.


    "So when I bestow blessings that increase someone''s intelligence, what am I actually increasing?" I asked.


    [You''ve asked something similar to this, vaguely at least, in the past. By increasing someone''s intelligence you''re increasing their ability to acquire knowledge and skills. You''re not actually giving them specific skillsets or knowledge, which is why the queen you just spoke to had difficulty articulating the distance to their colony.] The system explained. I nodded my head, in understanding.


    "So what if I improve their charisma?" I asked, curiously. The system made a curious noise as it contemplated my question.


    [If you improve their charisma, which you can do, you''d be granting them an improved, intuitive understanding of how to be charming and how to be effective in social situations. I''m not entirely sure if you''d be increasing their effective attractiveness, which is one component of charisma until you gain influence over the right domains and subdomains.] The entity told me, indulging my curiosity a bit more.


    "Thank you for that. That''s... really useful actually." I told the system, appreciating its candor even if I was still a bit annoyed that I almost subsumed the wills of several million creatures. Only some of that annoyance was aimed at the system, most of it was aimed at me.


    It took us a few minutes to finally reach the area wherein the ants we were following were leading us. We stopped just outside of a section of tunnel flooring riddled with small holes. And when we did I wasn''t surprised to see it, but I realized that my companions were probably more confused than ever.


    ________________________________________________


    "Why are we stopping?" Asked Okig, who sensed that she was affected by a rather abrupt loss of forward momentum. Her eyes couldn''t pierce the darkness, but I didn''t doubt that she could sense the fact that she wasn''t moving anymore.


    "We''re here. Where we were going. Would you like to be able to see?" I asked her, aware that she couldn''t see. She huffed in annoyance.


    "Of course I''d like to see!" She said, clearly still bothered with me. Which was fair, all things considered. I chuckled and opened up my grimoire, hoping that I''d have something there that could grant me the power to allow her to see.


    [Welcome Althos! You have new spells. Would you like to peruse them, or search for something specific?] The cheery voice of the grimoire asked me. I paused for a second to consider how to respond since I knew I didn''t have that would have allowed me to grant Okig and Iret the ability to see in the dark. When I did reply it was with resignation.


    "I can search for things? Can you see if I have anything that grants people the ability to see in the dark?" I asked the grimoire. That was when I received an interruption from an unexpected but welcome source.


    "Hello Althos. I''ll grant you a spell that lets people see in the dark. There''s a necromantic spell that does such a thing. If you would like we could unlock it..." The voice told me, tempting me with such a thing. My eyes narrowed in suspicion for a number of reasons.


    "What are your powers? Like... what can you do?" I asked, honestly curious about what and how it was that domains and subdomains did. I heard a soft laugh come from somewhere within me.


    "Subdomains and domains alike are actually pretty limited in what we can do. We pretty exclusively handle things like determining the nature of our quests and allocating when a god can engage in our quests to gain influence over us. Oh and in the cases of schools of magic that are also subdomains we can distribute spells to gods, who can then distribute them to mortals." The entity revealed, and I could have sworn I felt the thing grinning, somehow.


    "We have an innate ability to influence gods, but then again so do their worshipers so that''s not as potent as it sounds. In fairness... we''re sentient ideas, laws, and powers, so it makes sense for us to not be that powerful. That said... reality is malleable in the hands of a god. If a god wanted to change us and was strong enough they could." The thing hinted.


    "You really like trying to give me ideas don''t you?" I asked the odd entity. It didn''t reply but it did give me a parting gift.


    [The subdomain of necromancy has granted you access to a new spell.


    Penumbra peer: This potent necromantic spell grants the target the ability to see in the dark.]


    I grinned, and targeted both Okig and Iret with the spell, granting my living servants the ability to see even in the deep darkness of the tunnel we were in. Their eyes took a second to adjust, but when they were finished adjusting the two ogresses'' eyes went wide with shock at the sight that was revealed to them.


    I nodded at the pair and set all of my servants on the floor. We were on flatland now, they could easily walk on their own without my assistance.


    "It''s... something right?" I asked, referring to the strange design of the alienly designed colony not far from us.


    "I think... I think this might be my new home." I told my gathered servants, even as they all studied the sight in front of us. It was beautiful, in its own odd way. And with the right amount of power usage, I had a feeling I could make it very roomy. And then I turned inward to ask the system a question.


    "So you mentioned earlier that the domains of light and darkness are interested in me? I think... I''m gonna need some light in this place. If you could tell me about that quest, that''d be much appreciated." I asked the system, hoping that whatever quest the domain had in mind I''d be able to do easily and quickly.

 48 Reasons And Explanations

    [So you''re gonna pursue the domain of light''s quest?] The system asked me, sounding not particularly surprised by that.


    "Yes I am. It''ll be something easy right?" I asked, hoping and honestly pretty certain that it would be. So far I had only earned influence over two non-innate subdomains and no domains that weren''t innate, but their quests weren''t hard.


    [For you, it will be. All you have to do is restore sight to blind five people. Other gods have struggled with completing this quest, in the ancient past, but you won''t. Healing is deeply tied to your soul. It''s... odd and the domains and I have discussed it in the past, but your healing... it''s different somehow.] The system remarked, speaking of my healing reverentially. It was... strange to listen to.


    I chuckled and grinned, my black chitinous mask hiding my facial expressions from my allies and servants. "Healing... Feels nice. I can''t really explain it, but I like to heal. I suppose I''ll think about it more deeply. Maybe I''ll see why I enjoy healing if I ponder it, when I heal people." I remarked to the system, revealing that I enjoyed the power to heal. I also pondered how I knew what "blindness" was.


    I was aware that I possessed some strange, intuitive knowledge. I knew now that most of what I knew was probably due to domains and subdomains innately filling me with knowledge that was ether pertinent to their areas of influence and expertise, or due to my wild traits, but it still felt strange to simply know things for no clear reason. I didn''t know the mechanics of how I was given this information, or why, even though I suppose I could guess at both.


    After I pondered that I closed my eyes and allowed the not-so-mini-map to overtake my vision. And I immediately dove into the filters, searching for applicable targets. At that moment I noticed something new.


    ________________________________________________


    Just above the not-so-mini-map floated a few words. They said one, simple thing.


    "Filter by quest". I chuckled wondered why they appeared not and earlier.


    [Explanation: The new symbols have appeared because of your new status as a ''Lesser Deity'' and because of your desire to find applicable targets for a quest. From now on you''ll be able to use quests as a way to filter through the countless targets you can detect whenever you use tremorsense.] The system''s more automated voice told me.


    I appreciated the new filter and tapped it. The automated voice spoke up once more.


    [''Filter by quest'' filter selected. You only have one active quest therefore this will automatically choose that quest.] The system announced, making me smile. And then all at once, the not-so-mini-map grew a lot less colorful as tens of thousands of the outlines on it lost their color.


    A clear and comical majority of the millions of creatures visible on the not-so-mini-map weren''t applicable figures that I could engage. In a matter of seconds, plenty of creatures still remained, their outlines variously colored revealing considerable variety to their relational status to me, but it was obvious that this only a small minority of Puerto Rico''s creatures were blind. None of them were creatures of any sort located in Comillas but plenty were located in San Gerardo.


    I thought about the quest for a second and then wondered why this was the effectively the entry-level quest for the domain of light. As soon as I did the system, being a handy pal when it wasn''t giving me attitude, broke it down for me.


    [You aren''t a mortal so I suppose it doesn''t make much sense to you, though not many mortals in this world would know why so unaware of this id hardly unique to you... Anyways mortal eyesight relies on light. Mortals can see objects off which light bounces thanks to the peculiarity of their eyes. Your eyes can pierce through anything, regardless of whether or not any light bounces off of them, thanks to your being a god and all but mortals aren''t so lucky.] The entity explained.


    I nodded, appreciating that explanation. And then I focused on the contents of the not-so-mini-map. I studied it carefully as I considered who to select to heal, attempting to figure out what would be the best-case scenarios for what happened once I healed creatures.


    "Curing someone of blindness is a significant act, one of immensely powerful and personal magic. I can safely and reasonably assume that the system will be telling them who healed them. What comes after that matters." I told myself as I considered how to handle more than just the act of healing the blind, but also how to followup on that act of healing.


    As I pondered that, an idea came to mind thanks to a handy power I had acquired when I first became a lesser god. A faith domain power that allowed me to give creatures visions whenever I wished.


    "Bestowing a vision upon those I heal is a good idea. But what sort of vision should it be? What sort of message should it confer?" I wondered, silently asking myself this while my followers wondered what we were doing here. I chuckled and for a moment allowed myself to focus on the scene unfolding in front of me.


    In fairness to them this being my lair was something I sprung on them out of the blue. Not that they had much input, I wasn''t really asking them for their insights and importantly I wasn''t telling them to stay with me, but they didn''t'' know this since I hadn''t precisely explained what was going on.


    ________________________________________________


    As I began to consider what all to tell my servants, I asked a friend a question. It was very similar to one I had asked the system at the beginning of my life, and I figured I owed it to myself to ask it to a relevant party this time around.


    "Hey necromancy," I began. I was referring to the subdomain, but I opted to shorten its name. "What do mortals think of necromancers and necromancy? When I first came to life I asked the system what mortals thought of druids, I figured it was only fair to ask you the same thing just for necromancers and necromancy." I asked before I explained why I had asked it in the first place.


    I heard a peal of mirth-filled laughter. And then speech. "Oh boy... I figured you''d ask me that question eventually. I''m glad you did before you went around showcasing your abilities to any humans. They tend to be... judgmental." The subdomain explained.


    "Mortals are scared of necromancy and necromancers. In fairness to them, as the subdomain that governs these things they should absolutely be scared of me and what I govern. I definitely want to see dead worlds. Dead solar systems. Dead galaxies. Dead universes." Necromancy confessed, doing so with a chilling casualness that reaffirmed its ultimately violent and misanthropic nature.


    "I know that you might be thinking less kindly of me in the wake of me saying that, but you''ve got to understand that I want my power and my influence to spread. The other domains and subdomains are the same way but a lot of them are lucky and don''t have the bad reputation I do." The voice complained. It huffed in annoyance and then refocused.


    "If you''re asking me, as you did, about humanoids in general... Many of them would be scared if you confessed that you were a necromancer. Humanoids as a whole, even ones with thoroughly evil leaders and in unrepentantly evil civilizations, view necromancers in very generalized lenses." She revealed.


    "At best you may find someone who values your power and would like to work with you to terrorize the living. Or someone after my own heart who hates life and wants to see it be extinguished. That said... These sorts of things always have exceptions." The subdomain told me.


    "There are humanoids, and I''m not just talking about necromancers either, who recognize that I can offer them an endless existence, one free from the fear of death or a decaying body. Or that I can be used to transform their enemies into their allies. They recognize my worth. But you deserve to know that many humanoids would be scared if they learned you were practicing necromancy." The voice told me, speaking sincerely.


    I nodded, mentally, and thanked the thing for its candor. It was useful in planning how to tell my allies about why I wanted a hidden home, far from annoying and moralistic eyes.


    ________________________________________________


    "I suppose I should tell you what you''re looking at," I told the assembled creatures. They were, reasonably, confused by what we were doing deep underground. "We are staring at an utterly gigantic ant''s nest." I announced to my followers. They looked rather unsurprised by this revelation.


    "I am a god of... these creatures. These ants. Among other things, mind you, but I came down here to learn more about them and to build a lair." I explained, my voice growing more confident the more I spoke. My explanation about my godhood over the ants shocked all of my servants, but especially the two ogresses. I figured, after seeing their reactions, that I ought to further explain.


    "Gaining powers as a god is a surprisingly modest-looking process. I gained some powers over these creatures before I met you all, but I gained powers over ants in general after we all had joined forces, while we were in the encampment. I just didn''t demonstrate it." I told my worshipers and servants.


    "I gained powers over the ants," As I said that, some of the ants came out of one of the nearby holes that riddled the floor. They came out of one of the thinner ones, one that was clearly made by regular ants and not myrmekes''. "By making some of them evolve into the massive ant-like humanoids you saw earlier. There are more of those creatures elsewhere." I revealed all while grinning.


    Iret was the first individual to speak up in response to this. Her voice was soft, and she kept her eyes glued on the holes that riddled the floor, especially the handful of positively gigantic ones, ones that the myrmekes'' ants were located within.


    "Alright, I can understand all of that. Or pretend too anyway. But what''s the deal with you saying you want to make this your home?" She asked, curiously.


    I grinned at her, my mouth hidden behind my bizarre, organic mask. "I have a handful of reasons for wanting to make this place my home. But also... it''s not precisely ''this place'' I''ll be making my home." I told the ogress all while gesturing to the hole-riddled floor.


    "The first reason why I would like to make this place my home is that it''s located deep underground. I am a deity of the earth, as you know. As you''ve seen," I told her, confidently. She nodded as she acknowledged the truth of my words.


    "I am strong above the surface, but deep underground? Deep underground I''m virtually unassailable." I confidently asserted, telling the truth. I could sense all the ways I could manipulate my surroundings as if I were a painter and this was my painting. And then I moved on to explain more of my overall reasoning.


    "You all know that I am not a god of goodness and healing. Other worshipers of mine have been led to believe that. Deliberately. But here, in this place I shall build, I can engage in more... let''s call them ''dubious'' acts without suspicion or judgment. I am envisioning that the place I build here be one I populate with darker servants and worshipers." I told the creatures I had gathered to my side.


    I had spent a fair few minutes contemplating what sort of qualities I would like in a lair while my companions and I had walked deeper and deeper into this strange, subterranean region. One of the big reasons I had come up with was so that I could have located I could begin to build my forces, particularly my darker minions and allies. That wasn''t really in reference to my ants, it was far more so in reference to the deceased beings I had reanimated and converted into my worshipers.


    "I like the living. Even those of you who give me lip. You all, even those of you with more... ''spirit'' have your uses. That''s part of why I feed you and heal you. But a friend of mine has told me a lot about you." I explained, teasing what the subdomain of necromancy had just revealed to me about mortals and their rather judgmental nature.


    "You see, I have a friend who knows a lot about necromancy. She and I were conversing minutes ago, divinely of course, and she told me that if I spoke openly about my necromancy to many humanoids they would fear me. That fear could be useful, in time, but it isn''t what I really want right now." I told the creatures I had converted into my minions. The undead thoughtfully nodded at me as I said all of this.


    "So part of what I need in a home is secrecy. The ants aren''t humanoids and they don''t share the sensitivities of light-hearted humans and other... in their own words ''more civilized'' humanoids. You see, my worshippers don''t care about the fact that I practice necromancy." I confidently asserted, without any particular basis for doing so.


    "I would like my home to be a lair wherein I can conduct dark experiments and quietly accrue and arm my forces. I want this place to be my sanctuary." I told my followers, telling them the truth again. I did want a home from which I could do those things. I didn''t know what sort of dark experiments I wanted to perform just yet, but having a place to perform them when I did know would be useful.


    I envisioned a massive fortress populated by my minions, be they the undead, or waves upon waves of insects, or other as of yet unobtained minions. I wanted this place to be the seat from which I began to build the faiths dedicated to me. A place where I could thoughtfully devote my time to the acquisition of more power and more worshipers and where I could shape the world to my whims.


    Envisioning it made me want to make it real. Which was what I began to do. I turned to face the tunnel''s wall and began to make use of my immensely powerful ability to control the earth. As I did so I also connected myself and the mortals whose blindness I''d be healing in order to earn the first tier of influence over the domain of light.


    A smile etched itself onto my face as I did so. I knew I was inching ever closer to acquiring a lair worthy of a god.

 49 Miracles And Mysteries

    I was gradually growing accustomed to the sensation of having a mind that''s been stretched and pulled in various directions. I was able to adjust pretty rapidly to it if I''m being honest. I didn''t doubt that this was because of my influence over the mind domain as well as my status as a lesser god.


    Part of my mind dove into the tunnel to my left and began to shape what was a massive, solid chunk of earth. I grinned as I began to mold and shape the earth that was visible and crushingly present throughout the area to the left of the ant''s tunnel.


    ________________________________________________


    I mentally floated within a deep and gigantic natural wall of stones, soil, and dirt. I took a deep breath and willed a gigantic chunk of the rocky and naturalistic materials away, instantaneously creating an incredibly massive cavern that stretched over a kilometer long, was at least twice as wide, and was over five-hundred meters tall.


    It wasn''t illuminated, but I could peer through the darkness without difficulty and as I stared out at the featureless place I suddenly felt deeply grateful for one of the domains I had yet to make use of; the civilization domain.


    I quickly and silently activated my "Create building" power and envisioned a massive tower made of vanilla-colored stone coming up out of the ground at the far end of the cavern. The earth began to tremble as my power flared to life and altered reality in an incredibly real way, both crafting and pulling a shockingly tall tower out of the floor of the newly created cavern at the same time.


    In the span of a few seconds a tower well over four hundred meters tall was visible from any point within the gigantic cavern. I smiled as I studied it, aware that it was the product of my own immense, possibly immeasurable power.


    I chuckled and began to design the rooms of the tower, countless rooms as was befitting a god of unquantifiable power. My mind quickly designed bedrooms, a room for seeing audiences, dungeons, and armories. It made sense to me, since I was a sovereign, to have a tower befitting a monarch.


    ________________________________________________


    Another portion of my mind dove deep under the surface of the island, psychically tunneling through kilometers of stone, tunnels, and soil in every direction. I was able to lay my eyes on thousands of small creatures, some of which were things like worms, rats, and snakes that I had never laid my eyes on before. The sight was inspiring.


    I was also able to lay my eyes on the obscure civilizations that lurked in the lightless pits of the world beneath the world. Dark elves, dwarves, kobolds, and other, more brutal and vicious civilizations like those of magmic giants and driders.


    Each of these civilizations was distinct, and in my eyes, worth gaining influence over. It stirred a part of me that was quickly beginning to gain a palpable sense of pride, a part that relished worship and wanted me to actively expand my forces.


    On the other hand, I was able to lay my eyes on creatures that I had seen before. I was able to see all sorts of spiders. Some of the spiders I got to see were like the giant spider I had transformed into my undead servant, but the majority of spiders I got to see were small things called tarantulas. They still intrigued me though, and I liked the sight of them with their furred bodies.


    As I psychically zoomed through the world beneath the world I wondered what I''d have to do to gain access to the quest needed to earn the first tier of influence over whatever subdomain governed spiders. And I was also curious about what the quest would be. A part of me wondered if it''d be a simple evolutionary quest like the one I had undertaken for the Hymenoptera subdomain.


    I was lucky to have a companion that was ready and willing to answer my questions. As I dug through the underground world, zooming closer and closer to San Gerardo, my mental questions were heard by the system. It wasted no time in replying.


    [Hello Althos. To gain influence over the flora and fauna subdomains it is necessary to interact with creatures from those subdomains. How you interact with them is up to you. It always takes interacting with a few of them, and then you''ll get permission to do the quest needed to acquire the first tier of influence over the type of life in question.] The system explained, gifting me with that knowledge freely.


    [It''s true that a lot of the work required to acquire the first tiers of influence over the domains and subdomains will require grinding and practicing your skills, but so does gaining class levels. In a way... it''s oddly mundane. Humbling even.] The system mused, and I chuckled at its observation.


    [There''s a few things you should know going forward. Not every flora or fauna subdomain will require you to conquer a world in order to acquire your final tier of influence over it. It''s true that the subdomains that govern more aggressive things may ask you to do that, but that''s hardly every subdomain that governs types of animals, plants, or other lifeforms.] My companion told me.


    [There are a few subdomains that will instead ask that you render a planet habitable for life or to make a moon or asteroid habitable for life. These tasks are suitably epic ones that are beyond your present capabilities but won''t be forever. Also, if you acquire enough tiers of influence over natural subdomains, including those of floral and faunal life you''ll eventually begin to level up your druid class. That said, there are easier ways to do that.] The voice in my mind told me. I chuckled.


    I didn''t disagree with what it said though, and so I reviewed the powers I possessed thanks to my influence over the subdomain of healing in preparation for what I was about to do as well as to "tend to nature" as the system had told me was the key to leveling up the druid class, hours ago. Doing so just took a thought.


    [Passive powers:


    Restorative energy manipulation: This passive power allows you to idly channel energy that undoes wounds and defeats discomfort. You no longer need to use magic to cure wounds, and any effects that suppress the effects of magical healing on those you intend to heal are ignored, allowing you to heal at maximum efficiency.


    Natural healing: This ability is the result of having influence over one or more elemental subdomains. Through it you can create fonts of natural healing, locations wherein someone''s natural ability to recover from sicknesses and from wounds are tremendously sped up.


    Since you can currently influence the earth subdomain this power currently works on tunnels, on forests, and on mud. Mud can be taken and transported out of the affected area and can be used as a healing ointment. As you gain influence over other elemental subdomains the ways you can use this power will increase.


    Sensory restoration: This power automatically restores a sense to a target who has lost one. If the target has only lost a single sense then this power automatically restores that sense.


    Rejection of discomfort: In the case of gods an aura is an emanation that surrounds them and projects certain beneficial or harmful effects to lesser creatures who stand in their presence.


    At the lowest tier of influence over the subdomain of healing, you gain an aura that grants nearby creatures that are neutral or friendly towards you the effects of a numbed pain spell. This aura extends beyond you in every direction for six meters.


    Twice per twelve-hour period, you can supercharge this aura and for ten minutes it transforms into what you gain at the second tier of influence over the subdomain of healing: an aura of regeneration which heals neutral and friendly creatures in your presence for a hitpoint every half minute. Lesser creatures suspect that you are somehow responsible for their healing or abated discomfort but unless you wish for them to realize it they don''t.


    You can suppress this aura whenever you wish. This aura''s effects can be mixed with the effects of other auras that affect friendly and neutral creatures. There exist auras that target hostile creatures as well, ones that drain their life-energy or sap their hostility from them.


    Health map: This is a passive power that allows you to detect the health of creatures on your minimap. You have already seen a weakened version of it, innately, but this is greatly enhanced and is effectively the prognosis spell ambiently applied to your minimap.


    Universal healing: This synergistic power is the result of you acquiring influence over the subdomain of necromancy as well as the subdomain of healing. Because of it, you possess the ability to heal creatures regardless of their type.


    Holy energy manipulation: This synergistic power is yours due to your influence over the faith domain and the subdomain of healing. It allows you to create and manipulate holy energy, an energy that is repugnant and dangerous to the undead, and to evil extraplanar beings. Holy energy also heals and strengthens the living and good-aligned extraplanars.


    Active powers:


    Symptom removal: This power allows you to target a disease a creature is suffering from and do away with a symptom. At this tier of influence, this is only usable on non-magical diseases, but it can be used on any non-magical disease. You can use this power twice every twelve hours.


    Pain immunity: This is a targeted power that renders someone unable to feel pain. It is usable six times per twelve-hour period, and each usage lasts for five minutes. If used before a battle it can be immensely powerful and free you up to not have to cast numb pain on creatures mid-battle.


    Healing burst: This targeted power sends a tremendous burst of life energy into whatever targets you''ve chosen and the number of targets you can select is unlimited. It heals them of anything short of magical diseases and restores them to maximum hit points.


    It also functions as a casting of "Abate sickness" on a grand scale, causing affected targets to gain a forty-eight hour period of relief from even the strongest magical sicknesses. This power can be used four times per six-hour period.]


    The powers I possessed made me smile, and for a moment I decided to test a single one of my more potent active powers. I began to mentally target every single creature in the forest above me, a wide grin on my face as I prepped my experiment.


    ________________________________________________


    "This is the first time I''m truly unleashing my potent healing abilities isn''t it?" I asked myself, once I had targeted the entirety of the inhabitants of the forest. I targeted every tree, every insect, every lifeform large enough for me to target that lingered within the boundaries of the forest was a target for the power I was about to unleash.


    I had around three-quarters of a million lifeforms selected and as I readied myself to unleash my true power as a god of healing, I allowed myself to feel my hesitation. "This is a truly powerful, genuinely world-changing ability." I reminded myself, wanting to feel the nerves and the tension I recognized lingered in my heart.


    "This isn''t curing a disease, or even regenerating a limb. This is... genuine power." I said to myself, wondering if I should stop if I should pull back and not use this ability. I considered this fear, for a second. It made sense for me to feel this way. This was, after all my first time using my powers on a wide scale since I hadn''t created a hive-mind with the ants in my swarm.


    But in time the fear I felt, the hesitation that made me stop, lost its edge. I wanted to do this. I wanted to experience the power of the subdomain of magic and this was one heck of a way to do it.


    "I''m going to do it." I told myself, grinning as I readied myself for the storm of notifications I was about to receive. As I did so, I heard indistinct voices in the back of my mind. I knew they were domains and subdomains chattering about what I was going to do.


    "So it''s true then... He''s finally gonna perform a wide-scale miracle." One of them whispered. Its voice was powerful, ancient, and majestic. A deep, almost oak-like timbre resonated from the throat if domains and subdomains even had throats, of whichever domain or subdomain was speaking.


    "About time he used me to my maximum potential. If he only uses me on individuals than I feel like I''m just being used for glorified spells rather than true miracles." Complained a soft, but audibly excited voice. I chuckled and made sure to remember that that was the voice of the subdomain of healing.


    "So is he a restorative god after all? The multiverse could use authorities with an interest in healing." Said another of the voices. This one was strange because each word had a different quality to it.


    Some words felt hot to hear, while others chilled my mind. I wondered if that was the voice of the subdomain of evocation magic, and suspected that it was since evocation magic governed elemental, oftentimes destructive magic.


    "Oh? He hears us. How intriguing, his connection to me might be stronger than we anticipated." Spoke another, this one more sinister sounding. It sounded like it was coming from two places at once, not just in the back of my mind, but also the front of it. It was possible that this was the voice of the domain of the mind. I grinned in response to its observation, hoping that it was right.


    And then I went ahead and unleashed my immense, divine healing energy. I did so with a relieved sigh, as at all once I felt thousands of lifeforms above my physical body sigh in relief and begin to cry tears of joy and delight.


    The power that surged out of me was potent enough that even I felt it. I had to concentrate to stay on my feet, and not visibly appear exhausted. I felt weak for a second, as the burst I had just unleashed was so magnificently massive that even I felt the effects of its sudden loss. But that momentary weakness dissipated a few seconds after I had unleashed my magic.


    And then I received a single notification.


    [Alert: You have performed your first mass-miracle. Mass-miracles are historic events that permanently alter the fates of worlds. In this case, you have tested your restorative power by targeting a forest and using it to conduct an experiment to determine the potency of your deific power.


    Your actions will convert some forest inhabitants into your worshipers. A few of them will be humanoids, some will be fey, and others will be animals who dwell within the forest. You performing a miracle in this place is one necessary component of eventually transforming it into a holy site.


    Over 99.9% of the forest creatures who just now benefitted from your healing burst do not know you. Only the goblins, a handful of coyotes, and a few other creatures have even seen you in any form whatsoever. It is time for you to decide how the inhabitants of the forest shall receive word of what you''ve done for them.


    How would you like for the creatures who dwell in this forest to learn of the act that you just performed? Please write out the notification you wish for them to receive.] The system''s automated component instructed me.


    I chuckled as I saw this and immediately knew what to do. I wasn''t going to hide behind my persona in situations when I could help it. I began to compose a notification. One that I felt painted me in the best possible light.


    ________________________________________________


    The forest was a dark place during the brightest of days. Even the brightest parts of it often felt subdued and eerie. It was a beautiful place, to be sure, but not one that most would call hospitable or well-lit.


    The night Althos performed not just one miracle but several within and underneath the forest had started off normal enough, a positively unremarkable night by the standards of the forest. That ended when he performed his first wide-scale miracle.


    At approximately 8:30 at night, the very ground underneath the forest began to radiate a faint silvery glow. And at first, as if mirroring Althos'' dominion over the earth, it was only the ground that radiated this gentle, restorative glow.


    It took a few moments for it to spread to the smallest creatures. More often than not these creatures were sleeping, sometimes within trees, sometimes they boldly slept on the forest floor, and in a few cases, they slept shallowly within the earth just underneath the forest.


    A few moments later it spread to inhabitants of the forest who were roughly the sizes of goblins and satyrs. All of them, a few dozen in total, awoke as they felt the potent energy surging into them. Their bodies were also glowing. They gave off the same eerie, radiant glow as the earth at their feet.


    The trees were next. And when they began to glow the rest of the forest awoke. Trees and their leaves began to transform, their wounds fading from the branches and from their trunks over the course of a few heartbeats.


    The few humanoids who dwelled within the forest, creatures like tiny and curious gnomes and a single spear-fingered hag, benefitted from the healing as well. Their skin was also transformed, momentarily at least, by the unimaginably powerful burst of healing energy that Althos tested on the forest.


    And then came the largest predators within the forest. Creatures like predatory and aggressive snakes, spiders, and even more conventional predators like wolves and bears weren''t exempt from Althos'' healing. Their carapaces, scales, and fur coats were also painted a glorious shade of silver.


    Althos had no way of knowing this, but this action, undeniably divine act, was felt the world over and beyond. Elves, demons, dragons, and other more ancient and more esoteric forces felt the young god''s powers spring out from the earth and cover kilometers of forested land. They felt it heal the wounds of hundreds of thousands of living creatures. It was so radiant that for a single, brief instant the forest was visible from outer space.


    The trees sighed in relief, the goblins and satyrs cried out in joy, and the other, more mysterious and more hostile forces that dwelled within the forest stirred as ancient and powerful energy penetrated their battle-hardened bodies and soothed their scarred souls.


    The creatures that dwelled with the forest received a single notification that identified the entity responsible for the miracle. It was direct and in many ways honest, even if it hid the intention behind the curious god''s actions.


    [Alert: The merciful lord, Althos, has extended to you a token of his love. He has given you relief from pain, cured your sicknesses if he was able, and if not at least given you respite for two days from the suffering your sicknesses have caused you.


    Althos is a god of mercy and restoration. This is but one gift he can offer to those who seek to live peacefully. He cares not for your background, nor your history. If you come to him, he will accept you. Offer him your prayers and your praise to let him know you wish to know him.]


    The message was simple, and in the cases of the goblins, it was reworded to state that "Cosecha" was responsible for the miracle. In their cases, it was a reaffirmation that Cosecha wishes to help, to heal, to protect. But the edits were minor. The system itself did that as a favor to the young god.


    Althos'' first recorded mass miracle occurred on the 3rd day of the month of Atrium, in a small world named Torus.


    ________________________________________________


    The string of notifications I received was still going even when I targeted all five of the humanoids, three humans, and two dark elves, whose sight I''d be restoring. At this point, several minutes had passed since I triggered the miracle and I had grown used to the endless surge of notifications.


    I quickly and quietly activated my sensory restoration power. I grinned as I felt another burst of healing energy, or more precisely five small bursts of healing energy leave me. It felt like a much smaller version of the incredible burst of energy I had just unleashed.


    A second later I felt a new, never-before-felt, surge of power well up within me. It was at this point that I received a new, brighter, and bigger notification. It was one that stood out and dwarfs other notifications. I read it and smiled even as I read the first word.


    [Details about the domain of light:


    The domain of light is an enormously powerful domain that governs any and all illumination. Whether it is light from the sun or the afterglow of a nuclear explosion, the illumination it radiates is governed by this domain.


    Be forewarned, this is not a domain for the soft-hearted. This domain, like every other non-alignment domain, is not a good or evil domain. It is a neutral domain. It can be used for good, like providing light by which civilizations are built, or for evil such as for creating weapons with which to slaughter refugees who hide in darkness from evil soldiers.


    This domain banishes darkness and sheds light on ancient, forgotten truths. To gain influence over it destroy darkness and build cults that worship you as an illuminator. Be a provider of light in a world that all too often feels the impact of darkness.


    Light domain passive powers:


    Light generation: This passive power allows you to generate light wherever and whenever you wish. It can be used to illuminate the seafloor, the deepest depths of a mountain, or the lightless corners of space.


    Light manipulation: This power grants you the ability to manipulate light. You can solidify light to form powerful suits of armor, distracting vehicles, or even weapons that ignore armor and can be fired at the speed of light. A uniquely powerful manifestation of this power from an ancient god of light created an unmatchable bow that fired arrows that flew at the speed of light.


    Light speed: You gain the ability to move at the speed of light. You also gain corresponding reflexes.


    Portal creation: You can synergistically fuse your ability to teleport with the ability to move at light-speed, allowing you to create temporary portals that go from one place to another. You must have been to the places any of your portals go, but with this, you gain an incredibly potent power that can turn the tides of a war in an instant.


    Image manifestation: By combining the powers of the domain of the mind, and the domain of light you gain the ability to manifest whatever is on your mind. These images are not real and are not solid, but they can be created remotely allowing you to create illusions even without influence over the illusion subdomain or illusion spells at your disposal.


    Light walking: You acquire the ability to walk wherever light is present. This isn''t the same as flying, but given your newly acquired ability to move at the speed of light, it is just as if not even better than normal flight.


    Light detection: So long as something has a single ray of light illuminating it you can detect it. This is a direct upgrade to your tremorsense that allows you to detect flying creatures and creatures within water.


    Aura of illumination: Nothing can stay hidden in your presence. Invisible things are rendered visible, and lying while in the range of your aura is impossible for mortals unless you allow it.


    Domain of light active power:


    Disintegrating radiance: When activated this twice-per-twelve-hour period power gives you a bird''s eye view of a place and allows you to select a location. When you do that location is immediately bathed in a flash of light so powerful that it utterly disintegrates whatever or whoever was there.


    Domain of light blessing and curse details:


    You can bless creatures to be able to endure exposure to any type of light and see, or better see and be better equipped to handle all manner of light if they can already see or endure exposure to all kinds of light.


    Your curses centered around the domain of light cause light to burn a creature, and cause their vision to slowly deteriorate.]


    After reading through the notification I didn''t hesitate and activated my new "Light generation" ability. The tunnel I was in was immediately illuminated, a pale silverly light filling and brightening the previously pitch-black tunnel. I also activated the same power within the cavern I had created, ensuring that it would be well-lit in the next few moments it took my allies and I to enter it.


    The ogresses who accompanied me, finally inured to my rapidly expanding powerset, just sighed when the tunnel began to beautifully come into view, even as I deactivated the spell I cast on them, unwilling it like how I had canceled out my magic draining power on Gnorl earlier today.


    I chuckled at them and then used my powers to open up the wall of the tunnel to my left, revealing the entrance to my cavern lair, and the newly created pallid tower. The wall to our left crumbled and formed a naturalistic pathway to my new home. The cavern, fully illuminated by my power, was revealed to my allies in its full glory.


    "Come friends. It is time that we rest. It has been... truly a long day." I told my allies, as I considered merely opening up a portal into my home, but then decided against it. A final kilometer-long walk was nothing after the walks we had done today. I heard multiple creatures sigh, and I chuckled and led the way into the tunnel.


    It was massive, and featureless aside from the tower. The floor, walls, and impossibly high natural ceiling were made of darkened stone that contrasted beautifully with the weird, silvery light my "light generation" power created. We took our first steps into it, and I began to grin, already feeling at home in my enormous, handmade palatial realm.


    It was while we began to trek through the empty space between the entrance to the cavern and my tower that I began to truly process the countless notifications I had received for my miracle. And they, like many parts of today, brought goofy grins to my face.

 50 Refocusing And Goal-Setting

    The trek to my new home was a quiet one. I was too busy reading through notification after notification to try and talk all that much, and my followers weren''t exactly inclined to talk to each other.


    The notifications included countless alerts. One of the big ones was that the miracle I had performed caused me to become a level twenty druid, since I had tended to nature in an incredible way. And, as was appropriate, I had gained a range of class features, a few of which were quite intriguing to me.


    I had also gained permission to perform the quests to gain the first tier of influence over the Serpentes, Ursidae, Fagaceae and Canis subdomains. None of that mattered as much as the fact that I had acquired permission to pursue the quest that would allow me to gain the first tier of influence over the domain of souls. The domain of disease was also there, offering me its first tier of influence. I didn''t know how to feel about that one, given what it was asking me to do.


    Half an hour after we started lazily making our way towards the seat of my burgeoning empire we finally found ourselves inside of an alienly designed foyer. The foyer was designed to show off a gigantic spiral staircase made from white stones that ascended upwards, higher and higher until it reached the peak of the tower, hundreds of meters in the cavernous air. The foyer was designed to encircle the odd staircase.


    I had designed it that way purposefully. This foyer had a secret that I would make use of to quickly transport my allies and myself to where I wanted us to spend at least a few minutes. Something I quickly informed them about.


    "Alright, you all. We don''t need to walk up the staircase. That''s a safety feature designed to prevent mortal armies from being able to reach me, by exhausting them before they can get to me. That said, there is just one more thing we need to do before we can go and rest." I announced, causing my ogress companions to sigh in relief. I gave them a sympathetic look, aware that they were tired.


    "I want us to have a strategy meeting. I''d like to hear your insights and use your knowledge, which in mundane things is far greater than mine, to help me begin to plan what the future looks like for me. Is that something you can do?" I asked the two ogresses, who were far from home and doing their best in an odd and unthinkable situation.


    The two of them looked inward for a second, both of them casting their eyes downward and contemplating what I was asking them. I planned to start off by chatting almost exclusively with them, so seconds later when both of them looked up and nodded at me I nodded appreciatively at them.


    I quickly and quietly activated one of my newer abilities, the power to create portals, and willed one to open at one of the foyer''s corners. The foyer was a pentagon, and a bright, shining portal opened up at one of its sides, the side closest to us.


    The portal itself was a glowing, and gigantic circle. It appeared just inside of the foyer''s wall, so walking towards and into it was almost like walking into the foyer''s wall. I turned and led my allies into the portal, walking towards and through the thing with no hesitation at all.


    I stepped through the portal, and for a moment one foot of mine was within the foyer and another was within what could only be called a war council room.


    ________________________________________________


    My war council room was an empty chamber. It was a high roofed place, that was presently devoid of furniture. I couldn''t let craft furniture using my civilization domain abilities, but I had an alternative that I was grateful to make use of.


    I focused and envisioned a table and thick, size-appropriate chairs fashioned from dim, blue light. My companions watched as such radiant pieces of furniture phased into existence, existing as little more than beautiful outlines of what they were about to become.


    I willed them to become solid, making usage of my ability to manipulate light, and then tested it myself by walking from the portal behind my companions and I to a chair at the head of the table. When I reached the thing I quietly sat down, carefully testing my chair''s stability and solidity, and finding both to my liking. When I was sure that my powers had worked as intended I motioned for my servants to join me.


    They all carefully arranged themselves in seats that were appropriate for their body-types and when everyone was seated I began to speak.


    "Thank you all for all of your work today. It has been an exciting and monumental day for me, and without you that wouldn''t have been possible." I explained to them. The creatures all looked at me quietly and I began to explain myself.


    "When I first came to life, three days ago, I was put into a weakened state known as a ''tutorial''. This state served to force me to learn to subtly wield my powers and gain worshipers while less capable of using my powers than I am now. I was released from the restraints of the tutorial earlier today, with your unwitting assistance. I plan to reward you for that. All of you." I declared, explaining some of my circumstances.


    "In order to be freed from the tutorial I had to build the beginnings of two cults, each one containing ten worshipers. The undead I''ve created today far exceed the seven I''ve gathered here, but you seven and the three skeletal stags protecting the goblins were the first ten I created." I told my gathered companions.


    "And the goblins formed the other cult which is dedicated to ''Cosecha'' after our activities over in their encampment." I revealed all while a sly grin appeared on my face.


    "I have also done other things you don''t know about. I performed something called a ''mass-miracle'' minutes ago, wherein I healed every entity in the forest using one of my more dramatic powers. Because of that I''ve gained a few hundred disorganized forest worshipers." I declared, nonchalantly.


    "That said, before now I had lived a life of subtlely. I had carefully done minor things, healing people and creatures, feeding them, slyly entering their dreams, and generally being low-key. My basic reason for doing that was that I felt... weak isn''t the right word, but I didn''t feel powerful or possess the world-changing abilities I do now. But that doesn''t change one critical thing: I am ignorant." I told the creatures gathered around me. This caused the eyes of the undead to flare with anger.


    I looked around and sighed at my followers. I appreciated their energy, but I knew that what I was saying was true.


    "I am correct. I possess incredible, legitimately world-changing abilities. I made this cavern, this kilometer-long area, in an instant without breaking a sweat. I could probably tear islands in half. And I possess the power to break a mountain with a punch. But I do not possess the knowledge I need to possess." I said to my assembled minions. And then someone spoke up.


    "Master, what knowledge do you feel you need to possess?" Asked my lovely drider companion, the beautiful woman named Imbrosa. I looked to her and considered her question.


    "I want to possess all knowledge. It is perhaps my one goal that is internal and wasn''t given to me by someone else. It is not my only goal, mind you, but it is one of them." I told the blue-skinned spider-woman. She nodded at me and then her facial expression shifted from one of focus to a more thoughtful, contemplative one.


    "Althos... can you tell us what your goals are, in your own words?" Iret, the ogress barbarian asked me. She had an intense look in her eyes, and I could tell she was curious to learn about whatever could drive a creature as powerful as I was. I turned to look at me and smiled.


    "My goals are to gain all knowledge and become all-powerful. I don''t just want to possess more knowledge than anyone else or to become more powerful than anyone else, I want to become the deity who can do literally anything. And who knows literally everything." I confessed, declaring for the first time in my own words that I was pursuing omnipotence and omniscience.


    A hush fell over the room. Internally I registered a feeling of shock coming off of both the system and the domains and subdomains that it often spoke with and for. I also registered feelings of pride and hope. I had confirmed that I was pursuing these things before, but never out loud and never to mortals. My bold declaration must have impressed some of the entities who dwelled in my mind.


    I smiled as I observed the strange silence, quite enjoying it. I had other minor goals of course, such goals consisted of me wanting to increase my power over individual domains and subdomains and eventually selecting worlds for annihilation.


    I wasn''t pleased with that last part, but I knew it was necessary if I sought to achieve my overall goals. Plus, a curious of me did truly want to see what a dead world would be like, a world populated solely by the undead. I''d never see that unless I went out and did it myself. I recognized that, and I accepted it. But that was far off, in the distant future. I refocused and continued to speak.


    "I''ll be forthright with you. I don''t care about conquering this world. I want to become its god, not its emperor." I told my gathered minions and worshipers.


    "I want to spread my faith, and I am fine with my worshipers worshipping me in different ways. In fact it''s kind of necessary if I am to achieve my overall objectives." I told the creatures who were seated before me.


    "Wait, can you clarify that?" Asked Nivar, the grave-giant who I had risen earlier. I smiled at her and began to expand on my statement.


    "Divine powers, which are the majority of the powers that I''ve shown you all, are powers that are unique to gods. Those powers come, at least as far as I can tell, from domains and subdomains. Domains and subdomains are concepts given consciousness that helped the gods govern the multiverse." I revealed, explaining a bit about the apparent true nature of the multiverse.


    "Gods gain ''influence'' or power over domains and subdomains by completing tasks for them and building followings that revere them as ''God of this'' or ''God of that'', relevant to the domain or subdomain. When a god gains a large enough folllowing, aside from when earning that first and lowest tier of influence over a domain or subdomain, they undertake a quest decided by the domain or subdomain. Completion of the quest grants them new powers." I explained.


    Risa turned to me and asked a question I didn''t doubt the others were thinking. "Can you tell us what you have ''influence'' over, or is that some sort of secret?" The medusa asked, her voice tinged with curiosity. I grinned and took a second to recall of the domains and subdomains I had engaged with so far.


    "Well in terms of domains there are... the domains of nature, knowledge, magic, light, civilization, faith, chaos, minds, and dreams. And for subdomains, I have influence over vermin, earth, agriculture, necromancy, purity, corruption Hymenoptera, and healing." I declared, after a few moments of silence. Nine domains and eight subdomains.


    "I had influence all over all of the domains but the domain of light at birth, and for subdomains, I only earned influence over the subdomains of necromancy and Hymenoptera, which is the name of a particular biological classification of creatures that includes ants, bees, and wasps." I explained, knowing innately that that was the reason why the name for that particular subdomain was what it was.


    My followers were pleasantly surprised to hear that I had power over a fairly wide earth of things. So Okig''s next question made sense.


    "That''s a lot of things Althos. Are there any particular things you want to gain influence over in general, or anythings that you currently have influence over and wish to gain more of?" Okig asked, speaking up for the first time since we sat down at the table. I considered her question for a second before answering it.


    "I want to gain further influence over everything but especially the subdomains of healing and necromancy, and the domains of minds and dreams. As for other things I wish to gain any influence over? Hmm... I want to gain influence over the subdomains of spiders, liquid, and evocation magic, and the domains of stars." I told the assembled creatures, pleasantly surprising them. And then I took control of the conversation once more.


    "That said, I think that''s enough about me for right now." I declared, working to get the conversation back on track.


    "I want to work carefully and thoughtfully moving forward. I had fun tonight, using my powers in big and explosive ways, but I don''t yet know what the consequences of that will be. I felt the need to experiment with my powers and so I did, but I''m not going to make doing that, in the particular explosive ways I did today, a habit." I sternly told my gathered servants.


    "For now I want to gain more servants slowly and carefully. Okig, Iret, what do ogres value? I wish to bring your kin into my service." I told the pair of ogresses. Surprise and delight crossed Okig''s face, while surprise and mixed emotions crossed Iret''s. Okig was the first to speak up.


    "Ogres value power. Defeating one is often enough to earn its service, though... ogre service isn''t that great unless you want to intimidate someone. If you wish for it to worship you... well it depends on the ogre in question really." She said, speaking truthfully about her own kind. I grinned at her.


    "How did I earn your worship?" I asked, curiously. I had healed her mind, and cured her addiction to tormenting Iret, and she was a worshipper of mine. I wanted to hear from her in her own words how it was that I became a divine figure to her.


    "I worship you partially out of reverence and partially out of fear. You broke my mind with disturbing ease. And then you fixed it even more casually. I recognize that very real power. I am both in awe of it and terrified of it. I know that if you wanted too you could kill me at any time. I''ve never met another creature who could do that." She confessed, speaking candidly.


    "Althos, you showed me mind-bending and perception distorting pleasure. I know it broke my mind, and that you healed me, but there''s a part of me that wants to experience it again. A part of me worships you in the hopes that someday I''ll earn that pleasure once more." She added, speaking that last part more softly. There was eerie lunacy audible in her voice, a sort of brokenness that I easily detected.


    A part of me, a cruel and corrupted part, stirred when she said that. I wanted to do what I had done to her to more people, to tear their minds apart from pleasure and then "fix" them.


    I didn''t want to do this to showcase mercy or even power. I knew that this desire stirred in me because doing so would stain their minds. The memories of their time experiencing the pleasures that would overwhelm them would leave them wanting to be broken once more. I quietly and quickly quashed that desire of mine, silencing it and forcing back down.


    "I see." I said softly, as nonjudgmentally as I could manage. I also had to work to keep excitement out of my voice. The part of me that was influenced by the subdomain of corruption vowed to remember this moment, and to treat Okig tenderly later on, perhaps in a dream.


    I mentally noted that Okig''s worship of me came due to my power. My power to kill, to heal, and to corrupt. I knew that the goblins who worshiped me worshiped me as a guardian spirit who healed them, protects them, and who will provide with what they need to survive.


    I knew why the undead worshiped me. To them, I was a provider of reanimation, of their own unholy mockery of life, and I embodied power itself. After all, I could take back the energy that reanimated them with but a thought, meaning their very existence was tied to my whims.


    I pondered how to gather worshipers, wondering for a moment what tools I possessed that I could make use of to most efficiently gather new servants and begin to organize my followers. I was silent for a moment as I did so, my mind both recalling every single one of the varied abilities I had gained over the course of the last three days, while also considering which powers would be the most effective.


    It didn''t take me long to understand that I had a few extremely powerful abilities with regard to gathering worshipers. I had the ability to render someone immortal, provided they worshiped and served me. My entropic manipulation ability allowed me to turn infants into young adults instantly, and to easily gain the worship of older individuals afraid of dying of old age.


    At this point I created portals behind Okig and Iret, portals that would take them to their beds. I looked at them and smiled.


    "You two are allowed to stay here if you wish. You can spend the night here, and then in the morning I''ll return you to your homes, or I can whisk you away to your homes right now. Whichever choice you pick I will respect." I informed them, as I was grateful for their assistance and company today.


    "Also, consider what you want for your reward. I was being sincere when I said that, I plan to reward you for your help. Take your time to think about it, and then inform me of whatever you desire via prayer when you know." I explained.


    Both ogresses looked at me and then stood up and walked into the portals behind them without uttering a single word. I watched as they fell onto beds fashioned from light and swiftly fell asleep. I chuckled and willed the portals they had entered to fade from existence.


    I looked to my undead followers and grinned. "Now that the mortals are gone, let''s talk about necromancy." I said, my eyes wide with delight. My followers, particularly the grave-giant, all looked at me with abject interest now. It was like a switch had been flipped in their minds.


    One thing I was actively doing was using my ability to channel my powers through my swarm to animate every single corpse I could find, and I had gained over a dozen levels in necromancy because of it.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: You have reached the pinnacle of mortal druidry. You have gained the following class features:


    Natural form: You can shapeshift into any non-magical creature. This power can be used at will. At level 20 you gained the ability to use magic while shapeshifted. In your case this was a redundant power.


    Disaster caller: You can call forth localized natural disasters, such as lightning strikes, earthquakes, and flash floods.


    Enhanced casting: You can boost the potency of any spells that replicate or trigger natural phenomena.


    Animal companion: You can establish a magical bond between yourself and a natural animal that makes it into a familiar of yours.


    Herald of nature: At the pinnacle of mortal druidry you can ask nature itself to intervene in a situation, allowing you to animate and temporarily awaken all manner of natural creatures. You also gain the power to make elementals of any sort, respect you as a champion of nature.


    Divine levels: Mortals can only go to level 20. Deities are not so limited. As a deity, you can reach up to level 30 of a class, with each level beyond level 20 granting you features related to class specialties, which are paths that mortals take to acquire greater, specialized power in different parts of a class. At level 30 you basically become an overgod of a class itself.


    To level up beyond level 20 you must undertake specialized quests, quests that only become accessible to you once you have acquired sufficient knowledge of a class''s history, traditions, and sources of power. To truly master a class it''s not enough to gain levels and new abilities. You must actually gain an understanding of the class itself.


    Necromancer class alerts: You can no longer gain experience by transforming ants into skeletons. You must actually diversify the sorts of undead you create.


    Empower the undead: Undead you create are more powerful than others of their kind, and become stronger than they were in life.


    Fear nothing: You are immune to attempts to make you feel fear, and diseases cannot harm you.


    The reaper embodied: Your melee attacks now inflict extra damage on the living, as unlife energy surges into any weapon you wield.


    Quests:


    Serpentes: To gain the first tier of influence over the subdomain that governs snakes, be bit by a snake and make three snake familiars.


    Ursidae: To gain the first tier of influence over the subdomain that governs bears, cause a single bear to evolve.


    Fagaceae: To gain the first tier of influence over the subdomain that governs a quarter of all tree types, create a dryad. This is a power you can now use that is synergistic between the domains of nature and magic.


    Canis: To gain the first tier of influence over the subdomain of wolves befriend three wolves.


    Soul: To gain the first tier of influence over the domain of souls, devour three souls.


    Disease: Hit five different mortals with the disease bolt spell. You can cure them, just hit them with it first.


    You have gained access to all non-legendary druidic spells, and many necromantic spells.]


    I spent the next few hours chatting with my undead worshipers. During this time I decided to pursue the quest of the domain of disease, solely because it contacted me and told between sickening choughs that when I gained the first tier of influence over it I could I cure people of magical diseases. That alone changed my mind.


    Well that and the fact that I could cure those I sickened with the disease bolt spell and still complete the quest.


    By the time the fourth day of my life rolled around I was still underground, and still in my lair. It was at this point, that I finally excused myself from the table I had fashioned from light and used my power as a lesser deity to teleport back to the Silver Xana.


    I still wanted to get to know people throughout Comillas and build connections after all. That hadn''t changed just because I now possessed world-shaping and world-changing abilities fully under my control.


    It felt strange to be leaving a place where I was known and worshiped as a god, and to be returning to a place where I was thought of as a druidic novice. But in a way, it also felt right. I was after all basically a child, and completing quests given to me by the Silver Xana and Isadora allowed me to safely explore my powers. I was grateful to have a place where I could do that without fear.


    Armed with goals, with quests, and with new magic and abilities, I phased out of my tower and into my room in Comillas'' tiny inn.

 51 The Dawn Of The Fourth Day

    In the span of a mortal heartbeat, I went from being seated in my tower to standing in the room I sprang to life in. I took a look around and allowed my senses a moment to catch up with me. And that was when I received a quiet and understated notification.


    [Alert: Your body has finally finished acclimating to the demands of your new and improved senses. Your body and mind are now equipped to handle the sensory overload of detecting any creature on which light is shining, and your senses are now capable of differentiating between things close to you and things far away. Preparing the initial burst of sensory information in 3... 2... 1...]


    By the time another mortal heartbeat would have happened I began to hear my surroundings. And they were quite loud. I could hear the sounds of more patrons of the Silver Xana, something new as until yesterday morning I had been the only person here aside from Isadora and her family.


    My new senses really came to life in the town of Comillas. I could hear all manner of noises, and they were all distinct and identifiable to me.


    Some of them were the gentle noises of people turning over in their sleep, others were the sounds of people putting on their clothes as they got ready for a lively day in the field. Others were the muffled moans of people having sex as a way to start the day feeling satisfied.


    I could smell not only everything in my room but everything for a full twenty-four kilometers. I smelled the scent of washed bodies, unwashed bodies, the scent of wild and domesticated animals alike, and the fetid odor of corpses becoming fertilizer. It was nauseating, but only for a second.


    I willingly opened my mouth and inhaled, allowing my sense of taste an opportunity to be overwhelmed. And as quickly as my nostrils had adjusted my sense of taste adjusted.


    "I guess I''ll just have to allow each of my senses a chance to be overwhelmed and then adjust to this new, immense amount of information huh?" I rhetorically asked myself, as I went ahead and placed my hand on the bed behind me, casually stretching my arm out so that I could get my fourth sense over and done with.


    I could feel each imperfection and crack in the wood my fingers were on top of. I could sense where the blades of man had cut and shorn into the wood to force it into its present shape. I feel where the blades had chipped and left minute scars.


    I turned and looked at the bed, and felt tears begin to pour out of my eyes as I leered at the bed that I had only really used when I first awoke. I could see every centimeter of the bed''s straw and I was able to count the number of straws that softened the bed to make it suitable to sleep on.


    My discomfort lasted for only a second and after it, I was able to grin as I wiped tears from my eyes. Now that my discomfort had passed, I turned and went out of the door so that I could chat with Isadora once more.


    ________________________________________________


    Isadora was standing behind her usual desk and greeted me with a smile. I grinned back at her, as I approached her desk and began to speak.


    "Hey Isadora, you''re up bright and early." I told her. She nodded at me, her hair unusually messy.


    "Yep! We got another set of guests this morning. They got here this morning so I had to be up early to help them check into their room." She explained, an easy-going grin on her face as she spoke.


    "I was surprised to not see you come in last night. A bit worried even." She told me, her eyes brightening as she reaffirmed that I was here and okay.


    "I was fine. I just had to spend a few hours in the forest, inspecting some trees." I told her, lying but doing so with enough confidence and casualness that after a few seconds considering my excuse she shrugged at me and accepted what I told her as true. And then she scooted closer to me and began to whisper.


    "I''m pretty the other guests aren''t humans. They seem like they might be something else. Something more." She gossiped, a look of conspiratorial concern on her face as she told me that.


    I hadn''t expected her to react that way to a non-human individual, so it caught me off-guard. That didn''t keep me from seeing what she knew, while I checked out the pair of newcomers on my mini-map, mentally fiddling with the thing so that I could discover the species of the newcomers.


    "What do you think they are?" I asked Isadora while I selected them on my mini-map. She gave me a careful glance as if sizing up my trust-worthiness.


    "I think they are elves. But... I''ve only ever heard of elves in forests and living in communion with nature. These elves are oddly... cosmopolitan." Isadora told me, struggling with the pronunciation of the word "Cosmopolitan" for a second.


    As she told me her speculation about the true nature of the Xana''s newest residents, I quickly inspected the information given to me by my mini-map. I chuckled and noticed that she wasn''t wrong. The two creatures were "High-elves". The system then whispered in my mind, chuckling as it did so.


    [High elves are regal, city-dwelling and empire-building elves. Most humans know of elves as woodland-dwelling humanoids who live in forests, as most non-forest-elves live in a distant continent and have little to no contact with humans.] The system slyly revealed. I hadn''t known what elves were until this point, so I felt a slight kinship to humans right now.


    [Humans in this world tend to not know much or even anything about the other types of elves who aren''t forest-elves. Dark-elves, winged-elves, high-elves, and aquatic-elves are largely unknown to humans.] The system told me, a smug grin audible in its voice. I could tell it enjoyed knowing what they didn''t. I didn''t begrudge it for that though, in fact, that endeared it to me a bit.


    I grinned at Isadora and replied to her. "I''ll keep an eye out for the two of us. If I can ascertain what they really are, I''ll tell you." I whispered, conspiratorially. She smiled back at me and nodded appreciatively.


    At that point I began to think. My mind turned to what I ought to do today, and I quickly came up with an idea that I liked that would endear me to the community.


    "My mission today is to go out and check out the fields. I leveled up last night and I wanted to see if I could figure out what''s going on that''s lessening the harvest." I explained to Isadora, to explain why I wasn''t taking on a quest today.


    As I told her that her face positively lit up. Her eyes radiated excitement, and a part of me was glad that that was the choice I was going with for today.


    "Oh that''s just excellent! Mateo will be so excited to hear that you''ve leveled up and that you''re hoping to really dig in and help." She exclaimed, sounding honestly relieved that someone was here to help out.


    "Though I guess that means that you might not be around today to help out... You see the Xana''s newest guests mentioned wanting to go into the woods today... Hmm, well maybe if you can solve the problems with our fields quickly then you could do both at once..." Isadora whispered her resolve audible in her words, quiet though they were.


    I chuckled, drawing her attention back to me. She looked at me and then quickly grew flustered, color rushing to her cheeks in mild embarrassment. I looked at them, admiring their rosiness for a moment, before speaking to her.


    "I suppose if you''ve come to rely on me I can''t let you down huh?" I asked, teasing the girl. There was a light and playful smile on my lips as I playfully messed with her. She shook her head at me sheepishly and began to speak in her defense.


    "No, that''s not what I meant! I just meant that you''re our only real adventurer and you''ve proven yourself as a trust-worthy healer. It makes the most sense that you''d be the person to guide these newcomers into and maybe even through the forest." Isadora told me, it obvious that she thought to convince both herself and me as opposed to just seeking to convince me of her words.


    I teased her for a few more moments before biding her farewell and heading towards the fields outside of town. The quicker I got this over and done with the better overall it would be, both for the village and myself.


    Reaching the fields took me not very long at all. And as soon as I did, I rechecked my agriculture subdomain scanning and checking out old and new abilities alike.

 52 Conditions And Crops

    [Agriculture subdomain passive powers:


    Crop growth: This power allows you to cause crops to bloom instantly. If you would like you can even do this when crops aren''t planted in soil, transforming seeds in someone''s hand into the fruit, vegetable, or other plants they''d eventually bloom into, even out of season.


    Crops you grow this way are of incredible quality, restoring health, stamina, magical energy, and possessing incredible nutritional value. They are also fully living crops, not like the magical food you create when you use your legendary magic.


    Crop and soil devastation: Using this allows you to decimate crop and soil life alike. If you use it you can cause famines as you wish.


    Soil-life restoration: This synergistic power fusing the subdomain of healing and the subdomain of agriculture allows for the restoration of life and health to soil, causing soil that''s been overly farmed or not taken care of to be fertile once more.


    Earth-transformation: Fusing the powers of the subdomains of earth and agriculture you gain the ability to make any solid, earthly surface suitable for crop life. Using this power someone could grow potatoes atop the rim of a volcano, or plant cucumbers in gold. This power is suitable for ensuring crops can grow entirely submerged underwater or in other classically difficult spots to farm in.


    Agriculture subdomain active powers:


    Abundance manipulation: This twice every twelve-hour-power allows you to increase or decrease the amount of a crop available at a whim. If you use it you can duplicate a crop up to one hundred and fifty times, allowing you to turn one apple into one and fifty hundred. You also infuse the crop you manipulated with your influence, causing those who eat it to fall under your influence.


    You can also use it to reduce the amount of a crop, either reducing the size of an individual crop or reducing the total amount in a group by up to half. This power''s potency will increase as you gain more influence over the subdomain of agriculture.


    Fruit of life and fruit of knowledge: Twice every twelve hours you can grab a food item and bless it to contain either great knowledge or cause it to lower someone''s physical age by a year, allowing you to grant someone effective immortality.


    If someone eats the item while it contains great knowledge, that knowledge includes the fact that you are real, and intended for them to eat that item so that they may know you. It also contains knowledge pertinent to their careers, allowing them to become more successful at their work.]


    The new agricultural powers I possessed all brought smiles to my face. They were deeply significant and meaningful powers in general, but right now they were especially critical.


    I stood outside and just in front of a great field, several dozen meters long and equally wide illuminated by the last rays of moonlight. The field was neatly organized and currently devoid of any non-plant or non-insect life. None of the laborers were visible just yet, though I could hear them finishing up their preparations for the work-day ahead.


    Crops were already planted in the field I was in front of, and an inspection of the field gave me confidence that these crops, the ones of them that were growing and still alive anyway, were likely to reach the stage in their lives where they could be harvested without much difficulty.


    That said, the number of crops planted here that were still maturing weren''t many. The other fields had fewer crops than this one did, and this one didn''t have all that many planted, to begin with. Even without my powers, I would have been able to sense that yield this small would have been problematic.


    As I considered how to resolve the crop disaster, I knew that my first priority ought to be discovering the precise nature of whatever was causing the land to gradually go barren. I willed my knowledge-related abilities to the forefront of my mind so that I could once more inspect my updated powers list.


    [Knowledge domain, passive powers:


    Appraisal: This power allows you to learn the properties and basic information about objects you see scattered throughout the world. To use it just select an object and focus on the power. This can also be used on people, where it identifies their species, class (if they possess any), level, and alignment.


    See condition: This synergistic power integrates the might of the domain of the mind, the domain of knowledge, the domain of civilization and of the subdomain of healing.


    It allows you to see someone''s or something''s holistic health, not just that of their physical form but also their mental health (if applicable). This power allows you to see the health of buildings and other non-living things and any conditions they are affected by, positively or negatively.


    When someone or something is suffering from or otherwise affected by a condition, the usage of this power allows you to ascertain the cause of the condition. Conditions include but aren''t limited to diseases, charm spells, domination spells, petrification, fear (natural or otherwise), and exhaustion.


    Detect magic: This is a synergistic power that is the result of a fusion between the domains of magic and knowledge. It allows you to see the ambient power that magical creatures radiate, as well as the color of the magic that most resonates with their souls.


    Knowledge domain, active power:


    Peruse the past: This twice per three and a half days power allows you to learn key details of an object''s past. This is a potent power that will be upgraded as you gain more power, and as you increase the amount of influence you can exert over the domain of knowledge you can increase the amount of knowledge you gain through this power.


    Light the way: This twice per twelve-hour period power is somewhat rare for a lower-tier power in that it affects mortals and not yourself. If you use it you can select a mortal or mortals and have them see a path towards their current goal. The path lasts the whole day, but it only guides them to one goal and will dissipate the second they reach it.]


    Reminding myself of these powers, especially the ones I unlocked after I completed the tutorial, helped me visualize a clear and simple route forward.


    ________________________________________________


    I looked out at the field and grinned. I allowed my mind to wander for a moment, and for the commingled scents of growing crops, fertilizer, and the residual sweat of local laborers to fill my nostrils. The sky above me was clear, and the sun was beginning to peak out over the horizon, banishing the darkness of the night and replacing it with the loveliness of the dawn.


    The sun''s earliest rays of light were already faintly visible, brightly illuminating distant patches of grassland. I could feel them even though they were kilometers away, no doubt thanks to my potent ties to the domain of light. They felt tied to me, like far-off fingers.


    I closed my eyes and targeted the field in front of me. And then without wasting another second I activated my new "See condition" power. It caused my mind to be split between a textbox scanning the field, and my familiar not-so-mini-map.


    [Large field targeted. Initiating scan in 3... 2... 1...


    Large field scanned. Formatting information...


    Condition: Damaged. Cursed.


    Curse type: Famine.


    This curse causes the targeted area to be affected by a condition that makes it less valuable and usable each year until the affected area has been rendered completely unprofitable or otherwise uninhabitable. This curse lasts a century, gaining strength with each passing year and by the end of the century the curse can only be done away with by a god''s direct intervention.


    This curse affects the entirety of Comillas, though its effects are limited to and focused on the production of food. It was also secretly cast and isn''t something anyone else is aware of aside from you.


    Currently, it has been seventy-two years since the curse was first inflicted on these fields.


    Treatment: Usage of wild-trait ''Breaker of Curses''.


    Special note: Undoing this curse will cause the curse''s caster, the ancient black dragon Qoirre to reawaken from his decades-long slumber and to gain an awareness of the curse''s destroyer.]


    This caused my eyes to go wide in surprise. And to quietly check something out, I willed away the notification and focused my mind on the not-so-mini-map.


    My mind had taken the simple leap that since there was an ancient black dragon nearby it was likely that this dragon was Qoirre, a reasonable enough conclusion given that Qoirre was the curse''s caster. I was wrong. A quick scan of my map revealed that.


    The ancient black dragon that was closeby was named Ygaynth. It was located incredibly deeply underground and was not Qoirre. And then I began to make choices.


    ________________________________________________


    "I need to help alleviate the concerns of the townspeople. I can probably do that without activating my ''Breaker of Curses'' trait. An ''ancient black dragon'' that delivers devastating, slow-acting curses isn''t something I know enough about to counteract or piss off at the moment." I told myself as I gazed out at a particularly tall corn stalk.


    I was cautious and wasn''t in a rush. Knowing that no one else knew about the curse gave me an odd sense of certainty and calmness that I had multiple choices in how to handle this. I could be subtle and work to research Qoirre and Ygaynth rather than doing something brash and overt. I had all the time in the world, or at least 27 years, to be safe, and to come up with a response that I felt confident about.


    "I have enough agricultural powers to safely provide the people with food for the next few months, even once the harvesting season has passed. I just need the right allies and worshipers." I realized, as I began to scheme.


    "If I can just convert a few laborers into my worshipers, into ''Cosecha''s'' worshipers, then I can work with them to ensure that no one panics and eventually deal with both the curse and the dragon responsible for it." I quietly said to myself, as the first of the laborers began to quietly walk out of the nearby houses in which they lived and stored the town''s food.


    The laborers immediately walked over to their respective fields, massive things that stretched on, and were largely empty. They took slow, deliberate, and almost moody steps towards where they''d begin their work.


    My enhanced vision allowed me to easily study the laborers, and I did so curiously. They all had stoic expressions on their faces, grim ones that told me that they were every bit, if not more, aware of the frightening conditions of the fields as Mateo and I were. Or at least as Mateo was. I highly doubted that any of them were as aware of the conditions of the fields as I was.


    I began searching for a leader, cognizant that if I tricked a leader into worshipping me my work here would be much easier to pull off than if I tricked a run-of-the-mill laborer.

 53 Lies and Laborers

    "So you''re really sticking with this whole ''Cosecha'' thing huh?" Asked a new voice in my mind, as I studiously stared at various laborers. I did the mental version of a nod and felt a chuckle become distinctly audible in the back of my mind.


    "If you''re intent on doing this that way, it wouldn''t be a bad idea to hear us out." Said the voice. This was one of those moments wherein I could hear a grin on someone''s face. For a moment I wondered if domains and subdomains even had faces, but I knew that that was just me distracting myself with frivolous questions and refocused. I replied to the question with one of my own.


    "Who is ''us''?" I mentally inquired, sensing that I was about to get a quest. I couldn''t help but smile, as there was an opportunistic part of me that quietly sensed an opportunity here.


    "We are a trinity of domains and subdomains. The one you hear speaking is the domain of trickery. I''m accompanied by the subdomains of lies and enchantments. Over the course of your life, you''ve performed some... delicious pranks on people." Said the self-proclaimed domain of trickery.


    "We''ve grown quite fond of you little one. For a young god, you show so much... potential to become well-versed in our ways. We, like all of the other domains and subdomains, want to help you master our powers and eventually take what some of us already view as your rightful place as our god." Whispered the sinister-sounding domain.


    "We''ve approached you so that you may begin our quest. We''re offering you a joint one, so as to speed your acquisition of our assistance. All you have to do is convince the laborers to worship Cosecha. We''ll say you have to convince... three of them to worship it." The subdomain told me, speaking slowly and softly.


    I considered the quest, deciding more than anything else whether or not I ought to prioritize it. After a few seconds, I figured it was a quest that wouldn''t take a long amount of time to complete, even though I knew better than to think I''d complete it in a day.


    "Thank you. I''ll definitely put that at the top of my to-do list." I told the trio of entities listening to me. I was being sarcastic, and a second after I said that I wondered if the subdomain of lies had a power that let me detect lies. And if it could detect lies itself. I heard three pairs of laughter ring out in my mind, one masculine, one feminine, and one... more androgynous.


    After that, I quietly refocused on the scene unfolding in front of me.


    ________________________________________________


    Just minutes after I was approached by a trinity of deceptive domains and subdomains I was carefully making use of my updated and better-organized appraisal power to inspect the laborers. That was when I finally detected a leader, right as he left his house.


    [Name: Gustavo Mondragon (Level two warrior)


    Species: Human


    Alignment: Neutral good


    Magic Sensing: Gustavo would most resonate with the school of alteration magic, as that school is the school that would most allow him to alter his tools, himself, and his environment in ways that are conducive to his ultimate goals: serving his community, and protecting his wife, and daughter.


    Personal vice: Pride


    Personal virtue: Chastity


    Faith-sense: Gustavo believes in the worth of his community. Once you''ve checked out your new faith domain abilities and established Cosechian teachings and beliefs, Gustavo may well be a good cleric or inquisitor of Cosecha.


    Authority detection: Gustavo is considered the de facto leader of the laborers and farmers who live on the most remote reaches of Comillas. He is considered this by both the laborers and everyone else. He is proud to be the leader of the farmers and laborers.]


    There were two new things there, "Faith-sense" and "Authority detection". I could easily infer where they came from, the faith domain and the civilization domain respectively. They were handy abilities, and when this was settled I''d be sure to refresh my memory about the sorts of civilization and faith powers I now possessed especially faith powers.


    Gustavo was walking towards me, a curious and neutral expression on his face. I pretended to be focused on the field in front of me. He managed to be both broad-shouldered and tall, standing just about 2 meters high, with a muscular build. I assumed it was because of the manual labor he performed.


    He was dressed in a working man''s clothes, thick things that protected his body from cuts and from other sorts of injuries that came from working with animals. His face was deeply tanned, and he had a muscular jawbone. His hair was hidden underneath a hat. He had amber-colored eyes, deep-set ones above a surprisingly thin nose and full lips.


    He was casually carrying a large hoe made of iron, and had a speedy gait. I could tell that my appearance had caught him off-guard as he drew closer and closer to me. From the way he smelled I could tell that he had taken a bath the night before, and probably did so regularly as he didn''t have a residual, unpleasant stench following after him.


    I didn''t turn and pretend to just notice him until seconds before he would have reached me. When I did I gasped and leaped into the air to let him think of me as someone weak to surprises. After I did I respectfully and apologetically bowed to him.


    "Whoa, sorry! You just caught me off guard. How may I help you... sir?" I asked, feigning meekness. He gave me a curious glance, now that he could study me more thoroughly. His eyes took in all of the parts of my appearance, and I grinned at him.


    As he was studying me I quietly reconjured my soul-staff, the bark-colored thing suddenly phasing into being in my mind. I had unsummoned the thing last night, but it felt nice to have something to hold once more. This surprised the laborer-leader, who reeled back from me before I suddenly opened my eyes wide and began to explain myself to him.


    "Oh hey, it''s okay! This is my staff. I''m a druid you see. I was asked by Mateo to see if I could figure out what''s going on here." I told Gustavo, speaking gently while only loosely holding onto my weapon. This caused Gustavo''s eyes to open wide, and then a smile crept across his face.


    "Oh! I see. Okay, yeah Mateo told me about you." He exclaimed, smiling at me. He seemed to relax when I mentioned that I was a druid and asked by Mateo to investigate, which wasn''t surprising but I was happy that such simple statements worked so well on Gustavo. It made my work all the easier.


    "Oh really? That''s great!" I exclaimed, smiling sincerely at the man. I visibly relaxed and turned back to the field to continue pretending to study it. We both lapsed into silence for a few moments, and then Gustavo began to speak once more.


    "Can you tell what''s wrong with it?" He asked, studying my facial expression as he asked me that question. My face remained impassive the whole time he spoke.


    "I can''t. Not yet anyway. But if the problem is just the quantity of food... Well, I do have something that can help with that." I remarked, idly. I smiled playfully at Gustavo, who looked up at me with curiosity and vague interest.


    "I''m a druid of the harvest moon. I have magic that has been created specifically to address these sorts of problems." I told Gustavo, grinning as I did so. "In fact, do you happen to have a seed on you?" I asked, hoping to illustrate the sort of powers I possessed.


    He gave me a skeptical stare as he began to rummage around in his own pockets. I put out my hand, grinning at him, knowing that however skeptical he was now he was about to get blown away. After a few moments of pulling things out of his pockets, he eventually retrieved a pair of apple seeds and proceeded to place them, surprisingly gently given his size and build, in my hands.


    "Watch this." I told him. I kept my eyes glued to him, while I grabbed a single one of the seeds and pocketed it myself.


    Mentally I took aim at the seed that was still in my hand and activated my "Crop growth" power. The seed began to magically and energetically glow, before it almost instantly transformed into a fully grown, consumable apple.


    Gustavo had kept his eyes locked on me until the apple-seed began to grow in size, and as the thing morphed into a fully-grown apple he transferred his gaze from me to it, his eyes widening as he observed my legitimately miraculous power. The apple in my hand was a beautiful, dark-red, impressively weighty, Winesap apple.


    When the thing was done growing Gustavo''s eyes were locked on it, and his mouth was hanging open. I could feel the shock and awe radiating off of the man, and it was hard for me to resist the urge to smirk at him. There was something satisfying about moments like this, especially when I didn''t even use "Religious fervor" on him. I was saving that for a future display, as I wanted him to be truly shaken by the power I would show him in maybe even a few minutes.


    "Yeah, when I first did it I reacted like that too." I told him, lying. I felt ecstatic at this moment though, as I knew that what I had done had left an incredible mark on the human. The awe he was radiating was palpable in the shock on his face, the smile that was slowly creeping up his lips and I could tell that I had just left a profound impression on him.


    "It''s edible too. Would you like for me to demonstrate that, or do you just believe me?" I asked him. It took him a second to react to my question so I ultimately just lifted the thing to my mouth and took a healthy bite out of it. I still had another seed after-all, so it''d be easy for me to do again if he wanted.


    The apple tasted sweet, and I enjoyed both the texture of its skin and its soft interior. I smiled fondly at Gustavo, and I could tell that he had questions so when he began to ask them I was ready.

 54 Harvest Moon Druidry

    "What''d you say you were? A druid of the... ''Harvest moon''?" Gustavo asked, his eyes locked on me as I casually grabbed the other seed I had put in my pocket and repeated what I did to transform the apple seed I had taken earlier and transformed into an apple.


    In an instant, I had another fully grown Winesap apple in my hand. I casually tossed the thing to the leader of the laborers and farmers. He easily caught it and brought the thing eye-level before beginning to scrutinize it.


    "Yep! As a druid of the harvest moon, I pledge myself to a spirit of the harvest and in exchange, that spirit grants me an incredibly tiny fraction of its power. That''s how I can do neat things like make crops grow instantly." I explained, carefreely explaining the supposed source of my power. Gustavo turned to me and gave me an amazed stare when I explained the fabricated origins of my power.


    I wondered how he''d react if I hadn''t told him about my persona and I had instead told him the truth. For a moment I considered it, but I knew that if I really wanted too I could infiltrate his dreams later tonight and tell him. Not to mention that I also figured that that''d make pursuing the quest I had been given a few minutes ago a bit harder.


    "Whoa, how''d that happen?" He asked, curiously.


    "A long time ago I was asked if I wanted to help rid the world of starvation. I said yes, I did. And the rest... well the rest is history." I told Gustavo, as I closed my eyes and feigned having a moment of nostalgia.


    Gustavo was quiet for a moment while he considered what I said. And then he opted to accept it, deciding not to push the issue any further. Something he did push though, was the apple. He pushed it into his mouth and took a bite out of it. I opened my eyes right as I was treated to a familiar notification.


    [Influence over Gustavo: 5%. This is due to you having gained increased power over the domain of the mind and the subdomain of agriculture, and the events that took place before he bit into the apple.] The system alerted me, giving me a good reason for a wide smile.


    "So... how is it?" I asked, looking the farmer in the eyes with a grin seconds after he bit into the apple and began to noisily chew on it. There was a contented grin on his face as I asked him that.


    "It''s delicious... A real apple. Grown from magic." He muttered as he bit more into it. I could tell he genuinely liked it, even without his words, as whenever he bit into it he took a second and sighed as its tastes coated his tongue.


    "Oh my friend, I can do more than that. But for now, do me a favor would you?" I asked him, after teasing my other powers. He looked at me curiously, awed by my powers and evidently curious to hear me ask whatever I was about to ask.


    "From here on out would you collect and keep every seed you could?" I asked, as I brought the apple I had bitten into to eye-level and began to dig through the thing for the seeds the apple contained not far from its core. It took me a few seconds to collect the seeds, numbering seven in total.


    Gustavo looked at me after I finished speaking and began to nod. "I see, so you want us to collect seeds for you to use your powers on?" He asked, inquisitively. I chuckled and nodded at him.


    "If you give me seeds, I will use my powers on them. If you wish we could even experiment with them and see if burying the seeds produces trees." I explained. I was happy to practice experimenting with my powers, and knowing that doing so would gradually increase my influence over Gustavo brought me great joy.


    "I possess one more especially potent ability, but I don''t think its time to show you that one just yet. For now, I would like for you to spend the day thinking about and then selecting two lieutenants of yours that we will inform about my powers." I announced, not rushing anything but teasing Gustavo and suggesting I had one more trick up my sleeve that I could use that he''d like.


    His eyebrow raised up curiously as he listened to me. I chuckled and continued speaking.


    "I would like for your closest and most trusted advisors to know the truth. I don''t want you to carry this burden alone. And that way I can have more help in acquiring seeds for us to keep the population fed." I told Gustavo, explaining what my "intentions" were without actually revealing the truth.


    Gustavo was quiet for a moment. He had a look of thoughtful contemplation on his face. I suspected he already knew who he was going to pick. Eventually, he nodded at me and began to talk once more.


    "Alright, Althos. I can tell from the way that you''re talking that you would like to pick this up tomorrow? In that case, I have plenty of time to pick two people. I''ll select the men most able to help us!" He declared, speaking softly but confidently. I smiled at him and nodded gratefully.


    "Cosecha be pleased! That''s excellent news, my friend." I told him, referring to "Cosecha" by name for the first time. The unusual expression caught him off-guard and he gave me a look but he didn''t ask for an explanation, so I opted not to give him one. Not for now anyway.


    I had a plan for how to introduce him to ''Cosecha''. I intended to visit his dreams tonight in my more impressive form than my surprisingly ordinary human disguise. But tonight was a way''s off. I had more work to do elsewhere. So I kept him company for another five minutes before I politely bid him adieu and began my trek back to the Silver Xana.


    ________________________________________________


    The sun hung very low in the sky as I made my way back to the inn I had spent the majority of my nights in. I was walking by a house inhabited by a lone man when he opened the door leading in and out of his home. At that moment I realized that I had a good opportunity here.


    "I can go ahead and begin working towards curing Troik by striking this man with a disease bolt." I told myself, keenly aware that I had the opportunity to make progress towards becoming what was, in essence, a god of health.


    "I don''t even need him to be infected for long. I can literally just cure him the second he''s hit by the disease." I muttered to myself. That didn''t keep me from not wanting to do it though.


    "He''s an innocent, elderly man. Why should he be the first target?" I asked myself, not at all a fan of this quest. I had only opted to pursue it because I knew that completing it gave me a potent power: the ability to cure magical diseases.


    "Oh damn it, I''ll just cure him the second the spell makes contact." I muttered, before targeting him with a casting of the disease bolt spell. The spell flew, invisibly to all but me, through the air and struck his back.


    He began to cough, not violently or anything, but even as I did I immediately cast my spell that cured diseases on him. As soon as I did his coughing began to lessen in intensity, until it was over altogether.


    "One out of five." I muttered, under my breath. I was grateful to have begun to do the work I''d need to do to gain the influence, even if I still had to infect four more people.


    On my way to the Silver Xana, I was surprised, somewhat pleasantly, to find that the people of Comillas are early-risers. I encountered three people and subsequently infected and then cured them using disease bolt and cure-disease on anyone I saw. I made it to the Silver Xana uneventfully aside from that.


    Inside of the inn I was delighted to find a pair of people who I had never seen before sitting down and waiting for something, probably me given that they were the pair of high-elves I had inspected using my tremorsense power earlier in the morning.


    ________________________________________________


    The two high-elves, one male and one female, were seated on a single sofa, one of the two I had first seen during the beginning of my first day truly alive. It feels like so long ago that that happened that it''s difficult to believe it was less than one hundred hours ago.


    Both of the elves wore simple clothes well-suited to trekking across forests and other ecospheres less suited to humanoids. They wore green trousers and had on matching green tunics. At their sides were bright blue bows and they each had a quiver filled with arrows strapped to their persons.


    The elves smelled of the road as if they hadn''t had time to really change out of the gear they traveled in. One of them had long brown hair and the other had shorter blonde hair. The one with brown hair had empty white orbs for eyes, ones that lacked pupils, and the one who had short blonde hair had equally empty green orbs for eyes.


    It was at this moment that I activated my appraisal power, targetting the two of them with the exact same ability I had used on Gustavo minutes ago.


    [Name(s): Calorron Lordrawn (Level five ranger), Farrane Elfsflame (Level three wizard)


    Species: High Elves


    Alignment(s): Lawful good


    Personal vices: Sloth (Farrane), Envy (Calorron)


    Personal virtues: Diligence (Calorron) Kindness (Farrane)


    Magic Sensing: High elves are naturally magical and can naturally use magic. Farrane Elfsflame is an exceptional spellcaster and a potent pyromancer, and the school of magic that most resonates with her soul is evocation magic. Calorron is not particularly skilled at magic for a high elf and the school of magic that most resonates with his soul is enchantment magic.


    Faith-sense: These two elves are firm believers in the might of the empire they are citizens of, the Ansari empire. They are proud of their mission: to investigate the strange event which occurred last night in the Rodan forest.


    Authority detection: Farrane and Calorron are relatively low-ranking officials in their government. They are scouts, trusted in their specific tasks but not taken with the same seriousness as others in their government. In their outposts, they are viewed as trusted figures whose reports are taken seriously and viewed as credible.]


    They both looked up at me and began to grin. Isadora waved at me as I entered the inn. I smiled back at her and then went over to the sofa across from the one the elves were sitting in and introduced myself.


    "Hello, I am Althos. I suppose you are the Xana''s newest guests?" I asked, grinning at them.

 55 Consequences

    I sat down on the sofa across from the two newest inhabitants of what could loosely be called my hometown. They gazed at me, curiously. Their eyes had no pupils, but I could feel their gazes exploring me from head to toe.


    "Hello Althos, I am Farrane." Said the woman, finally introducing herself. I knew her name already, but she didn''t know that. Farrane had brown hair and white orbs for eyes. Calorron had blonde hair and green orbs for eyes.


    "And I am Calorron. We are scouts who dwell not far away from here. We came here because a superior of ours asked us to investigate something." Explained Calorron, who based on levels alone might well have been Farrane''s superior in their shared tasks. I looked at Calorron curiously, not feigning the look of intrigue on my face.


    "What brings you to a quaint little community like this?" I asked the elf, curious if this had something to do with myself or my actions but not having enough information to attempt to guess one way or another. Calorron chuckled, the sound faint and musical.


    "Well Althos, we aren''t here to investigate Comillas. We''re here to investigate the Rodan forest." Explained the male elf, his voice growing fainter as he spoke. And at this point, Farrane spoke up again.


    "In fact, the only reason why we''re here now and not at Rodan is because of you. Isadora told us about you, and the fact that you''re a druid who has spent some time in Rodan. Would you like to come with us while we investigate the place?" Farrane asked, curiously.


    "Sure! That sounds like a good way to spend today. Provided you''re willing to pay me for my labor, I''ll happily accompany you." I told the elves, a smile perking up my lips. They both grinned slyly at me.


    "Oh Althos... We''re a fair people. Fair folks you could say. We pay those who aid us. What are your terms?" Calorron asked.


    And so began a quaint series of negotiations, which my mind would only be in half-heartedly. My thoughts were elsewhere. In the safety of my mind, I quickly began to ask myself a few questions.


    ________________________________________________


    "Is the Rodan forest the name given by humanoids to the forest I''ve frequented?" I wondered while in the safety and relative isolation of my mind.


    "Yes, it is. It''s a misheard version of the name given to the forest by ancient, alien inhabitants of the forest." Claimed the domain of knowledge. I was unsurprised by this, and in fact, welcomed it.


    "''Alien inhabitants''?" I asked, hoping to probe the domain for more information. I heard a soft giggle from the domain as it recognized my attempts to milk it for more knowledge.


    "Yes, Althos. Alien inhabitants. If you want to learn more though, you''ll need to investigate things in the forest. That''ll be a lot easier now though since you performed a mass-miracle and gained the reverence of thousands of the forest''s inhabitants." The domain told me, a smile audible in her voice. I nodded, unsurprised by this but I didn''t regret having tried to gain more knowledge now.


    "I wonder if they''re investigating me... Or something I did?" I asked myself, a small smile on my lips as I pondered that possibility. I heard a soft, affirmative sigh from the domain of knowledge and grinned wider now. I thanked the domain with the power of my emotions, and refocused, more knowledgable than ever.


    ________________________________________________


    Perhaps half an hour later I found myself just outside of the oddly bright-looking forest I had spent every afternoon of my life in to date. I chalked up this strange brightness to a simple fact: this was easily the earliest I''d arrived here during the day. The sun hung low in the morning sky and the trek was mostly silent.


    My new allies, newcomers to this place, didn''t have experience with this place. So they were ignorant of the forest''s habitual darkness and weren''t odded out by the bizarre illumination that dimly illuminated the edges of the forest. I opted not to comment on it, for now anyway.


    My elven companions weren''t especially interested in talking until we got to where we were now. Calorron looked to me, when we were but steps outside of the forest.


    "So, do you happen to know anything about this forest?" The blonde-haired elf asked me. I looked at him and shrugged.


    "Sadly, I am a newcomer to this part of the world myself. I spent a long time here in Puerto Rico in a distant part of the island. I only just began exploring Rodan." I told the elf ranger, mixing truth and lies quite easily. He slumped his shoulders as I spoke, and I could tell that I had just disappointed him. Internally I chuckled at this obvious display of disappointment.


    Farrane let us speak, and when I was done talking she began to speak herself. "Come friends. It is time that we go forth. There are mysteries to uncover." The wizard said, an excited grin on her face. She was the first of us to take the steps into the forest, and I followed quickly after her.


    I was a bit surprised to receive a notification immediately upon entering the forest but was even more surprised to hear a sudden and utter silence fall over the forest and my other surroundings. The silence was one of those eerie ones where its suddenness makes it feel loud.


    My companions had also stopped moving, and the way that I was able to tell that this wasn''t natural was when I looked at Calorron and saw that his feet were still. In mid-air. He was clearly artificially frozen.


    That was the moment I checked out the notification and got the answers to questions that were mentally on the tip of my tongue.


    [Intervention alert:


    The forest is still reacting to the mass-miracle you performed last night. The domain of time, one of the greater domains, has authorized the system to perform what is, in essence, a quiet intervention before you enter the forest.


    The lesser creatures of the forest, insects, some plants, and lesser animals, have recognized you as their master and savior. As have a handful of greater creatures throughout the forest. This would complicate things for you as you enter the forest.


    The domain of knowledge is strongly suggesting we don''t reveal the precise nature of the elven investigation, but it has authorized us to ask you how you would like to proceed. Would you be fine allowing the forest creatures to recognize and react to you in your true might?


    Weirdly enough it is easier for simple creatures to react to your divinity and accept it, which normally advantages gods, hence why even the first tiers of influence over life-form subdomains tend to come with powers that grant mastery over lesser, unevolved lifeforms. Today, sadly, that is the problem.


    Your intelligent followers in the forest will recognize you unless you actively wish to be hidden from their understanding and they''ll be cautious to not rush towards you as long as you have the elves with you. The real question is do you wish to be hidden from your simple followers. Unevolved animals, the plants themselves, and other simple lifeforms.


    Do you wish to conceal your presence from those who serve you?]


    I quietly considered the question, before answering it in the affirmative. "I do wish, for now anyway, to not be recognized right away. Aside from by wolves. Direct wolves towards us, and deter other lesser animals. At least non-sapient ones. Allow my sapient followers to recognize me and be filled with awe and caution in my presence." I told the system.


    An instant later time was unfrozen. And the elves and I continued into the forest, uninterrupted by domains, subdomains, the system, or other, less powerful and more corporeal lifeforms.


    ________________________________________________


    Our expedition continued uneventfully as we strode far enough into the forest that the elves couldn''t see out of the place. My immense senses confirmed that no nearby animals moved close to us, aside from a single wolf who was gradually coming closer and closer to me.


    We were deep enough in the forest that trees stretched around us in each direction. Strangely enough, these trees radiated a dim, silvery light which prevented the forest from being as dark as it ought to have been. The grass itself also felt thick and fuller than it had felt the day before.


    It was at this point that my companions opted to finally begin to educate me as to what had brought them to my neck of the woods, in a very literal sense.


    "Althos, since you live in Comillas even if you''re a newcomer, you should know a bit about what we''re investigating." Began Farrane. I turned to look at her, my head tilting slightly to the left as I did so.


    "We''re here on a potentially urgent, but by no means secret mission. Last night this forest radiated strange, distinct energy. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. Our elven thaumaturge-technology detected the ripples of power, but it wasn''t magic. It was something else. Something... purer." Said Farrane, her voice filled with something resembling childlike wonder as she explained the purpose of the mission that brought the elves here.


    "We have been asked by our superiors to investigate this forest and determine exactly what happened last night. Our mission is not one we are ashamed of, and in fact, anything we find might be in the public interest of Comillas." She explained.


    With each word of hers the wolf who was approaching us drew nearer and nearer. I smiled as I feigned listening attentively to Farrane. I heard her and registered her words, but I also knew now what I needed to know. They were almost certainly investigating me, albeit indirectly.


    I turned my mind to something else altogether now. I opened up my list of faith domain abilities in preparation for the creation of a dryad, what I needed to do to acquire the first tier of influence over the subdomain of Fagaceae, a tree-type subdomain.


    [Faith domain passive powers:


    Create lesser spirit: This power allows you to create spirits related to the domains you have influence over. You can create oreads and dryads at the moment. Using this power is necessary to gain influence over the spirit domain, one of the greater domains.


    Soul sensing: This power, a synergistic one that is the result of possessing access to the powers granted to you by virtue of your tier of influence over the knowledge domain, allows you to glean someone''s soul and see specific information.


    Specifically, you''d be able to determine if someone would make for a good cleric, paladin, dark knight, templar, inquisitor, monk, or one of the pact classes, the witches, warlocks, and wards.


    Class granting: You can grant someone some of the religious classes. The classes you can currently grant are the cleric, witch/warlock/ward, templar, inquisitor, monks, paladin, and the dark knight classes.


    With the exception of the monk, no secular equivalents of these classes exist in this universe. Lay-monks work as archivists and guardians of knowledge, but otherwise, these classes were some of the lost-classes, classes that have ceased to exist since the end of the mythic age.


    Clerics are immensely devoted followers of the gods. They seek to enact the will of whatever god or goddess they follow, and see no greater purpose in their lives than that. Gods sent them omens, granted them magic, and told them their wills and the clerics served them faithfully and freely.


    Witches, warlocks, and wards are the ambitious mortals and extraplanars who make pacts of servitude with gods, goddesses, or other higher beings. In exchange for servitude, the mortal or extraplanar pact-makers are granted magic and other unique class features dependent on the nature of their pacts and the nature of their patrons. Witches are female, warlocks are male, and wards are for creatures whose genders are not binary.


    Paladins and dark knights were the respectively good and evil-aligned servitors of gods and goddesses of their chosen alignments. They were the traveling champions of their deities and served as both mobile missionaries of their lords, as well as militant leaders of the armed forces of their chosen deities. Gods and goddesses granted them lesser divine powers as a way to reward their service and aid in their successes.


    Templars were the lesser soldiers of their gods. These warriors had been convinced of godly glory and devoted their lives to service to their gods. Every templar sought to become a paladin or a dark knight eventually and prayed daily.


    Inquisitors were the followers of gods and goddesses who sought to ensure that people obeyed the precepts of their faiths. They were the brutal enforcers of theocracies. Deities, no matter their alignments, had inquisitors, though how feared their inquisitors tended to be depended on the alignments of the gods and goddesses themselves.


    Monks were followers of gods of law and or knowledge who lived in cloistered communities and stored and protected all manner of knowledge. Religious monks often built orders devoted to specific types of knowledge, usually after asking their gods or goddesses for guidance. Secular monks exist who work for brotherhoods and sisterhoods that collect, archive, and protect all manner of knowledge.


    New classes: You now possess the ''God'' and ''Patron'' classes. These classes come with distinct features, which you can learn about later on by clicking on the ''Religion'' symbol. The ''Patron'' class relates to your abilities to make pacts with mortals and extraplanars.


    You can also learn more about the classes you can grant mortals if you wish by clicking on the ''Religion'' symbol. The symbol is the shortcut to access all sorts of handy information about the various religions devoted to worshipping you in all sorts of ways.


    Demographic analysis: This power allows you to gain an understanding of who all worship you. It will grant you access to a considerable amount of information about your followers.


    Create teaching: By using this power you can begin to establish the more social and community-based aspects of the religions devoted to you and your glory. Upon using this power you''ll be asked to select particular groups of worshipers and they''ll automatically learn the teachings you impart on them.


    Faith domain active powers:


    Religious fervor: This is the name of an unusual active power gained by any and all deities when they gain access to their faith domain powers. Using it causes you to create a zone of awe wherein those who witness your divine acts because more susceptible and more likely to become worshipers of yours.


    This potent power is one of the key abilities gained by gods at an early age. It works on any sentient creature regardless of their alignment and lowers their resistance to your worship. In essence, this power renders people more likely to find themselves in awe of your power and more likely to believe your claims that you are divine.


    At the lowest tier of influence over the faith domain, this is a short-range ability and one that isn''t extremely strong but it''s still an incredibly useful power that can speed the process of acquiring worshipers.


    This divine power can be used freely, but it cannot be incorporated into your aura. That said if your goal is to acquire worshipers and just that then this is the perfect power for you.


    Unfettered divinity: This active power creates a small zone in which mortals are forced to accept the truth of your divinity. It doesn''t force them to worship you, but it can be used if mortals insist on denying your divinity as a way to force them to reckon with the reality that you are divine. It can be used twice every 3.5 days and lasts for an hour when used.]


    I quietly activated my "Create lesser spirit power" and was surprised when my not-so-mini-map opened up and I was asked to select a spawning point for the dryad I was about to create.

 56 Cosechian Teachings

    I selected a place for the dryad to spawn that was directly in front of us but that was also far enough from us so that we''d be unable to see the spirit when it came to life. I could still see it, as the thing was easily within my particular line of sight, but that was fine. It was gonna come to life well over five kilometers away.


    [Spawning point selected... Spawning point approved. Formatting information about dryads...


    Dryad: A dryad is a tree and forest spirit, all of which are women. There are two types of dryads: unbound dryads who are weaker yet also freer to travel than hamadryads, and hamadryads who choose to forgo freedom in exchange for stability, power, and responsibility.


    Both kinds of dryads are among the spiritual entities that persist in the multiverse even after the apocalyptic battle that extinguished all higher beings. Most kinds of spirits survived that battle and it is through them that mortals everywhere have some vague idea of how to worship, as some of the surviving spirits became the strongest beings in existence, until you came around that is.


    Unbound dryads are mobile forest guardians and in the ancient past were the servants, priestesses, wives or lovers of forest gods. Unbound dryads can choose to become hamadryads if they wish, though many prefer to live full, free lives before committing to that.


    Hamadryads are more mature dryads who live in a single tree and die only when that tree dies. They provide their arboreal homes with a limited form of immortality and draw strength from nearby woods.


    Hamadryads are often leaders of forest-dwelling fair-folks, another name for the fey, and tend to dislike the so-called "civilized races". These dryads tended to be among the greatest servants or closest friends of ancient forest gods.


    Both kinds of dryads are powerful in their own right, even if they are weak in comparison to many other kinds of spirits. Dryads tend to eschew clothing, though some wear outfits of leaves or other plant-life. Dryads defend themselves using potent nature magic, magic that they can wield naturally but in the past often augmented through worshipping and serving gods of nature.


    Finalizing preparation to create an unbound dryad. What would you like to name her?]


    After giving me a sorely needed explanation as to what dryads were, I was asked to name the spirit I was about to create. I felt a word immediately call out to me, powerfully coming into being in my mind. Raiz.


    I informed the system of my choice and then was greeted by a whole new screen.


    [Welcome to the lifeform creation menu. By creating a true spirit you are creating life. This is something you''ve yet to do, so we''re gonna take you through it step by step.] The system declared in my mind. Hearing such a declaration brought a smile to my face.


    [First things first, the entity you''re creating will be lacking a soul for the moment. This is fine, for a creature like a dryad that''s not that big of a deal, but we advise that you complete the quest to gain the first tier of influence over the soul domain so you can grant her a soul.] The system informed me. It didn''t explain exactly how that was bad, just that it was, which wasn''t hugely helpful.


    The new screen in front of me was a strange one. In the middle of it there was a shadowy outline of a person, a regular, human-sized and shaped person.


    On the left, there were a bunch of words like "Stats" and "Special qualities" each of which had several options and words underneath them. On the right, there were words about physical qualities like "Hair color" "Skin color" "Height and width".


    [Spirits you create will automatically worship and serve you. They gain more freedom as they grow older, but for a spirit to turn against a god who directly created it was rare in the mythic age. The menu before you depicts the stat block of the dryad and the physical appearance of the thing. Experiment with both to create the sort of dryad you wish to create.] The system explained.


    I spent the next few moments pouring over the words on both sides. When I tapped them they showed me what I could give my creation, and how I could modify her even before she was created. I ended up giving my dryad only some strength but gifting her high charisma, wisdom, and intelligence. I made her a short, pale-skinned beauty with hair the color of a Winesap apple.


    I was delighted to see a number of special qualities pop up when I tapped on that word as if part of some strange drop-down menu. Among other things, I could give her "Omnilingualism" which was the name for my ability to understand and speak all languages, select her class and levels, and grant her the ability to generate light.


    Upon completely filling out this screen I was asked to review what I had entered. I quickly did so, and then was asked one final question.


    [Would you like to give Raiz classes and class levels? With your current overall strength, you can grant her up to two classes, and cause her to come into being with an overall total level of three.] My companion asked me, quietly doing so with an unusual solemnness. I could tell this was a serious moment.


    "Can I make her a level two druid and a level one cleric?" I asked, curiously. I received an immediate response.


    [Absolutely! That is well within your capabilities. However, if you wish to do that there are a few religion-based things you must do first. Are you willing and ready to do those things right now?] The system asked, curiously. I did the mental version of a nod and heard an excited laugh escape the metaphysical lips of the system.


    [Come up with three teachings of the Cosechian faith. These need not be profound, but there absolutely must be three.] My companion told me. I thought for a second about what three teachings would be the most relevant to my agricultural and civilization-based cult. And then I came up with a single teaching.


    "Through Cosecha starvation is either a choice or a consequence of pride. Pray to Cosecha and it will always provide you with food to eat and water to drink." I informed the system, feeling quite satisfied with that particular teaching.


    As I informed the system about the teaching I quietly realized that the teaching could also eventually be used to link Cosechians to the sins of sloth and gluttony, which brought a smile to my face. That''d be handy in the near future when I focused on getting to the next tier of influence over the corruption subdomain. That was when I came up with my second teaching.


    "Animals are friends. Whether one is facing the biggest bear, the stealthiest snake, or the cruelest crocodile, all animals are potential allies and partners. Treat animals with respect and look forward to Cosecha''s blessing." I told the system.


    This teaching was unusual because it was the byproduct of many different things. It was partially because I didn''t like violence, partially due to my druidic nature, and also somewhat a product of my desire to gain omnipotence. That said I quite liked it, and quietly made gathering druids a priority, a lesser one, but a priority nonetheless. I liked the idea of having more druids and more animals under my control.


    My final teaching was an easy one. It took me barely a few seconds to come up with. And I was quite proud as I said it to the system.


    "Cosecha works to create a world of harmony. Show Cosecha your gratitude by having large families, and teaching them what Cosecha has taught you. Devote yourself to Cosecha and act on your desires." This teaching was sinful and encouraged worshipers to surrender to lust, for the sake of reproduction.


    I recognized that this was me giving something to corruption, but I also knew that this was a reward to the domain of faith as it served to increase my worshipers in the long-term. I was okay with giving corruption this small victory, knowing that I''d need to give it small victories to gain further influence over it, which was something I''d need to do to eventually become all-powerful. I was musing on that when the system next spoke to me.


    [Your teachings have been accepted and will be transmitted to all of Cosechians as well as to all Althonians who revere you as a god of nature and healing.] The system announced. I nodded at it, right as it asked me one final question.


    [Can you come up with a dogma for Cosechians? Dogmas are a set of principals for your followers to follow to please you. This would apply specifically to Cosechians, and Raiz would know to repeat it to humanoids in your presence. She will be gifted knowledge of your current predicament and will aid you as soon as you and your allies come across her.] My companion asked me.


    I spent a few moments thinking of one that felt worth telling the system. It was difficult at first, but eventually one finally came into being that I felt proud of.


    "Protect the earth and the earth shall provide. By working with nature rather than against it, one can have one''s needs met while keeping the world clean and beautiful for those to come. Trust in Cosecha and it shall ensure that your needs are met. Strive to live peacefully and honorably with your neighbors, and to establish happy homes and families." I confidently told the system. And then the entity began to laugh softly. It stopped shortly after starting and began to talk to me.


    [I apologize for laughing Althos, I just find it interesting that Cosecha is now, in essence, a spirit of civilization. The cult of the harvest you''re making is a cult that promotes careful living, peaceful-relationships with one''s neighbors, and happy home life. It''s an interesting transformation.] My first friend told me. I chuckled softly, not really disagreeing with what it said and began to reply.


    "In fairness, those things do help with successful harvests. Farming is hard work, and to do so as successfully as possible requires a lot of stability and control over one''s own environment." I told my companion, speaking inwardly.


    [That''s a very fair point, but it''s worth noting that you''ve created what could reasonably be described as a lawful-good cult while you yourself are chaotic-neutral.] My friend retorted.


    I laughed, audibly at that. That caused my companions to look over at me curiously as we strode deeper and deeper into the woods. I looked away sheepishly and muttered something about remembering a funny joke. They smirked at me, skeptically, but appeared to accept my excuse.


    "I am not a foolish or ignorant person my friend. I am keenly aware that I will need to do such things to become all-powerful. Eventually, I''ll need to create chaotic evil cults. Possibly to begin to control demons. I know that the road to omnipotence is paved with contradictory actions. I am... well I am as ready to do such things as I possibly can be, given my youth." I told the system, speaking honestly.


    [Hmm... we see. The domains, subdomains, and I are excited to hear that. And now... I will play my part in the activation of this power, and finish bringing Raiz to life.] The system announced, speaking proudly and boldly.


    [All you have to do is select your Cosechian symbol. Is a golden apple okay with you?] My ally asked before my mind was filled with the image of a single golden apple. It was slightly stylized to glow more than the golden apples I had created had, but not much more. I mentally nodded and the system made a joy-filled sound.


    [Do you care to share with us what you envision Raiz''s purpose being? That will help us craft her into precisely the sort of spirit that will be maximally effective at serving you.] The system, speaking for itself as well as for all of the domains and subdomains asked me. I allowed myself a moment to thoughtfully consider the question.


    "Purpose? Hmm... what would I do with Raiz after I create her?" I asked myself. "I suppose I should make her my high-priestess? It''s a fitting role for a dryad." I mused, before quietly settling on that. I informed the system of my choice and heard a faint laugh emanate from the thing.


    [I suppose that makes sense. In that case, we''ll add a few extra features to her, to make her feel like a real high-priestess.] My ally told me, bring a smile to my face.


    I watched as far off in the distance a new being sprung to life. At first, the entity was smooth and hairless, and more eerily she was a short, human-shaped, featureless doll. But seconds after she phased into existence, she was given actual features.


    The woman was given a sharp nose, pointed ears, beautiful green eyes, long, wavy red hair, and her curvy, sensual body-parts were covered in leaves and other assorted natural detritus. She had a birthmark of a shimmering apple on her exposed shoulder. She smiled, and I sent her a mental message.


    "Welcome to life Raiz. You are now the high-priestess of the Cosechian faith." I told her, smiling.


    "Thank you master. I look forward to serving you." She replied, her voice a sing-songy one that filled my head with the pleasant sensation of music and song. She began to make her way towards the elves and I.


    I sped us up, encouraging us to venture deeper into the forest in hopes of uncovering the mysteries that lay before us. My elven allies looked at me curiously but obliged me and we sped forth, drawing ever closer to my newest servant and worshiper.

 57 A Different Sort Of Creation

    As we drew closer and closer to the first lifeform I had ever created, the Cosechian high-priestess named Raiz, my elven allies began to sense something. They were tight-lipped about it, but they couldn''t hide their physical reactions from me.


    Their ears perked up, a strange sight when such a thing happened to an elf, and their hearts began to race. I could audibly hear the pounding of their hearts quicken thanks to my enhanced senses. Their hands, previously at their sides, twisted and stretched towards their weaponry.


    Inwardly I chuckled, as I began to piece together that they could in all likelihood somehow sense Raiz. I quietly sent her a message as well. "Be careful, my allies might have detected you. I''m unsure of why, but their hands are atop their weaponry and their body language indicates that something has spooked them. Don''t attack if they attack." I told her, commanding the newborn to stay calm.


    "But master, am I in danger?" She asked, replying to me in the exact same method in which I communicated with her. I was tempted to shake my head, but we were still over three kilometers apart. It wasn''t likely that she could see me, and it''d surely confuse my already tense allies.


    "No Raiz, you are not in danger. I doubt they''d strike first, and even if they did I have light-speed reflexes and can manipulate light into forming protective barriers. You''re safe." I told the newborn dryad while explaining just one way in which I could protect her.


    Inwardly I knew that if I needed too I could also drain Farrane of her ability to use magic and telekinetically catch any arrows or any other weapons that Calorron might use against my servant. I felt ready to play defense if worst came to worst.


    Earlier in the day, the moment I had arrived in the forest, a wolf began to dash towards me. That wolf, being a beautifully persist thing, was continuing to approach me. It was still far away though.


    It took us a few minutes, but eventually, we did manage to reach Raiz. We were still in a darkened part of the forest though, and so it took my companions longer than it would have otherwise to actually detect the short, red-headed dryad who at that point had begun to patiently stand still and wait for us to reach her.


    It was while we were walking towards her that I received the notification alerting me to the powers I had just gained from the Fagaceae subdomain for creating Raiz, which was my reason for doing so.


    [Details about the Fagaceae subdomain:


    The Fagaceae subdomain is the subdomain of a tree-type but effectively serves as the arboreal subdomain. By gaining influence over it, you are gaining influence over evergreen trees, and gain assorted tree-type abilities.


    Once you gain enough influence over it, it officially becomes the arboreal subdomain, governing all tree-types, and its powers already affect a healthy amount of trees. It''s worth the work.


    To gain further influence over this particular subdomain you must awaken and nurture tree-servants. This subdomain is the first to grant you an awakening ability, the ability to grant sapience to a non-sapient creature or entity, though it is a limited awakening ability that will only work on trees, even if they are non-Fagaceae trees.


    Fagaceae subdomain passive powers:


    Photosynthesis manipulation: This power grants you the ability to cause photosynthesis in plants, eliminating their need for sunlight. You can activate this power remotely and can use it to speed or slow the growth of plants, especially if it''s mixed with your entropic manipulation ability. This is a synergistic power that is the result of the light domain mixing with the Fagacaea subdomain.


    Root manipulation: This power allows you to command tree roots specifically. By using it you can further use the earth or nature as a weapon, or you can transport trees from one place to another. Your abilities to manipulate roots aren''t limited to just manipulating their location either.


    Roots serve a number of functions, including feeding the plants they are a part of. If you wish you could activate a root''s feeding function, causing the organ to drain nutrients, life, and energy from people or creatures entangled in them, instead of through photosynthesis or water absorption.


    Tree transformation: This power allows you to manipulate the shape of a tree, enabling you to transform a tree into a humanoid-like shape, if you wish to, or something stranger if you''re so inclined. You can mix this ability with your awakening ability to create all manner of life, civilization, and art.


    Leaf manipulation: This ability allows you to manipulate leaves, forming things from barriers to weapons with them at will. This power allows you to transform leaves into thorns, spines, and prickles, and use them as needed.


    Arboreal aura: This aura is one that ambiently heals and strengthens trees in your proximity, even if it''s just their roots under the ground you''re on top of. If attacked near trees this aura will cause roots to come to your defense and has a small chance of causing nearby trees to awaken spontaneously and temporarily to aid you.


    Fagaceae subdomain active power:


    Awakening: You can awaken trees, granting them sapience. This power''s precise effects are hard to nail down, but it causes trees to animate and gain a similar sort of will and thought-processes as humans and other humanoids have. By animating them this power grants them ambulatory abilities and the ability to speak a single language.


    This ability is best when mixed with other abilities, not when used on its own. When mixed with the powers of the soul domain this power can be used to create all sorts of new species. Trees have weaker souls but possess souls nonetheless.


    To truly transform an awakened tree, it is necessary to replace its soul with one of your own creation. Creatures awakened by you automatically worship and serve you.


    This is perhaps your strongest power that this world''s oldest historians recognize was an ability once usable by mortals, though it hasn''t been used by a mortal in millennia, possibly as far back as the end of the mythic age. Truthfully this power is a synergistic one that stems from the intersection of various subdomains with the mind domain.


    This ability can be used eight times per three hour period.


    Fagaceae subdomain blessing and curse details:


    The Fagaceae subdomain''s blessing is only applicable to Fagaceae plants. Plants blessed in this way are stronger, healthier, and if awoken become smarter and faster creatures.


    The curse this power applies causes Fagaceae plants to be weakened and more easily destroyed.]


    Shortly after reading through the entry, a process that took me a few seconds, I realized that I had a chance to set Raiz at ease using these newfound abilities. I quietly began to activate and experiment with my new abilities. I did so in a location that was far from me: right beside Raiz.


    ________________________________________________


    I mentally focused on three distant trees. None of them were particularly large, and all three of them were close to my newest ally: Raiz. I quietly envisioned their diminutive, for trees anyway, forms shifting into distinct shapes, making rough use of my new ability to transform trees.


    One of the trees seemed to shrink, becoming shorter and thicker, and taking on a distinctly lupine form. This process was a noisy one, one which caused Raiz''s head to turn and examine my work. As she did so she mentally messaged me.


    "Master, is this your doing or should I prepare myself for combat?" She asked, fear and awe mixing in equal parts in her mental tone as I was weaving together an arboreal wolf right next to her. I chuckled and formulated a response to her.


    "Sorry Raiz, I just wanted to go ahead and begin doing what I needed to do. I am creating a... honor-guard of sorts for you, as is befitting a high priestess of a spirit of nature and civilization alike." I told her, as I envisioned a tree-like wolf and set about making my will manifest. I heard her sigh and relax when she knew that I was protecting her.


    This power of mine seemed to work by taking the mental images I created in my mind and shaping the targeted tree or trees in a way to create that image. It didn''t require much focus, but I still paid it significant attention, because I wanted to thoroughly master it. I could sense the potential of this power, and knew that to make such potent manifest I''d need to pay careful attention to this power.


    The tree I was using as my base to form the wolf was one that was large enough for me to make the thing taller than Raiz, and look like an impossibly muscled wolf. I imagined that its paws would be enormous and that its claws would be misshapen spines made from leaves.


    In order to make its face, I smoothed and thinned a bit of its trunk, and created the necessary body parts, the eyes, the snout, and the teeth, using different powers. It was an experiment, one that took a great deal of concentration since I was relying on an instinctual understanding of what a "wolf" even was. I had only ever encountered coyotes, not wolves.


    For the thing''s eyes, I activated my created dark green lights where its eyes would have been located, had it been an actual wolf. For its snout, I kept thinning and smoothing out part of its trunk, elongating its face further. And for its teeth, I used my new ability to manipulate roots and wove them together tightly.


    "Say hello to your new pet." I told Raiz, as I quietly awoke the thing, feeling a surge of power leave myself and invisibly sail towards and then into what had once been little more than a lupine statue. The second the transformed tree was struck by my power, it began to move slowly. Its paws shuddered, and then the rest of it began to lightly vibrate. I smiled and turned my attention to the other two trees I had targeted.


    Both of the other trees were taller than the tree that was now a slowly animating and awakening lupine-shaped tree. They stood around five meters tall. I was gonna reduce their height significantly, but neither tree was particularly tall relative to the other trees I could see throughout the forest.


    Their intended shapes were easier for me to conceptualize. I wanted them to become human-like bodyguards and servants of Raiz, to give her the appearance of someone loved and cared for by her master. Which in fairness was exactly what she was.


    I envisioned the other two trees, one of which was behind the newly animated wolf-tree, and one of which was not far from either tree, thickening and losing their height in exchange for the appearance of muscle mass. I watched as both things went from standing just over five meters tall to a modest height of just under three meters, and nearly doubling in thickness even as took on a human-like appearance.


    Their "skin" was made of dark brown bark, and they had enormous arms. They had powerfully "muscled" chests, made of particularly dense bark, the thickest and hardest parts of their trunks. And this was when I got brave.


    "Let''s see if I can speed this up." I told myself, feeling courageous, as I suddenly pictured two whole men made of bark and other tree parts. I pictured their faces, mouths made from parted wood, teeth made of sharpened leaves, and empty eye sockets. I pictured their hands made from wood and their leafy fingers. I even pictured their root-based legs, covered in a wooden exoskeleton.


    Raiz was once again alarmed as the other two trees suddenly transformed into fully-formed statues of men. An instant later I once again expelled two invisible surges of awakening energy, surges that collided with the statues quite easily just moments after I expelled them, and animated the trees.


    As the elves and I got closer and closer to Raiz and her newly created honor-guard, my mind turned to what sort of items, particularly what sort of weapons I ought to give the trees, and indeed my high-priestess herself. I wanted them to be armed with items that fit their overall nature motif. It was while I was thinking about how to arm my worshipers that I received a handy notification.


    [Notes about awakenings:


    Awakened creatures serve you differently than non-awakened creatures do. Creatures awakened by gods are among their most fanatical servants, creatures eager to devote themselves to their awakeners. They are not always the most intelligent entities, but their fanaticism is a powerful tool for any god and they strive to perform whatever orders they are given to the best of their abilities.


    Awakened entities were often tasked by gods to either accompany them on adventures or to guard specific locations. Only a handful of gods truly strove to maximum the awesome power of awakening entities or even using awakened creatures to create entirely new species.


    Awakened creatures count as "creations" of gods, not just as worshipers. Godly "creations" include creatures given life by gods, which grant them access to a number of boons, evolutions, and divine gifts that are greater than mere worshipers can get.


    You can actually peer into the minds of entities you awaken, which you don''t yet have the power to do to other things. It might be worth doing if you''re curious about what minds are like.


    Awakened creatures tend to be granted classes by their divine awakeners. Granting the wolf-like tree a class might require some forethought but granting the human-like trees a class doesn''t.


    Would you like to grant the two human-like transformed trees the templar class? Templars don''t receive any particularly flashy powers or enormous stat boosts so they are a good starter class.]


    I mentally informed the system that that was exactly what I wanted to do. And then I reached into the minds of my new creations out of curiosity to see what such environments would be like.


    ________________________________________________


    The three trees that ambled to life, were still in the process of ambling upwards and beginning to gain some real sense of consciousness when their "creator" peered into their newly elevated minds. What he found was both disappointing and intriguing.


    He found himself in three strange places. All of them were dark, empty, and filled with potential. Althos could quietly sense the potential that existed in these minds, but he couldn''t sense memories, fears, hopes, or anything else. These three places, places he existed in all at once, were unpopulated.


    The young god spent a few moments in these locations, before vacating them. But as he did, he gave his creations their first orders. They weren''t complex.


    "Obey me." He told them, mentally commanding them in an incredibly powerful and authoritative tone. He had created them to obey him, and to fulfill one other purpose. That other purpose was his second command.


    "Protect her." He demanded, before picturing Raiz''s face. He didn''t demand that they obey her, merely that they protect her. That was deliberate, a willful, conscious choice that he made.


    The three infantile minds made quiet noises of affirmation and obedience. Althos smiled, satisfied that his creations had heard him, and vacated their minds. As he did so, the three entities immediately began to miss the presence of their "creator".


    It was around this time that the three began to fully stand up. And as they did so, the hands belonging to the two humanoid-trees were immediately filled with equipment constructed by their creator.


    While portions of his mind had been in their minds, another portion of his mind had been actively manipulating light to a specific end. Althos had been hand-crafting weapons and armor from light, weapons which now found themselves in the hands of the two human-like awakened trees, and armor which found itself protectively clinging to the wooden forms of the awakened trees.


    A spear found its way into the hands of each of the humanoid trees. One spear was fashioned from light that Althos had manipulated to "look" red, making it clearly visible to any virtually humanoid''s eyes. A sword found its way into the hand of the other humanoid tree. The sword was fashioned from what looked like bright yellow light, light that drew in one''s vision.


    The spear-wielder found itself holding onto a dark "leash" made of tempered light that was connected to the lupine-tree, and immediately sensed that it had received one extra task: to be the animal handler of their little party. The tree was unsure of if it was ready for this responsibility, but it felt sure that its awakener wouldn''t ask it to do the impossible and committed itself to the task Althos asked of it.


    The one holding the sword was given a shield as well, and quietly sent feelings of gratitude towards its mysterious maker. The trees didn''t know the identity of their awakener, they only knew that he was close, and he was approaching them. They knew that their creator had tasks for them to do, and all three creatures readied themselves to obey their maker, even as he drew ever closer to them.


    Althos and the elves were inching closer and closer to the new party of woodland beings and as both groups readied themselves for their meeting, Althos and Raiz began to mentally communicate once more.


    The god and creator of the arboreal party rightfully felt that it was wise for him and his dryadic high-priestess to be on the same page as he led the elves ever-nearer to his wooden and spiritual servants.

 58 Introductions And Questions

    "Raiz, I want to make you look like a true high-priestess. And that means that you walk around, protected." I explained to my newest creation, while I inspected the bizarre beings I had given new life too in order to protect her.


    The creatures were reshaped, shambling trees. Two of them vaguely resembled humans or at least humanoids, and one of them was a massive, wolf-like thing made of wood. They all possessed eerie, ethereal eyes, roughly eye-shaped orbs of light that illuminated other empty spaces where their eye sockets would have been on the creatures they modeled after.


    The two human-shaped ones loosely held weapons of light, one of them holding a spear of light and the other holding a light-blade. They were both outfitted with one extra piece of gear as well. In the case of the spear-holder, it was gripping an imitation of a leash, tied to the neck of the wolf-tree. I studied all three of my creations before I turned my attention fully to Raiz.


    "These creatures are your bodyguards. They have one order: to protect you." I told Raiz over our mental connection. I saw her turn to the arboreal playthings that stood beside her and look at them. She wasn''t enthused about the situation, but when she replied to me her tone wasn''t as negative as it could have been.


    "Alright, master... I trust you." She told me, speaking sincerely albeit somewhat unhappily. I chuckled but kept that hidden from her as to not worsen her mood.


    "Thank you, Raiz. Your trust is not misplaced and in time I shall give you protectors that more match your particular aesthetic tastes. Whatever those happen to be." I told her, aware that her concern with her current retinue might well be one of optics rather than something immaterial.


    If it was true that her concern was one of optics and aesthetics I could understand that and didn''t begrudge her for it. A part of me, perhaps either due to the influence of the domain of faith or the subdomain of corruption, had an intuitive understanding of the importance of optics and aesthetics.


    I understood that to mortals, aesthetics carried weight and could shape impressions and opinions. And I wanted mortal worshipers.


    Her bodyguards were an odd-looking group. That was only partially my fault, as it was true that I didn''t give them especially impressive looking gear, or craft them to be works of art, but it was also partially because trees aren''t the kind to give the aesthetic opinions of elves much, if any consideration. That said, every second brought us closer to them.


    But in time, we got close enough to my party of servants that the time came for me to cease studying my creations and for me to meet them, in the flesh. Within a few minutes, Farrane and Calorron drew close enough to Raiz and her bodyguards that the elves could see the dryad and her unusual honor-guard.


    Our encounter began with my elvish allies verbally greeting the strangers they could finally see.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello! We are visitors to this forest. May we approach and converse with you?" Calorron asked when we stood about sixty or so meters away from the wooded warriors I had created. I used this time to truly study Raiz for the first time.


    She stood under a meter and a half tall. She had a curvy body, one that I had bestowed upon her consciously as a manner to lure lust-driven mortals to her more easily. She had long, wavy, red hair inspired by one of the more common colors of apples that was made all the more lovely by contrasting it with her snow-like pale skin.


    She had bright green eyes and the sharp-pointed ears of elven kind. She radiated a faint aura of magic, a dimly visible green one, but at a glance, I had difficulty discerning what kind of magic she was radiating. It was magic, unlike any kind I had seen so far, which was annoyingly limited. While studying the aura I heard the voice of the domain of knowledge whisper into my mind.


    "That aura... it''s possible she''s radiating evocation magic, which tends to be magic that druids excel at manipulating. Not that you would know..." Said my free-loading companion, before making a snarky and unnecessary remark. An accurate one, but still an unnecessary one.


    "Hey, all I''m saying is that you should focus on building your influence over all of the subdomains of magic, and not just the ones your soul is attuned to." Complained the domain, which made me roll my eyes. Once again, it wasn''t wrong, but it was still annoying.


    "Hey, that''s the other domains say about me too!" Whispered the obnoxious entity. I heard a faint giggle come from it before I refocused and continued studying Raiz.


    Loose piles of multicolored leaves covered Raiz''s naked body, keeping the parts of her that mortals tended to find the most pleasurable to look at just out of view. Aside from that she immodestly showed my allies and myself her body, which was quite pleasing to look at.


    I would have focused more on her companions, but I had already studied them extensively. I wasn''t about to pay them anymore mind just yet. Raiz turned and began to reply to Calorron.


    "Hello friends, welcome to the Rodan forest. I am Raiz, the high priestess of the Cosechian faith. Please come and introduce yourselves. Do not be afraid of me or of my... relatives. They are blessings bestowed upon me by the god I serve. They do not seek to harm anyone, only to protect me while I enact my master''s will." Raiz declared, her voice carried to us on the winds themselves.


    Farrane looked to me, and I shrugged. She then looked to Calorron and he nodded at her. And so we closed what little distance separated us from Raiz and my other creations, with a few swift moments of motion.


    ________________________________________________


    When we stood just 10 or so meters away from Raiz, we found ourselves on one end of a path and found them on the other end. The four of them together soundly blocked us from advancing forward, as although none of them were particularly bulky when they stood shoulder to shoulder they were just tall and wide enough to keep us from advancing unless we went around them.


    I was the first to speak, moving a bit closer as I did so. I smiled at my creations, proud of them for so regally and distinctly representing me.


    "Hello! My name is Althos and I am a druid and healer who lives in a nearby community. For the past few days I have been coming to this place and healing who I could. I am interested in learning about the Rodan forest, and so are my companions." I declared, speaking excitedly and energetically to the creatures in front of me.


    As I spoke I telepathically transmitted a message all of my followers who stood before me, while linking our minds together. It was a simple message.


    "Hello, my name is Althos. I am also the entity known as Cosecha. I am your creator, and I aspire to be worthy of your worship and your service." I informed them, knowing that Raiz knew my name already and that my other servants didn''t. I felt three powerful surges of awe and worship surge into me as my creations suddenly had names for me. It widened the smile already on my face.


    "Hello Althos! I and my... lesser siblings," She said the words "lesser siblings" with a touch of annoyance distinctly audible in her voice. "Are newborn or newly created creations of a young god named Cosechca. This god is a spirit of the harvest, and... other things." She said, smiling cryptically at us.


    I had to work to hide my grin as my elven allies looked at Raiz suspiciously. They weren''t exactly distrustful of the young dryad, but they weren''t fans of the cryptic comment she just made, which was honestly quite fair.


    "Raiz, there''s a lot... weird about what you just said." Calorron told the young dryad, a tense expression on his face. There was an edge of steel in his voice as he spoke, but he was careful to not make any overtly hostile statements just yet. Raiz turned to look at him and smiled disarmingly.


    "I apologize sir..." She said, before quickly waiting for him to introduce himself. The elf, annoyed at both his own rudeness and her exceedingly gentle way of pointing it out, began to speak.


    "I am Calorron. I am an elf who is a part of the Ansari empire. As is my companion. Yesterday there was an... event in this forest. The Ansari empire maintains its own colony on a nearby island and that was where we were stationed. Our technology detected... energy coming from this forest." Said Calorron, introducing himself and then immediately beginning to explain why he and Farrane were here. Farrane immediately interrupted him, her eyes throwing daggers his way.


    "And I am Farrane. As Calorron was saying, we''re here to investigate this place. The existence of a... god, in this forest is definitely something we''d like to learn more about." She said, speaking cautiously and in a tempered way. Raiz smiled at both of them, and her eyes were suddenly filled with palpable energy.


    "You''re curious about Cosecha? Cosecha is my creator! I''d be thrilled to tell you about it." She said, in a rapid burst of words. Her soft voice was filled with awe as it exploded out of her.


    The two elves gave each other a look, one that was intriguing to me because I could tell it was significant to the two of them but was unsure of precisely how. I ended up being the first person of the three of us on my end to speak after her energetic and bubbly voice spilled out of her.


    "Why do you keep calling it, Cosecha, an ''it''?" I asked, honestly curious about this. This was a legitimate question, as it was an odd thing that I had picked up on and was intrigued by.


    "Well because Cosecha is... a chimera. You see, Cosecha is a god, but also it''s more than that." She told me before time suddenly froze again, capturing her mid-thought and mid-utterance. It was easier for me to tell this time because Raiz''s mouth was still open.


    [Shit.] Muttered the system. This caught me off guard, so I stayed still as I waited for the system to expand on what was happening.


    "I told you that you should have told him." Said the domain of knowledge, in a rather smug voice. I couldn''t help but chuckle, as I wondered what I was about to learn.


    [Well Althos, we have good news...] The system, my oldest companion, told me. Its voice was rather chipper, but clearly artificially and falsely so.


    [Do you remember back when you first came to life, your wild-traits?] The system asked, attempting to lead me to a conclusion that almost immediately made itself apparent with just that question.


    "Are you telling me that you told my first creation more about myself than you told me? Because I can easily guess that you''ve figured out what ''More Than Meets The Eye'' means." I said, wanting to laugh, but also wishing that the system had a face so I could at least yell at it rather than speak loudly in my own mind.


    [In our defense, she takes after you, and the earliest signs of MTMTE are beginning to show.] The system explained, abbreviating my wild trait. I took a deep breath, and then calmed myself before next speaking.


    "So what does it mean? What am I? Because Raiz made it clear that I am not just a god." I asked, both curious and annoyed in equal measure. I was so annoyed that I almost forgot to ask a good question, but I corrected that the second I noticed it.


    "Also, what reason could you possibly have for explaining something I don''t know about myself to her and keeping it hidden from me?" I asked, and this question was born entirely from annoyance.


    [Well Althos, those are all really good questions and fortunately, we''ve got... somewhat good answers? We''ve got alright answers. We would have really liked to have more time to research this. You''re a... one of a kind creature.] The system teased, before finally launching into a real explanation.

 59 More Than Meets The Eye

    [Althos you aren''t just a god.] Explained the system, doing so with surprising boldness and directness. I was quiet, even though I had several questions floating around in my mind. That was the sort of declaration that implied that it wasn''t a complete thought.


    [To be clear there is no precise word for what you are, as nothing like you has ever existed before. You''re a sort of... omni-higher-being. A creature who could potentially have the powers of a number of an unknown number of higher being types. Possibly all of them.] My companion explained, carefully using imprecise language. But now I had a question.


    "If nothing like me has ever existed before then did no higher-beings ever breed with another type of higher-being?" I asked, curiously. It sounded, to me anyway, like I was just a hybrid.


    [Whenever interbreeding occurred the children that were created were either exceptionally powerful mortals or a higher-being that was a member of one species or another with a handful of powers of the species of their other parent. And you have no parents. Which isn''t unheard of for gods, but it''s still uncommon.] Said the system, patiently working to help me understand my own uniqueness.


    "So wait... functionally, what does this mean for me?" I asked, curiously. The system chuckled before next beginning to speak.


    [It means that when we say that no limits affect you we mean it. As an... ultimate higher-being, there truly isn''t a power-cap we could imagine affecting you. We''ve also quietly hypothesized that this is limited to your other wild traits, especially ''Shapeless One''. It would make sense for this weird trait of your genetics to have influenced your lack of a true form.] My first friend revealed.


    I took advantage of this moment to aim a casting of "disease bolt" at Calorron, waited for it to collide with him, and then immediately healed him of whatever disease he just received. I figured I might as well take advantage of this moment, as I wasn''t frozen even if everything else was.


    I smiled as I received the notification about the domain of disease, and mentally refocused on my exact surroundings, as opposed to reading through the thing right away. And the system began to speak once more.


    [Right now the domains and I can detect two distinct other sources of power beginning to come from you and we have theories about their causes. One of them is a surge of deep elemental power, which we suspect is the first sign of you being an elemental overlord, an elemental of god-level power.] The entity that resided in my mind explained.


    [This power first started emanating from you when you first gained influence over the subdomain of earth. It''s likely that as you gain more influence over the other elemental subdomains this''ll increase in potency until you start manifesting the powers of an elemental overlord, which are all reality-defying elemental powers.] The voice told me.


    [The other source of power we picked up on is that of powerful natural energy, the sort associated with the fey. This started emanating from you last night, so we suspect that its because you gained fey worshipers last night. It''s possible that the more fey worshipers you gain, the more... fey power you''ll gain. Eventually, this could manifest in you gaining the powers of an archfey, a monarch of a fey court.] The system said, quietly and reverentially. I had questions.


    "So wait, you''re making it pretty clear that I''ll be gaining new powers from this. Are the powers that I would gain from these... additional sets of titles and responsibilities distinct and mutually exclusive from my godly powers?" I asked, curious to learn about what was being revealed to me, and all of its intriguing implications.


    [Yes. As a god, if you ever became omnipotent, you''d gain the power to make the sorts of creatures we just talked about but their abilities would be distinct. Now they wouldn''t be. If we''re correct, and we are, then you''re on your way to gaining a virtually unlimited number of powers. The road ahead is long, to be sure, but at the end of it lies a sort of omnipotence no entity ever imagined possible.] The thing announced, confidently.


    "What other kinds of higher-beings are there?" I asked, hoping to get a clear answer. I was almost immediately disappointed.


    [There are several actually. More than mortals realized. The big ones though are the gods, demon lords, archdevils, archfey, elemental overlords, angel kings, archon queens, and the outer gods.] The voice revealed, teasing me with the suggestion that there were others.


    "Why did you tell Raiz before you told me?" I asked, knowing that this conversation was gradually beginning to wind down.


    [Ugh. We were hoping you had forgotten about that. We told her because she kept asking what you were, and Truth told her that you were more than a god, because... well she''s Truth. She wasn''t able to fully explain it, so Raiz took it as you being a hybrid higher-being rather than something that has well and truly never existed before.] The system told me, explaining it quite simply.


    "So... what now? Do we know of a way to test if I truly am as limitless as you say I am?" I asked, a few seconds after my companion told me why Raiz was told bits and pieces of the truth about me before I was.


    [Well... The way for us to test it is for you to continue building your power. Ultimately it seems like whatever ambient powers are hidden away within you begin to make themselves known to us when you gain influence over the right domains and subdomains and gain the right types of worshipers. So, for now, you need to continue building your power.] The system told me, uncertainty audible in its voice.


    [It''s possible that in time you''ll be asked to undertake epic-level quests in order to truly gain mastery over the non-god higher-being powers we suspect you''ll eventually unlock. These quests will probably involve you going into the assorted dimensions that the non-god higher-beings once controlled. Places like Deep-Stone, the Wildlands, and the Heart of Darkness.] The entity said, whispering those names reverentially.


    I was quiet for a good while after it said this. I knew there was a question I had wanted to ask, but I couldn''t quite articulate it. It was related to something that I had noticed, but couldn''t quite verbalize. But eventually, after perhaps a few minutes of silence, I was able to put words to it.


    "What is the difference between a god and a spirit? It seems like we use those words kind of interchangeably." I asked, aware that we had described Cosecha as both a god and as a spirit depending on to whom we were speaking. I heard a gentle laugh emanate from the system.


    [Gods are a type of spirit. Gods are the strongest kind of spirit actually. And lesser spirits survived the end of the mythic age. So it''s easier for many mortals to understand that you are a spirit rather than hoping that they understand what it means that you are actually a god.] The system told me.


    I nodded at that, right before the system asked me one quick question.


    [Are you ready for us to unfreeze time? Or do you have any questions?] The thing asked.


    "If it takes me gaining more influence over the elemental subdomains, can you tell me how to gain the first tier of influence over them?" I asked, while finally beginning to look at the details of the subdomain of disease.


    [Nope, I cannot. But you can learn how to gain influence over them yourself if you just work towards it. Just submerge yourself in water, set something on fire, and fly. Remember, gaining access to the quests is supposed to be easy.] The thing told me, and I swore I could hear a grin on its lips if it even possessed any.


    [But anyway, finish looking over the disease domain''s powers and then we''ll unfreeze time.] The entity announced. A part of me wondered how I''d go about even accessing the quest to gain influence over the domain of time, and unsurprisingly the system was silent when it came to that.


    I knew it could still hear me, so I let it be. For now anyway. I turned my full attention to the domain notification I had received earlier.


    [Details about the disease domain:


    The disease domain governs all manners of sicknesses, conditions, and disorders. As such it is... one of the domains that are potentially cataclysmic if used by a god that seeks to bring devastation to a community, civilization, or even entire planet.


    There are three domains and one subdomain that together comprise a quarter of entities known as the "Apocalypse Quadrangle". The domains of death, war, disease, and the subdomain of agriculture all wield powers that can decimate planets even at their lowest tiers of influence.


    To gain influence over the disease domain it is necessary to build two sorts of cults: cults devoted to the creation and spreading of diseases, and another cult devoted to combating diseases. This is a domain that is influenced both by spreading and combatting what it governs, which isn''t uncommon among some of the... eerier domains and subdomains.


    Disease domain passive powers:


    Cure disease: No disease is beyond your power to heal. Magical, or non-magical, you can cure diseases and can restore someone to health. Magical diseases you cure are added to the disease you can infect someone with, but you can''t manipulate them or gain mastery over them just yet.


    Non-magical disease manipulation: This power is a vicious one that allows you to seize and control diseases. You can minimize or even eliminate symptoms of a disease, including making the whole thing asymptomatic, but causing carriers to remain infectious.


    Inversely you can also magnify the effects of symptoms and increase the overall deadliness of the disease in question. Eventually, you''ll be able to add symptoms to diseases, both magical and nonmagical diseases and magical and nonmagical symptoms.


    Non-magical disease mastery: This power is one of the more unusual mastery powers. You become a lord of pestilence but that doesn''t mean that you automatically control all diseases.


    In order to master diseases, you have to learn about them by encountering creatures infected with them. When you do, and you cure the diseases they suffer from or you magnify their effects, you gain mastery over the sicknesses that plagued them. Whenever you encounter someone suffering from a disease of some sort you ought to use your ability to manipulate non-magical diseases.


    Parasite dominance: This synergistic power is a fusion of the subdomain of vermin and the disease domain. It functions similarly to the power from the Hymenoptera subdomain that grants mastery over unevolved ants.


    Unevolved parasites such as mosquitoes, mites, lice, and more automatically become your worshipers and servants the minute they become aware of you. This power functions retroactively as well so when time is unfrozen you''ll automatically gain many new worshipers.


    Corruption of the mind: This synergistic power allows you to cause heightened libido to be a symptom of any disease, and to transform any sort of disease into a sexually transmitted disease.


    Pestilent aura: This aura is devastating to your enemies, even though it might not seem like it. It infects enemies with all manner of maladies, like boils, rashes, a fever, and other, worse symptoms that linger after the encounter.


    Magic granting: You have been granted access to a number of evocation and necromancy spells that spread diseases. You can grant these spells to your followers.


    Disease domain active powers:


    Magical disease infection: You can infect someone with a magical disease. In order to gain knowledge and influence over magical diseases, you must cure them using your power to cure diseases. This is a twice-every-twelve-hours power.


    Madness burst: This synergistic power is the result of the mind domain, the chaos domain, and the disease domain mixing together to create a cruel power. You can use cracks in someone''s mental health to drive them mad, and smash their sanity. Not everyone is susceptible to this power, but with each tier of influence you gain over the domain, more people become vulnerable to it.


    People driven mad by this lose their previous alignments and neutrally aligned worshipers of yours who seek to enact your will, as they hail you as their lord. Your voice can be heard by them across any distance, and they obey any commands you give them. This power can be used four times per day, but its effects are permanent unless you undo it so be careful.


    Magical symptoms: This power allows you to infect eight people per hour with magical conditions.


    You can currently infect people with two potent magical symptoms: slow-moving petrification that gradually transforms those infected by it into statues, and a condition that infuses living creatures with unlife energy and if left untreated would transform victims into ghouls, vampires, or zombies, as determined by you when you infect them. You can infect people with these conditions in battle.


    Disease domain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with a disease domain centered blessing bestows them with either immunity to diseases, or causes them to become immune to any negative symptoms from any diseases they are currently suffering from but it also makes them highly infectious.


    Cursing someone using this domain is vicious and it ensures that they''ll get infected with any sort of disease carried by anyone they come across. This curse also magnifies their personal infectiousness and the negative effects of any diseases they either contract or had already contracted.]


    And as I finished reading the notification, time resumed. The first thing I heard was Raiz continuing to speak.

 60 Unfettered Divinity

    Time unfroze and the world seemed to exhale around me. It took a conscious effort for me to keep standing, but even as the sensations of thousands of little creatures beginning to worship me I was able to stay on my feet. Raiz continued to speak.


    "Cosecha, the god I worship and who literally created me, is an entity unlike any that has ever existed. It will possess the powers of all of the higher beings that once existed." The dryad explained. As she spoke there was a rapturous expression on her face, one that expressed her immense pride and loyalty to her creator, to me. My allies looked at her in confusion and shock.


    "Could we... meet this god of yours? This... ''Cosecha''?" Farrane asked, a dubious expression on her face as she spoke. I could tell that she didn''t actually believe Raiz, and I suspected Raiz did as well. The dryad fell silent in response to her question. And though I didn''t say anything, I wasn''t silent.


    "If I use ''Unfettered divinity'' here, would the elves automatically know that Cosecha and I are the same entity, even if I say... use my ''image manifestation'' power to create an illusion depicting Cosecha?" I asked the system, ready for it to tell me that that wouldn''t work, but also hoping that it would.


    [Actually... that would work. Alternatively, you could create an avatar...] The system suggested, to which I transmitted the energy of shaking my head to communicate that I was rejecting that idea.


    "Creating an avatar isn''t something I feel comfortable doing at this moment. And especially not for something this low-consequence." I replied, refusing to do something as powerful as splitting myself for something as relatively simple as convincing a few elves that I was a real god. But I was eager to attempt to convince the elves of the existence of Cosecha.


    Raiz was still silent. She was carefully considering how to advance through this delicate situation. I was pretty excited to be able tell her exactly how we''d navigate this situation, together. And so I quickly composed a mental message to send her.


    "Tell them that Cosecha is on its way." I told her, simply. When I did, I saw her eyes flick towards me, an unspoken question in them. I just grinned, and she gave me a confused look before finally nodding and doing as I commanded. She turned towards our elven companions and smiled.


    "My master is coming. It was just informing me that it is on its way. Please, ready yourselves. It is very fast." She said, politely and while doing her best to suppress her own shock. I grinned and envisioned my alternate form before activated my ability to manifest images.


    ________________________________________________


    Raiz was the first to react to the image I manifested. In fairness, I manifested it behind the elves and I, just to mess with the elves. Raiz''s eyes suddenly went noticeably wide, which provoked a reaction from Calorron. The elf gave her a relaxed look and asked her a quick question.


    "It''s right behind us isn''t it?" He asked, his tone indicating that he was amused by my antics. She nodded, speechlessly, and Farrane quickly turned around to stare at the fabricated and manifested image of Cosecha, in all of its omnielemental glory.


    The unreal illusion I had created stood a good distance behind us, but due to its size and distinct features was easy to see. Calorron turned as well and looked at the eerie entity who was looking at us ominously. I silently used my mental abilities to tie our minds together, the elves and my own and waited for a second to see how the two scouts would react to my other form.


    Neither of them opened their mouths to speak. Instead, they took a step back, carefully adding a bit of distance from the deity, but plainly aware of the dryad and the three two-beings behind them. Their faces were stoic masks. And they remained impressively still, even when I activated both "Religious fervor" and "Unfettered divinity".


    The first of my activated powers, one I was growing increasingly familiar with, manifested as a subtle field of blue light tinting the area around us. The second of my powers manifested in an unusual way: the area where Farrane and Calorron were standing was suddenly bathed in beautiful, radiant light. It illuminated them and cast their features in a soft, golden glow.


    They were baffled by this, looking visibly stunned, but they made no attempt to move. Instead, they both began to mutter something about feeling light as a feather, and that they felt healthier than they had in centuries. I was behind them now, since they had turned around, and I gently grinned. And then I began to speak to them, using my mind to trick them into thinking that Cosecha was being telepathic when it was actually me.


    "Hello, Farrane and Calorron. It is nice to meet the two of you." I told them, making my voice a powerful one filled with regal authority and divine might. To them, it was like listening to the sounds of an earthquake with a voice. Their eyes once more filled as they were shocked to their cores to hear me speak to them as my true, divine self.


    "I am Cosecha, the god that Raiz worships. I am a god of both nature and civilization and the oftentimes... chaotic ways in which nature and civilization intersect and interact." I explained, speaking both confidently and happily to the elves before me.


    Farrane was the first to open her mouth to speak, but it did take her a second to actually begin to talk even after her mouth opened. "Hello... Cosecha. We see that you know our names already... Do you know why we''re here?" She asked, speaking shyly, despite the fact that I had communicated mentally with her and her colleague. "Cosecha" nodded at them, its airy head bobbing up and down.


    "Yes I do. You are here from the Ansari empire and you are here to investigate and almost certainly create a report detailing what I did last night." I told them, putting a twinge of mischievousness into my telepathic voice. This caught the two of them off-guard and caused them to blush embarrassedly. They didn''t speak for a second, so I opted to continue speaking.


    "Make no mistake I hold no grudge against you for this. I don''t even mind you doing it. I simply know why it is that you''re here. Something you didn''t hesitate to tell my high-priestess..." I pointed out, reminding them that they had already informed her of what they wanted. Calorron smiled at my illusion, and this time he was the one who spoke.


    "Cosecha... You have to understand that we''re in an odd situation here." Calorron said, letting the sentence linger in the air for a moment as if I could understand what he meant from that alone. I couldn''t.


    "Why? I am not asking you to keep this a secret. If you want I''ll tell you exactly what I did." I told them, surprising them with my candor. They looked at me in shock and waited for me to continue telepathically speaking. After a few moments, I did.


    "I am a god. One of the things I can do is heal people. When it comes to healing... it''d be difficult at the very best for a mortal to match me, even though I don''t doubt some of mortals, somewhere might know more technical knowledge than I do." I told the elves, immediately before beginning to launch into an explanation of my activities.


    "Last night I healed the creatures in this forest. All of them. I cured them of everything short of magical diseases. Their health was restored, their stamina was restored, if any of them had missing limbs those were regenerated, and any non-magical diseases they suffered from were healed. Heck, the power I unleashed was so powerful that even the symptoms of magical diseases were temporarily overcome." I explained.


    "I did this, by targeting this area and activating a power I possess called ''Healing burst''. This power covers an area I target with potent healing energy and heals anyone in the area." I told them, causing their eyes to grow wide in both amazement and shock. I opted to not reveal that I had undergone an upgrade just now and could heal both magical and non-magical diseases.


    "So wait, what happened last night... that really was just you? That incredible, record-breaking burst of energy was all you?" Calorron asked, a few moments after I spoke. Cosecha''s unreal form nodded at the high-elf. He chuckled, not quite believing it. My fake form laughed, while I, speaking telepathically, made the high-elf an offer.


    "I can understand your skepticism... So how''s this? I''ll heal you and Farrane of any conditions you''re suffering from, and then I''ll show off my healing mastery. I''ll use my power to cure someone of a magical disease. I know you believe that I am a real god. I can sense it. Now let me prove my other claims." I asked and then told the elves. I wasn''t lying either, I could sense their belief in my, or rather in Cosecha''s divinity. It radiated off of them, a consequence of both my honesty and the powers of the faith domain.


    The two elves turned to look at each other, silently, before turning their gazes back towards Cosecha and nodding. And now I smiled, unseen, and barely remembered in all of the "revelations" of the last few minutes.

 61 The Divinity Of Healing

    I didn''t even bother to look up their conditions. Instead, I quietly looked at the elves and began to target them. It was me who was looking at them and not the illusionary manifestation of Cosecha, so they didn''t even notice.


    When I had suitably focused on the two of them for my mind to hone in on them, I silently activated "Healing burst" and watched as they were positively showered in restorative energy. This was the first time I could actually physically watch the effects of the burst of healing energy, as and I did so I was surprised to see both elves begin to faintly radiate a silvery glow.


    Because the effect was so specifically targeted this time, it didn''t take long to take hold. Both elves began to shiver in delight, as their bodies were coated in a blanket of gentle, thorough, healing energy. They were both surprised as its intensity as the energy poured into each of their cells and each of their pores. I was focused on them, studying their reactions, until I was interrupted.


    [Alert: Your "Healing burst" power has received an upgrade. It can now cure magical-diseases due to your influence over the disease domain. As such a creature who is the target of a "Healing burst" will be totally healed of any and all negative conditions.] The alert revealed, bringing an even bigger smile to my face. That was when the system chimed in, asking me an important question.


    [Althos, what would you like the alert that informs the elves of your actions to say? Would you like to repeat the contents of the last message, just modified to say ''Cosecha'' instead of ''Althos''?] The entity asked me, curiosity coloring its somewhat mechanical voice. I considered its question for a second before replying.


    "I''ll construct my own message." I informed the system. And then I began to do just that.


    [Alert: The merciful god, god of both civilization and nature, Cosecha has proven its divinity and might by healing you of any and all ailments that plagued you. This includes magical diseases.


    Cosecha is a deity of healing and restoration and happily demonstrated that by doing what was once thought impossible: using just healing energy to cure someone of a magical disease.]


    As soon as I was done creating the notification it was transmitted to them. Their eyes widened in shock, and I watched as they attempted to check themselves to confirm that if what they just read was true. I assumed they did this by accessing their own ties to the system, but wasn''t sure. Thankfully, I had the sentient voice of knowledge within my mind and she was happy to show off.


    "Hey Althos, that''s exactly what they''re doing. Each living creature, and the undead as well, has access to a mini-version of the system that informs them of things like their own classes, their overall hitpoints, and more." The voice informed me. Something it asked piqued my curiosity.


    "What are ''hitpoints''?" I asked it, inquisitively. I heard a gentle chuckle emanate from the voice before it replied.


    "Hitpoints are a measure of lifeforce and vitality. They quantify how much damage someone can endure before beginning to die. And before you ask, no. You don''t have hitpoints. Killing a god is more complicated than knocking them to zero hitpoints. Though if you sustain enough damage over the course of a few minutes your physical form will fade away and you''ll be unable to form a new physical form for an... indeterminate period of time." She informed and then warned me.


    I smiled, appreciating her just telling me the answer to the question I would have obviously asked if she hadn''t gone ahead and answered it before I had the chance. It endeared her to me a bit more, something helpful given the... roughness of her personality.


    It was at that point that the elves looked at Cosecha and fell to their knees. They didn''t quite prostrate themselves, but they did humble themselves and I could sense that in their hearts they truly acknowledged Cosecha as a divine being. Calorron was the first of the pair to speak after both of them humbled themselves.


    "Cosecha, we are grateful for the kindness you have shown us here. In your presence, I feel... words cannot describe how being in your presence elevates me and soothes my soul. Truly your power is divine, as are you. I will not see for my companion, but I see no point in denying this obvious truth." The male elf told me. Humility and humbleness were audible in his voice. Farrane spoke next.


    "It''s true... You really are a god, aren''t you? I can tell that this energy we detected earlier is the same energy that now infuses me. How... odd." She said, speaking both about the fact that I was divine and her own feelings towards that fact. I chuckled, still unnoticed.


    I then turned my attention elsewhere. To Troik. I sent him a message, using my divine mental voice.


    "Troik, it is time that you were truly and fully healed." I informed the tiny goblin, speaking not as Althos but as Cosecha. I was ready to fulfill one of the very first goals I had ever made: curing Troik of the demonic infection he was suffering from. And in order to prepare for that I had to quickly build up my knowledge of what a demonic infection even was. So I asked the system and the domain of knowledge.


    "Hey you two. What is a ''demonic infection''? I know it''s apparently a magical disease, of some sort, and that possession is one of the symptoms, but aside from that... I honestly don''t know that much about it." I confessed, aware of my relative ignorance of the malady that I was readying myself to cure. I was met with momentary silence, silence which lasted a few moments. During those moments Troik hurriedly began to approach my current location, after asking where I was.


    ____________________________


    [A demonic infection is a disease a creature suffers from if they get into a battle with a demon and survive. This disease opens their minds up to the destructive influence of a demon, and causes them to be susceptible to possession for up to an hour a day.] The system told me.


    "Interestingly enough, in curing the disease you''ll be able to gain knowledge of it. That means that in the future when you eventually gain demonic worshippers and servants, you''ll be able to grant them mortal bodies to possess immediately." Added the domain of knowledge. That intrigued me.


    "So what are demons anyway? I know that they are chaotic evil extraplanars, but that alone doesn''t give me much knowledge of them." I told both of the metaphysical voices that dwelled in my head. Both of them chuckled, their soft voices meshing together in my mind.


    [Demons are some of the native inhabitants of the Heart of Darkness, another dimension made up in equal parts of chaos and evil.] Began the system. It wasn''t the only one to speak either.


    "They are vicious creatures made up of evil, chaos, sin, and anger. Demons possess innumerable forms and countless powers. The kinds of demons that most commonly possess people are an incorporeal family of demons that relish using the bodies of mortals to sow chaos and to foster hatred." Said the domain of knowledge.


    "Demons are some of my creations. If I felt like lying I could say that they are creatures meant to unify mortals and give them external obstacles to clash against and to rise above. I''m not much of a liar though. They were just meant to change societies. A sort of... cultural and civic ''reset-button'' if you will. They were taken and... modified by the domain of evil and a handful of evil deities, and given their current outlook and home." Added a new voice.


    "Hi, Althos. I am the domain of chaos. It is quite nice to meet you. I''m so excited to see how you play with your first demon." Said the soft voice. Its tone was filled with energy, even though it wasn''t speaking loudly or particularly chaotically.


    "Depending on how you play with the creature that dwells inside of Troik, you may gain a new ally. Demons love deception and respect the threat of violence. If you want to, you could pretend to banish the thing, while secretly helping it hide. Or you could perform an act of goodness and defeat it, sending it back to the dimension of its birth: the ever eerie Heart of Darkness." The voice told me, really informing me as to the options before me.


    "Many of us are curious as to what you''ll do next. I suppose I ought to inform you that no matter what choice you pick, new quests will be made available to you. So just have fun, and give us a good show would you?" Asked the chaotic entity. I chuckled and internally nodded at the thing.


    It wouldn''t take long for my first goblin friend to appear close-by. He immediately noticed me and began to dash in my direction. He only stopped when he was close enough to hug me, wrapping his small arms around my legs and beginning to speak energetically and happily.


    I chuckled and began to gently pat his head. "Hi there Troik. How are you doing today?" I asked the little guy, speaking soothingly. At this the elves turned around and finally noticed me once more. I grinned at them and began to speak.


    "Calorron and Farrane, allow me to introduce you to Troik. Troik was one of my first friends in this forest." I told the elves. They gave him a disdainful look, one filled with haughtiness. It made me laugh. Troik was too busy happily hugging me to pay them any mind.

 62 Confrontations And Curveballs

    A few minutes after Troik''s arrival, I looked at the little goblin and readied myself to tell him the truth. I knew that if I didn''t handle this delicately it might be unnecessarily complicated, so I took a second to steady myself and prepare to deliver some bad news, and then some great news.


    I closed my eyes, while still patting Troik, and channeled my inner divine voice. As soon as I felt confident in my ability to channel the sort of pride I felt gods ought to show, I spoke telepathically to Troik, pretending to be Cosecha.


    "Hello little one." I said, politely greeting the tiny creature. I quickly heard a loud and energetic reply from the little guy. The goblin turned and looked in Cosecha''s direction, before swiftly letting go of me and dashing over to stand where the creature was facing.


    "Hello Cosecha! How are you?" He asked, speaking eagerly as if to an old friend. I smiled, though Troik didn''t notice this as the tiny goblin was now a bit away from me.


    "I am well. How are you?" I asked, curiously. I wondered how the goblin had slept and what time my friend had awoken. It was now mid-morning, and the day was gradually progressing, even if it felt like today had dragged on for a bit.


    I wondered about my friend would respond to my question. I thought and hoped that the tiny goblin was having a good day, but I also considered the real possibility that he wasn''t. It''d make sense for him to be scared, and would in fact be wise for him to be. Troik considered my question for a second before answering it honestly.


    "I''ll be honest with you Cosecha... I''m scared." The green fellow confessed. This surprised me, but not entirely. I mean I hadn''t expected a solid admission of fear from the creature, but I was expecting the guy to be afraid.


    On my first day of life, I had encountered him far from the other goblins, alone and stuck in a trap. I rescued him, but shortly afterward a demon that was possessing him revealed itself and fled, taking him with it. I was able to free him from the demon''s ability to control him, but the demon itself has lingered in him. Today, in the next few minutes even, I planned to change that.


    "It''s okay to be afraid Troik. But today is the day you get your life back. Today is the day we defeat this creature and drive it out of you, once and for all." I explained, speaking as Cosecha and informing the goblin as to the plan.


    Based on what I had been told about demons earlier and the fact that it seemed that I was about to have a confrontation with a demon I was able to make an inference as to what would happen when I cured the disease: the demon possessing my friend would likely be expelled from Troik. When that happened it''d most likely fall on me to either defeat the thing or trick others into thinking I had beaten it.


    "Cosecha" looked at Troik and made eye-contact with him. The two were silent for a moment before Cosecha began to mentally speak once more.


    "When you''re ready I''m going to cure you of the demonic infection you''re suffering from. I won''t do it until you''re ready though, so take your time. This will mark the first time I''ve cured someone of a magical disease, so I want you to feel comfortable and be ready when I do." I explained, to a gently nodding Troik.


    The goblin went ahead and sat down. And then he mentally spoke to me. His message was simple. "I''m ready. I''m ready to be cured. To be freed. Please." He told me, asking for his freedom. I smiled and mentally messaged my elven allies and my dryadic high-priestess.


    "It''s time. Ready yourselves. I don''t want anyone else to be at risk. I don''t fully know what''ll happen when I cure Troik of the disease he''s suffering from, a demonic infection. I suspect that when I do that the demon that has forced Troik''s body to accommodate it will be expelled. If it is I intend to destroy it." I explained, informing everyone present aside from the trees I had animated of the uncertainty of the next few moments.


    Raiz backed up, looking to me to keep her safe. The elves stood up and backed up. Farrane rose her hands in the direction of the goblin, and Calorron put his hands on his bow. I could sense that they were ready for violence. I chuckled but did so quietly enough that they didn''t notice.


    I waited a second before I activated my power. I double-checked on my allies, they looked more ready than ever. With a smile on my face I quietly targeted Troik, and activated my ability to cure diseases. I watched as radiant energy washed over the goblin, bathing him in resplendent light.


    Troik began to shake, his body vibrating violently. My companions tensed up, and I readied myself for whatever was about to happen. As Troik shook, I noticed that there was a relieved smile on his face. And then I received a welcome notification.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: You have successfully cured the goblin named Troik of "Demonic infection". Your ability to cure diseases has meshed with your ability to learn about and infect creatures with diseases.


    A new disease has been added to your repertoire of biological warfare. You can now infect someone with ''Demonic infection''.


    Demonic infection information: This nasty disease opens up even the strongest-willed beings to possession. Its symptoms are all largely unserious, aside from the fact that those infected by it become over 50% easier to possess. The disease has an incubation period of three hours but sadly isn''t contagious. Possessed creatures cannot transmit the disease.


    Demonic infection symptoms when a mortal is infected: Headaches, irritability, increased libido, greater sinful behavior in general, and finally significantly enhanced susceptibility to possession.


    Special note: As a lord of lust there are two minor edits you can make to the disease within yourself.


    You can choose to transmit this disease to mortals by engaging in lustful acts with them, and you can give demons who serve you a special version of this disease that spreads to mortals who engage in lustful acts with them. If you want to further edit this disease, you need to gain more influence over the domain of disease.


    Transmitting Demonic infection: The relative rareness of this disease is due to the unlikely conditions by which it is spread. In order to be infected by "Demonic infection" one must suffer a wound from a demon and then survive the battle in which they received it. All demons are capable of infecting someone with this disease.


    If you want to infect mortals with this disease normally all you have to do is land a blow against them and will them to be infected with the disease. There''s a chance they could resist being infected, but if that''s the case you''ll be alerted to the fact that they resisted and can simply try again until they fail to resist. Mortals cannot resist being infected if they willingly engage in lustful acts with you.]


    I read through the notification and it vanished right as Troik suddenly stopped vibrating. The timing was perfect because at the moment that Troik stopped vibrating, the light that protectively covered his body flowed out of him and was replaced with the deepest darkness I had ever seen.


    Troik''s entire body was momentarily covered in pitch-black darkness, making him look like a goblin-shaped silhouette. The darkness only covered him for a moment though, and the strange substance quickly poured onto the floor at his feet, pooling onto the grass he was sitting beside.


    I immediately focused on the darkness and extended my mind towards it. When I did I felt that the darkness possessed a consciousness, something I knew but was happy to have confirmed anyway, and that I could establish contact with it. And at that moment I knew that I had a decision to make. But before I did anything else I immediately did two things.


    One of the things I did was bathe the demon in an intense, holy light that I radiated outward from Cosecha''s fabricated form, to see if that forcibly stunned it. It appeared too because the thing suddenly shook like it had had just endured a terrible attack. I suppose in a way it might have.


    And at the same time, I pulled the earth on which the creature resided into the air. I was trying to limit its movement, and I was able to do everything fast enough that it couldn''t react to my actions in time to escape.


    While the monster was stunned I mentally spoke to my allies. I sent everyone a quick message and then teleported away all while creating an illusionary Althos out of manipulated light. My message was simple.


    "I''m gonna go deal with this creature. Give me a moment and I''ll be back." I told them, my mental voice filled with authority and power, tolerating no dissent or back-talk. They were silent in response to my words, and I smiled as I took the creature to my underground lair.


    ________________________________________________


    In an instant, I and the creature vanished from the view of my allies. We covered a distance of several kilometers and reappeared within an empty room located inside of the subterranean tower I had constructed last night.


    The creature was still stunned by the suddenness of the past few moments, and the power of the holy light I bathed it in so it didn''t try to fight back against me yet. I had at least a few moments to think and make an important choice.


    "What should I do?" I asked myself. I knew that the demon in front of me didn''t stand a chance if I opted to destroy it or at least banish it to its native dimension since I could control light and holy energy. A part of me was tempted to do that after all the thing had sort of been my very first enemy.


    Another part of me wanted to see if the creature had the wisdom to serve me. I knew it was a sentient being, the thing had spoken to me when I first met and rescued Troik and it had also sent monsters after me. If it did, I could imagine at least a few ways the thing could be useful.


    One thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to talk to the thing. I had some knowledge, but what I knew was mostly limited to my own limited life experience and things about domains. I could imagine that the thing was privy to all manners of knowledge. I wanted to talk to it, and learn some of that knowledge before I harmed it, if it ended up coming to that.


    While I waited for the creature to regain its senses and begin to talk to me, I asked the domain of knowledge what I was looking at. I received an answer right away.


    "Well, Althos... what you''re looking at is a demon hyper-specialized in possession. And more than that... it''s a sort of demon whose blood is used in making conjuration circles. These demons exist to do two things: bring more of their kind to mortal worlds, and to pave the way for demonic invasions." Said the domain of knowledge, sounding shocked by this. And that was further explained by the system, who spoke next.


    [Althos what you''re looking at is a praereptor demon, the first kind of demon sent either by the forces of the Heart of Darkness, or their mortal allies. This demon is... a scout. Its existence here is a significant development.] The system told me, sounding rather perturbed by this. And it wasn''t quite done talking just yet. After a few moments of silence, it added something to its thoughts.


    [If you opt to banish the thing, make sure you learn everything you can from it. Take your time extracting the truth from the thing before you return it to its home dimension. Who knows what this thing knows...] The system urged, still sounding uncommonly serious.


    The demon began to groan painfully. I chuckled and looked at it, as it began to regain some sort of coherence. It was still a puddle of darkness, but now it had thoroughly covered the entire surface on which I had trapped it. I opened my mouth and began to speak.


    "Hello! Do you remember me? When we last met you said I''d ''pay'' if we saw each other again." I told the once arrogant demon I had captured. The thing began to make a sound that wasn''t unlike water suddenly turning into steam. At that moment I linked our consciousnesses and spoke to it mentally.


    "You''ll find that you can now send me mental messages. And I recommend you do. You and I need to have a chat." I told the thing, speaking into its mind. I waited a few seconds and then got a mental message back.


    "Well... hello ''Althos''. I don''t know what you are but something tells me that you''re about to tell me, aren''t you?" The thing asked, its mental voice sounding surprisingly deep and unsurprisingly filled with malice. I couldn''t help but smile. It was right.

 63 Sinister Shadows

    "You''re smart! That''s a good sign. You''re gonna need that intelligence to get through the next few minutes." I replied, speaking to the praereptor demon while staring at the steadily churning demonic puddle in front of me.


    And then I considered how to best inform it as to what I was. The fact that I was less sure than ever as to what I was didn''t help me out here. After thinking for a few moments I just sighed and told the demon what I had considered myself my whole life.


    "Well, I am a god. I am a god of chaos and of lust." I told the demon. It went still when I said this, genuinely shocked at what I told it. I couldn''t help but chuckle, because before now the thing had been active, milling about atop the pile of soil it had been forced onto.


    "Are you being serious?" The thing asked, its mental voice calm now but also filled with a quiet fear. I smiled at it and nodded.


    "I am a four-day-old god. I am chaotic neutral, and among other things, I possess the ability to control lust and cause chaos. And here''s the thing... I don''t need to destroy or even banish you. I do have things I need, but we needn''t be enemies." I told the demon.


    I silently activated my "Religious fervor" power, generating a soft blue tint that quickly spread throughout the lonely room we occupied. I felt the demon stiffen as it waited for me to speak more. And so I obliged it.


    "I am not a bad guy. I am also not a good guy. I don''t want to be just bad or good. I want to be neutral. And part of that means having good and evil servants. So here''s what I propose. I propose you answer any questions I have and serve me, and I don''t banish you. And here''s the thing... you''re gonna tell me what I want to know, one way or another." I told the demon, speaking confidently. The demon responded to me, after taking a few seconds to think about what to say.


    "You really are a god aren''t you? That would explain why you were able to cure Troix''s disease and how you effectively trapped me in his body, leaving me powerless, for days..." The demon exclaimed, despair sneaking into its voice as it did so.


    I grinned at it, not feeling bad about the fact that my first enemy was now experiencing despair because it now knew the truth about me. The creature had possessed and terrified Troik at least once, and now it was my prisoner. I felt powerful at this moment, and that was a nice feeling.


    "I really am a god. And now the time has come for you to make your choice. How do you want to tell me what I want to know?" I asked the thing.


    "Do you want to do it willingly, maybe even pleasantly, or will you stubbornly resist and allow me to have the fun that comes with tearing what I want to know out of you?" I wondered. I was telling a light lie, as I didn''t want to torture the creature, but I didn''t tell it that. I was happy to allow it to be afraid.


    I watched any courage the creature possessed melt away in that instant. The puddle of darkness seemed to deflate, and I knew at that moment that the thing was going to surrender and submit to me. For a moment I wondered about how to truly cement its loss. And a wicked idea came to my mind.


    Opening the list of corruption powers I possessed took me but a second. And as I did, I wondered about which of my abilities would be the best to use against the demon to ensure it surrendered all of its secrets to me.


    [Corruption subdomain passive powers:


    Heart of corruption: This passive power allows you to detect a creature''s personal vice, the gateway sin that most resonates with someone''s soul. Usage of the powers related to the personal vice of a target makes a creature far easier to thoroughly corrupt.


    Corruption infusion: This power allows you to infuse corrupt energy into food. If creatures eat corrupted food they are not physically harmed, but they become less resistant to temptations.


    Lustful aura: This is an aura that affects anyone attracted to males independent of their species and makes them either less hostile or more friendly towards you. You can also use it to invade the minds of those in range and discover what they desire, not just sensually but also in general.


    Any neutral creatures affected by this aura view are easier to persuade to become your friends and find any propositions made by you difficult to resist. Any hostile creatures who are affected by the aura are easier to calm down and persuade to cease fighting. Becoming a greater god and gaining greater influence over the subdomain increase the range of your aura and its potency.


    Velvet voice: This power makes your voice, even your mental one, a luxurious and sensual weapon and a useful tool in your arsenal. Creatures who hear your voice, be it physically, mentally, or even in their dreams, feel it on their skin and it lingers in their minds. Weak-willed creatures, and unintelligent creatures, can become charmed or even dominated by the sound of your voice.


    Addiction and fetish infliction and curing: You can cause someone to become addicted to something. Addictions are psychological compulsions that if ignored cause people to experience withdrawal. Some examples of this include: you can make someone addicted to a certain behavior, to a certain sensation, food, drug, and other things. You can also cure someone of an addiction.


    You can cause someone to have a particular fetish. Fetishes are a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to a certain fashion, behavior, part of the body, etc. As an example, you can cause someone to have a fetish for a specific species, a specific hair color, or a sexual dynamic. You can also cure someone of such a thing.


    You gain knowledge of someone''s fetishes and addictions at a glance.


    Persistent desires: This power causes those you kiss and otherwise caress to fall under your influence. The more intense your sexual relations with the person, or otherwise more fulfilling it was the deeper they''ll fall under your influence.


    Incubi and succubi caress: You gain the seductive powers of succubi and incubi.


    When you are kissed or embraced or you kiss or embrace someone they experience blissful, bodily and mental pleasure and are left drained of strength and will for it, their strength and will entering and empowering you instead. The drain is temporary and lasts for a day. That said, the power can affect someone more than once a day.


    The sensation is addictive. This power can corrupt someone over time and it can also kill over time if you allow it to.


    Vampiric desires: This synergistic power granted to you by the intersections of the subdomains of necromancy and corruption allows you to leech lifeforce from creatures you kiss or embrace. This power stacks with powers like your enhanced versions of the draining powers of incubi and succubi.


    Diseased Doxy: This synergistic power is one you''ve been awarded due to your influence over the subdomain of corruption and the domain of disease. It allows the debilitating effects of your affections to persist even if you aren''t there to reapply them.


    When you first caress a target you can choose to subject them to a lingering desire to have another sexual encounter with you, and also be subjected to the effects of your caresses even days later. The maximum amount of time someone can be suffering from the effects, for now anyway, is three days.


    Corruption subdomain active powers:


    Gratifying gaze: This subdomain makes your body a powerful tool and this active power embodies that. Usage of this twice-per-half-hour power makes your gaze a trap and dominates those whose eyes meet yours. Dominated creatures serve you willingly and obey your commands, experiencing sexual fulfillment while doing so.


    Catatonic kiss: A synergistic active power granted to you due to your influence over both the domain of dreams and the subdomain of corruption. With this twice-per-twelve-hour power, you can kiss someone and cause them to fall unconscious. If you leave them alone in this state they''ll have intense, erotic dreams and sleep for twelve straight hours.


    Whispers of corruption: This twice-per-half-hour power uses your velvet voice to corruptively whisper in the ears of a target. It whispers sinful and corrupt things into their minds and lessens their ability to resist corruption for three hours.


    Inhibition remover: This twice-per-twelve-hour power temporarily destroys someone''s sense of inhibition. For an hour they are unlikely to say "no" to offers to experience new sensations and are more suggestible then they''d otherwise be.


    Lust: This twice-per-half-hour power allows you to immediately learn something that someone desires.]


    Reading through that list made me smile. And it filled my head with a wicked idea.


    ________________________________________________


    "I don''t have to use my full power on this demon." I realized, as I considered how to best subjugate the frightened creature. I wanted the demon to spill its secrets to me, and I could tell that it wouldn''t be difficult for me.


    "Besides... eventually I''ll have to practice with my powers. If I''m careful, and I just kiss it that should be enough to calm it down and dominate it." I assured myself, seeing in this an opportunity to safely practice my corruptive abilities, on an already thoroughly corrupt being. This was my best chance to see my corruption-powers in practice. And I might as well take it.


    I walked over to the thing and shot my hand into the puddle of oil-like ooze. It felt gross around my hand, and I could feel the creature''s "body" coiling around my appendage but the monster didn''t dare attack me. I dug around the puddle, searching for something like a head.


    It took about a minute of exploring the puddle before my hand grabbed something I could hold onto. I yanked it out of the rest of the darkness with a soft grunt and the application of a bit of force.


    "Ahh!" The demon shouted, screaming in pain as I forcibly pulled what ended up being its actual, incorporeal head out of the inky darkness that comprised the rest of its body.


    When I was done yanking its head out of its collapsed body, I immediately approached it and kissed its ethereal cheek. I smiled as I received and read a quick notification following my the peck I laid on the demon''s cheek.


    [Influence over Sombra: .00001]


    The demon immediately stopped yelling, as its mind was inundated with my power. I chuckled as I felt the demon''s mind try to shake off my influence, but I didn''t intend to let it do so so easily. Instead, I began to speak to the creature.


    "What are you doing? Do you want this to be unpleasant?" I asked it, infusing my voice with power and envisioning my "Velvet voice" power seeping into the demon''s mind. I grinned as I felt the creature''s resistance begin to weaken, as the creature began to consider what I was saying.


    "I am a lord of lust and I am offering you something I don''t often offer my enemies. A chance at a pleasant experience." I told it, shortly before activating a power I had never activated before: "A sensual lie". I watched as the demon considered my words, and felt a bit of its fear begin to dissipate as the demon fell for what it felt were the sexual implications of my lie.


    I let go of the demon''s head and stopped holding it in a contained sphere of holy light causing the room we were in to darken as darkness invaded and reasserted its dominion.


    The demonic puddle was still for a second, aside from the demon''s head slowly being pulled back into it. When the puddle was whole and uniform, it dripped onto the floor of the room and the demon''s form began to change. Over the course of the next few seconds, the demon ceased being a puddle of oil-like darkness and reshaped itself into the shape of a naked, and muscular humanoid.


    I studied it as it did this, unafraid of the thing, and waited to see if it''d give itself some clear sex organs. I was a bit surprised when it didn''t. I wasn''t disappointed though. It was an incorporeal demon, so I hadn''t really expected its gender to be clear at a glance. That said, when the thing was fully formed I spoke again.


    "Hi there. For the next few minutes, you''re mine. How pleasantly you want to do this is really up to you, but let me assure you I get my way in the end." I told the demon, acting how I believe a god, an embodiment of power, should act in this situation. The demon looked at me, and there was a strange expression on its face. I studied it for a second.


    The creature''s face was made of some sort of translucent, smoke-like darkness. I could clearly make out facial features, like colorless eyes, lips, a nose, and ears, but I could also see all the way through its head. It was a bizarre sight.


    The rest of the demon''s body was made of the sort of darkness someone could find underground, a frightening sort of absolute darkness that absorbed all light. That darkness was modeled after the shape of a humanoid complete with a vague mimicry of human muscles, and the demon was evidently very fit.


    The expression on the demon''s face was a dazed one. It was one of pleasant shock and anticipation. I chuckled, aware that the demon was now having to deal with a number of powers and was almost certainly losing.


    I opted to ensure that the thing lost. I took a few steps to draw close to it, and I put my hands on its face. The incorporeal shadow-stuff that made up its face solidified when I brought my hands close to it, and I was able to pull the demon towards me, until the thing was in my arms. I chuckled as I brought its face to mine and pulled its smokey lips to my own.


    Our lips lightly touched and I felt the demon exhale, its breath entering my mouth. It was now in the middle of the process of surrendering to my power, having lost the fight to resist the will-eroding effects of my corruptive abilities. I grinned as we kissed, enjoying the sensation of the demon becoming mine as its strength and willpower flood into me.


    "That''s it..." I whispered as I pulled back from the kiss, a smile on my lips. I received a number of notifications, but I didn''t let them distract me. I kept my eyes glued on the demon I was going to extract information from, and watched as the demon''s willpower faded from its eyes.


    "Now for the real fun..." I whispered, my voice taking on a surprisingly seductive undertone. I hadn''t intended for that to happen, but it was to my benefit so I didn''t question it.


    The demon even began to blush and a quick read of its mind revealed that it was filling with musings about the sort of pleasures that a god of lust could cause it to feel. That made me laugh. It wasn''t the one who''d be having fun.


    I lightly kissed it again, and immediately caused the thing to become addicted to my kisses. I ignored the unhappy sigh that the demon made when our lips parted. This was, after all, me beginning the process of permanently securing its servitude. And this cause the system to send me a message.


    [Well, well... Is this the beginning of you walking towards becoming a demon lord? I don''t disapprove. This has caused the domain of evil to allow you to take its quest. It''ll be worth taking when you''re done here. Now have fun.] The system haughtily told me, smugness audible in its voice. I grinned and readied myself to learn the demon''s secrets.


    The first thing I did to begin to do that? I quietly activated my knowledge-based powers and began to learn all about the creature in my arms.

 64 What Was Learned

    [Name: Sombra (Level eight assassin)


    Species: Praereptor demon


    Alignment: Chaotic evil


    Personal virtue: Patience


    Personal vice: Envy


    Magic sensing: Praereptor demons are naturally capable of potent magic such as possession and they possess semi-ethereal bodies which make them well-adapted to use alteration magic.


    Faith sense: This demon is loyal to no one but somewhat unwillingly serves as a scout for an army of demons led by a Soluto demon named Agustino.


    Authority detection: Sombra serves as a scout and seducer who is meant to convince those who summon it create demon-summoning conjuration circles that summon fellow demons until the number of them in total is large enough to overthrow their conjurers.


    Soul sense: Sombra is surprisingly charismatic and if given the right body to possess could easily create a chaotic evil cult dedicated to a lord who actually earns its loyalty. Sombra could become a talented cleric devoted to a lord of sin and deception.]


    Reading about my new servant brought a smile to my face. It turned out that manipulating the creature would be easier than I had anticipated it being. The thing was an envious little monster and suitably easy to handle. I looked at it and readied myself to begin a gentle interrogation.


    ________________________________________________


    "Tell me who summoned you." I told it, speaking softly but utilizing words that made it clear that I wasn''t asking. The demonic creature was silent for a second, but I knew it would do as I asked so I was patient.


    "I was summoned by a dwarven conjurer named Atmost. He summoned me intending to use me as a spy meant to see if the world above the tiny dwarven settlement he lived in had humanoids that he could recruit as part of a plan to invade and conquer a nearby dark elven city." The demon revealed, speaking gently.


    I looked at it, confused and suspicious. I knew that it probably couldn''t lie to me, but my tremorsense didn''t show me any dwarfs with that name. I revealed as much gently, and the demon chuckled.


    "I killed my summoner. It took a lot of planning, as Atmost was a skilled conjurer who had carefully prepared his defenses, but in the end, he couldn''t defend himself against a cave-in. All I had to do was leave the dwarven mine sufficiently unstable, and one day a dwarven miner stuck the right rock with too much force and well... my work was done." The demon confessed, a smile on its smokey face. I chuckled.


    "After that my plan was simple. I went around possessing who I could for as long as I could, having fun in their bodies and encouraging self-destruction. One creature I possessed was a satyr. He was fun to control and I led his best friend to the lair of a Rusalka. The miserable creature never stood a chance against that water spirit. She''s vicious even for her kind." The demon told me, causing my eyes to widen.


    Sombra was most likely responsible for the death of Mof, one of my undead minions and worshipers. And it readily revealed that, chuckling all the while. I considered pursuing this for a moment but ultimately decided against it. I wasn''t one hundred percent sure, and though the news was shocking, I wasn''t particularly offended by it. Sombra, all the while, continued speaking.


    "The dark elves who dwell underneath the island regularly summon demons. Many of them who do, only know how to do so because of me. One of them summoned a lesser demon, a sly demon who intended to go to the big city to the west." My newest minion told me, which explained the handful of demons I could detect in the major dark elven city beneath the island.


    "That demon came to the surface in this forest and was defeated by the goblin I possessed, but not before biting him. I possessed the goblin for weeks before we crossed paths." Sombra explained, revealing how it came to possess Troik.


    "So that''s how you got here huh?" I asked, smiling at the demon I was going to make into a major minion of mine. The thing nodded.


    "What was your ultimate plan?" I asked it, genuinely curious as to what it intended to do. The shadowy creature considered my question for a few moments.


    "Well, ultimately I want to be one of the first demons responsible for converting this world into a part of the Heart of Darkness. To do that I need to bring my fellow demons here." The creature explained, suggesting both a far-reaching plan and also that it still intends to do that. I looked at the creature skeptically.


    "I won''t let that happen." I told it, flatly. The creature looked up at me, annoyance flaring in its colorless eyes. I chuckled and didn''t change what I said.


    "There are other demons on this world Althos. We will win, eventually." It declared, arrogantly. I chuckled again.


    "If that''s the case, I''ll find and make them my servants as well. And you''ll help me. And in exchange, I''ll give you what you want. Whatever that happens to be. I don''t intend on being a cruel master, but if you stay in this world you''ll only do so because I allow it." I explained, flatly. There was a coldness and steel to my tone that made it clear that I wasn''t bluffing. The demon visibly shivered.


    "Why do you want to protect this world?" The demon asked, gazing into my eyes. I laughed audibly, as soon as the demon was done talking the sound cutting through the silence of that engulfed this room when neither of us spoke.


    "''Protect''? No, my friend, protect isn''t the right word. I want to decide this world''s fate myself. I don''t want someone else doing that for me. I want to be the one who decides what fate befalls this world, and I won''t settle for the idea of demons having their way with this planet." I announced, sternly.


    I wasn''t lying either. I intended to stop any major world-changing schemes by any powers, be they native to this world, alien, or even extraplanars. This was my homeworld, and I intended to be the one to decide what happened to it, no matter what I ended up eventually deciding to do.


    The demon looked at me, and though not many emotions could be seen in the depths of its eyes, I sensed a certain level of approval in its gaze. Evidently, the thing didn''t hate the pride I demonstrated when I effectively announced that this world was under my protection from the machinations of all manner of ambitious beings and even entire dimensions.


    The more I spoke to the demon the more I came to feel a distinct pride. It wasn''t pride in my world or anything silly like that, it was pride in myself. I was a god, and the more I spoke to the demon the more I realized that. The more I came to feel it in my divine bones. It was a nice feeling.


    I gazed into the demon''s eyes. I opened my mouth to speak once more.


    "Let me be perfectly clear. I am a neutral god. I intend to lord over both good and evil, and be a master of order and chaos in balance. I will destroy, I will create, and I will do so on my own terms. In time I will set my eyes on the other dimensions that exist in this universe. I will conquer them as I will conquer this world." I declared, speaking in no uncertain terms and declaring my goals for the first time to someone other than the system.


    "I intend to reward those who follow me. I will recognize loyalty and those who serve me faithfully will be treated well. Be mine Sombra. Become my servant, my worshiper." I told the demon, before placing my hands on the thing''s face once more and gazing into the demon''s eyes. The creature was silent, as its eyes explored mine.


    When the creature nodded, it was a subtle gesture. It was so faint that the main way I noticed it was that I felt the creature''s head bob up and down against my hands. I grinned and pulled the demon''s head closer to me, before placing a kiss on its forehead. The creature shivered against the kiss, delighted by it, but also feeling my eerie powers crawl across its skin and sap its strength.


    At this point, I quietly sent a telepathic message to the elves and my servants located in the forest. It was a simple message, and as some of my messages tended to be, it was a lie.


    "I have dealt with the demon. If you wish to learn more about me, please listen to Raiz. She will explain my faith to you." I told them.


    My plans, for now, were simple: I intended to use what Sombra had told me to begin to make moves to engage with the civilizations that dwelt in the world beneath the world. That included a few species I knew I''d need to deal with eventually: the dark elves, the dwarves, and other, stranger beings. And doing so would be easier if I took Sombra along with me.


    I gazed into the colorless depths of Sombra''s eyes and activated my will-stealing gaze power: "Gratifying gaze". The last of the demon''s independent will was snatched away from it as it gazed back into my eyes. I smiled as I watched the demon lose any ability it might have had to resist me, and I promised myself that I''d restore its will eventually.


    "And now, I suppose we should go and introduce ourselves to our neighbors shouldn''t we?" I asked, speaking mostly to myself. There was a smug and satisfied smirk on my lips as I tied my mind and the mind of my demonic servant together, to allow for telepathic communication.


    "Let''s go meet the dark elves." I told the demon, smiling at it, as I looked over the details for two quests, one I had ignored, and one I only just access too.


    [In order to acquire the first tier of influence over the domain of darkness you must blind three people. There are spells you possess now, that allow you to do that.] The system informed me, via one of two text boxes that appeared in my mind''s eye the second I wanted to begin to learn about the quests for darkness and evil.


    [In order to acquire the first tier of influence over the domain of evil you must acquire five evil mortal or extraplanar servants. You''ve already acquired four. The two ogresses are evil, Gnorl is evil, and Sombra is evil. You must acquire one more evil servant who is either a living mortal or an extraplanar.] The system told me, via the second text box. I looked at that and plainly realized that it was asking me to acquire a dark elf servant. I chuckled and nodded, ready to do just that.


    I looked at Sombra, and asked it a question out of curiosity. "Can you enter my shadow? Just to ride it?" I asked the creature, not quite sure of its abilities. When my first demonic servant nodded at me, I grinned and commanded it to do so. I didn''t want to waste time.


    The demon entered my shadow without any difficulties, and for the first time in my life, I readied myself to move at the speed of light. I took a deep breath, teleported myself outside of my tower, and began to move towards the place I could detect where dark-elves could be found in large numbers, the place I assumed was the closest dark-elven city.

 65 Into The Darkness

    I found myself standing in the large cavern I had excavated using my power over soil, stone, and dirt last night. Where I stood was roughly in the middle of this massive cavern, and I allowed myself a brief moment with which to admire my own handiwork.


    The cavern that surrounded me was utterly gigantic. It was several times wider than all of Comillas and was perhaps a twentieth of the total length of the forest under which it was located. It wasn''t shaped in any particularly unnatural way, rather I merely wanted it to be massive, to give me a wide amount of space to work with. I had succeeded in that regard.


    It was eerily illuminated by my own powers, specifically by my ability to generate light. I kept the place illuminated because I wasn''t comfortable in total darkness, an odd idiosyncrasy that I and the domains felt was probably due to the beginning of my life being a period I spent in darkness.


    The glow that allowed sight-possessing visitors who relied on light to see was a powerful and seemingly sourceless one, but for a moment out of curiosity I looked at a corner of the cavern and willed the light to vanish. Only the area I was looking at was abruptly bathed in darkness, and after a few seconds, I allowed the light I created in this chamber to refill the darkened place. I turned my attention back to the matter at hand.


    My shadow was inhabited by a strange demon, a creature known as a praereptor demon. I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to consume my vision.


    The gigantic map had only recently stopped expanding. The "mini-map" that my "Tremor-sense" power had granted me was no longer a mini-map and now could be more accurately described as a sprawling thing, one that even in its miniaturized form informed me of every step taken by the several million inhabitants of Puerto Rico.


    Studying either the miniaturized map or its more expansive form filled my heart with a powerful tug of ambition. I could see numerous locations filled with enough life for them to obviously be settlements of some sort that happened to be populated by sapient creatures. Only a few of those were located on the island''s surface.


    Of the surface settlements, there was the city of San Gerardo, Comillas, the goblin tribe, a tribe of orcs, a number of satyrs and gnomes, a tribe of creatures called hyenoids, a small group of ogres and a final group of creatures called kobolds.


    The surface was also inhabited by a handful of creatures who lived alone, or in pairs. Those included things like a solitary rusalka, an aquatic elf who lived along the coast furthest from San Gerardo, a single hag who lived in a clearing in the forest, and a handful of other apparently lonely creatures.


    Unlike the number of settlements above the ground, there were many settlements of creatures who lived underneath the island. Of the living creatures dwarves, dark elves, driders, grave giants, gugs, reptilefolk, and insects dwelled in massive colonies or other communities. Many kinds of deceased creatures could be found underneath the island as well, of assorted kinds of creatures.


    Something that surprised me was that there were few solitary creatures who lived underneath Puerto Rico. The ancient black dragon dwelled in what appeared to be a massive underground cavity, relatively alone aside from the company of small, unintelligent creatures like worms and other bottom-feeders.


    Other solitary, subterranean creatures included a creature classified as a "Shadowfolk", a single "Maddened-man", and a handful of other creatures with bizarre names. In time I''d turn my full attention to them.


    For now, for the first time, I turned my full attention to one of the two cities of dark elves located underneath Puerto Rico. One was located not far from where my lair was located, and another was located further away from human civilization.


    Both had a fair number of kilometers separating them, and a number of other settlements between them as well. I turned my attention to the one closest to me. I studied it, and carefully scrutinized what I could learn from my powerful "Tremor-sense".


    And when I felt as prepared as I could I quietly teleported myself to a momentarily uninhabited tunnel that led in and out of the city, my shadow carrying my newest minion along for the ride.


    I found myself inside a pitch-black tunnel. Off in the distance, much to my surprise, I could see a gentle glow that provided the strange city of dark-elves I was intent on visiting with something surprising: a source of insignificant, yet noticeable light. It drew my eyes, and so I hurled myself forward so that I could get a better look at it.


    I sped through the tunnel, reveling in one of my odder abilities: the ability to move at the speed of light and found myself at the edge of a ledge overlooking the city. Thanks to that power I moved through the length of the tunnel at a speed exceeding the speed of sound.


    In a span of time that took less than a heartbeat, I had gone from inside of my lair to standing on a ledge admiring something I had never seen before: a city.


    ________________________________________________


    What stretched out before me was a gigantic city. It inhabited a cavern more than three times the size of the cavern my lair was located in. The top of the cavern was so high in the subterranean cave the city was located in, I had to stretch my neck upwards to see it. It wasn''t anywhere near the edge of my vision but it was still several kilometers high.


    The buildings that made up the city were carved from stone but it wasn''t the same stone that I trodded on with each step I took. The stone I was walking atop was a dark, coarse stone, but the stones that made up the dark elven cityscape before me were multihued and were partially responsible for the light that faintly drifted upwards and provided the city with the weak glow that made sight difficult, but possible within the city.


    I could see differently sized buildings throughout the city, and they were all harshly made, with a clear focus on functionality rather than any sort of focus on decor or aesthetics. They varied in color but the larger buildings, by and large, were made from stones with darker hues and thus were made all the harsher on the eyes, requiring someone to squint to see them properly.


    Some of the buildings stood out even at a glance. The one that stood out the most was a building that sat within and then expanded out of a depression on the cavern''s floor. This building was a large one, which stretched upwards into the cavernous sky that loomed above the city. It was inhabited by many people, all of whom were dark-elves.


    The city had countless inhabitants but not all of them were dark-elves. Many were, several thousand of the place''s inhabitants were members of the race I had come here seeking to make contact with, though others weren''t. I could sense humans, dwarves, elves of other kinds, and a number of other races within and throughout the city.


    Another building that stood out to me wasn''t a building in the traditional sense but was instead an impressive arena. From there I could hear the sounds of combat, and of audiences reacting to bloodsport. The noises coming from the arena were, in fact, some of the loudest noises I could hear.


    I ignored the arena for now and focused instead on the gigantic building that sat in the depression. I studied it, and wondered what it was for a few moments before ultimately deciding to use a power I had never used before to get a good look at it and actually learn about it: "Peruse the past".


    I targeted the building and then willed my power to activate. I was pleasantly surprised when I received a notification that gave me a great deal to consider.


    [The Morthonian mansion: This ancient temple once served as the holiest site dedicated to the demon-lord Morthos located in this world. This temple was built by some of the founders of the city of Aronms, dark elves who spoke to Morthos himself and found themselves enthralled by the voice of their master and patron. They even said that it was at his command that his city began to be built.


    Morthos was the demon-lord of persuasion and was believed to have had a silver tongue. He was a master persuader and was rare among demon-lords because he sought to behave non-violently and tempt mortals into evil actions without violence. He was worshiped by countless evil cultists and his followers were depraved individuals who valued the power of a subtle word over a swift stab.


    The purpose of the Morthonian mansion now that the mythic age is over is one of administration and record-keeping. This strange building serves as the seat from which the city''s bureaucrats do their work and serves as the seat of power of the city''s historians, influential individuals whose words are heeded in and out of the city.]


    I considered what to do first, but a part of me, that ambitious spark located deep in my soul that salivated at the thought of building a subterranean empire, was fully awake now. And that part desired for me to stop by the building known as the morthonian mansion and see what sort of mischief I could raise there. I grinned and began my descent into the city.


    I did so by taking several steps forward. My final step forward saw me step off the ledge I was standing atop of and beginning a careful, controlled descent to the ground far below me thanks to my light manipulation ability. This caused me to get another pleasant notification.


    [Alert: You may now complete the quest to gain the lowest tier of influence over the subdomain of the air. To do so, simply allow a creature to fly. It is enough to allow them to believe they have flown, so this quest can be done with some creativity.] Explained the system, bringing a wide grin to my face as it did so.


    "I see we''re using the word ''fly'' very loosely." I excitedly and somewhat sarcastically muttered, even as I began my continued my downwards descent into the darkened depths of the city''s lowest levels. I chuckled at the wittiness of my own remark and waited to reach the ground far below us.

 66 Aronms

    I found myself quietly and slowly descending to the surface of Aronms. I maintained my connection to the earth by placing a single hand on the mountainous wall next to me as I carefully controlled my descent to the ground. Thanks to that decision I was able to continue to use "Tremorsense" to study the demographics of Aronms.


    As I lowered myself to the ground, I did my best to discover what I could about what lived in this city. It took me just about a minute to reach the surface, and during that time I was able to discover a fair deal about the non-humanoid inhabitants of Aronms.


    One of the first things I noticed was that the sorts of animals the people of the city kept as pets or had evidently domesticated were different from the sorts of animals humans kept as pets or domesticated. I wasn''t surprised by this, but the sorts of animals that were domesticated underground were incredibly different from the ones that were domesticated on the surface.


    "Tremorsense" allowed me to detect a number of animals throughout Aronms, but another useful tool in my arsenal was my eyes. I could detect animals with multiple usages, like worms, and see a handful of animals with one main usage, like bats.


    "Tremorsense" informed me of what appeared to be farms of worms, where the little things were raised in staggering numbers. But small, mass-raised worms weren''t the only worms in the city.


    I could also detect a few hundred worms that were considerably larger, larger than the dark elves who comprised the primary inhabitants of the city. Many of these larger worms tunneled underneath the city, perhaps expanding the city or preparing to move it somehow. Some of them though were ridden by dark-elven riders and patrolled the city which implied that the dark-elves had a way to tame and control these creatures.


    Other creatures seemed to serve singular purposes. As I looked out and visually explored the city I could see and even hear tremendous bats. The bats I could see were being ridden by various dark-elves, and often went into or came from other tunnels that led in and out of the city. There were hundreds of them, and they all seemed to serve a single duty: high-speed, high-mobility transportation.


    I studied them and studied the worm-farms that were the stomping grounds of low-skilled dark-elven laborers, aided by creatures of various species clad in chains and other shackles. Those creatures had dour, helpless looks on their faces. When I first noticed them a single word flashed into my mind, in big bold letters. "Slaves".


    It was a word I didn''t like. A word that made me feel a flash of anger, more powerful than any I had felt before. At that moment a familiar voice crept into my mind.


    [The reason you don''t like the word ''slave'' is that that word symbolizes the ultimate loss of freedom. Slavery is the practice of owning another person. It is a system that is one of the cruelest aspects of dark, law-abiding societies. You are a chaotic god, you embody the power of freedom and of choice, which is anathema to slavery.] The domain explained, informing me about slavery and providing a target for me to aim my anger at.


    I took a deep breath and narrowed my anger. I managed to get it under control, after a few seconds of feeling it well up within me. It was difficult though, and I felt a strong part of me want to rail against slavery and those who owned slaves. I only managed to restrain myself because I gave it serious thought.


    I took a few seconds to consider assaulting a city that I didn''t know, had no allies in, and at the moment didn''t have the resources or the personal power to control. It didn''t take me long to realize that that was a dumb plan. That didn''t mean I couldn''t do anything though, indeed as a god there was much I still had the power to do.


    I again closed my eyes. When my familiar map showed itself to me, I quickly went to work on the filters, searching for a way to target all of the enslaved people in the city. It took me a few moments, but I was pleased to find a way to select creatures based on what the system called their "occupation". I wasn''t pleased to find that the system apparently considered being a slave an occupation, but for the time being I focused on the positive.


    I instantly targeted each of the creatures that the system hadn''t filtered out, and was somewhat distressed and also unsurprised to see that the practice of slavery wasn''t limited to Aronms. This only served to anger me more, but I effortlessly targeted the several thousand enslaved people I was able to identify, here and in other settlements throughout the land beneath Puerto Rico.


    I did two things at once. I activated my "Healing burst" power, and I also began to transmit a mental message to the enslaved inhabitants of the city and of the settlements throughout the subterranean land I found myself in.


    ________________________________________________


    Throughout the region underneath the surface of the island of Puerto Rico there were several settlements. These settlements were populated by a number of creatures, many of which were incredibly hostile to life from the surface. Dark-elves and reptilefolk were among the most aggressively hostile towards surface life, and had captured or otherwise acquired the most slaves.


    Both of these civilizations had large settlements that were built primarily on slave-labor. In both cases, the settlements they maintained ran largely on such actively immoral labor-conditions. This was something Althos was ignorant of.


    That said, the young god wasn''t ignorant of the powerful feelings that surged into him when he activated his potent restorative power and pumped thousands of enslaved individuals with magnificently powerful healing energy.


    Althos shivered as the sensations of those he healed, especially those who had lost limbs or were suffering from previously incurable diseases reached him and seeped into him. This happened while the curious deity was just landing on the surface of the city of Aronms.


    One of the results of this was that he instantly gained mastery over numerous virulent diseases and some that were troubling but not-so-virulent. He felt power over these illnesses infuse him, and make him grateful for the fact that he now possessed powers over diseases. This marked the first moment that the young god actually felt grateful for his ability to infect people with diseases.


    His mind was elsewhere, even as he received notification after notification about his powers over disease. He was still crafting a message by which he could introduce himself to the people he had just healed.


    It didn''t take him long to craft something he wound up liking, and it was even something that incorporated his new powers over disease. The message he ended up transmitting was a simple one.


    "Hello. My name is Althos, and I am a god. I have come to liberate you and to change the subterranean land in which you dwell. Even now I am working to secure your liberation. Until I complete the work set before me, please stay safe, and stay healthy." He told them, his mental voice filled with power. His message wasn''t over yet.


    "I shall do what I can to make the remainder of your enslavement less painful. The moment of restoration I gave you all was just the beginning of that. I can heal, and I can sicken just as well. Your masters shall suffer for what they have done to you, and you shall see their suffering with your own eyes." The deity told them, and in doing so gained the admiration of many hundreds of the people he had just potently healed.


    As Althos felt their feelings surge into himself, he smiled. He sensed the hope that his undeniable power had rekindled in some, and lit for the first time in others. And this served to again enrage the god. It served to give him additional reasons to lash out against the enslavers who profited off of this cruel system of dehumanization and abuse.


    For one of the first times in his life, the young god felt a cold hatred that was both righteous and hate-filled. He felt it well up deep within himself and threaten to spill over and cause him to act recklessly. The god sighed, willed away his physical form, and began to explore the city on foot while doing his best to soothe the hate he felt in his heart, a simmering hate that tempted him to behave viciously and cruelly.


    ________________________________________________


    "Master, couldn''t you destroy this city?" Asked Sombra, the praereptor demon who inhabited my shadow and was now traveling beside me incorporeally. I chuckled at the demon.


    "Honestly? Probably. Actually..." I replied to Sombra less than certainly at first. But I changed my tune when I considered the powers I already had. I could easily use my dominion over stone, soil, and dirt crush this city if I wanted too. So I revised my response to Sombra.


    "I could destroy this city. I could bring the cavern''s ceiling down on the cavern itself and crush every living thing here." I said, almost tempted by the idea before I cooly reminded myself that that meant crushing both non-slave-owning individuals and those who were themselves, enslaved. Sombra laughed delightedly at what I said.


    "Master, you should do it!" The demon said, egging me on. I could hear the little monster''s delight at the idea of watching every corporeal creature in this part of the land underneath Puerto Rico perishing in an instant.


    For a second I considered the demon''s words. The more I thought about crushing this place, the more I thought about how it''d feel being crushed underneath tons of rocks and dirt. It struck me as a particularly brutal way to die. It took a second of concentrating, but eventually, I shook off the thoughts that tried to fill up my mind about how that sort of death would operate.


    "No. I won''t. It won''t help me achieve my goals." I told the demon, annoyed at it. I found myself ethereally exploring the streets of this city, and mostly ignoring the largely pedestrian happenings of the city''s dark-elven inhabitants.


    The area I found myself in was a single long road that stretched on for several hundred meters. It was populated by dark elves who hadn''t been paying attention to the wall I had stealthily slid down on my way to the city''s surface.


    They were going about their own business, chatting with each other about an assortment of topics. As I invisibly traveled closer and closer to the Morthonian mansion, I heard gossip about a number of different things. Things like the goings-on at the arena, the existence of something called an "Asylum" and other bits of gossip I stored away in my mind.


    After a few moments of listening to them, I opted to come up with a real plan. I did so by starting off with a strategy that had worked so far: asking my friends for help. "So what happens if I decide to abolish slavery in this city?" I asked them, knowing that their considerable intellect would give me an answer. And it did.


    "With no plan in place to ensure that there is a labor force in this city? Panic. And at best a splintering of the city. At worst... civil war between factions who listen to you and factions who don''t. And that''s assuming you do this correctly and establish alliances with major dark elven factions throughout the city." Explained the system, quickly replying to me. It wasn''t the only one to reply either.


    "Althos, it''s good that you recognize the injustice of this but you can''t try to change it on a purely emotional level without inviting chaos. You need to come up with a plan to ensure that not only are slaves freed, but also that the city can survive once slavery is abolished. And you have the power to do that. There''s an obvious solution to a labor shortage. Just think about it." The domain of knowledge told me, lecturing me briefly and encouraging me to think about my powers.


    It didn''t take much more than a second to realize what the domain was suggesting. Necromancy. And that realization brought a smile to my face.

 67 Towards The Manor

    I realized with a start, and with a macabre grin, what the domain of knowledge was alluding to. The first domain or subdomain I had gained power over through my own effort was that of the subdomain of necromancy. And that was what the domain of knowledge was suggesting was the key to the abolition of slavery. I spent a moment considering the implications of that.


    "The key to meaningfully and successfully defeating slavery is to replace enslaved people with... corpses that do the work instead?" I asked myself, fascinated by the moral implications of what I had just learned.


    "Slavery is objectively and undeniably evil but if it is to be successfully abolished then plans are necessary. It is not enough to have a purely emotional or ''moral'' response to slavery unless one wants to cause the collapse of society. Necromancers can create a new source of labor." The domain explained. It was at that moment that I heard a sinister chuckle from the subdomain of necromancy.


    "Yes, they can. Do you see that Althos? I am necessary." The subdomain whispered sinisterly. I chuckled at the subdomain''s words. I could see the somewhat ruthless point being made by the domain and subdomain.


    "That said... there is technically another way for you to create an alternative to slavery that undercuts the need for a massive number of unpaid and dehumanized labor." The domain of knowledge suggested, not actually mentioning what it was just yet. I heard an annoyed sigh come from the subdomain of necromancy.


    "At the moment your skills are not quite diverse or strong enough for you to fully replace the labor done by slaves, but eventually you could use your powers over things like civilization, agriculture, the earth, and more to do the work currently being done by slaves." The domain suggested, even informing me as to which domains and subdomains would one day allow me to do so.


    "Well, even now you could replace the most valuable work done by slaves. You possess power over agriculture, and the growth of food is perhaps the most valuable work done by slaves throughout this entire region. Your ability to speed crop growth and manipulate the numbers of crops grown is invaluable and also legitimately society-changing." The system told me, causing me to grin.


    "If you wanted to you could really hold the hands of an entire civilization. And that might be necessary, because have you even begun to consider what happens when you end slavery? Even if you''re fully successful at abolishing it peacefully, what happens to the freed slaves?" The system asked, curiously.


    I fell silent for a moment and considered the question. It was an important part of determining how to proceed, and a small part of me had considered it already but I hadn''t come up with anything definitive. It took me some time to begin to come up with a real response. Time during which I was still moving, taking my time as I drew ever closer to the Morthonian mansion.


    "If I successfully abolish slavery I will ask those people who are currently enslaved what they''d like to do. I will assume that they will want to leave, as this is a place of darkness and cruelty. They could come to my lair. I mean... I may have to expand it, but if they wanted to be in my presence they''d be welcome there." I told the system, explaining one part of what could come next.


    "If they wanted to go back to the lands they came from, I''d be more than happy to send them back. But it''s possible and probably even probable that many of them were born into slavery and might do better in a society that strives to help them." I explained, thinking out loud as I did so.


    "If they chose to stay with me, then I suppose I''ll begin to create a new civilization. Because honestly, that''s... what that''d entail isn''t it? If even a tenth of the victims of this institution I seek to free in this city alone chose to stay with me that''s several hundred enslaved people choosing to stay with me." I told both myself and the system, as more and more realizations came to me one after the other.


    I spent a moment in silence. I could sense a feeling of quiet respect emanating from the disembodied entities I was speaking too. I could sense that they were happy I was thinking this through and actually considering what came next.


    "If I freed them, and gave them the choice to live with each other and live in a safe community, many of them would stay wouldn''t they? I mean... In this scenario, I freed them from slavery and successfully helped them leave the place of their enslavement. If I gave them the choice to stay either in or around my lair it''d be perfectly rational for them to chose to stay with me." I muttered, thankful to the system for pushing me to consider this fully.


    I wasn''t unhappy about it. I actually didn''t mind the thought of it, perhaps because in a sense this constituted me behaving as a god should. I was creating things and destroying other things, which was what the system once told me gods were, creators and destroyers, embodiments of power. And for this to succeed I''d need to behave more powerfully than I ever had before.


    I took a deep breath and I pushed myself to enter the mindset of a powerful, arrogant, and unstoppable deity. I felt that entering such a state of mind was necessary for me to successfully create the conditions under which I could begin the work needed to liberate the slaves of this city. As I did so, I spoke to my demonic minion.


    "Are you ready to help me cause some chaos?" I asked the creature, a grin on my disembodied face. I was preparing myself for what came next, now that I was beginning to have the outlines of a plan formulate itself in my mind and as I turned to face the Morthonian manor, where I hoped to gain my first allies, I felt that my demonic ally would probably be a useful partner. The demon chuckled.


    "Oh, absolutely master. What do you want me to do?" The creature asked, and I could hear a grin on its incorporeal lips.


    "When the time comes for you to act, I''ll lash out at a vessel I''d like you to possess. When I do, take over it." I told the creature, confusing it.


    "But master... I can''t just possess any creature. It needs to be sick." The demon told me, confusion distinctly audible in its voice. Now it was my turn to chuckle.


    "Sombra, I can cause people to be sick. Including the sort of sick someone needs to be for you to be able to possess them." I revealed, saying so for the first time. I decided to expand on my statement to clarify and allow the demon to fully understand how I could do that.


    "I am a god Sombra. I gain new powers very easily. I can control non-magical diseases and infect someone with ''Demonic infection'', opening them up to your abilities." I explained, proudly discussing one of my newer powers.


    "In fact, with non-magical diseases, my powers are even more potent than merely infecting someone. But for now, I merely want to use you to demonstrate my powers." I told the demon. There was a part of me that wanted to command an army of praereptor demons. With my powers, they''d be especially able to wreak havoc on those foolish enough to make themselves my enemies.


    [Alert: You have received a number of different prayers. One of them is from the human village of Comillas, several are from the goblin tribe, a handful are from members of the swarm, a few are from forest inhabitants, one is from one of the dark elves you healed, and many are from slaves you''ve healed. Would you like to hear them?]


    The notification I just received was intriguing to me. I informed the system that I would be happy to hear the prayers since I was intrigued by them. I opted to begin with the prayer from Comillas.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Beginning with the prayer from Comillas. This prayer comes from the Comillian named Alma. After this, we''ll prioritize prayers from creatures you know.


    ''Hello Cosecha. I hope you are having a good morning. I am convinced that you are... something. I don''t know if you''re what you say you are, but I received the apple you created for me, and I also felt the soothing effect of your magic. Which is precisely why I am praying to you. I have a request for you.


    My granddaughter is currently sick. Her condition is somewhat serious and she''s presently wasting away. Her mother hasn''t even told her husband, who happens to be my son. Could you cure her somehow? If you can''t, could you at least increase the quantity of the food her father produces? His name is Gustavo. He''s been stressed about this year''s harvest and could really use the support.


    If you helped him produce more food, I''d be deeply grateful to you. If you cured my granddaughter I''d even tell him about you, if you wanted me too. I recall you mentioning that you seek to gain more followers. I love my family, and my son and granddaughter are my whole world. I haven''t seen either of them in days. Please help.''


    The second prayer is from the goblin named Mawby.


    ''Hello, Cosecha! I hope you''re having a wonderful morning. Thank you for coming yesterday. I wanted to start today off by apologizing to you. I wanted to tell you about the myths my people tell each other, but when you got here everything became a bit chaotic.


    I thought about simply praying and informing you as to the contents of the myths, but Xiax is insisting I invite you to come back here and listen to the stories themselves. I think he might be jealous of the fact that I pray to you and can get a response? He hasn''t prayed to you himself, but he''s shy about it for some reason. Anyways, last night was great and we hope that you come back sometime soon.


    Oh goodness, how do I end this? Umm... bye-bye? Have a good day? Sure. That sounds right. Have a good day!''


    The next is from one of the coyotes who you saved from Sombra''s ability to charm creatures.


    ''Hello, Althos! You were a god this whole time? Wow, wow, wow! No wonder it felt like you saving us was super easy, barely an inconvenience. This is good news because it turns out that the forest will probably need some saving soon.


    Anyways, we wanted you to know that we detected some hyenoid footprints, which probably isn''t a great sign. They tend to only come here when they are really hungry. And usually, they send a few preliminary scouts to investigate the state of the forest before coming in a large number.


    Since this forest is now your territory it might be worth acting quickly to establish contact with them and see how you can prevent a feeding frenzy from occurring. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we think that''s a good idea!''


    Here''s another prayer, this one from the myrmekes queen who guided you into the world beneath the world.


    ''Good morning creator. We have begun a careful exploration of the region you created, while steering clear of the tower in the distance. With your permission, we''d like to begin building in the region.


    Also, as you no doubt know, many of us are evolving. There are now over 10,000 myrmekes ants in my colony alone. If you''ve taken command over other ant colonies... well the number of myrmekes ants under your control would be staggering. What are your commands? If we are to serve you successfully we require your guidance.''


    The next prayer is from a dark elven evocation-mage named Qu''Ren. She was one of the dark elves who you cured of blindness.


    ''Hello? Hello. Sorry, prayer is weird for dark elves. You''ll find that we''re a very... prideful species. Prayer is something we''re uncomfortable doing.


    My name is Qu''Ren. I am a member of a noble dark-elven family, and I lost my sight when I failed to properly cast a powerful evocation spell. You restoring my sight was both an act of great power, and also one that was very kind. I recognize that.


    But I know better than to think that acts of great kindness are acts that are done freely. I also know that you are a god. If you''re unsure of why, like the system said you''d be, then you should know that it''s because of the system. I asked it how I was healed, and it told me about you.


    I want to reward you and to meet the one responsible for the restoration of my sight. Please come visit me at some point in the near future. If you introduce yourself as Althos to any of my house''s guards, they''ll know to send you to me.''


    Here''s the prayer that actually caused you to receive the notification, it''s the most recent prayer you have received.


    ''Hello, Althos. You probably don''t know me on a personal level, but my name is Seamus and I am one of the slaves who healed by you just a few minutes ago. I wanted to find a way to thank you, and the system informed me about ''prayer''.


    It''s funny, back in my homeland of Arthurstown we actually had folktales about prayer but I never believed they were more true than false... To think that a god can actually hear prayer? That''s incredible. Anyways, if you need help freeing us, please let me know. I''m sure if I can communicate with you, you can communicate with me somehow. You may find the help of a druid useful.''


    Here''s another prayer sent to you by someone who is currently enslaved.


    ''Hello, Althos... Oh goodness, how do I do this? Gah, I guess I''ll just do my best with it. Anyways, my name is Aoife and I am praying to you because the system asked me too. I am a warrior, and the system informed me that it might not be a bad idea for me to pray to you before you did anything else.


    If you''re really trying to free slaves, it told me that it was a good idea for me to serve as your advisor. I think it might have been trying to do you a favor? This whole thing is weird, so please if you''re interested in gaining an advisor, it''d be a good idea for us to come into contact but I did my part so I guess I have to wait to see if you send me a message somehow.'']


    Reading through the prayers I received reminded me of the first time Mawby prayed. And it made me realize that I really needed to establish a way to pray that helped increase overall knowledge of prayer and established a tone to take when praying. It was weird to hear so many different tones taken by those who prayed.


    By the time I was done sorting through the prayers I had received, I found myself ethereally standing in front of the Morthonian mansion. I grinned and walked right through the front door leading in and out of the place, a gigantic thing made from massive slabs of some sort of red stone.

 68 The Historians

    The area that Sombra and I entered into when I passed through the door leading into the mansion was a massive foyer over a dozen meters tall and over two dozen meters long. At the center of the foyer stood a statue of a creature unlike any I had ever seen.


    The statue was of a person. I could tell, largely because of the humanoid frame of the statue. It possessed two arms, two legs, a human-like head, and a basic stomach. The rest of it was... odd.


    The statue''s head had long, ruby-colored horns. There was a long tail that ended in a deadly looking stinger protruding from the creature''s back. It had a set of draconic wings that were exquisitely crafted and matched the color of the thing''s horns. I studied it for a moment until Sombra spoke.


    "Morthos." It said, breathlessly. There was a touch of awe in its voice, an emotion I hadn''t really heard it articulate until now.


    "Althos, that statue is a depiction of the demon-lord known as the ''Silver-tongued destroyer.''. He brought doom to a thousand worlds just by speaking. Morthos." The demon told me, sounding genuinely inspired by the creature. I chuckled at the amazement audible in the demon''s voice. And then I paused to consider the creature''s reputation.


    "He ''brought doom to a thousand worlds''?" I asked myself, curious about that. It was a fierce reputation to be sure, but I thought it was odd because he was also apparently the creature who ordered the city of Aronms to be built in the first place.


    [The title is accurate. Morthos enjoyed creating destructive societies, especially ones that were destined not only to destroy their neighbors but also themselves. Dark elves were among his favored servants for this very reason. Dark elves in thousands of worlds, including ones that they weren''t able to destroy before the end of the mythic age, served and worshipped him.] The system explained.


    "I see..." I replied, wondering how many thousands, if not millions of servants he must have had throughout this universe. I didn''t doubt that the number was immense if he somehow brought doom to over a thousand worlds. And that wasn''t the only thing I was curious about either.


    "What happened to the worlds that he ''brought doom to''?" I asked the system, curious to hear what fate befell the worlds he was apparently responsible for ruining.


    [Well... If you''re really curious I''ll go ahead and tell you that one of the worlds he ruined is located in the solar system, the chain of planets that orbit a sun, that you inhabit. I won''t tell you what''s happened to it since then though. You''ll have to investigate that yourself.] The system told me, giving me more of a reason to uncover the secrets behind interstellar travel. I grinned internally and finished my visual exploration of the statue in front of me.


    This odd foyer wasn''t uninhabited. Dark elves of all sorts wandered it, and before I went anywhere else I laid my eyes on them.


    The dark elves here were elegant individuals. No matter their gender they were tall individuals, standing in the range of two and a half meters at the lowest to over four meters tall at the tallest. The difference between their shortest and their tallest members was an impressive sight.


    The clothing that adorned their bodies were skin-tight things that were covered in three different motifs that I noticed. One of the motifs were animal imagery.


    Their helmets were clad in the imagery of stylized bats, worms, and a few other animals like badgers and armadillos. I wasn''t sure how I knew the names of the animal types, but at this point, I was ready to chalk it up the domains and their influence on me.


    Another motif was that of the dark elves themselves. Some of the breastplates that guarded the dark elves'' thin bodies were covered in artistically etched envisionings of dark elves. It would have been difficult for someone else to notice as the armor was dark and in the dark. I couldn''t imagine another surface dweller''s eyes easily peering through the darkness so to see what I had noticed.


    The final motif was an odd one. There was a consistent theme of tiny, monstrous creatures covering the armor that protected the extremities of the dark elves. They wore arm guards and greaves that were covered in depictions of creatures that were a cross between humanoids and monsters. I looked at them intently for several seconds, having never seen anything like them.


    "Althos you''re looking at depictions of corporeal demons. Corporeal demons are monstrous creatures with equally monstrous powers. And they form the majority of demons. Sombra and other incorporeal demons are a minority." The domain of knowledge revealed, educating me gently.


    After hearing that I nodded, appreciating the information, and finally readying myself to mentally scan the inhabitants of the mansion. I had come here to at least lay eyes on the historians who apparently had some influence over the people of Aronms, and it was time for me to focus on them.


    ________________________________________________


    I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to fill my vision. The thing instantly consumed what I could see, and inside of the building it was powerful enough that I could see who all was inside along with me. I quickly applied filters to the map so that I could focus on a specific group: the aforementioned historians.


    Countless dark elven outlines lost their color, and after a second only two in the building retained their vibrancy. They were blue, the color that the system had long ago meant neutrality on both the mini and not-so-mini maps. They were located above me, almost directly on top of me in this strange mansion.


    Out of curiosity I quickly unapplied the filters and allowed my eyes to explore both the interior of the mansion and the rest of the city. There were a handful of red outlines, indicating a group that was just hostile towards me, and a small number of green outlines.


    I tapped on one of the red outlines, just out of curiosity to gain a bit of insight into who my enemies were. I heard the familiar voice of the automated system begin to speak into my mind, ready to educate me as to the status of my foes.


    "The selected enemy is Duliha Ardror. The Ardor family is a family of well-known slavers in the city. As things stand they oppose anyone who opposes slavery, and thus they are your enemies. Duliha herself is a powerful berserker, a potent warrior whose rage fuels her. She''s a minor daughter of the family, who serves Lady Dilva, a noble in a noble house." The voice explained, letting me that because of my desires I had at least one enemy household. I swiftly turned my attention elsewhere.


    The green outlines marked people in need of assistance, who had a quest I could opt to fulfill if I felt inclined to do so. I tapped on one of them and waited the brief second it took for the system''s automated voice to once again fill my ears.


    "The selected quest-giving figure is named Simer Darkheart. Simer is a beastmaster, but he has a problem: the arena results in the deaths of too many evolved creatures. Evolved creatures are a rarity, as only gods and a handful of other higher-beings can bless creatures to the point that they evolve. Simer needs assistance in acquiring more evolved creatures." The system announced.


    This intrigued me. It felt like an easy enough quest, and it came with the implication that through it I''d gain a greater understanding of how helping creatures evolve worked. I made a mental note to check in with Simer before I left. I wanted to fulfill that quest.


    I tapped on another green outline on the map that encompassed my vision. This one was located near the edge of the city, a healthy distance away from me. The system''s voice filled my ears once more.


    "The selected quest-giving figure is named Dumme Runeshatter. Dumme''s career revolves around the expansion of the city. A few weeks ago a demon attack left his last dire badger died in a demon attack. Dumme now has two problems: he needs help figuring out who launched the attack, and he needs a new stable of animals that can dig through stone to create new tunnels." My automated companion revealed, informing me as to another quest.


    This was another intriguing quest, and as I readied myself to go to where the historians were located I figured I''d be able to drop by Dumme''s current location before I left Aronms today. With that, I refocused on my objective: at least seeing the historians at work. Sombra and I went directly overhead, phasing into the ceiling that separated us from other floors with ease.


    We had to pass through two floors onyx colored things made from sinisterly shadowy stone, both decorated with statues of Morthos and other demonic artwork and populated by dark elves flitting to and fro before we made it to where the historians were located. And as it turned out, we found ourselves in the midst of a conspiratorial meeting.


    ________________________________________________


    The chamber two floors higher than the entrance that we found ourselves in wasn''t a particularly lavish one. I had expected it to be much gaudier than it was. It was a decently sized chamber, the centerpiece of which was a large table crafted from some white substance that provided the chamber with a sort of natural, ambient lighting that didn''t rely on something that could be put out like a torch.


    The table was rounded by nine chairs, thick, egg-shaped things that protected anyone in them from literal backstabs, at the cost of preventing them from seeing who approached them from behind without leaving their safe outer shells. Of the nine seats, only two were inhabited at this time.


    One of the figures seated in an egg-shaped seat was a male dark elf. I took a chance to study him. He stood shorter than most dark elves, standing at about two meters tall. He was muscular though, and his face was covered in long-since healed scars.


    The well-built dark elf had armor covered in dark elves on his body. He wore a heavier looking suit than the other elves did as well. His armor actually looked like armor and not like clothing. He had entirely white orbs for eyes, and they seemed to almost radiate power.


    I studied him to see if he radiated a magical aura, but after a few seconds, I concluded that he didn''t. It was a bit surprising to see that he failed to radiate any particular color, and almost a bit disappointing. But what it suggested wasn''t something I missed: this man''s power was probably martial, which was impressive in and of itself.


    The other seated individual was a female dark elf. She wore skin-tight clothing as the other elves did. I had an intuitive sense that the clothing she wore would protect her, but upon close inspection of her and her armor, I realized that it was because the armor she wore radiated some sort of magic. It was difficult to tell what sort of magic the armor radiated though because the woman herself radiated a thick miasma of yellow-tinted magic.


    She was tall, and even sitting down she was close to two meters high suggesting her height was close to four meters when she stood up. Her hair was a mixture of gold and white, and her eyes were golden orbs, something which suggested she wasn''t any ordinary dark elf.


    "Listen I''m telling you we may need to ready... a plan to deal with the D''Rorce family. They are a thorn in my side." She said, her voice starting off fairly high but dropping a good deal when she said the words ''thorn in my side'', so much so that the final word was little more than a growl.


    Anger flashed in her golden eyes. She studied her companion, who seemed to be paying her little mind. This evidently angered the dark elf, because her eyes narrowed and a burst of yellow energy shot out of her and was clearly aimed at her companion.


    Thanks to my high-speed reflexes I noticed the energy escape her body and had time to react to it before it got anywhere close to her target. For a moment I wished I had the ability to identify magic at a glance, so that I could determine what she had just done. And that was when I got a handy message from the system itself.


    [Would you like to make that a new power? Because we can design it... All you''ve got to do is ask us too.] The system reminded me, harkening back to the one time I had had a new power designed for me, my potent "Stone prison" power.


    "Oh absolutely. Can you let me identify spells at a glance?" I asked, and I felt the system do its own version of a nod. That brought a grin to my face. I focused to the extent that time itself almost seemed to stand still as I waited for the next message indicating that I had received a new power.


    The yellow energy hung almost motionlessly in the air. I stared at it, curious as to what the elf was planning. That said, I could do a lot here and I wouldn''t act until I had more information, so I opted to take this chance to appraise the golden-eyed dark elf. Which was when I learned that she was more than met the eye.

 69 Timely Intervention

    [Name: Lilith Silverstone (Level 15 enchantress)


    Species: Half-Dark-Elf, Half-Succubus


    Alignment: Neutral Evil


    Personal virtue: Diligence


    Personal vice: Wrath


    Magic sensing: Lilith Silverstone is an extremely skilled enchantress. Lilith takes the natural powers possessed by succubi, such as charming people, invisibility, and seduction, and mixes them with the dreadful powers over darkness possessed by dark elves.


    Faith sense: Lilith possesses no current significant loyalties in one direction or another. She has a lover, has a family, and is a leader in her community, but her desire for power, her impatience, and the culture she lives in render her devoid of any meaningful ties in any direction.


    Authority detection: She possesses significant authority and influence over the city of Aronms. Lilith''s influence is felt all over the city and there isn''t anyone in it who doesn''t at least recognize her name.


    Soul sense: Lilith has the soul of a witch. She craves power and is happy to work with those who can provide it to her.]


    Her entry intrigued me. And it was precisely at that moment that I received an alert from the system.


    [Alert: You can now use two new magic domain abilities:


    Interruption: This power allows you to disrupt magic by lashing out at the mind of the caster. It is a synergistic ability that ties together the mind domain and the magic domain. Usage of this power automatically grants you the magic you''ve interrupted.


    Identification: This power is a straight upgrade to the ''Detect magic'' power you possess curtsey of the magic domain. It allows you to identify spells even if they''re midair, at a glance. You can also claim spells you''ve identified. It works automatically.]


    I grinned as I read the entry before me, and immediately turned my attention to the spell. I laid my eyes on the vague energy and was delighted to see it begin to be identified. After a few seconds, a single word appeared underneath the spell. "Dominate".


    At that moment I received a welcome notification. My new power had just activated!


    [Alert: Thanks to the power of your ''Identification'' ability you can identify the magic before you.


    You have laid your eyes on a potent enchantment spell named ''Dominate''. This spell forces targets hit by it to try and resist its potent effects. Failure to resist causes someone to become enthralled by the spellcaster.


    You can now use ''Dominate''. This spell must be focused on to keep working but gods can focus on many things at once.


    Furthermore: You can tell that a yellow aura depicts someone with significant enchantment powers and ambient yellow energy is a sign of powerful, long-lasting enchantment magic.]


    I chuckled and tilted my head in Lilith''s direction. I took a moment to take aim at her, all while keeping my mind in a hyper-focused state. When I felt certain that my power would affect her, I envisioned her spell falling apart and then willed my new "Interruption" ability to lash out at her.


    I watched as Lilith suddenly hissed, possibly in pain. Her companion turned to her, having willingly ignored her words but still being present enough to notice that she was suddenly distressed.


    Her magic, which had begun sailing through the air, dissipated but not before suddenly illuminating the room in a sudden flash of yellow energy. And with this, I stopped focusing so intently. That caused my perception of time to return to normal, and therefore return everything to a normal speed.


    Lilith, recovering from the potent shock caused by the power of the "Interruption" ability suddenly turned in my direction. She wasn''t quite looking at me but she somehow sensed my proximity. I chuckled and made the conscious choice to make the sound distinctly audible. Her eyes widened as she realized that whatever suspicions she had were correct.


    "Who goes there?" She asked, her voice filled with anger at being watched by an unknown force and at her attempt to ensnare a new servant being interrupted and thwarted. I was silent for a second and considered how to proceed from here.


    ________________________________________________


    "What should I do?" I asked myself. The room was now dead silent and even the male dark-elf I had saved turned to look in my direction. He had a curious look on his face, and Lilith had a rage-filled one on hers.


    "I suppose I ought to introduce myself..." I mused, chuckling at the fact that I had opted to out myself so as to prevent someone''s will from being snatched away. I turned to look at the muscular dark elf and studied him for a second.


    I visually memorized every centimeter of his body. And then I crafted myself a dark-elven form based on his body but considerably taller. Once the new form was complete I transformed into it and allowed myself to corporealize. This whole process took about half a minute and I carried it out in silence.


    The only differences between the armored dark elf and myself were that his eyes were sheer white orbs and mine weren''t and that he was clad in armor and I only gave myself light-crafted pants so as to hide my genitalia. I came into being standing and very literally looking down on the seated dark elves. Both of them were shocked to see me, and in their eyes, there were flashes of recognition as they realized they were looking at a copy of the male in the room. I grinned at the pair.


    "First of all, allow me to apologize for borrowing your form." I said, almost immediately beginning to speak to the male in the room. This seemed to shook him more than anything else, and he merely slumped back in his chair. I grinned at him and continued to speak.


    "If you''re annoyed or upset at me there are two things you should know: I just saved you from an attempt, by her," And with that remark, I turned to look at Lilith for a second. "To dominate you. Magically." I explained, causing the male dark elf to look over at and glare, both angrily and in shock, at Lilith for a moment before turning back to me.


    "The other thing you should know," I said as the dark elf turned to look back at me. "Is that I don''t have a ''true form''. I tend to use a human form, but as a god I don''t possess a single, definitive form. So my choice to mimic you wasn''t anything personal." I announced. My declaration that I was a god wasn''t missed by Lilith.


    I had attention focused on the male, but when I finished speaking to him I turned to address Lilith. "And as for you..." I said, a confident smirk on my face.


    ________________________________________________


    "My name is Althos. I am a god. And I have come here seeking to make contact with the dark elves, and add this city to my empire." I told her, inferring from her way of talking that she saw herself as a leader. I intended to make use of what I felt was her arrogance and to appeal to it.


    Lilith looked at me, and studied me for a second. She was clearly unnerved by the fact that I was basically a taller version of her colleague. When she did speak her voice was tinged with skepticism.


    "Your ''empire''?" She asked, clearly skeptical that I was telling the truth about having an empire. I grinned at her and nodded.


    "I''m a young god, but I do have forces of my own. Thousands of troops ready to die for me." I told her, mixing truth and fiction together. I did in fact have my own forces, and there were, in fact, thousands of them, but saying they were ready to die for me was a bit of fiction on my part.


    "What sort of forces do you command, ''Althos''?" She asked me, inquisitively and mockingly looking at me. There was disbelief and even scorn in her gaze. I laughed, understanding her skepticism.


    "I have an army of millions of ants under my control. And I possess strong necromantic power and have risen thousands of undead in my name." I told her, speaking honestly this time. She smiled, mockingly, at me.


    "Your armies are ants and zombies? For a god you don''t have impressive servants." She told me, speaking arrogantly. I shrugged my shoulders at her, indifferent to her skepticism.


    "I know my power. My forces are not to be underestimated." I replied, somewhat understanding her point. I didn''t bother to correct her idea that my forces were zombies and regular ants. I was quiet for a second and envisioned my current list of necromancy subdomain powers.


    [Necromancy subdomain passive powers:


    Lesser undead mastery:


    As a god of the undead, you become the undisputed master of the lowest caste of undead beings. Lowly legions of ghouls, ghosts, skeletons, zombies, wraiths, shadows, vampires, wrights, and mummies, as well as lesser entities like hungry hands and undead plants, begin to worship you and obey you once they become aware of you.


    This power grants you divine authority over all lesser undead, including those that were intelligently created by necromancers or those who transformed themselves into the undead which is often the case with vampires. It subsumes their wills and makes them yours.


    This power is also felt by undead strong enough to resist your ability to subsume the wills of lesser undead. It makes you more persuasive to them and increases the likelihood that they''ll obey or listen to you willingly even if they won''t worship you.


    This power adds zombies, hungry hands, and shadows under your control to your swarm but gives you total control over them. When you issue commands to them, that doesn''t cost you your usages of that power the way that it would when you use it on the insects under your control.


    Reanimating plague:


    This synergistic power ties together the disease domain and the subdomain of necromancy. It allows for those who die due to a disease you infected them to be reanimated spontaneously as undead under your control. These undead serve as carriers of the disease and infect anyone they attack with the disease that killed them.


    Unlife energy mastery:


    This power grants you utter control over the deadly energy that enables the undead to be undead. You can manipulate this energy as surely as you can manipulate the earth, and you can use it to a wide number of ends.


    You can infuse your blows with this energy, causing them to sap a living creature''s lifeforce, you can weave this energy into items to create artifacts that cripple those bold enough to try and use them without your permission, and you can make living creatures immune to it, as well as countless other things that are up to you and rely on your creativity.


    Miasmic aura:


    The auric power granted to you by the first tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy is one that strengthens undead allies and weakens living foes. This aura is unusual in that it also activates if you are near an undead creature strong enough to resist the compulsion to worship and obey you, further pressuring their wills to be vigilant around you. The aura is one of unlife energy.


    Sinister shadow:


    This power creates a persistent bodyguard in the form of a shadowy wraith who lives in your shadow. It springs to life whenever you are attacked, and attempts to kill and reanimate your attacker. If it successfully kills its targets then the targeted creature will reanimate as a ghoul or vampire under your control.


    Create Undead:


    You can now create the undead as a simple matter of flexing your will. If you wish to transform a corpse into an undead entity all it takes is for you to touch the thing with unlife energy and for you to will it to reanimate, allowing you to create undead in areas with anti-magic defenses.


    When you create the undead in this manner you''ll be asked what sorts of undead you wish to create just like if you used the ''Create Undead'' spell. You can create any of the undead you can command via "Lesser undead mastery". This power allows you to swiftly create undead armies.


    Fleshcrafter:


    So long as a creature hasn''t been dead for over five centuries you can restore its flesh and bone, so long as you have a single fragment of bone or flesh to use. This greatly enhances the number of corpses you can use to create armies and grants you the ability to salvage destroyed undead.


    Unlife energy infusion:


    The same energy that infuses undead creatures now infuses you. As a deity, you can possess both life-energy and unlife energy. You can also possess infinite amounts of both.


    Mindtether:


    You can tie together the minds of the undead. If you do this with a horde of lesser undead, like zombies, you can grant them elevated intelligence. If you do it with greater undead you can ensure greater cooperation between them.


    Swarm Loyalty:


    Members of your swarm are automatically reanimated as undead under your control when they die. This power means that enemies effectively have to kill them twice, once when they''re alive and then again when they reanimate. It takes them just seconds to reanimate.


    Additionally, creatures killed by undead members of your swarm rise up as undead creatures themselves.


    Class-Granting:


    You can give someone the necromancer class. When they receive it from you they receive a notification alerting them to the fact that you''re the cause of them gaining the class. The notification''s exact text can be modified allowing you to create another persona if you wish too or otherwise hide that you''re the cause of the target gaining a new class.


    Spell-Granting:


    You can grant someone various medium-ranked necromantic spells. These spells include but aren''t limited too ''Create undead''.


    Undead they create using these spells serve and worship you, but they are automatically given instructions to obey the caster of the spell, which they follow unless you command them otherwise. Your commands are the commands they actually follow, including if you command them to not follow the orders of the spellcaster who created them.


    When spells like ''Create undead'' are granted by you to other creatures and those creatures use the spells they are just aiming a spell that is, for intents and purposes, cast by you. This power can be used to create some amusing and potentially devastating schemes.


    Undamaged material:


    Non-deific necromancers can only reanimate the same body so many times. This limitation doesn''t apply to you. Provided the corpse isn''t damaged you can bestow sparks of unlife onto the same corpse as many times as you wish, allowing you to punish failure and reward loyalty in rather creative ways.


    Send sensation:


    This power allows you to transmit sensations to the undead who worship you. If you want to transmit anger, jealously, lust, happiness, peace, or any other emotion, you can with but a thought. You can also cause undead beings to experience sensations like the feeling of fullness after eating a full meal or cause them to experience lifelike sensations of discomfort or frustration.


    Past necromantic deities used this to send their servants feelings as omens or as a reward. And plenty of gods used this as a punishment as well, punishing undead who failed them by making them uncomfortable in various, often creative, ways.


    Necromancy subdomain active powers:


    Remotely create undead:


    This is a rare active power that''ll become a passive one once you reach a higher tier of influence over its domain or subdomain. With this, you can reanimate a corpse you''re aware of two hundred times per half-day.


    Miasmic burst:


    This once a day active power is a direct and unholy offensive power. It creates an explosion of unlife energy wherever you aim it that decimates any living thing nearby. Anything caught in the attack that survives gains a permanent condition that only you can lift, which guarantees that they''ll reanimate as undead creatures in your service once they die, whenever that might be.]


    Recalling my powers made me feel powerful. And it reaffirmed just how mighty I already was. I knew my power wasn''t to be underestimated, and I chuckled at Lilith''s arrogance. I took a second to look over the details of "Shadow strike" the spell I had gotten that would blind those afflicted with it.


    As soon as I did this I closed my eyes and targeted three members of the Ardor family with the spell. I activated it with a casualness that surprised me. I felt chill creep down my back as I received a new and welcome notification.


    It was alerting me to the award I had just earned: the first tier of influence over the domain of darkness. As I read it, I grinned and felt stronger than I ever had. And more ready than ever to demonstrate my immense power.

 70 First Demonstration

    [Details about the domain of darkness:


    The domain of darkness is a strange and oftentimes cruel domain that relishes the expansion of metaphorical and literal darkness. It is an enormously powerful domain that has power over darkness in every sense of the word.


    Darkness is not just the absence of light. Metaphorically darkness is associated with deception, stealth, the night, mysteries, evil, ignorance, and fear. The domain of darkness grants you powers related to all of those things.


    Darkness as far as powers go also grants you greater powers over some creatures who can''t stand the touch of the sun on their skin and it also empowers your enchantment and deception abilities... Or rather it will empower those things when you gain them.


    To gain further influence over the domain of darkness you must create cults devoted to the powers of darkness and to the spreading of darkness. Doing so is far easier underground than it is above-ground.


    The darkness domain is both boosting a handful of the powers it grants you, and also providing you with a few tips on how to effectively use these powers. Because it knows you''re afraid of it.


    Darkness domain passive powers:


    Darkness manipulation: You gain the ability to manipulate darkness.


    This is power allows you to do a number of fun things, including covering an area in impenetrable darkness, obscure living creatures, travel through things like shadows, and other darkened areas or even generate structures and weapons from darkness.


    The darkness domain is also empowering this ability, as a way to incentivize you to use darkness abilities. This is a way to get you to confront your fear because the darkness domain is cognizant of your fear of it and it itself fears that that may prevent you from using it.


    If something is shrouded in darkness and in the range of your ''Tremorsense'' ability you can reach out and touch it. That is especially important for a handful of your abilities that rely on touch, such as magical abilities and your necromantic powers. Curiously, this would also make your physical attacks unavoidable underground and allow you to speedily master martial classes.


    Blindness inducement: This synergistic power allows you to forcibly cause people to go blind. This power is so powerful that even those who see magically are not immune to it. It is a synergistic power stemming from the intersection of the domain of the mind and the domain of darkness.


    Detection manipulation: This power allows you or anything you select to become undetectable by mortals. For now, things you select can still be detected by extraplanar beings and the undead, but you can increase this power''s potency over time. This is a deception related power.


    Shadow mastery: You gain the power to manipulate and animate your shadow and the shadows of others. This greatly increases the power of your shadow guardian, allowing it to instantly attack anyone shrouded in darkness who attacks you. You can also turn an enemy''s shadow on them if you wish, giving you an ally that the enemy can''t escape.


    This power is perhaps the most abstract of all of your powers to date. ''Shadow mastery'' allows for a number of things, including the animation of shadows, but also for you to transform shadows into portals, storage spaces, and places for you to exert your power through. It also refers not just to a present shadow, but the concept of shadows altogether.


    You can command shadows while they are shrouded in darkness or in places where a human wouldn''t be able to see them. This makes this a stealthy power if you want it to be.


    If someone''s shadow is stolen from them, even temporarily, they are more susceptible to heat and fire damage for as long as they''ve been shadowless and for up to an hour after they recover their shadow.


    An important aspect of this power is that it allows you to use your own shadow in a number of ways. You can bless your shadow, increasing its stats, but your shadow can also work as a portal through which you can bring enemies to yourself, warp to them, or create a prison in which you can toss your foes.


    This power also grants you total dominion over the following creatures: shadows, wraiths, praereptor demons, and shadowsavants, a type of lesser extraplanar that hails from the dimension of darkness. To become the lord of the dimension of darkness it is necessary to become an overgod of both the darkness domain and the subdomain of necromancy.


    This power allows you to manipulate the bodies of shadowy creatures. That means that you can grant them physical forms, or otherwise modify their appearance as you wish.


    By using it you can also extinguish shadowy lifeforms, or forcibly infuse someone with darkness, which would siphon away some of their ability to resist your commands while granting them incorporeality and a handful of darkness related abilities, as well as ageless bodies.


    Aura of cowardice: This auric ability only affects neutral creatures and activates right as individuals are about to become hostile towards you. Creatures have to work to muster the courage to attack you. They can, but it''s a challenge.


    Hazy aura: This auric ability affects your enemies and makes it hard to pin down your exact location. If an enemy attacks a shadow of yours they feel nauseated for a moment.


    Umbral servants: This synergistic power ties together the domains of light and darkness and allows you to bless darkness touched creatures like vampires. Your blessing can render them immune to the harmful effects of the sun, entirely wiping away the single greatest weakness faced by vampires.


    Darkness domain active powers:


    Miasmic mystery: You can shroud an area in life-stealing darkness. Every second an enemy is trapped in this area, which can be as large as a small building, their lifeforce is stolen from them and given to you.


    If an enemy dies in this area, their corpses rise as vampires under your control, and their shadows arise as independent servants of yours. This power is useable twice per every three and a half-day period.


    Hostile darkness: This power is a targeted one that causes a living creature to suffer incredible pain every second they are surrounded by darkness. This pain cannot kill, but it is an effective punishment or form of torture. This pain also isn''t actually physically harmful, the pain is psychological. ''Hostile darkness'' is useable twice per twelve hours.


    Darkness domain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with this domain grants them the ability to hide in darkness once a day and allows them to see through both darkness and lies more effectively.


    Cursing someone with it causes them to be afraid of the dark, hampers their ability to the see in the dark, and makes them more susceptible to deliberate deception.]


    I began to audibly chuckle when I finished reading through the notification. I made eye contact with Lilith and asked her a simple question.


    "Would you like a demonstration of my impossible power? Because I''m more than equipped to give you one." I told her, smiling proudly and monstrously at the arrogant half-demon. She haughtily looked at me, a smug smirk tugging on her lips.


    "Oh you can prove that you''re a god? If all you want to do is summon a horde of ants, by all means go ahead. But that won''t impress me." She told me, speaking in a way that made it clear that she had already made up her mind with regards to my powers.


    I laughed and began to ready a proper demonstration for her.


    ________________________________________________


    I spent a moment in silence. My mind was racing as I considered how to demonstrate that I was a god to the egotistical dark elf seated not far from me.


    I had a number of considerable powers at my disposal, many of which would have been suitable for me to abuse at this moment. More than anything else what paralyzed me wasn''t some sort of doubt in myself but instead the act of choosing which powers would be the most impactful.


    I turned my mind to what I knew about dark elves. A moment passed as I drew on my considerable knowledge. And then I realized that I didn''t have considerable knowledge about dark elves, which made me sigh humbly.


    "Dark elves enjoy serving dark powers. Demon lords are creatures of supreme evil and chaos, and at least one demon lord lorded over an entire city of the creatures. Some dark elves breed with demons, producing in at least a few cases viable half-demon, half-dark-elf offspring." I told myself, inferring somethings from the existence of Lilith.


    "Some dark elves are slavers and some are animal-trainers and farmers. Dark elves are naturally magical, possessing some power over darkness." I told myself. I took another deep breath.


    "I suppose I could start things off by demonstrating my powers over shadows." I told myself, beginning to mentally puzzle out bits and pieces of a scheme.


    I cleared my mind and closed my eyes. I was immediately greeted by the familiar sight of my not-so-mini-map. Seeing it made my smile relax and lose some of the pride that colored it. And it was at that moment that my newfound powers began to nestle themselves within me.


    As if guided by instinct, but more so by muscle-memory than anything else, I quickly selected the filters that allowed me to effectively use my map. I spent a moment fiddling with them, before informing them that I wanted to select all corpses hidden deep beneath the island of Puerto Rico that I could reanimate.


    This was followed immediately by me receiving a notification that made me grin.


    [Alert: You have selected over ten billion corpses, more than a few of which are not those of ants. Are you sure you would like to reanimate all of these corpses at once?] The automated system asked me, cautiously.


    I unselected those corpses, and made a mental note: "Apparently trying to be too ambitious this early on results in a polite warning from the system." I told myself, unsurprised and opting not to stress out the odd entity. At least not yet.


    Switching gears for a second I decided to try out new darkness domain abilities. I refocused my "Tremorsense" mini-map and targeted nearly all of the almost one hundred workers within the Mansion.


    Targeting them took me but a second. I focused and fixated on their shadows, excluding just Lilith and her fellow historian. And then I issued a single command to the shadows I had selected.


    "Come." I told the shadows, willing my "Shadow mastery" ability to activate as I extended my hand out in front of me. The two dark elves in the room looked at me with facial expressions indicating a mix of curiousity and light amusement. There were a few seconds of stillness and peace before anything else happened.


    After a few moments of calmness, the shadows began to seep into the room we were in, their sudden appearance causing the pair of dark elves in the room with me to gasp in shock. Their dark-elven vision was acutely sensitive and more than powerful enough to see the shadows invading the room.


    "Hello there children." I said to the creeping silhouettes that seeped into the room from the ceiling, snuck past the doors leading in and out of the room, and climbed into it from the floor at our feet.


    The darkness latched onto me and either crawled down my face if it latched onto my head, or climbed up my legs if it hailed from the floor at my feet. Either way, it clambered all over me until it reached my hand, where it shrunk and just sort of clung to my skin.


    The controlled shadows invaded the room for all of a minute, and when the last of them was finally done, and settled on my arm they had shrouded every centimeter of my arm in clingy darkness that protectively and obsessively stuck to my skin. I looked up at my companions and grinned.


    Both of them had shocked looks on their faces. They openly display their surprise, and I could tell the sight of what I had just done had confused them. I decided to play into this.


    ________________________________________________


    "Oh, are you confused?" I asked, looking at the dark elves with an expression that feigned shock and delight. I spoke in a way that conveyed my excitement. Both of the elves took a second to compose themselves after I spoke to them, attempting to recover some of their pride in doing so.


    They picked up their jaws, and turned their faces away from me from a moment. I let them, figuring their pride was a value they shared. And then I began to speak.


    "What I just did was snatch up the shadows of the others who work here." I explained, casually revealing the true nature of my otherworldly power. I examined the dozens of now tiny shadows that clung to my arm. They had shrunk themselves down to a small size, but I sensed that they were still powerful, if I wanted them to be.


    I selected one of them at random with little more than a passing glance. I then used my unshadowed hand to deftly reach over and pluck one of them off my skin. I pinched the thing and then easily tossed the marble-sized dark silhouette onto the table that my two companions were seated around.


    "Grow." I commanded the shadow I had just tossed, even as it was released from between my fingertips and began to sail towards the table. And it did begin to grow. Right now I was experimenting with this power myself so I watched it with abject interest.


    The shadow speedily grew bigger. It expanded in height and width over the course of a few moments, allowing me to watch my powers in motion with a front-row seat I didn''t always have.


    The shadow went from being a pint-sized outline of a person, a female dark-elf, and quickly expanded to the size of a full-grown female dark elf standing roughly three meters tall by the time it finally landed on the table I had tossed it towards. Its growth rate was explosive.


    It had the figure of a female dark elf, albeit one made of featureless darkness. It had the thick arms of a well-built warrior of some kind, long legs, and an hourglass figure. It stood atop the table, motionlessly. After I examined the thing for a moment I spoke to it. I once more spoke a single word.


    "Speak." I told the thing, commanding it with divine authority and pride. The dark elves and I watched as the shadowy creature''s face opened disturbingly to allow it to speak.


    "Hello master." The odd monster said, greeting me. It spoke with a feminine voice, but there was something... unelven about it. Something almost frightening about it. The two dark elves looked at the monster that had just spoken with looks of fear on their faces.


    The male dark elf was the first of the pair to speak after my new servant spoke. He turned his gaze back to me, and asked me a simple question. "What are you doing?" He asked, a touch of anger audible in his question. I grinned.


    ________________________________________________


    "I am showing you that I am a god. This shadow, what it can do... It''s beyond what any other sort of shadow not under my control can do. And other shadows are capable of this too, if I control them." I told the dark elf. As I spoke I locked gazes with him. He was silent for a moment, before standing up and out of his chair.


    "Do you mind if I test for myself just how ''advanced'' your shadows are?" He asked, before turning to lock his gaze on the creature. I considered his question for a moment before sighing and shaking my head. Instead of giving him an affirmative answer, I met his question with a question of my own.


    "Listen... What will it take to convince you two that I am a real god?" I said, turning partway through my question to face them both. For a moment I considered using "Unfettered divinity", but for now, while it had a strict cooldown period in which to recover from usages it was too valuable to use for moments like these.


    My question caused the two of them to deflate. They paused and considered what I had just asked them. I also began to consider my other powers, feeling somewhat impatient.


    After a quiet fifteen seconds went by I sighed and reached out to the system. I had a question for it.


    "Hey, can I take others along with me if I teleport somewhere?" I asked it, opting to see if there was a way for me to easily transport the dark elves to a place where I could easily show them that I was real.


    For a moment I even considered using my shadows to store them, but then realized that I didn''t want to imprison them somewhere for no reason that required such a form of transportation. It took the system a few moments to get back to me.

 71 Gaining Servants

    [Yes you can. You can also cast teleportation on others even without you going with them.] The system informed me. That brought a grin to my face.


    I immediately turned my attention to my mini-map and inspected it to see where Raiz, Troik, and the elves were. I was delighted when I saw that they weren''t over at the still activate zone of "Unfettered divinity". Seeing that brought a smile to my face and allowed me to turn my full attention to my two dark elven companions.


    I looked at them and spent a second targetting them. And then I cast "Teleportation", whisking them out of here and into the same spots where Calorron and Farrane had just stood. A second later I followed them there, vanishing in a flash and reappearing in the forest I had spent the early morning in.


    ________________________________________________


    The span of time it took for the three of us to leave the chamber we had met in was a mere few seconds. And when I met the dark elves once again both of them were reeling from the sudden exposure to the sun. I chuckled and refocused to target them, before bestowing them with a single blessing: that of the domain of light.


    Doing so merely took me looking at them and willing them to experience the sun''s kiss on their skin. As soon as I wanted them to be blessed by the domain of light, I felt a rush of power flow out of me and into them. I watched as both of them fell to their knees, and as they read whatever notification they had just received.


    "So it''s true..." Lilith muttered, truly stunned by what she was reading. Her eyes were filled with an emotion that hadn''t crossed her face until just now: awe.


    "He really is... a god." Uttered her fellow historian. His voice was reverential, as he was truly in awe of the power I displayed.


    Both of them finished reading whatever notification they had received at the same time and their gazes snapped upwards. They had calm expressions on their faces and their eyes were surprisingly tranquil. It was when they spoke though that I was the most surprised.


    "Althos... What are your intentions? Your true intentions?" Asked the male dark elf. I chuckled. It seemed that he didn''t believe that I was being honest earlier about my desires. I turned my gaze so that I could stare at him.


    "I am building an empire. An empire that serves me. That worships me. I seek to add Aronms to it. I wasn''t lying." I told him, speaking honestly. "I intend to become the overlord that rules over Aronms. A living god and the figure from which all other power is granted." I explained to the dark elf.


    Lilith listened to my answer, her eyes widening when she also realized that I wasn''t joking or lying. She spoke now, her voice filled with curiosity.


    "What will you do to those who intend to oppose you?" She asked, looking at me in a whole new light now. I sighed.


    "I will convince them to accept the truth. In life... or in death." I told her, speaking somewhat honestly. I had the power to convince people to worship me, and I intended to use it.


    "I possess powers over the earth, light, darkness, and so much more. I will sneak into the places where I am not worshipped and make myself worshipped. I am a god. I will earn the worship of the living, or I will accept the worship of the dead." I told her, speaking arrogantly for a moment.


    "I want this to be clear. I am the most powerful being either of you have ever or will ever meet. And I grow stronger every second. If you revere power, then there will never be a being you revere more than me." I declared, speaking sincerely.


    "I can grant you power. Power to shape your city as you see fit. But for you to acquire said power, you must worship. You must submit. Your pride is nothing to me. Discard it and become mine." I declared to the elves, before finally focusing on the male dark elf for the first time.


    [Name: Drow Dragonspear (Level twelve monk)


    Species: Dark elf


    Alignment: Lawful Evil


    Personal virtue: Chasity


    Personal vice: Pride


    Magic sensing: Drow isn''t a particularly potent spellcaster. He is, on the other hand, an incredible warrior.


    Faith sense: Drow lacks a cause to fight for or a master to believe in. What''s worse is that because of his high-ranking position within Aronms hierarchy he isn''t really below any specific individual. This leaves him directionless and adrift in a surprisingly hierarchical society.


    Authority detection: Drow is a well-known individual and military-commander within the city of Aronms. He is one of the higher-ups within the military, and his suggestions are taken seriously.


    Soul sense: Drow has the soul of a templar. Many templars are lawful warriors or monks who obey their divine masters with fervor and who love and adore the divine beings they follow. They are also skilled warriors who obey the edicts of their gods zealously.]


    Learning more about the male dark elf made me smile. The dark elf, noticing my attention, bowed low and passionately. I considered how to approach the directionless denizen of the darkness. And then I began to speak to him.


    "Drow... I see your secrets. I feel how adrift you are without a master to serve. If you would serve me, you''d finally have a master that truly deserves to be served." I told the dark-elf.


    "You''ve spent so long feigning service to mortals undeserving of your service. Mortals who never appreciated you and who never recognized your talents. Let today be the day that that past dies. That your old life comes to an end." I told him, before beginning to truly appeal to his pride.


    "I recognize your power. Your pride. I delight in them." I told the dark elf, speaking truthfully.


    "I could help you further advance your powers. By serving me you cease to be who you once were: someone people saw as a figure to be feared and you become who someone with your power was always meant to be: a recognized and valued servant." I told the dark elf.


    I sensed the conflicted feelings my words stirred within him. He tensed up at what I was saying as if it conflicted with some value held by dark elves. But he also exhaled, releasing a breath I doubt he knew he was holding in at all.


    "You are directionless, unsure of where to go or what to do. You are above the petty politics of Lilith. I need skilled warriors and respected commanders who are immune to the temptation of personal advancement and recognition. Come to where you are needed. Serve me." I told the dark elf, speaking sincerely. In response, he grinned at me.


    "If I serve... What will I gain out of it?" He asked, beginning to seriously consider the words I was saying.


    "If you serve you will gain the power to extend your people''s power and authority. If you serve, I will be able to quicker in my conquest of Aronms, and thus add your people''s might to my empire. This will open up new trade routes, and allow for more power and fear to be afforded to dark elves throughout the world." I told the dark elf, before adding on a few additional benefits.


    "I can bless people who follow me. One of the benefits of that, as you''ve seen here," I said, gesturing to the sun-bathed forest around me. "Is that I can help people in various ways. I can also increase someone''s stats using my blessings, making anyone I want into a champion." I told the thoughtful male.


    "I can render people immune to the sun''s burns and help them see in sunlight. Imagine the surface dwellers facing off against an army of dark elves?" I told the dark elf, chuckling as I envisioned an army of creatures even a quarter as powerful as Lilith or Drow being forced to defend themselves from the subterranean warriors.


    Both of the dark elves also began to chuckle at that remark, themselves amused by it. After they finished chuckling, I rose a single finger in the direction of Drow.


    "I can also grant classes. A number of them. If you wish for power, all you need to do is tell me. I''ll add to your power, blessing you and bestowing upon you a new class. All it takes is accepting your rightful place as my servant." I told the dark elf.


    "It is your destiny to become a valued and respected member of my forces. It is both of your destinies in fact. Serve me, in exchange for power. And gain so much more." I told them.


    "Serve me, and use the power I grant you to pursue your own objectives. It is a mutually beneficial relationship. All it takes is, in Drow''s case an embrace of pride, and in your case," I said, turning to Lilith more once. "An abandonment of arrogance. And in return, you gain power." I whispered, tempting both of the dark elves.


    I sensed both of them consider my offer. I looked into their eyes and saw them weighing the benefits vs the drawbacks. A part of me was tempted to remind them of the vast power difference between us but I opted not to do so just yet. I didn''t like resorting to violence or even the threat of it if I could help it, and I didn''t feel the need to do so just yet.


    I waited patiently while they mulled over my offer. A few moments passed before Drow turned his gaze back to me. When he did so he refocused and waited for me to let my eyes fall on him. As soon as they did he began to speak.


    "Master... I shall serve. What are your orders?" He asked, his gaze dropping as soon as he finished speaking. I chuckled, and rewarded him by granting him a class: the templar class. I then turned to Lilith.


    "Althos... If we aid you in conquering our own home, what do we get out of it?" She asked. I chuckled and thought about how to reply to her. It didn''t take me long to come up with a lie suitable for the occasion.


    "By serving me you save your own life, that of your family, and those of your allies. I shall conquer Aronms. If I do it with your help it will take longer, but more dark elves will live. And every dark elf that dies shall arise and shall serve. I am a god of necromancy. You and your kin will serve in life, or in undeath. Only the truly blessed shall serve in both." I told her, my words falling over her easily.


    "It is the destiny of Aronms to become mine. I can make it mine kindly, and keep the nobility of the city intact, or I can go a different route. I''d prefer to conquer Aronms kindly and over the course of a few months, enacting changes slowly and organically, as opposed to using violence to storm the city. But if I choose violence I will devastate the city. I will leave it in ruins to show my power. After all, I could rebuild it. Don''t make me do any of that Lilith." I warned the high-ranking city official.


    I sensed my words fall over her. I watched her absorb them. And after a minute of quiet contemplation, she submitted. I grinned as I felt her become mine, surrendering her pride and choosing to embrace the power she knew I embodied.


    "That''s it." I told her, grinning as I spoke.


    "Surrender is the right choice. Submission, to me anyway, is the only viable path forward." I explained, soothingly. That was when I received one mildly lengthy notification. I knew what it was, as I had just gained two evil-aligned servants.


    I quickly opted to make that one notification even longer. I almost immediately came up with an easy to execute scheme.


    At that moment I casually used telekinesis on Drow, gingerly lifting the dark elf into the air. He expressed shock at this, and after a few moments of shocked paralysis tried to move forward. I allowed him to do so, and he began to smile in delight. He believed he was flying! I knew so because my notification quickly grew even longer.


    ________________________________________________


    [Details about the domain of evil:


    The domain of evil is an alignment domain. The second alignment domain you''ve gained influence over. It is the domain that governs hate, maliciousness, violence, corruption, and sins.


    To be a god of evil is to lord over murderers, tyrants, sinners, and misanthropes. It is to rule over the darkness that lurks in the heart of every creature. To expand and exploit such darkness to destructive and vile ends.


    By becoming a god of evil you are becoming more than an evil god. You are becoming a god who possesses insidious powers and uses them to advance evil itself.


    This domain is a cruel one, one that you can only gain influence over by behaving evilly and by creating cults that also behave evilly. Its powers are all related to the spread of evil and wickedness.


    Evil domain passive powers:


    Evil kinship: Evil creatures are more amenable to you. They detect supreme evil within you and respect and enjoy it. This is especially true for evil outsiders.


    Unholy energy manipulation: Unholy energy now infuses you and can be manipulated by you. This means that your attacks can deal extra damage to good-aligned beings, if you will it, or can corrupt them or the ground or air you stand on or in.


    Corrupt areas leak unholy energy into those who inhabit or even cross over or through them. This energy gradually lowers the resistance someone feels towards the urges to act evilly.


    Evil detection: You can now not only detect evil creatures more easily, but you can also filter your mini-map to detect areas of evil and where evil energy lingers.


    Hate detection: You can detect what a creature hates. This power can be used to construct elaborate plots that lead to violence and wickedness.


    Parasitic and verminous awakening: You can awaken parasites and vermin. This is due to the hatred humanoids feel for such things.


    Parasites and vermin awoken by you, especially ones you create using verminous powers, become fully alive and worship you. They are also bestowed an evil alignment. This is a synergistic power granted to you by the domain of evil and the vermin subdomain.


    Demon master: This power is a necessary one to eventually become a demon lord. It grants you greater power over demons and causes them to recognize your power. It won''t stop them from attacking you, but it gives you greater chances to recruit them and makes them manipulable by you. This power is synergistic, given to you by the domains of chaos and evil.


    Evil epidemic: This is a triple synergistic power awarded to you by your influence over the domains of evil and diseases as well as the subdomain of corruption. With it, you can allow creatures to feel some reprieve from symptoms if they behave evilly. This rewards and obviously encourages evil behavior. It is a corruptive power.


    Demonic infusion: As a god of chaos and evil you can infuse creatures with demonic qualities. Doing so opens them up to possession but also grants them a number of powers you can pick from and enhances their stats. This can be a curse on good creatures or a way to reward chaotic evil servants.


    Evil domain active powers:


    Empowerment: You can empower evil creatures for up to two hours a day. This power increases all of their stats for its duration. It''s useable twice per twelve-hour-period.


    Evil lure: You can select an area and infuse with the energy that makes it appealing for evil creatures to come to. You can use this to acquire evil servants.


    Temptation: This twice per twelve-hour-period power allows you to select five individuals who''ll spend the next two hours plagued by whispers that tempt them to behave evilly. This power can be used to relentlessly hound good people and eventually corrupt them.


    Evil domain blessing and curse details:


    The domain of evil awards evil creatures blessed by it with enhanced power, longevity, and charisma. The domain of evil curses good creatures cursed by it with increased vulnerability to temptation, violence, and hatred.


    Air subdomain details:


    The subdomain of air is a potent elemental subdomain that grants those who master it mastery over the air, flight, gases, and more.


    By becoming a god of the air you are beginning to more fully lean into your nature as an elemental lord. You gain, among other abilities, the ability to manipulate the air, create air spirits, fly, grant others flight, and detect things in the air.


    In order to become a greater elemental lord and god of the air, you must acquire servants who worship you as a wind master and as an aerial authoritarian. You must also create air-spirit servants who worship and serve you.


    Air subdomain passive powers:


    Aerial radar: This is a simple upgrade to tremorsense that allows you to detect flying creatures. It doesn''t expand the range of your mini-map, but it does make it so that flying creatures no longer escape detection.


    Aerial manipulation: You can manipulate the air and oxygen. You can use this to strike enemies with airwaves, create air currents, aid in travel and more. You can also generate weapons and arrows made of air currents and wind-armor or remove the oxygen out of an area.


    Flight mastery: You can fly perfectly in the air and you can allow others to fly or take away their ability to do so. This power even works on creatures that normally always fly. This power allows for interstellar travel.


    Infinite dexterity: As a god of the air your dexterity becomes unlimited. This means that your speed and your skill with your hands becomes maxed out, expanding even beyond the speed of light.


    Oxygen adaption: You never needed oxygen to survive, but now your body instantly adapts to oxygenless spaces. This power, combined with flight mastery, allows almost comfortable travel through space. You still don''t possess a temperature adaption power which is needed for truly comfortable interstellar travel.


    Create air spirit: You can create spirits made of air and other gases. These spirits are loyal to you and can be used in a variety of situations. They also lack souls at birth at the moment.


    Air subdomain active power:


    Suffocation: You can actively draw out the oxygen that fills a creature''s lungs. If they need oxygen to survive this can cause them to begin to die. You can use this fifteen times per twelve-hour-period.


    Air subdomain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the air subdomain you increase their speed, overall mobility, and adaptability to spaces with low oxygen. By cursing someone with this subdomain you decrease their speed, lower their general mobility, and make them further dependent on oxygen.]


    I smiled as I felt the upgrade to my "Tremorsense" power take hold. I relished the feeling of gaining even greater awareness of the world around me.

 72 Powers On Display

    I took a second to mentally glance at my newly improved mini-map. It was considerably more active than before now that it could display flying creatures.


    I saw a myriad of creatures that I hadn''t seen before. Some were simple birds and things like butterflies. Others were a bit more complicated. In the subterranean area underneath my feet, I detected a number of creatures that I had previously seen, gigantic bats ridden by the dark elves.


    It turns out that such creatures were called dire-bats. I could detect hundreds of them throughout the island''s hollow interior. At any given time only a few of them were ever on the ground, and being able to detect them in mid-air was extremely helpful when it came to keeping an eye on them.


    I turned my attention back to my new servants. Drow was back on the ground, and Lilith looked at her and then at me curiously. I chuckled at the two of them and began to explain what had just happened.


    "I gain powers rapidly. Or at least... in the beginning, I do. I can gain degrees of control over these things called domains and subdomains. In order to do so, I need to do things related to the domain or subdomain in question and then complete a quest it assigns me. In letting Drow ''fly'' I completed the quest for the subdomain of air." I told the two, explaining my circumstances rather casually.


    Their eyes opened wide as they considered my words. As their eyes widened in reasonable shock I mentally targeted Drow and activated one of my new powers: "Flight mastery". I willed for my dark-elven servant to gain the power to fly. I registered his even bigger shock when he actually gained the ability to fly and grinned at him specifically. I continued to speak even through his shock.


    "I am a very, very young god. But even if I had just been born yesterday, which I wasn''t, I would still have immense power." I told the two. I fell silent for a moment as I considered how to properly explain my power.


    "There are so many things I can do. I can grant someone classes. I can create buildings in an instant. I can collapse caverns. Even a cavern as big as that the city of Aronms is located within could be crushed in an instant if I willed it. But that''s not the only way I could destroy Aronms." I told the pair of dark elves I had brought to my side.


    "I could unleash an epidemic of unimaginable proportions. One that plagues every single person in Aronms, and leads to their death and eventual reanimation as an undead creature. Or I could just cause a famine that leads to the starvation of the city''s residents, after walling off every entrance or exit out of the city." I explained to the pair. I sensed their impression of me shifting. Which I liked.


    The part of me that almost feed on mortal emotions directed towards me, a quiet part of me that only really came out when I gained new worshipers, enjoyed this moment. I felt their awe for me increasing, even as the emotions that caused them to submit to me became slightly more fearful. They knew I wasn''t lying about my powers.


    Lilith looked at me and began to speak. "Althos, have you given any thought to how you plan to achieve your objectives?" She asked. I could hear the curiosity audible in her voice. For a moment I paused and considered her question.


    ________________________________________________


    At the moment that I began to focus on Lilith''s question, I intentionally focused and entered a new state of mind. It was one wherein time was slowed down, and I was able to gain more time to consider how to proceed.


    The first time I did this I had done so unintentionally. It was when I was traveling through the tunnel I had used to enter Aronms for the first time. I had been able to travel down the tunnel at the speed of light, and while I did so I had time to think and reflect on my day, all while I moved at speeds beyond the minds of mortals to comprehend. And as I entered a light-speed state of mind I fully realized the untapped potential of using my power this way. All the time in the world.


    "How should I do what I set out to do?" I asked myself. I knew my objectives with regard to the city. I knew that I wanted Aronms to join my empire. I wanted to connect it to my lair and to use my myrmekes ants to protect it as well as actually gain trading partners for my ants. But how should I go about doing that?


    "I suppose I can start off by displaying my powers to the general public?" I figured, well aware of the potency and undeniability of my powers. If I wanted too I could even go about this with my usual display of power: a single usage of "Healing burst".


    I knew that such a display of power would not only heal every resident of the place but I also suspected that such a large usage of the power would cover the city in radiant silver light. If it did, I''d be able to truly confirm that my power was responsible for that, which would explain what happened in the Rodan forest. But I also wanted to explore and mix which of the abilities at my disposal that I used.


    "I could mix things up... If I wanted too I could take things a bit more slowly and target the city''s nobility. I bet sending them powerful diseases and amplifying their effects for a day or two and then healing them would send a powerful message." I told myself, quite excited at the possibility of so rampantly using my powers.


    I was normally somewhat cautious with my powers so a part of me that was rebellious wanted to unleash my powers fully on the Ardor family. I felt the deep and powerful dislike I had for them tempt me into unleashing my full wrath upon them. And now I had so many ways that I could do that.


    I could blind every single member of their family if I wanted too. Or I could unleash the parasites that feasted on the slaves the family "owned" on the family''s leaders. I could even create such creatures within the confines of the family''s estate and pack them full of powerful diseases to unleash upon the leaders. As I thought about that over I realized something.


    "If I willed it, diseases could become a powerful weapon under my control. And I could create entire societies wherein anyone infected with diseases was visibly marked as someone I was displeased with." I mentally remarked. Such a realization was a powerful one. It made me feel positively godly.


    That realization also made me want to begin to work towards gaining true mastery over my disease-related powers. I wanted to become a god who well and truly possessed a mastery over health including and especially diseases. Which was when the route forward became visible to me.


    "What precisely is the trigger for me to be able to target creatures with my disease-related abilities?" I asked, directing my question towards the system.


    [The trigger for you to be able to infect someone using your passive powers, at the moment, is that you have interacted with them in some particular way. This has a lot of different meanings. If you have cast a spell on someone they become targetable for you. If you use your powers on someone they are targetable. If you have been in someone''s presence then they are targetable.] Explained the system.


    There was eagerness in its voice. I could tell that it was excited by what bits of my idea it was able to hear without me explicitly inviting it into my mind. I chuckled and decided to test out one of my new abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    The Ardor family lived in an estate situated on the outskirts of the city of Aronms. Their estate was a massive one. It consisted of their homes, including the pens in which they forcibly housed the slaves they owned, and large fields where they grew massive subterranean crops.


    The familial heads consisted of twelve people. Two couples and their eight oldest children. The youngest person in this twelve-person band was a dark elf who was over seventy years old. At the precise moment that the young god Althos reached out and targeted them with one of his brand new abilities, the couples were sleeping and their children were managing the day to day activities of their family.


    The couples were the first to be targeted, as they were the oldest members of their family. All four dark elves were over eight-hundred years old. And in an instant, all four of them were forcibly awakened as the oxygen that filled their lungs was suddenly and to them inexplicably withdrawn from their lungs.


    Both couples lived in the same building. They did sleep on opposite sides of it though so they didn''t hear each other. Their eyes rocketed open as their lungs were suddenly stripped of the life-giving gas that filled it. One of the males and one of the females reacted so violently to the sudden attack on their persons that they fell out of their beds and crashed onto the floors of their rooms, coughing and in agonizing pain.


    Althos kept this up for a few moments, sensing their discomfort. Though the god that was responsible for their discomfort was kilometers away from them he could sense the fear and anger that welled within the dark-elves he had targeted. This was his doing after all.


    That said, the deity wasn''t planning to kill any of them with this power and so he quietly stopped using it. Relief-giving oxygen quickly flooded into their lungs after the god ceased using his power on them. But their unknown enemy, the god who they had unknowingly infuriated, wasn''t done yet.


    ________________________________________________


    "What do dark-elves value?" I asked Lilith, even as I unleashed my "Suffocation" power upon the heads of the Ardor family. I knew they were the heads of their family because of my "Authority detection" power which I had used on all twelve of my targets shortly before targeting them.


    It turned out that just using "Authority detection" on them was enough to target them. But I had fun using my ability to remotely suffocate someone on the family''s senior leadership.


    The half-demon half-dark-elf looked at me and considered my question. She was quiet for a second, before she gave me her answer.


    "We value power, pleasure, and pride." She told me. There was an unspoken question in her words and in the gaze she met mine with. I chuckled and readied myself to answer it.


    "As a god I can do... many things. And very importantly, I can do those things even when I''m here. With you. Right now I am unleashing my powers on some of the nobility of the city of Aronms. I am going to give you a task to do. You and Drow are to spend the rest of the day today going to the city''s nobility and explaining that I am a god and that I am intent on ruling over Aronms." I told the two. They looked at me quizzically.


    "Some of the city''s nobility will be afflicted with terrible maladies. Others will gain new powers. The ones that gain new powers will be told to obey you. And the ones that suffer from maladies, like the Ardor family, will be told to pray with you. If a family doesn''t obey I will strip them of everything." I informed the dark elven servants I had acquired.


    "I am bestowing the family of Qu''Ren the evoker with powers. She is someone I have healed in the past and she prayed to me. The Ardor family, being the family with the largest estate of slaves, is an enemy of mine. They are being sickened as we speak." I told my newest followers. Their eyes went wide at that remark of mine and they didn''t stay quiet.


    "The Ardor family are your enemies? Why?" Lilith asked, taken aback by my remark. I looked at her and for a moment there was a flash of anger in my eyes.


    "They are my enemies because they are a family of slavers. I loathe slavery and I will crush the institutions and families that uphold it. They are to be but the first symbol of that." I explained, revealing how I felt about slavery to the dark elves. And then Drow spoke up.


    "Althos... If we don''t have slaves how will we get labor done? Most drow can''t handle the exhausting physical labor needed to maintain a city." Drow told me, speaking defensively. His words incensed me, causing me to feel a burst of heated rage. I turned my anger-filled gaze to him and then took a second to calm myself before speaking. I then attempted to make an argument based on both pride and what came next.


    "Slaves are unnecessary and unbecoming of a civilization as grand as of that of the dark-elves. Slaves are rebellious and inefficient. I will replace the institution of slavery with a new institution: the institution of necromancy. I will replace living bodies with tireless undead laborers. Ones whose loyalties are never in question. Ones who don''t cost resources to maintain." I announced to the creatures I had brought over to my service.


    And then I began to devise a scheme to transition from labor done by slaves to labor done by untiring undead entities. It came to me quite naturally.


    "Not only do I intend to give every noble family a number of undead laborers equal to the number of slaves they own, I also intend to open up an institution wherein dark elves can be taught necromancy. I have not come here to destroy the capabilities of this city, I have come here to convert this place into a center of my worship and to make it a better city." I told my two minions, speaking gently about the city.


    "I will abolish slavery. That much is not in question. And I will do so without destroying the noble families of this city. Unless they resist me. If they resist me then it is their bodies I shall give to my most favored families." I whispered, speaking direly of any families who may one day decide not to obey me.


    At that moment I aimed a disease that inflicted those infected with it with bleeding sores and decaying skin upon the four dark elves who ran the Ardor family. My dark elven servants fell quiet as I casually aimed potent diseases at creatures who had unknowingly infuriated me. And in the wake of that silence, I continued to explore my mini-map and target the heads of the family, inflicting them with various maladies. All twelve of them but one.


    "It is your job, for now, to be my messengers. The city of Aronms is changing. And I am the cause of that change. The city is already mine. You are just here to help the city''s inhabitants discover that. And in exchange for your aid, I shall elevate you. I shall empower you." I told Drow and Lilith. Both creatures looked at me solemnly for a moment, before nodding at me. I felt acceptance fill their hearts, and then quietly teleported them back to the chamber where I had first met them.


    Eleven of the Ardor''s family''s head members were now severely sickened. All of them were physically ill, and covered in the physical marks of disease and decay. But I had left one unaffected. I wasn''t doing this as an act of mercy. I was doing it to instantly gain the worship and devotion of a single member of the family. One that I could use as I see fit. I quietly targeted her.


    And then I activated a power I had never activated before, taking aim at her and her alone. She was a centuries-old dark elf named Milene. In some ways what I was doing to her was cruel. But in a very real way I was paving the way for her to become the head of the family and I was being kinder to her than I had been to her other family members.


    The power I had just activated was the dreadful power known as "Madness burst". It was an attack that fractured someone''s mind and rearranged it so that all they wanted to was to serve me.


    Milene was an alchemist. And she was one of great skill and cruelty. She was perhaps the most aggressive member of her family and experimented on slaves and lesser members of her family alike. I had targeted her because of that. My choice wasn''t random, it was a calculated one meant to gain control over the most malicious member of the Ardor family.


    As I felt her mind shatter the second I activated the power, my choice still felt somewhat right but there was a part of me that didn''t like it. That said, it was probably a good thing that I felt that way. It was a sign I wasn''t going to be okay abusing this power.


    ________________________________________________


    Milene''s mind was shattered while she sat at a desk in her room. She had been absent-mindedly writing a letter to her latest paramour, and her quill was dipped in a bottle of her own homemade "ink". The substance she used for ink was the blood of the creatures she experimented on, blood she routinely extracted from them.


    The power that the alien deity Althos used on her was a terrifying one not just because of what it did but also because it was instantaneous and there was no resisting it if you were susceptible to it. Milene''s mind had just moments ago been a cruel, prideful place and now it wasn''t.


    Her hand still gripped her quill when her mind became the property of her family''s new enemy. Her gaze was still on the parchment she was using to write her letter. But her heart and mind were forever changed.


    Her cruelty, once a focal point of her personality, was now replaced with devotion. Her ambition and arrogance were replaced with humility and an overwhelming desire to please her master. She had no way of knowing how she acquired this knowledge but for a moment all she could hear was the repetition of a single word. "Althos".


    She knew instinctually that "Althos" was her master. She wanted to serve it. It was, in fact, all she wanted. All of her previous pride and ambitions faded and lost their appeal and she was now fully enthralled by her god. She wondered how she could serve it, and then it spoke to her for the first time.


    "Hello Milene. How are you?" It asked. Milene smiled, her heart-rendingly beautiful face lighting up with genuine delight. The young dark elf wasn''t sure how she recognized the voice, but she knew that it belonged to her master.


    "Hello Althos. I am doing well now that I have heard you." She told it, mentally speaking truthfully. The power had instantly torn through her old self. A gentle chuckle resounded throughout Milene''s mind.


    "That is good to hear." Althos told her, as it proceeded to move on from the Ardor family and target other noble families throughout Aronms.


    It would spend the next few hours focusing almost exclusively on that task, from within the safety of its tower-like lair deep underground.

 73 Quest Completion And New Servants

    I passed a good portion of the day within my tower. During that time I did a number of things. For the most part, I focused on my overall objective of selecting noble families throughout Aronms and either blessing them or inflicting harmful diseases upon them. It was an amusing way to pass the time.


    Other less notable tasks that I took it upon myself to do were transport the ogresses back to their lair, bestow flight upon a few myrmekes ants, casually connect with and befriend three wolves, bless numerous bears throughout the forest above me, and devote myself to evolving more ants. It turned out that my ability to mentally multitask made me able to pass time this way rather efficiently.


    I unlocked the first tier of influence over the Canis and Ursidae subdomains without any difficulty as whenever I interacted with wolves I made sure to bless them repeatedly and I discovered that bears evolved when they gained sufficient wisdom and strength.


    I helped a single bear become a dire-bear, the natural and animalistic evolution all bears have access too. These actions greatly endeared me to the animals I mentally interacted with, and they quickly became my friends and followers.


    When the notification came that alerted me to the new abilities I had gained I wished for a summarized version of the lengthy notification I''d normally otherwise receive. The system opted to oblige my impatience.


    [Dual subdomain summarized notification:


    The Canis and Ursidae subdomains are two subdomains that grant those who influence them power over potent predatory animals: bears and wolves. Bears and wolves are among the most dangerous, large predatory animals that can be found in several biomes.


    By gaining influence over these subdomains gods gained loyal, dangerous, and feared servants. Many humanoids and non-humanoids alike recognize and fear the power of bears and wolves and wise gods of nature made effective usage of these subdomains to influence societies in a number of ways.


    Many kinds of animals possess two different evolutionary paths. As you gain more influence over a grander number of animal subdomains you''ll gain greater abilities to alter and influence animals and you''ll come to see these paths yourself. One of the two makes the animals greater versions of themselves. The other path transforms animals into humanoids with animalistic traits.


    You''ve gained enough influence over enough animal subdomains and the first tier of influence over the disease domain so you now have a potent new ability: the power to inflict therianthropy upon humanoids. You possess therianthropy as a power, but when you inflict it on others its a disease that either curses them to shapeshift into animals or grants them the power to shapeshift into animals, depending on your mood.


    To gain greater influence over these subdomains gain more servants and worshipers who are wolves or bears, and build cults of humanoids and other creatures who worship you as the king of these animals.


    Dual subdomain passive powers:


    Therianthropy: If you will it when you strike or touch a humanoid they can either become diseased and suffer from uncontrolled shapeshifting or they can be blessed and gain the power to shapeshift. If you infect them with these conditions then you can cause their alignments to shift when they shapeshift, as well as decide when they are forced to shapeshift, but if you bless them with shapeshifting then their alignments when transformed match their alignments elsewhere.


    Currently, you can cause humanoids to gain the forms of wolves, bears, and myrmekes ants along with hybrid forms that fuse their humanoid features with those of the animals you''ve chosen for them to transform into. As you gain influence over other animal subdomains you''ll be able to cause them to transform into more things.


    Antherion: This ability is the inverse of therianthropy. With it, you can allow animals to shapeshift into humanoids. Both this power and therianthropy are synergistic abilities that are bestowed upon you by your influence over chaos and diseases mixing with your influence over the animal subdomains.


    You can bestow this condition upon ants, wolves, and bears.


    Mastery: Unevolved and undomesticated bears and wolves recognize you as their master the moment they gain awareness of you. They immediately begin to worship and obey you.


    With this power, you can also cause them to become friendly towards other creatures, or hostile towards them.


    Domesticated or even magically charmed bears and wolves, even unevolved ones, are rendered friendly towards you and won''t take any hostile actions against you unless you attack first. This includes if they are ordered to attack you. They''ll ignore the order, unless of course, you attack them first.


    Evolved bears and wolves sense that you are a superior member of their species, even if the form they find you in isn''t one of theirs. They would be confused, but also probably wouldn''t strike first.


    Evolution knowledge: As you gain influence over a number of animal subdomains you''ll gain abilities that apply to all of the animal subdomains you have influence over. This is one such ability. You gain an instinctual knowledge of what conditions need to be fulfilled in order for animals to evolve and your knowledge of what you can cause creatures to evolve into is greatly expanded.


    This knowledge is only gained relative to animals under the subdomains you have influence over. So you now know what causes Hymenopterans to evolve, as well as evolutionary conditions for bears and wolves. Animals you cause to evolve are basically awakened, but they don''t gain the ability to speak the languages of humanoids automatically. Unless you opt to push them down the humanoid evolutionary path.


    Blessed aura: The dual auric abilities you gain from these subdomains grant your allies increased strength, more sensitive senses, and higher speed whenever combat initiates.


    Dual subdomain active powers:


    Feeding frenzy: This power allows you to force unevolved bears and wolves to enter into a state of dire hunger that makes them attack any targets you select. This is a fierce power that causes already dangerous hunters to become even more dangerous. It can be used twice per twelve-hour period.


    Bestial devolution: This active power is an amplified curse. By using it you can forcibly devolve creatures, causing humanoids to become ordinary bears, wolves, or ants, or causing evolved ants, bears, and wolves, to revert to their devolved states. You decide if the effect is permanent or not upon use though you can always undo it.


    This power is useable twice per three-day-period.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Both subdomains grant the same blessing: more animalistic power and bears and wolves are made friendlier towards them. The subdomains curses are basically the opposite of that: they weaken their victims and make the animals more hostile towards them.]


    ________________________________________________


    I was quite amused by my new abilities, and I appreciated their ability to earn me new servants. Shortly after I gained them I made contact with one bear and one wolf, and felt their worship surge into me.


    The pleasurable sensations of gaining new worshipers compelled me to do something unusual: transform the creatures into true servants of mine.


    Wolves embarked down their more animalistic evolutionary path by gaining strength and dexterity. Those were my two strongest traits as well so I opted to bless the wolf I made contact with, pouring enhancements into the beast until I received a notification alerting me to the fact that I could make the thing evolve.


    I warped the creature to me, and upon doing so the thing meekly walked over to me and sat down. It was a beautiful creature with dark red fur and large amber eyes. I quietly accessed the evolution menu I had first used when gaining myrmekes servants and looking at the information on display for wolves.


    [Evolutionary alert:


    Now that you''re beginning to gain influence over a decent number of domains and subdomains you''ll find that you''re going to be able to cause creatures to undergo a wider range of evolutions. If you were are interested in mutations or templates the number of them at your fingertips are also gradually expanding.


    It''s also worth noting that more evolutionary paths open to you as you gain more experience causing creatures to evolve. Even with your new passive power you don''t automatically possess an awareness of all of the evolutions you can make things undergo. You need to gain experience evolving a wide number of different creatures, not just one type of creature thousands of times, before you gain such knowledge.


    Wolf evolutions:


    Wolves have a number of different things they can evolve into. Currently you can evolve wolves into dire wolves, simply larger and stronger wolves with improved intelligence, Amaroks, which are wolves with darkness-based powers, and Lupinefolk which are wolves who go down the humanoid evolutionary path.


    Amaroks are large wolves who possess dark fur and darker dispositions. They can see in any amount of darkness and possess eerie magical powers that allow them to teleport if they are shrouded in darkness and are teleporting into another place shrouded in darkness. They gain greater darkness related abilities as they mature.


    Lupinefolks are wolves who''ve gone down the humanoid evolutionary path available to most animals. They are humanoid-framed wolves who are most commonly found in places like the Tundra. They can speak humanoid languages, but also speak their own native language. They are hunter-gatherers who live in packs led by powerful nature-based spellcasters who commune with spirits.]


    The choice I had to make wasn''t a difficult one. I instantly opted to increase the abilities that the wolf before me possessed and caused it to evolve into an amarok. The creature stiffened and fell over before darkness enshrouded its body.


    I watched it carefully as its fur darkened and as its breathing slowed. A few moments passed before the thing regained control of its body and it slowly staggered to its feet. As it did so it grew larger and wider, expanding from the size of a decently large canine to a massive creature over three meters tall and four meters long.


    The fur of the creature was the color of shadows, and its once amber eyes were now a stunningly beautiful shade of purple. The creature looked at me, and I could sense much more profound and introspective intelligence in its gaze than before.


    "Hello." It said to me, speaking audibly. The look in its gaze grew excited as it heard my voice, and I chuckled at it. The thing''s tail began to wag lightly. The small thing wagged vigorously and the large wolf approached me. It drew close to me and rubbed its face against mine. I chuckled as I felt the creature''s soft fur brush against my face.


    "Hello master." The creature said to me shortly after doing that. It spoke in its native language, a language that to those who lacked the ability to understand it sounded like an assortment of yips and growls.


    As a final gift to the creature, I looked at it and activated one of my new powers: "Antherion". The creature took a step back and began to shiver as power emanated from my form and began to flow into it.


    The power was colorless but plainly visible to my eyes. It caused the air to become hazy and shimmer, as it chaotically flooded into the room we found ourselves in. I enjoyed the sight of it, and found myself grinning as it seeped into my new companion. The creature continued to shiver, and I spoke to the thing to offer it some comfort and assurance.


    "I am giving you a gift. I am granting you the ability to shapeshift. With this power you''ll be able to join me whenever I travel, and in you, I''ll gain something I have yet to acquire: a real companion." I told the wolf. The creature was silent as it endured the torrent of chaotic energy seeping into it, but its wagging tail was indicative of the strong emotions it felt at this moment.


    While the creature endured my newest gift to it, I warped the bear who I had converted into my worshiper to me. The creature suddenly materialized beside the large wolf, and looked at it in shock. I chuckled and studied the bear.


    The creature was about the same size as the wolf, with light brown fur. It had two eyes that were small but flinted in a number of directions indicating that it possessed keen eyesight even in the dark.


    The bear had a powerfully built body, one that was covered in long-healed scars that were a testament to its experience in battle. It had powerful limbs and when it looked at me it suddenly sat down. I grinned at the thing and felt that perhaps this was its way of showing submission to me.


    I walked over to the thing and lightly touched the side of its snout. Without any hesitation, I activated my "Antherion" ability, and felt the creature''s body also begin to shiver as even more chaotic energy seeped out of me and thickened the amount of chaos already in the air.


    I took a step back and curiously activated my new knowledge-based ability to determine more information about bears. I was immediately greeted by the voice of the evolution menu.


    [Bear evolutions:


    The most basic evolution for a bear is to become a dire-bear. These are just larger, stronger bears. These sorts of bears are perfect for use against humanoid communities and can serve you surprisingly well if you''re ever at war with enemies who live near forests and other places bears roam.


    Elemental bears are another kind of bestial bears that possess powers related to the elemental subdomains. Currently, you can evolve bears into earth bears and wind bears, both of whom possess stats that are superior to dire bears.


    Earth bears possess incredible strength and defensive powers and can tunnel through the earth with ease. Wind bears are sneaky, speedy bears who mix bearlike traits and abilities with the speed and stealth of the wind. Earth bears are fantastic for building tunnels, and wind bears are great for ambushing foes.


    You can also evolve bears into Onikumas. Onikumas are a species of innately predatory bearfolk who have a humanoid frame, but a bear''s fur. They are a dangerous breed of bearfolk who like to plague farmers and can harass hikers coming close to their mountain homes by tossing gigantic boulders at them. When onikumas develop communities of their own they are led by potent berserkers who encourage them to behave evilly.]


    The knowledge I had at my disposal caused me to hesitate a moment. With my current set of powers, I could evolve bears into a number of different things. I looked over at the shivering bear and weighed my options.


    I also considered the ramifications of the new abilities under my control. They were intriguing and I quickly gave myself a new minor goal: gain the ability to make an old friend a permanent companion.


    I wanted at least one other companion that wasn''t the bear or wolf in front of me, my old black caiman friend from a few days ago. I liked the idea of it accompanying me and I wondered what I''d need to do to gain influence over whatever subdomain governed it. But I almost immediately refocused on what was in front of me. I had choices to make after all.


    While this was happening I sensed something else of interest: the sun was descending. The night was falling. After a long and eventful day, the time of dreams was edging ever closer. And I could already detect creatures beginning to fall asleep. A wicked smile crept across my face. Dreams presented me with all sorts of opportunities.

 74 Domain-Sense And Miscellaneous Abilities

    As I felt darkness sweep over the land above me I closed my eyes. A small and inquisitive part of my mind turned away from the immediacy of choosing how to have the bear evolve and instead composed a quiet message to the system. It was a simple one, a question.


    "Can you give me a real explanation about ''Domain-sense''?" I asked the system, curious to hear more about this strange and powerful seeming ability that I possessed but didn''t know much about and also hadn''t begun to use. The first response I received was a gentle chuckle. And then a few moments later I received a real reply.


    [''Domain-sense'' is an extremely potent knowledge-based ability that causes you to gain extrasensory perception and knowledge. Specifically, it causes you to gain an awareness of whenever something related to a domain you influence happens.] The system explained, beginning to reveal the nature of one of my odder abilities.


    [I used the example of healing earlier. Hmm... This time perhaps I''ll use the example of dreaming. As a lesser deity, you have the power to detect whenever creatures in the universe you''re in fall asleep. There are a few things you ought to know that may help you understand the real power of this power.] The entity told me, speaking cryptically.


    [This power''s reach expands across the universe. Now... that''s not all of existence, there are countless universes, but that is still quintillions of lifeforms. You''ve had this power for little over twenty-four hours, and over a quintillion lifeforms have fallen asleep in that time. Creatures on the far end of the universe, and in other dimensions that are still in this universe have fallen asleep.] The system declared, and as it did so my eyes opened in shock.


    [Your ability to enter the dreams of other creatures has some limitations. For instance: you can''t enter an animal''s dream. But one limitation it doesn''t have is distance. If you can detect that a humanoid is dreaming, you can enter their dream. And you can. Your ''Domain-Sense'' doesn''t just detect sleepers, it can also detects dreamers.] My one constant companion said to me, my eyes opening even further in shock as I realized the incredible implications of that.


    [Gods are incredible beings. Their ability to adapt to situations is remarkable, and so is the rate at which they can gain world-changing abilities. Let me make this clear: if you want too you could conquer the world. This world anyway. Others... well others would be trickier. But right now, thanks in part to your mind-based abilities and the fact that you gained influence over light and darkness your powers can reach across the universe.] The strange voice whispered, speaking a bit reverentially.


    [You can detect and even cure diseases in creatures the instant they get them. You can inflict diseases upon alien-emperors in the most remote reaches of the universe. Gods are... truly incomparable entities. Mortals have forgotten the incredible powers of the gods, but we haven''t. We''ve waited.] The voice uttered, speaking almost mechanically at this point.


    I chuckled, in awe and shocked at the extent of my own powers. It was difficult for me to fathom that I possessed such an incredibly mind-boggling ability. Especially given the esoteric nature of some of the things I possessed influence over.


    I wasn''t entirely sure what "Domain-sense" meant in the context of the domain of light. A part of me wondered if it really was as broad a category as the domain''s details implied. If it was that meant that I''d likely know whenever someone did something as vague as lit a campfire in a dark cave, or when the sun''s light began to vanquish the darkness of the night over a cornfield.


    And if I could detect darkness, then that meant that would explain my ability to sense the spreading darkness that covered Puerto Rico''s surface. As would the fact that if something is shrouded darkness I can reach out and touch it. I still had questions though.


    "What can I detect with regards to agriculture?" I asked the strange entity that seemed to live in my mind and the minds of all lifeforms.


    [You can detect the planting of seeds, the tilling of the ground when creatures begin the process of domesticating other creatures when creatures begin to starve, and a few other things.] The system alerted me. I chuckled, enjoying the simplicity of that. At least it was direct.


    I quietly decided to activate my "Domain-sense" ability, allowing a portion of my mind to be opened up to the flood of information that would no doubt surge into it. And I grinned as I felt my prediction become a reality.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the other parts of my mind remained focused on the bear in front of me. I studied it and watched as its shivers began to calm down. It didn''t take me long to make a decision regarding what to transform it into.


    "And this one will become an earth-bear. That way I have an ally who can tunnel through the earth. I really should make some ants into earth myrmekes." I mused as I willed the bear to undergo the transformation.


    Before my very eyes, the tower underneath the creature began to move. It rolled around my ursine companion and then wrapped it in a cacoon of earth. It was surprising to say the least that that was how the creature''s evolution began.


    ________________________________________________


    With my attention split in two directions, a small and quiet chunk of me asked the system to do one more thing. It was a small favor but it was one that was critical in getting me to understand the current breadth of my powers.


    "Can you tell me about the classes I have under my belt? Specifically the patron and god classes?" I asked the eerie entity who liked to speak cryptically. I received a response immediately.


    [Why yes, I can. And I''m so delighted that you asked.] The voice replied, and I could hear the smile in its tone. I grinned, excited to begin to more fully and properly understand myself. I wanted to genuinely understand the full scope of my powers, and so long as mysteries about what I could abounded, I would never have the understanding I sought.

 75 Powers And Distant Dreams

    I immediately went ahead and tapped on the religion symbol after chatting with the system. As soon as I did I received an alert that filled my vision with informative text.


    [Dual Class Description:


    The ''Patron'' and ''God'' classes are classes that govern how you grant religion-based classes to your servants. Paladins, dark knights, witches, wards, and warlocks are all left physically marked by you when you grant them their classes, or when they earn them after years in your service and you gain an ability to brand someone as your first class feature from these classes.


    The ''God'' class also has miscellaneous traits and features that are worth taking note of. Some of these include powers that aid your servants and worshipers in achieving their missions, and others are miraculous powers that do a number of things.


    This brand is more than a physical mark. You use it to transmit your power to those to whom you''ve bestowed it, and can you use it to transmit emotions and sensations to those who serve you. For instance, you can use it to cause a servant of yours to experience great pain as a punishment for failure or to provide soothing relief after a heated battle that leaves them injured.


    As a patron, you are given great power over warlocks, witches, and wards. You can give them enhanced blessings, directly restore their HP, and at one point you can bring them back to life to serve you.


    You gain experience in these classes by causing people to become Paladins, dark knights, witches, wards, and warlocks in your service and by using these skills. As you level up you''ll gain more abilities and features with which to affect your servants.


    Dual-class features:


    Branding: You can leave a physical mark on a creature who agrees to become your servant in exchange for power or a devoted worshiper of yours who has earned a class of great power. You configure the brand to look however you want, and any of your worshipers recognize it automatically as a symbol that whoever bears it is a servant of yours.


    This feature is owned by both classes.


    Transmit sensations: The brand is an extension of your power and no matter where a creature is in the multiverse a creature who is branded by you is vulnerable to sensations you transmit. This feature is owned by both classes.


    Change: As a patron, when you brand someone you can cause them to undergo a change of some sort.


    A lot of patrons who lacked your particular powerset opted to take advantage of the sick and made pacts with those who were suffering from deadly diseases. Others sought servants who desired beauty or love and used the ''Change'' ability to make them beautiful or desirable.


    The change that pact-beneficiaries undergo is determined by their masters, but was often negotiated in advance and was part of the initial investment made by the masters of the pacts in the past.


    Conditional casting: As a god, you can grant your servants and worshipers magic. You can also cause such magic to require the fulfillment of certain conditions before it can be used. You can decide these conditions as you wish.


    Prayer inducement: As a god, you can force a worshiper of yours to enter into a temporary state of forced prayer. While in this state the creature is forced to kneel and pray and reveals their deepest and darkest secrets. It can only be used on genuine worshipers of you, and more than anything else was used by those who had this class to help detect pretenders who only offered gods lip-service.


    Desire sense: You can peer into a soul and see what it desires. This is an enhanced version of your ''Lust'' power. What you see are the desires that define the person who experiences them. These desires are their goals and their dreams.]


    I grinned as I read through these powers. They were all interesting and I couldn''t wait to use them on people. I also went ahead and tapped on my grimoire. I figured I might as well check on the magic I had gained.


    ________________________________________________


    [Greetings! You have gained countless new spells. Among them, you have gained alteration spells.


    The school of alteration is the school that governs manipulation of the physical world, changes made to the body, and can allow for weapons, armor, and other items to be magically enhanced. It is tied to the domains of biology and physics as well as being its own subdomain.


    You have also gained enchantment spells. Enchantment magic muddles the mind and senses. It is magic that is used to deceive people.


    Gravity well: This legendary alteration spell alters gravity in the affected area.


    Upon using it you select a fixed point in your vision and all gravity in the surrounding area up to twenty-five meters vertically and fifteen meters horizontally is affixed to that point. This spell can be mixed with other spells such as ''Weight of the dead'' to create messy gravity-based situations for your enemies to deal with.


    Charm: This enchantment spell causes a creature to become friendly towards you. It can be resisted but resisting it is difficult.


    Stiffen: This alteration spell manipulates the body and causes it to cease moving. A living body is frozen by this spell.


    Dominate: This enchantment spell is a potent one that not only charms a target but enthralls them. It can also be resisted but is much harder to resist than the simple ''Charm'' spell.


    Sharpen: This is an alteration spell that carefully sharpens a blade and increases the damage it can do. It increases both penetration and piercing damage.


    Transfigure: This legendary alteration spell is the first of the true shape-shifting spells. When you use it you cause someone to undergo legitimate transformations and can alter someone''s appearance in wonderous or terrifying ways.


    Disguise: This is an enchantment spell that allows you to alter someone else''s appearance. You can this spell to effectively cause someone else to shapeshift, even if it doesn''t actually change their physiology.


    Light of hope: This spell creates an orb of warm light that illuminates the area around it. This alteration magic is granted to you by the domain of light.


    Invisibility: By refracting light and darkness around you or someone else you can turn yourself or someone else invisible. You, as a god of light and darkness, have a greater version of this spell that doesn''t dissipate when you or someone else attacks while invisible.


    False reality: This legendary enchantment spell traps targeted minds in a reality under your control. If they die in this reality they immediately awaken from the spell and will experience long-term health effects as they are traumatized by the experience.


    Ravenous darkness: This legendary alteration spell creates an area of darkness that hungrily and greedily devours the life-force of anyone who steps into it or is in it when it is created, aside from the caster. This vicious spell transforms those who die from it into undead. Its range can be increased by using more magical energy than necessary when casting it.


    You have gained access to dozens of other spells as well. These spells are just some of the new ones under your control. Use the ''search'' function on the grimoire to find more specific spells.


    New quest alerts:


    Biology: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the domain of biology, use the legendary transfigure spell on a willing target to alter their appearance in a way they see fit.


    Physics: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the domain of physics use the ''Gravity well'' spell five times.


    Alteration: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the subdomain of alteration use alteration magic to win a battle against an enemy.]


    ________________________________________________


    One fortunate thing about a godly mind is that it allowed me to think about several different things all at once and learn so many different things at the same time. I was able to absorb so much new information, all while steadily processing the trillions of notifications I was receiving via "Domain-sense".


    "I wonder if I could mix and match my godly abilities..." I muttered, while my mind was being alerted to all of the dreamers in this universe. I felt an incredible amount of knowledge flowing into my mind from every direction and from across distances that even I couldn''t really imagine.


    I was able to detect the dreamers of an uncountable mass of humanoids. And as I did so I learned the names of the worlds they lived on. A domain-sense notification looked like this:


    [Name:


    Species:


    Name of birth-planet:


    Alignment:


    Class:


    Distance to you:]


    It was an incredible thing. I saw the names of tens of thousands of worlds, and the names of millions of species. And I was able to process it all instantly. But what I wanted to do, to safely experiment, was add another thing to the notification. I wanted to add someone''s desire to it.


    I had a scheme in mind, and in order to test it efficiently, I needed to know what someone desired. I needed to know what their hearts craved.


    My scheme was a fun one, and I wanted to act upon it in a safe environment, far from my current location. I needed someone upon whom I could experiment with these new powers at my disposal. And in order to find the lucky person who''d be gaining powers soon, I needed to efficiently find someone who desired something simple.


    I opted not to ask the system if something could be done and instead try to experiment on my own. I envisioned the notification I received from the system gaining one extra bit of information. What someone desired.


    I focused on that for a few moments, attempting to will it into reality, and then I checked if it worked. I did so by focusing on a notification I had just received alerting me to someone who had just fallen asleep.


    [Name: Andrea Handsfall.


    Species: Human


    Name of birth-planet: Htrae


    Class: None


    Distance to you: 42,000,000,000 light-years away]


    I hissed when I noticed that it was unchanged. In annoyance, I simply focused on Andrea''s name and then activated my "Desire-Sense" power.


    [Andrea Handsfall desires beauty and admiration. She is, in fact, willing to go to any length to get it.] The automated version of the system told me, seconds after I activated my power. Learning that brought a smile to my face.


    I took a deep breath and then activated my "Dreamwalker" power. Upon doing so I willed myself into Andrea''s dream and found myself standing in a place unlike any I had ever seen before.


    I stood in the middle of a plain white hallway. The floor underneath me was made of some sort of tile that a voice in my mind whispered was called "Vinyl". It was white.


    On the walls beside me were metal containers that were blue and a few meters long that happened to be stacked on top of one another. They were closed and I could see a sort of combination lock where someone would otherwise be able to open them. The ceiling on top of me was made of some sort of white tile, and occasionally there''d be some odd lighting fixture suspended in the ceiling that emanated harsh white light onto the ground below.


    The place was eerily silent and my tremorsense alerted me to the reality that there were only two people here: myself and Andrea. I began to walk in Andrea''s direction, curious as to the true nature of my present location, or at least its true nature relative to Andrea.

 76 Woes And Wants

    Andrea was located directly ahead of me according to my tremorsense. And so I had taken off in that direction. I walked and I walked.


    And I walked some more.


    And then I kept on walking.


    While I was walking I noticed that this place felt sterilized. It felt unnaturally and impossibly clean.


    I only stopped walking when I reached an end to the hallway I found myself in. I came to a stop right in front of a set of doors. They were odd things, made of glass and some sort of concrete-like material. I looked through the glass and saw that they led outside.


    Beyond the doors was a path that led out to a grassy field. A dreamy sun was providing the grassy field with bright illumination. And standing out in that grassy field was Andrea. I walked towards and then through the doors, finally able to see the person I had come here to meet.


    ________________________________________________


    Andrea or at least the dream version of Andrea that was standing out in the grassy field was a plain-looking girl. A part of me was surprised that she wasn''t particularly attractive or especially ugly already.


    She had back-length red-hair, a slim figure, was of average height for humans that I had seen so far, and her back was turned towards me. I took my first steps onto the path that laid out before me and waited a moment to see if she reacted. She did not.


    I closed my eyes and envisioned my form changing. I quietly worked to construct a form of incredible handsomeness, and when I felt the subtle touch of the subdomain of corruption aiding me I was thankful to have its seductive touch imprinted all over the body I was giving myself.


    My normal, somewhat middle-aged human form faded into ethereal nothingness. And in its place came a new form. One made of light the color of tanned skin, and that rippled with charisma and allure.


    I felt my muscles swell and vibrant wings explode out from my back. I turned my head towards the wings, and noticed that they were bird-like wings with thick and brilliantly dark feathers protruding out from them. I mentally tried to flap them and after a few seconds I was delighted to see that they began to gently move, obeying my mental commands, albeit in a rather delayed way.


    I had a new human-like body. My body was that of a tanned and muscular male. I was currently shirtless, exposing handcrafted and attractive muscles to the daylight that shone over the grassy field and I was quite tall. As my new form was being created and as I was donning it, I rose in height until I was almost twice as tall as she was.


    I mentally examined myself and chuckled as I saw a few touches that were added to the form I speedily crafted by the subdomain of corruption. One of them was that the pants I wore were made of skin-tight leather and I had a noticeable bulge that strained the material that kept my most private body-parts out of view.


    It took me a second to fully grow accustomed to this form, and when I did so I felt the bulge. It was a part of me that I wasn''t yet super familiar with, but one that my other human form possessed. An intimate body part. I audibly chuckled when I realized fully what it was. And that sound echoed across the outside of the strange building I had just left, and captured Andrea''s attention.


    The young woman turned in my direction and I let her behold my new form. When she first saw me she audibly gasped. I chuckled and began to approach her, quickly going from the path before me onto the grassy field on which she stood. I made no hostile movements, and didn''t match her gaze at first. I took careful, graceful steps, and felt thankful to my recent mastery over dexterity.


    ________________________________________________


    My multi-faceted mind wasn''t in Andrea''s dream and nowhere else. I was also physically present in my tower.


    I walked over to my transformed creatures, right as the earth-bear''s head smashed through some of its earthen prison and thus freed part of itself from the cocoon of earth it had been inside. I walked to the thing and began to pat its head. As I did so, the creature sleepily looked up at me.


    "Hello little one." I said to it, smiling. It was now a bigger and more powerful creature than before. It began to push itself out of the rocky cocoon that had entombed it. The creature moved its head against my chest, doing so with unexpected force and momentarily lifting me off my feet. I chuckled and a second later I was back on the floor of my tower.


    I waved a hand in front of the rest of my minion''s cocoon and watched as the thing crumbled, freeing my newest minion.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello Andrea." I said to the young woman in front of me, grinning as I approached her. She stood silently and examined me with a look of shock on her face.


    "Are you not feeling talkative? I suppose that makes sense." I said to her, a few seconds after a thick silence fell over the air between us. She kept her gaze locked onto me and I kept smiling nonthreateningly at her.


    "My name is Althos. And I am a friend." I told her, as I finished approaching her. She bravely stared me down, her head tilted almost straight upwards. Finally, she spoke.


    "I''d ask how you know my name, but frankly I''m assuming you''re just a part of my dreams." She said to me, speaking sternly. I chuckled, momentarily curious as to whether or not she was also a lucid dreamer.


    "I always hear that from humans, it''s somewhat annoying how skeptical your kind is." I explained, chuckling at her. This caused her eyebrows to arch upwards in curiosity.


    "I am a friend, and I have the power to change your appearance. I can grant you the beauty you seek. It is indeed, why I am here in the first place. Your desires led me to find you." I proclaimed, a grin on my face as I said so.


    When I mentioned the word "beauty" her body language shifted for a second. It was swift, even for my eyes, but I heard her heart hammer in her chest, a single loud heartbeat. She scooted forward, her face keenly locked on mine, and there was a glow in her eyes. A newfound intensity shimmered in them spoke to how powerfully she desired beauty.


    Her eyes were thin things, barely visible against the sun''s glow as it beat down on her skin. They were a bright blue color and were lovely to behold. They were perhaps the prettiest part of her face, and now that they were filled with desire they were even prettier than usual.


    "Oh? I see that that intrigued you... I am not surprised that it would." I told her, speaking smugly. A flareup of anger flashed radiantly in her eyes for a moment, but it quickly passed. Now she took a bit of initiative.


    "What are you?" She asked, curiosity and annoyance mixing in equal measure in her voice.


    "I am a god. But I know that that might not mean much to you. I suspect certain civilizations have forgotten what gods are entirely." I explained, opting to go with a familiar strategy: honesty. She audibly laughed when I told her that I was a god.


    "Oh? You''re a god?" She asked, skeptically. Her tone was so indignant that I actually laughed at it.


    "I take it that you''re a skeptic?" I asked, smiling at her. She kept her gaze locked on me, and nodded. I shrugged my shoulders at her.


    "Humans are so skeptical, all the time." I muttered, almost amused by it. I found that it was an interesting contrast with the way I was reacted too by goblins and dark elves. This garnered her interest as well.


    "You said something along the same lines earlier. You muttered that humans were skeptical. The way that you said was odd... Have you encountered lifeforms that aren''t human? Do you have non-human allies?" She asked, studying me cautiously. I began to smirk at her, knowing that she was curious now. I quietly used my "Appraisal" power on her.


    [Name: Andrea Handsfall


    Species: Human


    Alignment: Neutral


    Personal virtue: Diligence


    Personal vice: Greed


    Magic sensing: Htrea''s humans have evolved in a peculiar way; they lack magic. Andrea is non-magical. Any magic she gains she would gain by virtue of your abilities to grant magic to your followers.


    Faith sense: Andrea''s loyalties are to herself, as befits her status as a neutral creature. She is also loyal to the general pursuit of knowledge, which is fitting since she is a student of the sciences. She is a student at a university, an institution dedicated to research and teaching on Htrea.


    Authority detection: Andrea has no authority on her own but she is likely to earn such authority, given her status as a university student and the fact that she''s studying what she''s passionate about. Genetics.


    Soul sense: Andrea''s soul doesn''t sync up to any particular religious class. She would most likely be a regular participant of any faith she could be convinced to join.]


    After studying the amassed information I looked up at her, and began to speak.


    "I do have non-human worshipers. On a different world." I revealed. Now her eyes genuinely widened in shock. But she took a deep breath and regained her composure.


    "I don''t believe you. Can you demonstrate your claims?" She asked, properly questioning and challenging me. I smiled at her, now a bit impressed by her dedication to her skepticism.


    "I actually can. But tell me... what would meet your skepticism?" I asked, keeping my gaze evenly locked on hers.


    ________________________________________________


    Another part of my mind wandered into a different dream. And so it found itself in a simpler place than the distant, alien dream Andrea was having.


    That part of my mind found itself in my Cosechian form and stood in the middle of a large field. It was unplowed and lifeless. I could see the front of a simple and cute wooden house. I walked up to the front door of the pleasant wooden house and knocked on it.


    I did so using my liquid-limb by transforming the thing into a simple frozen mallet and lightly tapping on the door. The door felt weak, and I suspected that if I had wanted too I could have bashed the thing down without much effort. After knocking on the door, I only had to wait a few moments before it was opened by the person whose dream I was occupying.


    Gustavo came to the door and pulled it open. He had opened the door ready to speak but immediately shut his open mouth when he beheld my earthen legs. He quickly began to look up, his eyes drifting upwards and beholding my strange body. Unsurprisingly there was a look of amazement as he examined my body.


    "Hello Gustavo. My name is Cosecha. You''ve met my servant, Althos." I told the amazed man, lying to him a tiny bit about my relationship to "the servant" I had just mentioned.


    "Would you like to come outside? I think you and I ought to have a conversation." I explained, a wide smile on my airy face. Gustavo, quite shaken up by my sudden appearance, stepped through his own door and out onto the field.


    "Althos and Alma spoke to me earlier today. They revealed to me that you have a pair of problems. I am here to help you with those problems. But first, I''d like to hear about the problems from you. I want to hear your point of view." I explained to the leader of the laborers and farmers. He took in my perspective and was quiet for a moment. And then he began to speak.


    "Well... Cosecha. If you''re serious about this, I''d be eternally grateful. I suppose the least I could do is oblige you by letting you hear my point of view." The kindly laborer replied, speaking to me with a tone that mixed amazement, disbelief, and gratitude together into a mixture that was deeply heartfelt.


    The laborer than began to reveal to me the background of the dual tragedies affecting his life. As he did so, I listened attentively.


    The truth was that I was doing this for show, as it was well within my power to fix all of this in an instant. That said I wanted to do so in a way that earned me the worship of this communal leader and those who trust him. Doing so would require that I act with patience and compassion.

 77 Backstories And Bargains

    "I have a loving family. They are the lights of my life. From my mother, Alma, to my wife, Sophia, to my daughter, Marlena." Gustavo told me. There was a light in his eyes as he spoke about them. He smiled as he thought about them, and I felt the intensity of the love he felt for him radiate out of him. It was a tasty looking emotion, the sort that I might one day inspire in my own worshipers.


    "What a delicious emotion..." I thought, idly. Gustavo fell quiet for a moment after he mentioned his family members, but he didn''t stay quiet for long.


    "I have two problems. One of them is pretty straight-forward. Comillas'' fields aren''t producing food in the same quantities that they used too. Althos had an interesting, albeit probably temporary solution to that problem. The other problem I have is a bit... well it''s a bit more personal." Gustavo confessed.


    "I don''t know how Alma knew about this..." The man said, before he sighed quietly. "But I suppose I shouldn''t be surprised. She knows about so many things. My daughter is sick. My wife knows but she thinks I don''t. I''m assuming they tried to keep it hidden from me out of love and a desire not to worry me, but I''ve noticed. I just... can''t do anything about it." The man confessed, revealing an awareness of the vague malady that was plaguing his daughter.


    "My daughter can sleep for hours, but this isn''t the sleep of the living. It''s the sleep of someone who is slowly wasting away. Marlena''s health has always been less than tremendous, but this is new. Her skin is clammy, her pulse is weak, and she is often delirious. She''s suffering. She''s told me so herself. I actually learned she was sick, early on because she told me directly." Gustavo revealed, outing Marlena as the source of his awareness of her health.


    "My daughter, my wife, my mother, and my community are my whole world. I''d do anything to protect them and ensure that Comillas can one day thrive." The human said, looking at me earnestly. I grinned, my airy face contorting to physically express what I felt.


    I took moment before doing anything else to pause and consider my options here. I knew that I could dramatically and powerfully wait until he was awake to heal Marlena. Or I could go ahead and heal her right now, showcasing the ease with which I could heal and save lives.


    "On one hand, showcasing that my powers are real in a dramatic, flashy way is an excellent tactic to secure the loyalty of Gustavo... It''s almost guaranteed to earn his worship." I told myself.


    "On the other hand, I am not a fan of allowing Marlena to suffer just so I can demonstrate my powers. It''s not kind, or in the spirit of the subdomain of healing to prolong suffering to make a point." I reminded myself, my words safely hidden in the vault that was my mind. The debate didn''t last long, and my choice was unsurprising.


    I targeted Marlena through my mini-map and her alone and focused on her health. I waited for a second until nothing happened. I sighed, and then activated my knowledge domain''s "See condition" power, which actually produced a result.


    [Name: Marlena Mondragon


    Conditions: Sleeping, fatigued (When awake), delirious (When awake), ravenous (When awake), perpetual nightmares (When asleep)


    Hitpoints: 5/20


    Disease(s): Sleep-Strike Disease


    Disease information: Sleep-Strike Disease is a sleep disorder that causes those plagued by it to sleep for over half a day at a time. When victims are awake they are fatigued, delirious, and plagued by severe hunger. When they sleep they suffer from intense nightmares that they can''t remember during the day.]


    The disease was intriguing to me. It was, in a sense, a perfect disease for me to snag control over. If I needed to punish someone with a disease that at first might not look that serious I could smack them with it, and then harry them in their nightmares. This also made it good for singling out specific people I wish to punish, rather than punishing entire families.


    I calmly activated my disease-domain granted "Cure disease" power and targeted Marlena. The girl was immediately cured of the condition responsible for the suffering she had endured over the course of the last few days. I immediately filled out a notification to send her way when she awoke.


    Seconds after I did that, I received a familiar notification. It was one alerting me to my newly acquired mastery over the sickness that plagued Marlena. I grinned as read over and then dismissed the thing.


    "Well you can rest a bit more easily now. I have healed your daughter. She was suffering from a disease called ''Sleep-Strike Disease''. When you wake up, you can ask her yourself. She will tell you that Cosecha healed her. She doesn''t know who I am, just that I healed her from the disease." I declared, speaking in a proud manner befitting a god.


    Gustavo''s eyes opened wide in shock. He went still, but not before a smile burst across his face. I could sense, intuitively, that he wasn''t entirely sure if he believed me. At the same time, I also received an alert that suggested that he was more hopeful than he was skeptical.


    [Influence over Gustavo: 10%]


    That alert widened the grin etched on my face. I could sense that what I had done had already, in essence, won Gustavo over. Now it was just a matter of waiting for his worship to come to me.


    ________________________________________________


    Andrea and I had our gazes locked on each other. In her dream, I appeared as a darkly handsome winged-human. Andrea, or at least her dream-form, was that of a plain redheaded human in her early twenties.


    "You know what would prove your divinity to me?" She asked. I shook my head at her, and she chuckled.


    "Well that means you aren''t omniscient!" She sneered. This slightly annoyed me, but I bit my tongue and let it slide. I wanted to be omniscient, it wasn''t my fault that I wasn''t. I let silence fill the air between us, as if to demonstrate that she still had the floor. Eventually, she realized this and spoke again.


    "Fine. You know what could prove that you were a god, to me at least? Regrowing a limb. Even our most advanced science can''t do that. If you can cause spontaneous regeneration of a limb, I''ll believe that you are a god." Andrea told me. There was an emotion I wasn''t familiar with in her voice as she spoke. From this, I was able to infer that this might be something personal to her.


    I looked at her sympathetically for a moment before speaking again. There was a deep emotion in her eyes that caught me a bit off guard. And in those eyes, I could clearly see an opportunity.


    "Andrea... let''s make a deal." I began, smiling at her as I spoke. She looked at me, skepticism and quizzicalness mixing in her eyes.


    "I will heal whoever you wish for me to heal. And in exchange, right here and right now, I grant you your most heartfelt desire. Beauty." I told her, confidence audible in my voice. She listened to me, and paused for a moment. When she spoke, she had a question.


    "Let''s say I accept your deal. What I hear from this deal is that I gain two great things. What do you gain?" She asked, ultimately questioning my motives. I see gently at her.


    "You live in a world far from my own Andrea. On the other side of the universe in fact. I want to start to gain servants and worshipers all over the universe. For now, my servants are limited to the world of my birth. In you, I can start to gain worshipers or at least servants all over the universe." I explained. This caused her to give me a haughty look, one of disapproval and indignance.


    "Do you think that granting me beauty is enough for me to become your servant?" She asked. I could hear the anger in her voice. I smiled and shook my head at her.


    "I don''t actually. But I think that granting you beauty will be a good first step towards you becoming my servant. It will show you that even across the universe I am a being of indescribable power who can cause real, physical change. A creature with powers you can''t even begin to imagine." I explained, speaking with such sincerity that it caught her off-guard. I could tell because she took a step back, as if afraid of me.


    "Andrea, I am a lesser member of my species and even still I can do things that you couldn''t imagine. I could teleport to your world, right now if I wanted too. From literally across the universe." I said to her, beginning to explain just a few of my abilities.


    "I possess the power to cure any disease in existence. I can free someone from the shackles of mortality with a touch, or cause them to age into dust by backhanding them. I can generate earthquakes, or cause a famine with a snap of my fingers. I can probably generate tornados and cyclones that can annihilate communities." I revealed to the human, all while an ambitious smile crept across my face.


    "I am not your enemy. I want you to become my servant, my worshiper. I have no bad intentions towards you or your species. In fact, you and I share a thirst for knowledge." I told her, feeling as though I had emphasized my powers enough and now wanting to reveal what she and I had in common.


    "I want to be omniscient. It is one of my greater desires. For now, though, I content myself with accumulating power. And the truth is, that if I can grant you the beauty you seek I gain a whole new group of powers." I revealed, casually explaining why I had actually come here.


    Andrea''s eyes narrowed at that declaration. She speedily replied to what I said with an exasperated sigh.


    "What do you mean granting me beauty grants you more powers? How? Why?" She asked, annoyed at what I was revealing. I laughed, and waited for her to calm down. When she did, a few moments later, I opted to be honest with her.


    "I am a very, very young god Andrea so I don''t know that much about all of this yet. But here''s what I do know: there are things called domains and subdomains. Domains and subdomains are ideas, concepts, and laws given consciousness. Gods gain power, or ''influence'' over them in various ways. If I use a spell I possess on you, to transform you into a form you find beautiful I gain powers related to biology. The first tier of powers related to biology." I told the human, being candid with her.


    Andrea looked at me and chuckled. She then sat down and sighed. "So you entered my dream, probably through a domain or subdomain power, so you could grant me beauty?" She asked. I nodded at her. "Is that your true form?" She asked, eyeing me up and down. I shook my head and spoke to clarify.


    "I don''t have a true form. It''s been suggested to me that the gods of old did, but I don''t. Instead, I can shapeshift into any form, of any size. I have a number of forms I use, though I have spent most of my time in a human form. Not this one mind-you, but another human one. One that doesn''t have wings." I revealed, speaking gently. I wasn''t done either.


    "Andrea, I can transform you into whatever form you find the most beautiful. I have no problem admitting that I''m using you, but frankly you''re only benefitting from this deal. I am not asking you to become my worshiper, or to serve me. I would like for you to serve me, but for right now I am entirely happy to just make you beautiful. You have nothing to lose from this deal." I told her.


    I wasn''t lying either. A part of my mind was keenly aware that the quest I was undertaking only asked that I use the spell on a willing target. I could easily target Milene and still be awarded the various powers that the domain would grant me.


    Andrea listened to me and considered my words. After a few moments, she nodded uncertainly at me. I grinned at her and then began to question her.


    "I want to get to know you. What do you consider beautiful?" I asked her. And so began a conversation that opened my eyes to the peculiar aesthetic tastes of the humans of Andrea''s homeland in the world of Htrae.


    ________________________________________________


    "So let me get this straight... You want to be taller, have sun-kissed skin, gain a larger chest, blonde hair, and for your eyes to remain exactly the same?" I asked her, looking at her curiously.


    She nodded at me, a wide grin on her face as she envisioned her body matching what she thought was beautiful. I chuckled, studying the attractive young woman before me. Personally I really liked her red-hair and felt a bit sad to know that she wanted it to change. But I rose a hand in her direction, purely to make it clear that I was about to activate the spell.


    Andrea stiffened. I could tell she was a tiny bit afraid of whatever was about to happen next. I grinned at her and targeted her with the legendary alteration spell "Transfigure". I unleashed the potent magic, and watched as a burst of energy of multihued energy exploded out of my hand and flew into and then through Andrea. I wasn''t surprised to receive an alert a moment later.


    [''Transfigure'' activating... Please envision the sort of changes you''d like to cause the targeted creature to undergo.]


    I imagined the pale redhead before me undergoing a transformation into a taller, tanner, bustier woman. I focused on that vision and held it steady in my mind. It took what felt like a few minutes before I received another alert.


    [Envisionment processed and transfiguration complete. The target has been successfully transformed.]


    I willed the magic to dissipate and lowered my hand. As I did so I laid my eyes on Andrea''s transformed figure.


    She was now over two meters tall and had the body of her professed dreams. She had a bronze skin-tone, a weighty looking bust, and her red hair was transformed into resplendent golden locks. She rose her hands to her face, and gasped as she beheld her new complexion. She took a single hand and reached behind her head to grab some of her hair.


    She brought the hair to her face, and smiled when she saw that it was blonde now. I chuckled at her displays of shock and delight. And then I spoke.


    "Your physical form has been equally transformed. I can sense it." I declared. I wasn''t entirely sure how, but I knew that the magic I had just cast on her would bleed over into her physical form.


    "Tomorrow go visit someone you know and love who has lost a limb. When you do, pray to me. I will heal them, in front of you. They will learn my name the instant I do. I am indeed a god. And my powers can stretch across the universe. Space isn''t as limiting for me as it is for you." I declared. Andrea looked at me, and there was an expression of awe on her face.


    I smiled at her, enjoying how I had smashed her skepticism. I still had a few more words to say, even though I could see the notification alerting me to the powers I had just acquired.


    "It is time for me to leave this place. I shall grant you pleasant dreams for the rest of the night. And I thank you for your assistance today. Because of you, I am stronger than I was a few minutes ago. I won''t forget that." I told her, speaking honestly.


    I targeted Andrea and activated the restorative version of my "Restless or restful sleep" power. She grinned and began to shiver before me, as I willed myself out of her dream.


    As I did so, I received a new notification. It asked me if I wanted her to remember the dream. I chuckled and informed the system that I did want her to remember the events of her dream.


    The part of my mind that was within her dream slipped out of it and studied the newest domain that I had gained influence over. The potent domain of biology.


    ________________________________________________


    [Details about the domain of biology:


    The biology domain is a strange and fecund domain. It is tied to the greater domains of life and death, and gaining influence over it is a critical component of gaining influence over those domains, and it is tied to the numerous subdomains that govern specific lifeforms.


    This domain is the domain of evolution and fertility. It is a potent domain and gods who aspire to gain mastery over it become powerhouses with unsettling powers like pregnancy inducement, evolution manipulation, and the power to create new lifeforms once they gain influence over the domain of life.


    This is one of the few domains wherein power is acquired over it purely internally. You don''t need to gain worshipers who worship you as a deity of biology to enhance your degree of influence over it. Instead just use the abilities in question, until you gain the alert that you can further your influence over the domain.


    Biology domain passive powers:


    Pregnancy manipulation: This power is useable in various ways. It is most commonly used to induce pregnancy, even in virgins, or put an end to pregnancy in selected targets. That said, that''s not the only way it can be used.


    Evolution manipulation: This passive power allows you to create entirely new evolutionary lines. To use it you must have over ten-million worshipers from the species you wish to create new evolutionary lines within. Another facet of this power is that it allows undead who worship you to evolve.


    Vestigial restoration: This is a passive, synergistic power that allows you to restore traits and abilities in creatures that their ancestors possessed but lost over time. With it, you can target creatures and gain access to knowledge of traits and powers their ancestors possessed and restore them.


    This power has been awarded to you because of your influence over chaos, knowledge, and healing. With it, you can transform selected individuals into significantly powerful members of their species that possess traits thought lost to time.


    Fertility manipulation: This power affects someone''s likelihood to get pregnant or impregnate someone else. It doesn''t have to be targeted at a person though, it can be used to make an area a place couples can come and have sex in order to conceive, or where couples can have sex while certain they won''t conceive.


    Immortality mastery: This power is what it says. With it, you can grant someone immortality. This is different from reducing someone''s age, or even slowing down the rate at which they age. It doesn''t make them invincible, but it does prevent them from dying by old-age or by disease though they can still be infected by diseases.


    You can also snatch away someone''s immortality. If a mortal has discovered a way to gain immortality on their own, such as if they master alchemy and can create a philosopher''s stone, you can take away the immortality they have earned. This doesn''t immediately age them, but you already possess age manipulation abilities.


    Dermal and skeletal manipulation: You can manipulate someone''s bones and skin.


    On a simplistic level, this power can be used to break bones or to snatch them out of someone''s body, but if fused with other powers this can become a potent way to cause a person''s body to become a prison or to create horrifying abominations made of bones or boneless corpses.


    Controlled shapeshifting: You can manipulate someone''s form as a passive power. This has limitations though, as you can''t double someone else''s height, reduce them in height by more than half, or grant them new limbs with this power in its current iteration. That said there''s still a lot you can do with it.


    Biology domain active powers:


    Limb granting: You can create and graft new limbs onto someone as an active power. This can be used twice per twelve-hour period.


    Hibernate: You can force a creature to sleep for up to a week. During this time their bodily functions are slowed down to maintain their relative health. You can use this twice per three and a half-day period.


    Biology domain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the biology domain you grant them the ability to decide if they will become pregnant or impregnate someone else whenever they have sex. You also speed their progress towards their next evolution.


    By cursing someone with this domain you cause them to either become pregnant or knock someone up the next time they have sex or even lose their pregnancy if they are already pregnant. You also cause them to lose progress towards their next evolution.


    Special note: You can now complete the quests to gain influence over the domains of life and death.


    To gain access to the domain of death you must kill a creature. As a tip, there''s some creatures you can kill that would grant you access to domains related to the lifeform in question, such as a dragon.


    To gain access to the domain of life you must be responsible for three pregnancies.]

 78 Shadows & Sin

    When I stepped out of the dreams of Andrea and Gustavo I felt a powerful sense of satisfaction. In indulging the desires of the young human woman I had made an ally on an unimaginably distant world. I had also done a significant favor to Gustavo and gained control over a potent disease while doing it.


    All in all, I felt that in navigating the two dreams I had earned potent rewards. I allowed myself to sit down in one of the many chambers in my tower, and I rested my head against the soft fur that lined the side of my new ursine companion. The Amarok wolf I had aided in evolving walked over to me, unsteadily and nuzzled its head against my chest. I smiled and began to softly pat its head.


    "Hello there you two. Thank you for being such good company." I said to the two creatures. I was responsible for their current, highly enhanced states.


    They were powerful creatures, one a lupine being with mysterious powers over darkness and the other an ursine beast whose genetics included elemental power. And both of them were utterly loyal to me.


    The bear whose side I sat against sat down and laid down. The thing quietly allowed me to lazily lay my head back and rest on its soft and warm fur. The wolf sat down as well and relaxed as I rubbed its head.


    In this moment of relaxation, I felt like being kind. I quietly began to mutter nearly inaudible words. Words intended for a single recipient. One who dwelled in my shadow.


    "Sombra, listen to me." I commanded. I waited a moment before I felt the creature that lurked like a snake in my shadow direct its attention my way.


    "Exit my shadow." I told my demonic servant. I felt rather than saw the demon nod and shivered as its inky body detached itself from my shadow, and it crawled onto the floor next to me. The sensation was strange like my shadow was losing part of its mass. Sombra was now next to me.


    "What is it that you want? What are your goals?" I asked the creature, curious to see how it being in my presence had affected its perceptions and if it had altered what the creature wanted. In the hours since it had become a servant of mine, I had gained dominion over lesser shadowy monsters, including its kind of creature, and powers over evil and darkness.


    It looked at me and took a moment to consider how to reply. As it looked at me I sensed something shifting in it. It was a strange sensation because a part of me was sure, both consciously and unconsciously that my powers were somehow altering its mind. When it did speak there was a strange and new reverence in its voice.


    "I want to serve you. Your dark powers seep into me, and they infuse me with newfound energy and eerie emotions. I feel... joy from being next to you. An unholy joy. One that a dark part of me wants to spread to other shadowy beings." The demon whispered. Its voice was a strange thing, newly changed, now sycophantic and seductive where it had once been prideful and contemptuous.


    I grinned at the inky stain on my floor. I reached down and grabbed roughly where I hypothesized the thing''s head was, and in doing so caused my hand to seep into the floor and the shadow my demonic servant had created. And then I yanked what I had grabbed onto and pulled out an indistinct head, before placing it gently on the floor I was sitting on.


    "In that case, I suppose I ought to craft you a body." I told the demon, smiling at it. "A real one." I added, now that I possessed that power. It was a power I had acquired hours ago, through the domain of darkness, but hadn''t used right away. Now felt like the right time to do so, and I felt generous so I was opting to practice crafting bodies.


    "I am being kind. What kind of body would you like Sombra?" I asked the demonic entity. It looked at me, its ethereal eyes filled with unusual emotion. The emotional cocktail I could see in its eyes contained an emotion I hadn''t anticipated seeing in the gaze of a demon: awe.


    "Any type of body? Hmm... Could you craft me a body you could desire? I aspire to serve you... In all ways." The demon whispered and its last statement contained a tinge of a salaciousness. I chuckled and nodded at the demon.


    ________________________________________________


    "How do I craft a body?" I asked internally. As usual, my question was directed towards two separate sources: the domain of knowledge and the system itself.


    I knew that this was a strange power I possessed, but it wasn''t one I had made use of before. I wanted to go ahead and change that. The domain of knowledge was the one to reply.


    "You aren''t crafting a body per-say. You are modifying an existing body. You are granting it physicality, and power. You can do it instinctually. It''s not a power that requires activation, it''s the sheer modification of something you already possess control over: shadows." The voice explained, speaking gently and almost motherly to me. I grinned.


    "All you need to do is envision the form you wish for the shadowy creature to acquire. And then your power will do the rest." The voice whispered, revealing to me a key and amazing power.


    I focused on the shadowy demon I had dominated and transformed into one of my servants. I carefully pictured its instinct and shadowy body and held that image tightly in my mind. And then I began to carefully picture a physical form that even I would feel desire for.


    In all of my life, only one creature had ever made me feel anything resembling physical desire. Imbrosa Ravenfist, a stunningly beautiful undead drider who numbered amongst the first of the undead I had ever created.


    I envisioned her nearly perfect form and focused on the humanoid aspects of it. The picture that came to my mind and lingered in it was one of a dark-elf with delft-blue skin, piercing red eyes, pointed ears, and full, ebony tinted lips. I didn''t give Sombra Imbrosa''s lower-half, instead, I gave the shadow-demon a long and slim pair of humanoid legs that accentuated its figure and helped it stand tall.


    I was transforming Sombra into a dark-elf, or at least a shadowy imitation of one. And as Sombra felt the effects of my powers wash over it, it sighed pleasantly and began to transform before my very eyes.


    I grinned as an assortment of abilities blended together and touched the very soul of the praereptor demon. I felt no resistance from the creature itself as its body began to feel the unholy and strange powers of my touch.


    The creature''s indistinct form began to do the opposite of glow as if it were leaking darkness. I watched, delighted, as the shadows that made up my demonic minion''s incorporeal mass began to solidify underneath the darkness that it was emanating. The outline of a body that the demon possessed ceased being an outline and became something real, something corporeal in an instant.


    The ebony shadows that once made up its limbs became the limbs of a dark blue body, one that was almost impossibly dark and mesmerizingly curvy. I watched as the demon''s vague outline of a body solidified, and as the demon gained a physical body to call its own.


    The demon''s transformation was completed in an instant, and in the span of one heartbeat to another it went from lacking a true form, to gaining a beautiful one. One that was modeled off of the only creature whose beauty I had ever been amazed by. The demon was still immediately after it was finished transforming, but then began to smile and breathe heavily.


    "So... this is what having a body of my own is like? Oh goodness... Finally." It said, speaking in a voice that was also an intimation of Imbrosa''s. I studied the creature, amazed once more by Imbrosa''s form, even if it wasn''t on Imbrosa''s body.


    The demon looked on the floor it sat on and exhaled a breathy sigh. And then it looked up at me. That was when I was reminded of something important: it was naked. Its body was fully exposed to me, and since it was modeled off of Imbrosa the breasts and other feminine parts I could see were modeled off of her as well.


    Sombra''s new body was significantly feminine. Delightfully so in fact. Temptingly so. I had to work to keep myself under control as a part of me, presumably the part of me that was corrupted by the corruption subdomain wanted to lunge at the shadow demon and do virile things to it.


    The real problem was that my desire didn''t go unnoticed. Sombra kept her eyes peeled onto me, studying me intently for a moment. I could see its eyes locked onto my face, and I could sense the powerful emotions it was radiating. The lust it was emanating.


    I could see and smell evidence of its potent desires. I could see its nipples hardening, and I could smell the pheromones it was leaking into the air around us. It was a lot for me since I was new to both life and sex and sexuality. My keen senses let me pick up even the subtlest clues the demon was capable of radiating, and I wanted to act on them.


    "Go on! It wants this as much as you do." Whispered a voice I had heard a few times now: the voice of corruption.


    "Surrender to your lusts. Shadows serve you, and this is you rewarding that service. Demons are creatures of evil and desire. It obviously wants this too. Just give it what you both want..." The subdomain whispered, making a factually correct argument in favor of grabbing this more elfen copy of Imbrosa and treating it animalistically.


    I was still for a moment, wrestling with the idea of satiating my desire. Of behaving sinfully. But after a moment, I was able to regain control of myself and shook my head. I grinned at the demon, and beckoned for it to come closer to me. It nodded and obeyed me.


    Sombra crawled over to me, moving hypnotically on all fours. There was a lewd grin on the creature''s face, and occasionally its mouth opened and a long tongue snaked and danced its way out of its maw and moved desirously. When Sombra reached me, it placed its hands on either side of me and waited for me to make a move. I placed one of my hands on its face gently, and smiled.


    "This is... the most tempted I''ve ever been to take a creature and use it to release my desires." I told the demon, truly in awe of the beautiful form it had taken on.


    "But... It is too soon for that. Because you desire it too. And that means that this would be a reward. You don''t deserve a reward yet. But you will. In time." I told the dark-elf mimicking demon. A frown suddenly weighed Sombra''s dark lips down, and I chuckled.


    Its lips were one of its most beautiful features, as they were the same dark shade as the sky at night. Even glancing at them warmed parts of my body that I wasn''t used to feeling warm. I shivered at the thought of them pressed against various parts of my body and smiled at Sombra.


    I was impressed with what I had done while giving my servant a body. Though it lacked Imbrosa''s spider-half, the body was still awe-inspiringly beautiful and amazingly tempting. It was also warm, and alive, which Imbrosa''s body wasn''t. I sighed, almost annoyed at myself for not giving in to the temptation I felt and then I spoke once more.


    "If you desire a reward... Use this body, use it to serve me well. I gave you this form because I believe that you can become a powerful cultist of mine. I want you to help me create a demonic cult, as in a cult of demon-worshipers, and also a cult of demons, who both worship me. With your help, I can start to slowly work towards becoming a demonic lord, and as you help me I will reward you." I explained to the little demon.


    The creature''s eyes widened when I explained what I wanted it to help me achieve. It began to speak, but at first, did so nonsensically. It took a second before its words became words.


    "But... You''re a god, how can you become a demon-lord? They are two different things, Althos." It said, speaking softly. I smiled and gazed absentmindedly at the thing.


    "I am more than a god. I am something new. I possess all the powers of the gods, that much is true, but I am something... beyond them. I can become a demon-lord, a demon-king unlike any who has ever lived, but I cannot do so alone. In order to achieve that apotheosis I need your help." I told the demon, speaking truthfully to my knowledge.


    The truth was I was making a lot of assumptions, but those assumptions were backed by the knowledge I had acquired over the course of the past few days. The demon considered my words, and I could feel a surprising conflict welling within the demon. A surprising... pride, that made it want to believe I was wrong for some reason. This was curious to me.


    "Why do you doubt me?" I asked Sombra, genuinely curious. The demon looked me in the eyes for a second, scanned and studied them, and then just sighed.


    "What you''re saying... It goes against what I''ve always known. But your power... Its real and absolute. I can sense that I can''t disobey you. I''ve never felt anything like that before. I am filled with a desire to see your will done. I can feel that my will is nothing in the face of your power. If you believe you can become a demon lord... I will help you." Sombra said, its voice once more filled with awe and reverence.


    I grinned at the demon. And at that moment I received a quiet message from the system.


    [You''ve managed to fight off temptation, and gain a true demonic servant. Not bad. Praereptor demons are handy demons to lord over. And now that you''ve given it... given ''her'' a physical body, in time she''ll come to learn how to use it properly. And when she does, she''ll be able to shift between her shadowy form and the body you''ve given her. And that is positively wonderful!]


    The system''s message surprised me. I was pleasantly delighted to hear that my demonic servant would one day gain the ability to swap freely between the physical form I gave it, and its native, shadowy body. That meant that Sombra hadn''t swapped any strengths or skills for other strengths or skills but actually just become stronger altogether thanks to my powers. And that wasn''t the only message I received, as I heard a new voice speak to me out of the blue.


    "Resisting temptation is hard... Especially one like that, as a deity of lust. That was well-done Althos. At times you truly demonstrate a patient, and even chaste heart." The voice told me, speaking approvingly. I grinned, aware of the identity of the voice thanks to the way it spoke.


    I had just heard from the subdomain of purity. A welcome way to begin a period of downtime that was well-deserved.


    ________________________________________________


    The next few hours were filled with idle and mental exploration of my tower, a mostly empty place. The only other inhabitants of the place were the various undead who made up my first undead creations.


    I mentally wandered the tower, while speaking to Sombra. I did this until the morning sun had risen over the skies of Puerto Rico and bathed the island in light. And then I teleported to a familiar place: the laboratory of Dr. Cortes.


    In the time between the ending of the night and my appearance in front of Dr. Cortes'' laboratory one minor thing of importance happened. I gained two new worshipers. Marlena and Gustavo. Both of them had sent me prayers, or rather they sent Cosecha prayers, devoting themselves to it.


    The real worth of that though, was that this meant that I was one step closer to gaining influence over the domains and subdomains of trickery, lies, and enchantment. That brought a huge grin to my face, and left me with a satisfied feeling in my chest. A feeling of pride and accomplishment.


    Today was the day the good doctor had asked me to come back to pay him a visit and to begin learning about alchemy. It was an important day, and as I appeared in front of his laboratory I could sense that this would be a significant day for myself, one that was filled with learning.


    I was excited and there was a healthy grin on my face as I walked over to the door of the laboratory and knocked on it. My grin only widened when the doctor ushered me in and guided me to his workshop so that we could get down to business.

 79 Distractions & Subdomains

    A few moments after walking into Dr. Cortes'' laboratory I found myself staring at a familiar table. It was the table that was once filled with mortars and pestles, and now it was covered in papers. I approached it, and in doing so found myself standing on the other side of my teacher, the alchemist named Dr. Cortes.


    "Althos, it''s very good to see you." He told me, a goofy grin on his face. His face looked different this time. He had shaved the white beard he had when I first met him. He also had goggles like last time but they were hanging loosely around his neck rather than around his eyes.


    I looked at the diminutive human''s eyes and studied them for a moment. They were filled with genuine excitement, and after a few moments of silence, the good doctor tapped the table and motioned for me to look at it.


    "Althos, my young apprentice." He said as I turned to study the assorted papers that covered the table I had performed my initial test on top of. I looked at the papers and immediately realized what they were: recipes.


    "As of today, you are an officially an alchemist''s apprentice, an alchemist in-training! How exciting!" Dr. Cortes declared, speaking boisterously. He was looking at me quite happily, while I visually scanned the various recipes my teacher had prepared for me.


    I could see recipes for potions, beverages, poisons, and even a single one for a simple bomb. While glancing at them, I got to read some of their titles and mentally grinned at them. I could see recipes for items called "Spider''s antidote", "Snake''s kiss", "Manta-ray''s sting", and "Regenerative potion". Seeing them brightened my mood, even as my tremorsense alerted me to something that didn''t.


    I sprung to action immediately. I looked at Dr. Cortes and began to speak, asking for directions.


    "Dr. Cortes, my stomach is feeling... A bit strained. Before we dive into the wonderful lesson you have planned, do you mind if I go to the bathroom?" I asked, speaking somewhat urgently so as to explain why I''d have to run for a bit.


    Unpleasant intruders were making their way towards the Rodan forest, and I intended to send them a powerful message. Plus they presented an opportunity for me to gain access to two subdomains I had wanted to gain access to but hadn''t really had a chance to interact with yet.


    When the Dr. pointed me in the direction of the bathroom, I smiled and excused myself. When I was out of eyesight of my teacher I teleported myself far from where I stood and to a land I had yet to visit: the area beyond the Rodan forest.


    ________________________________________________


    A pair of creatures that could only accurately be described as bipedal hyenas were gradually making their way out of the valley that housed them. The two creatures were stealthily trodding out of the region where their kind, hyenoids, lived and towards the territory inhabited by all sorts of Althonians.


    The two scouts were lightly armored and armed. They deftly held stone spears in their pawed hands and wore armor made from the pelts of creatures they themselves had hunted.


    They were silent as they inched closer and closer to the outskirts of the forest which they had been tasked with exploring. The two were highly skilled, but they were no match for the powers of a god which was why the newborn deity that happened to reside primarily in the forest and in the human settlement closest to it detected them the moment they began their approach towards his territory.


    When they were close enough that they could see the forest, a strange event occurred. A shimmering wall of light several meters tall appeared between them and the forest. They could see through the wall, but the forest beyond it appeared hazy and indistinct as if viewed through a heat mirage. This caused the pair of creatures to pause and look uncertainly at each other.


    That was before the wall of light opened up ever so slightly and a strange creature stepped through it. The creature hadn''t been visible until the wall opened up, so the pair of hyenoids immediately put up their guards and tightened their grips on their spears.


    The creature had an annoyed expression on his face. He had a plainly human face, but the hyenoids had never seen a creature do what he did: put up what an obstacle of some sort that blocked off their way out of the valley and into the forest.


    The apparent human, a rather plain-looking member of his kind, studied the two of them. He made no attempt to hide his appearance or to appear extra intimidating. After a few moments, he was obviously unimpressed by them and casually began to speak to them.


    "I am only going to ask you once to cease your exploration of the Rodan forest." He said, speaking calmly to the pair of scouts. The two creatures froze when they heard his words, as they understood them quite easily even though the human was speaking their animalistic language.


    One of the scouts, the bigger of the two, lifted his spear threateningly in response to this command and snarled at the human. The scout practically spat out a reply, hissing it through broken teeth.


    "Why should we listen to you? Who are you to command us to cease our exploration?" The creature hissed, speaking angrily. Althos chuckled and grinned at the creature.


    "I am Rodan''s new master. My name is Althos." Althos replied, speaking without any hesitation. He grinned at them and wondered how they''d reply to what he had just said.


    "And? That is not a reason for us to obey you." The hyenoid closest to Althos quipped. Althos considered this for a moment and then sighed. At this moment he suspected that a conflict was inevitable.


    "The reason you should obey me is that I am the strongest creature you''ve ever met. If you value your health, your mind, and the future of your community, I recommend you stand down." Althos told the pair, speaking to them calmly and urging them to stay peaceful. They didn''t. Althos'' minimap pulsed and the color of their dots on it changed and became red. The color of creatures hostile to the youthful god.


    The other hyenoid inched forward, now also tensing up. Althos turned his gaze to her and remained unimpressed after a few moments of thorough study. That said, the creature''s purpose wasn''t to intimidate, at this moment it was to distract.


    The hyenoids were impressive and coordinated combatants, as Althos discovered when the one he took his eyes off of quietly reared back and hurled his spear at the young god. Unfortunately for the hyenoid, Althos was well aware of the silent strike and replied to it decisively.


    The god''s hand flicked in the direction of the silent striker, flaring outward with a flourish and casting an incredibly powerful spell. One that disrupted the spear''s trajectory instantly.


    The spear was caught in a sudden gravitational shift and immediately stopped in mid-air. It slowly turned around, and then flew back towards and then past the hyenoids. It collapsed onto the ground not far behind them, and the two scouts turned to look at each other in confusion.


    The gravitational well that Althos had just created wasn''t a particularly strong one, so the hyenoids barely felt its effects and at the moment weren''t aware of its effects on a conscious level. Althos had opted to create one that was more disruptive to their attacks than an attack on themselves.


    The young god took a step forward and then rose a single hand towards one of the hyenoids. He aimed his appendage in the direction of the male, and then grinned at the creature. It was at that moment that a potent burst of flames exploded out of the god''s hand and sped towards the scout.


    The burst of flames was a significant one, a curtain of golden fire that the god conjured with a frightening casualness. The hyenoid was shocked and was only barely able to leap out of the way of the fire. And even then he couldn''t dodge it completely. A patch of his exposed fur was caught by the flames and caught on fire.


    The hyenoid reacted by leaping back from the self-proclaimed master of the forest and turning his attention to his fur. He desperately tried to put out the flames, even as they spread to more and more of his body.


    Althos grinned at the hyenoid''s desperate actions and turned his attention to the female scout. She was watching her fellow scout with an expression of abject terror etched onto her Hyaenidae face. For a moment the god wondered about how he ought to handle her.


    When the hyenoid turned to flee, Althos shook his head at her and acted swiftly. A jet black orb sped out of his hand and made contact with the scout before she had taken even two steps away from the god.


    The orb knocked her down, and then its darkness exploded outward and engulfed her in an onyx-black field of darkness that rapidly began to cause her to freeze, and began to feed on her life-force. Althos kept an eye on her and watched patiently for the few seconds it took for her to fall unconscious due to the draining effects of his spell. When she did, he quietly deactivated the spell.


    Light returned to the area around her, and eventually revealed her unconscious form, lying face-down on the valley''s grassy floor. Althos chuckled, as he easily earned the first tier of influence over the third magical subdomain he could influence.


    The other hyenoid was still flailing about in an attempt to put out the flames that were inflicting harm on him. As Althos watched this, he gained access to the simple quest he needed to undertake to gain access to the subdomain of fire.


    The system informed him that in order to gain access to the first tier of influence over the subdomain of flames, he needed to set something on fire, since he had opted to set someone on fire earlier. This simple quest was fulfilled when the deity used telekinesis to lift up the spear he had deflected earlier and hurled a single bolt of flames at it, which exploded across the shaft of the spear.


    Althos chuckled as he gained access to another of the elemental subdomains. And then he used one of the abilities he gained to put out the fires that were rapidly spreading across the body of the hyenoids.


    The male hyenoid watched as the flames that were devouring his fur vanished. It caused the dimwitted almost-beast to stop in shock. That was when Althos spoke again.


    "You and your companion have lost this battle. She is unconscious, and her lifeforce has been considerably drained, to the point that she''s nearly dead. And because of your stupidity, I am even stronger than I was before. I am letting you live, but only if you retrieve her unconscious form and head back to your community. If you do not, I will pay them a visit myself and you don''t want that." The god told the scout. Althos was delighted by the collection of abilities he had just gained.


    The male hyenoid slowly recovered from his shock, and looked up at Althos. He stared at the god, a mixture of awe and fear etched on his face. And then the bestial humanoid turned to the unconscious form of his companion.


    He shuffled over to it dejectedly, picked it up, and began to walk back towards the hyenoid community. Althos watched as the creature retreated, and when the creature was suitably far away he teleported back to the workshop of Dr. Cortes.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual subdomain description:


    The subdomains of alteration and flames are potent ones. The subdomain of flames is a powerful and multifaceted elemental subdomain that can heal, hurt, and even create. The subdomain of alteration is a magical subdomain that is involved in magic that alters the physical world.


    As a deity of flames, you possess control over fire and can manipulate it in various ways. You can also regulate someone''s internal temperature and can now travel freely through space. You can cause and control natural disasters related to fire and you can command spirits of the inferno.


    As a deity of alteration, you possess powers that can greatly transform the world around you. You can create portals, can cause a number of unpleasant status effects in your enemies, and modify allies, weapons, and armor in meaningful ways. You also gain the first degree of control you will ever possess over anti-magic fields.


    To gain greater control over flames you must build fire-worshiping cults. All manner of creatures revere flames and there are plenty of creatures composed of flames so this won''t be an overwhelmingly difficult task.


    To gain greater control over alteration you must work to meaningfully alter the world through the usage of magic. This involves but isn''t limited to the creation of cults that worship you as a harbinger of change and transformation.


    Dual subdomain passive powers:


    Temperature control: You can regulate your own internal temperature and that of other creatures. This allows for you and others you choose to safely travel through otherwise hostile environments that would burn or freeze those traveling through it.


    Enhance: You can use alteration energy to enhance an item of your choice. You can sharpen it, harden it, and more. This is the origin of the lost art of grafting magic to items, one of many practices that has faded into near obscurity since the end of the mythic age.


    This power works on items of all sorts and can improve any of their properties including their deadliness, protectiveness, ability to heal, and more.


    Alter: You can use alteration energy to alter lifeforms. Effects that can be done to living creatures, such as granting them night-vision, the ability to ambiently detect other lifeforms, and more can now be done non-magically through the application of alteration energy to a living creature.


    Cancellation: This is an alteration ability that allows you to cancel out magical effects that impact an area. As an example of some of what you can do with this power, you can nullify any attempts to magically poison a community or to cast an area of effect healing spell.


    Portal creation: You can now create portals in any environment. This is an upgradable power that at the moment is somewhat limited in that your portals must be linked to locations in the same universe and the same dimension as wherever they are created.


    These portals can be one-way or two-way, and they can be turned on or off at any point. This allows for a lot of vicious opportunities in the hands of the right god.


    Flame-mastery and manipulation: You can conjure and control flames, including magical flames, at will. You can alter a flame''s properties, including making a fire particularly virulent or making it unharmful to living creatures or even solidifying it. You can also put out any sort of fires at any distance.


    This power starts off strong because you are over halfway done with the process of becoming a lesser elemental overlord.


    Property manipulation: This is an alteration ability that allows you to manipulate a creature''s properties.


    You can edit or even delete properties possessed by creatures, such as resistances or vulnerabilities. For instance, if a creature is normally immune to fire you can strip them of that immunity.


    Volcanic god: This is an elemental overlord ability that has become yours as a synergistic award for the influence you''ve acquired over the subdomains of air, earth, and fire.


    With this power, you become a god of lava, ashes, magma, and volcanos. Volcanos become holy-spots dedicated to your glory, and at will you can cause them to erupt. Additionally, the first time you step onto a world you gain a supernatural awareness and mastery over all of its volcanoes.


    Dual auric abilities: Enemies that approach you feel the air that fills their lungs burn them. Allies in your presence find that their attacks burn their enemies. Creatures that you are romantically or sexually attracted too find that they feel especially passionate in your presence.


    Enemies in your presence are burdened with a negative condition, usually fear, when they engage you in combat. Allies are healed by your presence and find that negative conditions are removed when they stand beside you in combat.


    Create fire-spirit: You can create spirits of fire.


    Dual subdomain active powers:


    Combustion: This flame subdomain power causes a creature''s internal organs to burn and then explode, killing and cooking someone from the inside. This power can only be used on living creatures at the moment but does effect extraplanars and ignores immunity to flames. It can be used twice per twelve-hour-period.


    Create anti-magic field: This alteration subdomain power allows you to create a field where magic doesn''t work unless you permit it too. This field can be several meters wide and many meters tall.


    In this field, any spells cast or spells that enter the area must have your permission to work, otherwise, they fizzle out of existence. This is a twice per three day period power that is exceptionally powerful.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the subdomain of flames you make them immune to fire damage, and grant their attacks a potent ability to burn enemies. You also make them more reckless and passionate. By cursing someone with this subdomain you make them vulnerable to fires and dampen their passion.


    By blessing someone with the subdomain of alteration you make them immune to negative conditions and grant a random beneficial condition per day. By cursing someone with this subdomain you burden them with a negative condition and no positive conditions can affect them.


    Special note:


    You have gained your very first set of elemental overlord powers. The domain of nature and all of the elemental subdomains you''ve acquired so far have all gained new abilities and the cooldowns on your active powers in those areas have decreased.


    Upon completion of the acquisition of the final elemental subdomain, the subdomain of liquid you''ll gain access to the quest to become a lesser elemental overlord.]


    ________________________________________________


    When I returned to the good alchemist, he was waiting patiently for me. My encounter with the hyenoids only took me a few minutes, but it was enough for the doctor to fully prepare for the lessons.


    Now the table wasn''t just decorated by papers, but by two pairs of mortars and pestles. I was delighted to see the familiar tools and smiled as I approached them.


    "Are you feeling better my youthful apprentice?" Cortes asked, a goofy grin on his face. I looked at him and nodded, my grin stretching up to my eyes.


    "That''s good news! Today I''m going to teach you how to make the three most basic items that alchemists are known for: potions, poisons, and bombs." The doctor explained. As soon as he said that I received a positively delightful notification.


    [Alert: You may now complete the quests for the first tiers of influence over the subdomains of alchemy and poison, and the domain of creation.


    Alchemy: In order to gain the first tier of influence over the alchemy subdomain, create one potion, one poison, and one bomb. You''ve already created a potion so you just need to make a poison and a bomb.


    Poison: Create one poison.


    Creation: Cook something, smith one suit of armor, and two weapons, create a potion, poison, bomb, and make a work of art.]


    I read through that notification and willed it away with ease. As soon as I did so, I looked over at my teacher and asked a question.


    "Why do you say that alchemists are known for poisons and bombs?" I asked curiously. Dr. Cortes was himself a potion-maker, but since he was an expert I was unsurprised to hear that he had other skills as well. My instructor smiled at me and then launched into a lecture I suspected he had readied beforehand.


    "Well you see, alchemists are some of the best inventors of poisons and bombs. Gathering ingredients for alchemy is a dangerous task, and so we tend to build things that can help us survive some of the more dangerous places we need to trek towards. Poisons can be useful to either weaken monsters who''d stop us from gathering our materials, or to scare them off." The medical professional told me, grinning all the while.


    "Bombs are more for when we are attacked by other humanoids. Of the two I prefer poisons because they have more of a personal touch. Which is why I''ll be teaching you how to craft a poison first." The doctor explained, eagerly discussing his plans with me.


    This was deeply exciting to me, and the thought of gaining influence over another subdomain was one that filled me with joy. I nodded at him, and moved over to the table so that we could dive into our work.

 80 Poisons & Discoveries

    Physically I stood in front of the table and waited for the doctor to act. But the truth was, a portion of my mind was elsewhere. It was internal, pondering on something odd: I could feel my awareness expanding. It was an odd sensation since it felt like the number of areas I could reach out and touch were increasing. In a way, they were.


    I knew what was happening: I was gaining an awareness of all of the volcanos on Torus, thanks to my "Volcanic god" power. It started off as a slow process, but with each volcano that sprang into my awareness, the next one was able to arrive a bit quicker.


    That said what was actually happening was odd, because I was gaining a "Tremorsense" style mini-map of parts of the world I had never been to before. And I felt the volcanos themselves submit, insofar as a planetary opening could submit, to my control.


    It wasn''t just that either. I could sense long, steaming tunnels of magma deep beneath the ground. I could sense and call to their heat, and unleash them against my enemies. This was odd because I wasn''t sure how I knew this but I did. I sensed that if I mentally called the magma hidden beneath the planet''s surface to me, it would answer my call. Knowing this made me feel safe and powerful.


    In my mind''s eye, I saw a new icon appear spontaneously. This one was odd because it resembled a mostly blue sphere, decorated with green dots. Curiously, I tapped on the thing mentally and immediately caused a new textbox to appear before me.


    [Hello! Welcome to the environmental menu. This is a powerful menu that is one of the powers granted to proto-elemental-overlords. It allows you to modify the environment and climate on regions, worlds, and dimensions you have influence over.] The menu revealed, greeting me warmly and like an old friend.


    [You gained access to this menu in an unusual way. Thanks to your mastery over volcanos you can now exert significant influence over the world of your birth.] The menu announced.


    [Volcanos, for now, can still erupt on their own but you can also will a volcanic eruption to occur. And even if a volcanic eruption occurs without your input, you can end it or minimize it. Or you could magnify it, and use it as a symbol of your wrath.] The menu declared, speaking energetically.


    [That''s not all you can do either. As you inch closer and closer to becoming an elemental overlord all of your elemental abilities have received boosts. As such you can now cause a number of devastatingly powerful natural phenomena at will, such as earthquakes, tornados, avalanches and landslides, sinkholes, and worse.] The menu revealed, informing me as to some of the new powers I possessed.


    [There''s also the odd reality of your status as both a god and a proto-elemental-overlord. That has resulted in some of your powers mixing and taking on new aspects. It''s actually been quite fun to watch. Your agricultural abilities are stronger now, and inversely so are your famine inducement powers.] My newest menu revealed to me, whispering as it did so.


    All this new power was significant. And the ways that it mixed with my newfound knowledge of the world was even more significant. I gained a strange and alien awareness of new creatures.


    I was immediately made aware of all manner of animals, plants, and various lifeforms from salamanders to fire giants, red dragons and drakes. Other things came into my awareness as well. Monsters like cherufes, phoenixes, and stranger, older things that lurked in the magmic depths of the volcanos.


    In the cases of the ill-defined older entities, I felt their minds connect with mine as well, and they turned their awareness towards me. It was a strange feeling.


    I felt no resistance from these bizarre beings, creatures made up entirely of magma. All I felt was their strength and shockingly their obedience as well.


    More than that, it wasn''t just a casual deference to my strength that I felt, but a legitimate and potent desire to serve me. Physically I took a deep breath and I smiled, as I began a careful exploration of the minds of these creatures and was delighted to find next to nothing.


    More than anything else I found hazy memories and half-remembered emotions. These creatures seemed to be nothing but than semi-conscious magma, who could recall that they could shapeshift and little more. That was when I heard a surprised voice spoke to me.


    "Althos... you''ve found angels. Volcanic angels. Their minds have been destroyed, but they are immensely powerful extraplanar beings that existed to serve the gods. It''s weird that someone destroyed their minds but these are... probably the strongest creatures you''ve met to date." The voice, which belonged to the domain of knowledge, told me. I found her reaction a bit strange, which she evidently picked up on.


    "I know it may sound odd to be surprised that volcanic angels are found in volcanoes, but the truth is that we didn''t know that there were angels in this world at all. It''s not their geographic location that caught me off guard, it''s their cosmic location. I was told that there were no angels on this planet. So to see them... it raises a lot of questions." The domain whispered, explaining her shock.


    I heard her sigh impatiently as she waited for something to happen. Whatever she was waiting for apparently didn''t happen right away.


    "These angels are damaged. But not in a way that you can heal. Not yet anyway. I''m examining them right now, and they appear to be mostly fine but their minds were destroyed. Even now their minds are being restored to a functional state, by your power, but I can tell that whatever memories they had will be gone. That''s disappointing. It means we won''t know what happened to them until you get stronger." The domain explained.


    It wasn''t the only domain that had something to say though. Another domain, one that I had only heard from time to time also had insights to share with me.


    "You''ve just unintentionally achieved something significant. You''ve gained your first angelic servants. Volcanic angels like the ones that are now attuning themselves to your desires and orders, are powerful spirits of magma and ash. They are intelligent, and served volcanic gods zealously." The domain of civilization explained.


    "If you use these creatures intelligently, once they''re back to operating capacity, you can quickly seize control of volcanoes and connect the creatures who live in and around them. That''d be an easy way to being to further establish your empire. Many volcanic civilizations are already martial cultures that''d be easy pickings for a god with as much power as you possess..." The civilization domain told me, suggesting that I use these angels destructively and mightily.


    "So you''re saying I could go ahead and in a single moment demonstrate my awe-inspiring power and gain servants? Do you really think it''d be that easy?" I asked the domain, curiously. I heard a soft chuckle emanate from the domain.


    "Althos... You are powerful. And now you can make a volcano erupt at will. That sort of power evokes awe and terror and in a race of creatures like say... fire giants, especially if you appear first and publicly strip them of their immunity to fire, they will worship you. Creatures that live near or in volcanoes are no fools, they know to serve and worship powerful creatures." The domain explained, encouraging me to think about the sort of power I now had at my disposal.


    On an instinctual level, I knew what a volcano was, but this wasn''t something I sprung to life knowing. I could envision lava, and I knew what a volcano looked like, but I also knew that I didn''t really understand what a volcano did, aside from in a textbook sense.


    That was an odd thing to realize given that if I wanted too I could unleash destruction on a worldwide scale now that I possessed powers over more kinds of natural disasters. And there was a part of me that wanted to do just that. It wanted to test my new powers and unleash them somewhere, even if no one else noticed the destructive power I unleashed.


    This part of me grew stronger the more I considered giving in. The more I considered actually doing it, willing a volcano to erupt, the harder the urge felt to ignore. But I was able to do it since casually doing something like that ran contrary to my nature. It wasn''t easy, and I knew that sooner or later I''d give in, but for now, I was able to ignore it.


    ________________________________________________


    "The poison we''ll be making today is a simple one." Explained the good doctor. He stood on the opposite side of the table and his back was turned to me. He was carefully handling an assortment of ingredients and preparing to transport them to the table in front of me, our mutual workplace.


    "I''m teaching you this recipe, if you can even call it that, right away because I would like for you to go retrieve ingredients for me on your off-days. I''m hoping that that''ll be something you agree to do, and when you venture into the forest you''ll find that there are some creatures who''d really rather you not be in their homes." The doctor explained, as he turned and revealed the items we''d be using.


    He held a tray that contained two mortars and pestles. These mortars and pestles weren''t the only things the tray contained. Inside of the mortar, there was some crystal clear river water, and beside the bowls were single, solitary fangs.


    The doctor placed the tray onto the table and I winced at the heavy sound the impact produced. I reached over and gently took one of the two mortar and pestles. The doctor took the other. And then he began to speak.


    "Making some poisons is easy." He told me, a grin on his face. He looked into his bowl and carefully studied the contents for a few moments before continuing to speak.


    "The rookie poisons, the kinds that any alchemist and anyone with knowledge can make, are really simple. They are watered down poisons found in the real-world. In this case, we are literally watering down snake venom." Dr. Cortes revealed a wry grin on his face. When he looked at me he chuckled, after seeing my face.


    This was so underwhelming that I physically reacted to it. I could feel the frown on my face. I was feeling a bit disappointed that my first lesson was one that was so simple, especially since I had been told to wait for two days to receive this lesson.


    "Oh Althos, I can read your face well. I can detect your disappointment. There''s a reason why this first lesson is so simple. It''s to teach you an important lesson: something doesn''t need to be flashy to be effective." He told me, speaking smugly as he did so.


    "This poison might not seem like much, but let me tell you the ability to make a poison this simple and judicious applications of such a poison have saved my life numerous times in the past." He told me, grinning.


    "As a young and greedy alchemist, I made many enemies. Using this poison carefully I managed to either evade capture or escape from the grasps of my enemies on more occasions than I care to admit." The doctor told me. I sensed his honesty and took a moment to open my mind to the simplicity of this poison. And then I realized that I''d gain access to a subdomain thanks to this simple poison and grinned, now grateful that it was so simple.


    "So... what are we going to do?" I asked the doctor, curious as to what process we''d need to undertake to be able to create the poison we were after. I watched as the doctor put on gloves, and gingerly picked up the fangs. He then deftly dropped the fang he had closest to him into the water.


    "We''re going to dissolve the fangs. By dropping the fangs into the water we are dissolving the fangs. This dilutes the venom to the point of near non-existence, and leaves little more than the sole property we seek: their paralytic potency." Cortes revealed, a confident grin on his face as he told me that.


    My eyes widened a bit when he revealed that. All of a sudden diluting the venom made sense. I could easily understand the value and potency of a poison that paralyzed its victims and did little else. It was a good weapon for kidnapping someone, or for escaping an awkward situation without fatalities. I grinned and then turned my attention to the fang.


    I carefully reached out with my mind and picked up the thing. It was small so it was unexpectedly difficult for me to lock onto but once I did I was easily able to manipulate and move the object. I positioned it just over the water inside of my mortar and then lightly dropped it. It landed in the water within the mortar and immediately sank to the bottom of the bowl.


    I watched as the water began to erode the fang. The fang, already a tiny thing, was shrinking before my eyes. As the fang shrank, the water changed color.


    And in a matter of moments, I received a welcome notification that alerted me to the fact that I had successfully created a poison: I received my first tier of influence over the subdomain of poisons.


    I spent a second reading through the list of powers I had just gained and grinned as I read them. They were a bit more diverse than I was expecting, and also more supportive than I had anticipated them being. Not that all of them were like that though, as one of my powers allowed me to create and command clouds that dropped acid or poison, which was a curious ability that I could see being amazing if used at precisely the right time.


    These new abilities were well worth the price I paid to get them: the creation of a single somewhat underwhelming but still handy poison. Dr. Cortes came up to me and studied my mortar. He was quiet for a moment before idly reminding me of his silly theory from when we first met, that I wasn''t a newcomer to alchemy. Being reminded of such a silly theory made me chuckle.


    [Details about the subdomain of poison:


    The subdomain of poison governs both poisons and acid. This makes it an incredibly useful subdomain for inflicting devastation on your enemies, as you can unleash titanic acidic attacks or personalized poisonous ones at will.


    This subdomain is a powerful one that grants you all manner of unpleasant powers to use against your enemies. This includes significant powers like the ability to create clouds that rain poison or acid on your enemies, to less direct powers like the ability to imbue an undead creation of yours with poison or acid.


    To gain further tiers of influence over this subdomain use poisons and acids and build cults that worship you as a poisonous or acidic god.


    Poison subdomain passive abilities:


    Acid/poison cloud: You conjure clouds that are filled to the brim with poison or acid. Poison is useful against living organisms, acid is fantastic when used to cause generalized devastation. The clouds you create freely unleash damaging rain on who can''t seek shelter against them.


    If you didn''t possess influence over the subdomain of air this would be an active power with a cooldown, but since you gained influence over the subdomain of air first this power is free to use.


    Acidic/poisonous grasp: This supportive power modifies your undead to naturally exude poison or acid, and allows them to pick which of the two they exude. This empowers their unarmed attacks and allows for the smarter ones to coat their weapons in acid or poison.


    The poison they can choose to exude is paralytic, and at this tier of influence over the subdomain is only paralytic. Acid is more dangerous and allows them to dissolve enemies they face.


    Acidic/poison manipulation: You can manipulate poison and acid. This power synergizes well with the subdomains of the air and the earth and allows you to create particularly dangerous areas that inflict incredible harm on living creatures who dare to pass through them.


    If you are feeling hostile towards lifeforms you can fill the area around you with acid or poison, or both, and watch anything that comes close to you be ravaged by poison if they dare to breathe in your presence or endure acidic burns for boldly standing in front of you. You can also hit enemies and inflict acidic or poisonous damage on them.


    If you want to inflict poisonous wounds or acid burns on someone or something with just a touch you can. If you empower your blows with poison they''ll wear down an enemy''s health over time and paralyze them, but if a follower of yours uses a poison you''ve divinely created for them it''ll just be paralytic.


    If you want to improve the strength of your own poisons or the poisons of your servants empowered by ambient allies then gain further tiers of influence over the subdomain. You can also generate acid or poison and drip it on something or someone.


    Enhanced ants: This power enhances a specific kind of your servants and worshipers: ants. Thanks to the influence you have over the Hymenoptera subdomain and your swarm powers ants that worship you immediately undergo a potent power boost to the potency of their acidic attacks.


    Acidic flames: This synergistic power mixes the potent effects of fire with acid. At will you can conjure and control especially deadly flames that cause those who are hit by them to both burn and dissolve.


    Corrosive necromancy: This synergistic power infuses your necromantic magic and powers with a paralytic touch, or makes them especially wasteful if used to kill an enemy. This also allows you to animate pools of acid or poison, which you can create using your manipulation ability.


    Both sorts of animated creatures seek out living creatures hostile to you to murder or guard a location you designate against anyone hostile to you. You can also awaken pools of acid or poison as an active power and thus grant such entities sapience. When you gain the power to create souls you''ll be able to create true lifeforms out of acid or poison.


    Poisonous aura: The air around you is thick with poison and acid. Enemies who stand near you are unable to concentrate as their mind is wracked by poison. Allies near you find that their attacks are minorly poisonous, inflicting an extra hitpoint of damage on foes a few seconds after they attack.


    Subdomain of poison active powers:


    Corrode the mind: This twice per half-hour-period power is used to weaken a creature''s mental resistance. Many abilities can be resisted, but resisting the effects of a divine power requires a strong will. This ability poisons the mind and weakens efforts to resist godly abilities.


    Awaken poison/acid: This twice per three-and-a-half-day period power can be used to awaken animated pools of acid or poison. Awakening them grants them sapience and transforms them into loyal oozes dedicated to serving you.


    Subdomain of poison blessing and curse details:


    Cursing someone with this domain causes them to excruciating pain as they are wracked by poison.


    Blessing someone with this domain renders them immune to poison, and they gain some degree of tolerance towards acid.]


    I waited for the good doctor to finish his examination of the poison I had just crafted. It took him a matter of moments to do so. When he did he turned to me and had a twinkle in his eyes.

 81 Sisters

    The odor of the mushrooms in bloom pungently carried across the subterranean field. The scent, a distinct and nauseating one, mixed with other equally unpleasant smells: the smells of sweat, blood, and other bodily fluids, as well as the everpresent scent of bat manure.


    If one stopped and let their senses explore the field, then they''d hear a variety of noises. Some of the noises they''d hear would be the sounds of stone hoes slamming into the stone and dirt that lined the field, as well as the sounds of ragged breathing. Another noise they''d hear would be the sounds of coughing, most often a virulent and painful sounding peel of coughing.


    The sights one would see on the field would be a painful one to visualize. They''d see creatures of a number of races plowing the field and tending to the enormous mushrooms that grew here. The fittest of the creatures here would absentmindedly plow the fields, doing as they were told and generally attempting to avoid the ire of the guards who watched over them.


    Others, the more stubborn creatures who gave their jailors and oppressors a harder time, were more haggard looking. They were treated roughly, being subjected to even more brutal conditions than their compliant fellow-captives. They were sickened, usually deliberately exposed to the alchemical runoff from the experiments conducted by the mad dark-elf whose name was whispered by those who jailed the slaves: Milene.


    Both groups of slaves included a number of different creatures. Some, the elite in both camps, were dark elves themselves. The dark elven prisoners were the members of both camps who were treated the most harshly. They wore tattered remnants of clothing and had the eyes of the other slaves been capable of piercing the darkness then the beautiful bodies of the dark elves would have been a visual feast for the other slaves to leer at and fantasize about.


    Even the most compliant dark elven slaves were treated with what could only be called savage cruelty by their fellow dark elves who happened to be a bit luckier, and who used and tormented their enslaved brethren at every chance. There was something almost mad about the cruel glimmer of excitement that shone in the eyes of the dark elven guards who got to interact with a dark elven slave. And indeed, much of the blood that colored the floor of the field was dark elven blood.


    The other slaves were members of an assortment of races. The most common types of non-dark-elven slaves were humans. This made sense, as the world above the city of Aronms, the mysterious island the humans knew as Puerto-Rico, was populated primarily by humans. The next most common kind of slaves were dwarves.


    The smallfolk were not only talented smiths and inventors but they were also hardy and could see in the dark. The dark-elves had enjoyed conquering virtually every dwarven settlement underneath Puerto Rico and capturing thousands of dwarves to torment. The Ardor family had their own fair share of dwarven slaves and enjoyed both the battles that resulted in them acquiring the slaves and the time it took to break such valuable chattel.


    One of the slaves carefully eyed her hoe. Her eyes, long-adjusted to the darkness of the world beneath Puerto Rico, were able to thoroughly assess the condition of the instrument her jailors had given her. She easily studied her tool, and she familiarized herself with each chip and crack in it.


    She sighed after studying her instrument and lifted it high above her head. And then with a soft grunt she brought the object down hard aiming the thing at the floor at her feet. The dirt she was tasked with tending too was hidden underneath a thin layer of stone. She was using her hoe as a mallet to locate the dirt she needed to till.


    It wasn''t logical, but then again neither were her captors. They were inefficient and favored to subject her and her fellow dwarves to humiliating acts that wore them down and eventually broke their spirits. That said, there was a certain effectiveness to their tactics. She had resisted their inhumane treatment, but not all of her fellow dwarves were as resilient as she was.


    All around her, her keen vision allowed her to see dwarves who had succumbed to hopelessness. They wore better clothing, had better tools, and weren''t standing on top of the stony floor in search of rare patches of arable dirt hidden within the ground. A part of her envied them. But it was a small part of her.


    The dwarves who had given up, who had surrendered themselves to their oppressors in body and spirit were sullen creatures. They were angry, bitter men and women with hate-filled eyes who subserviently appeased their dark elven masters with all manner of weapons, armor, and performed sinister rituals to please their cruel overlords.


    While Aoife focused on completing her unpleasant task, one of the dwarves who had submitted to the dark elves turned her grim gaze on the dwarven warrior. The embittered dwarf had opal-like eyes, and in those eyes, there was an incredible amount of hatred for the dwarf she was staring daggers at.


    The dwarf in question had begun taking on the features of her masters, her skin darkening and her eyes becoming colorless white orbs like the eyes of some of her tormentors. This eerie phenomenon happened only to a few of the dwarves who accepted their lots in life as whipping posts for the dark elves, and those to whom this happened were universally feared dwarves, who were every bit as pitiless as those they served.


    She smiled sadistically and obscenely at Aoife, but her lewd grin went unnoticed. The truth was that the savage little creature was imagining the nude form of the mentally unyieldly dwarf writhing underneath the taller and more powerful naked body of a male dark elf.


    The subservient dwarf wanted nothing more than to see Aoife, infamous for her tenacity, be brought low. And when Ava''s handler came over to get her to move again, he stopped for a moment and followed the general direction of Ava''s gaze. His eyes eventually settled on Aoife, who was mid-swing and whose voice was one of many that could be heard in the field hard at work.


    He studied her for a moment, admiring something about her. It was difficult to tell what attracted his attention, perhaps it was her pale skin, her finely muscled body, or the way sweat clung to her. He spent a few moments studying the dwarf before turning his gaze back to the one he was in charge of. And then he opened his mouth to speak, to spit and hiss venomous words like a snake.


    "Ava, what are you doing!?" He hissed, his voice quiet and embarrassed. She was a source of shame for him, as she was constantly misbehaving and getting him in trouble. His voice was harsh and filled with impatience. Ava was finally snapped out of her lewd daydreams and the dwarf was quickly snapped back to the reality of her situation.


    The dwarf suddenly shook her head and turned to look at her master, the dark elf she had personally been given over too once she had submitted to her dark elven wardens. He stood considerably taller than her, and was clad in the finest silk clothing money could buy. He glared disapprovingly at Ava, his colorless eyes burning holes through the creature he considered his property.


    "Master, no I apologize! I was just wishing for... you to meet my sister." The dwarf said, speaking quickly and making up something that could be interpreted as partially true on the spot. Normally she lied in these situations so for her to mention anything even remotely true was a welcome surprise.


    Ava''s handler''s face contorted in curiosity as he envisioned a meeting with Ava Silverhammer''s sister, Aoife Silverhammer. The dark elf, named Gladerial, considered what such a meeting would entail. A part of him was interested in approaching the strangely pretty dwarf. But he knew better than to feed such impulses. He clicked his tongue in annoyance and began to move towards her, his hands reaching out towards her and promising cruelty.


    Despair filled her eyes, as she knew that what awaited her later on in the day would be a vicious punishment. That said, the dwarf was so thoroughly indoctrinated that she didn''t even try to resist her master. When he reached her, she simply submitted to his vicious manhandling. She didn''t even cry out.


    Her sister didn''t even notice her, as Aoife was busy doing her best to complete the task she had been given. The poor dwarf''s stomach was rumbling, and hunger softened each of the warrior''s strikes, and so she didn''t feel like unnecessarily incurring the wrath of her captors. Not yet anyway.


    The dwarf recalled the presence of the strange and self-proclaimed god that had healed her and all of the other slaves a day ago. She wanted to confide in it. And she wanted to avoid unnecessary conflicts. So, for now, Aoife was doing something she found challenging: she was keeping her head down and not starting any unnecessary problems or fights.

 82 Prayer & Direction

    Underneath the Rodan forest, a pair of goblins were having a quiet conversation. They were both seated on the floor and they were the two most devoted followers of the strange nature god who identified itself as Cosecha.


    "Why don''t you pray? Cosecha itself told me that prayer is the path to get to know it." One of the two goblins said to her neighbor. She had bright yellow skin and was dressed in roughly fashioned animal armor.


    Her companion and the person she was politely chiding was the first cleric of the master of the Rodan forest. Xiax looked at her and sighed. When he didn''t articulate a response, his neighbor looked up at him sympathetically.


    "Xiax... Cosecha is an accepting god. It is a kind god. It healed us. It healed you most of all. What are you afraid will happen?" Mawby asked, curiously and sincerely. She found the goblin''s behavior beyond strange and somewhat maddening.


    Mawby was a pious follower of Cosecha. She believed in the god whole-heartedly. In her mind, she fed the savior of her people daily. This belief hailed from a conversation the two of them had had when they first met, wherein the god told her that it fed on belief. Admittedly, she received regular responses from the strange deity but in her mind, Xiax had received the real reward.


    Mawby was the only person aside from Althos that knew that Xiax had been awarded a class. Xiax had approached her when night fell over the encampment and told her of the award the system had bestowed upon him. The system was vague, but it told him that he was now a cleric, a devoted follower of a god who was gifted magical power by either the system or the god itself.


    Xiax''s gaze met Mawby''s. He studied her for a moment and he was able to detect what she felt. He detected the corruption in her heart that twisted how she felt about him. Mawby was envious that either the system or Cosecha itself recognized the piety that the odd god had inspired in Xiax and saw fit to reward him for this powerful emotion.


    The goblin cleric quietly considered how to proceed from here. He recognized the pain that was eating away at Mawby. And he recognized the fear that gripped his heart. After thinking for a few seconds he figured that speaking honestly to Mawby might help her deal with the jealous that was eating at her.


    "Mawby, I... Listen I didn''t choose this. And neither did Cosecha. The system did. It was explicit about that. I was told by it that it chose me to be a Cosechian cleric." Xiax explained, telling her the truth. This caught Mawby off guard, and her eyes softened further.


    "Oh... Well still, our savior feeds off of belief and faith. It told me so! Your prayers might help sustain it." Mawby told her companion, her voice soft and filled with a renewed hope. It appeared, to Xiax anyway, that learning that Cosecha didn''t choose him over her but that the system had made the decision to transform him into a cleric was positive for Mawby.


    The tiny yellow goblin had an envious heart. One could even say that that was her greatest flaw.


    The idea that Cosecha chose someone who wasn''t even Troik over her to be its first cleric was deeply frustrating. Mawby could even accept the presence of Raiz, a creature literally created by Cosecha who was its self-proclaimed high-priestess and had escorted Troik back to the encampment, but the idea that Cosecha had chosen Xiax over her had been too much for her to endure much longer.


    Mawby, calmer now than she had felt in days, was able to snap herself back to the restorative and helpful person she wanted to be. She was now truly sympathetic and the next words she said were surprisingly helpful to Xiax.


    "Maybe I should pray out loud. So you can hear how someone else does it. Would that help you begin to understand the power of prayer?" Mawby asked, smiling serenely at Xiax. The Cosechian cleric looked at Mawby and smiled. He nodded at her, eager to see how she did it. Mawby smiled back at him, eager to teach him how she approached prayer.


    When the cleric nodded at Mawby, the goblin momentarily wondered how to best teach her new student. The truth was that the system had been coaching her over the last few days, teaching her different approaches to prayer.


    She had taken notes about the advice that the system had taught her and so far the prayers that were the most likely to receive responses were conversational prayers. In fairness, Cosecha frequently replied to Mawby''s prayers and Mawby was grateful for this, it just so happened that the prayers that were the most likely to garner direct responses were conversational prayers.


    Mawby grinned after contemplating how to teach Xiax. And then she began to speak.


    "Prayer is important to me. Prayer is how I know Cosecha''s will. I pray more than once per day, though I don''t always get a direct, audible response from Cosecha." Mawby informed her ally, happy to have a chance to spread her own particular beliefs to someone else.


    "I pray by directing my thoughts to Cosecha. When I do, the system asks me if I''d like to make my thoughts a prayer. After I inform it that I would, I begin to share my thoughts with Cosecha. From time to time I''ve gotten direct responses, but otherwise, I get responses from the system that inform me as to how my prayers make Cosecha feel." Mawby revealed, explaining something that was unknown even to Cosecha itself.


    This revelation caused Xiax''s eyes to go wide. And it pleased the cleric. It gave him the assurance that he had needed to be able to muster the courage required to pray to his divine master.


    The source of the goblin''s fear had been that after he prayed he wouldn''t know what his master wanted, or if the god was pleased by the prayer. It wasn''t so much that the goblin wouldn''t know precisely how to pray, it was that he would pray and not know how his prayers made his god feel or if his god had some tasks he needed to complete in the name of the master of the forest.


    His fears assuaged, the goblin immediately began to pray. He was eager to do so and thankful for Mawby''s intentional and unintentional assurances. Mawby herself was unaware of Xiax''s newfound courage and continued to attempt to indoctrinate her companion.


    The prayer was a detailed accounting of the past few days and contained some sections of interest to the opportunistic deity the goblin served and worshipped.


    "Cosecha, I sincerely apologize for taking so long to pray to you. I beg your forgiveness and mercy, as I was too afraid that you may not reply to me if I prayed. It is only because of my fellow goblin, Mawby, that I now know better than to be afraid of that." The prayer began.


    The middle of the prayer was little more than accounting for the past few days. It was a detailed and thoughtful accounting, that would inform the deity to whom it was sent of events that would definitely intrigue him, including the arrival of the first lifeform he created: Raiz.


    "Cosecha, in order to atone for my hesitation please give me a quest or a task for me to accomplish. I will do my best to make up for the fear I wrongly and ignorantly showed. Allow me to do something that strengthens you in some way." Xiax offered, hoping that this would convince his divine master of his usefulness.


    The goblin had no idea how intriguing this would be to the deity he served. Nor did he imagine that the offer would be the cause of a conversation the deity would have a few minutes after the prayer was transmitted to its recipient.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes after Xiax finished and transmitted his prayer to his god, Althos''s body was carefully following the instructions of the alchemical expert named Dr. Cortes. He expertly handled ingredients and showcased a natural skill at brewing potions owned more to his infinite dexterity than anything else.


    The good doctor was showing him how to brew a handy potion: one that restored magical energy. The particular recipe the young god was being taught was a specialty of Dr. Cortes''.


    The god memorized the recipe quickly and the first of the potions he''d finish brewing in the next few minutes would be an excellent one. But his mind was elsewhere. In fact, his mind was partaking in an active conversation with the system.


    "So about this prayer..." The deity''s mind wondered, directing a question to two separate entities. One of them was the domain of faith, and the other was the system.


    The contents of the prayer were all intriguing to the young god to whom the prayer was directed towards. But it was the ending that was the most curious to the god, who sensed an opportunity in it.


    Mentally Althos was all smiles as he reread the prayer. He confirmed that it said what he thought it said, and chuckled in the confines of his own mind.


    [Yes Althos? What about this prayer?] The system asked, curious as to what was on the god''s mind.


    "Yes, Althos... What about the prayer? It seems pretty straightforward to me." The domain of faith replied, also intrigued by the god''s response to it.


    "Well you see... I was just wondering if there was a particular way I could capitalize on it. I still need to complete the quest of the domain of souls. And the life domain. I think there might be a way for me to use Xiax to do just that." Althos replied, transmitting the message to both the domain he was speaking to and the system once more.


    The domain of faith listened to the message but didn''t reply, though it was intrigued by what Althos had just said. Althos could sense the abject interest and chuckled.


    [What do you have in mind Althos? Especially because those quests are very different ones.] The system replied, keenly aware of the differences between devouring three souls and being responsible for three pregnancies. They were very different quests and everyone, Althos included, recognized that. But that didn''t stop the wheels in Althos'' mind from turning and scheming.


    "Well, I was thinking of giving the goblin a quest. And the more I think about it, the more balanced it feels. Because I''d like for him to take three lives and then create three more." Althos explained, a confident grin etched on his mental face.


    The two entities that were conversing with him silently considered what he was saying for a moment. After a few moments, a new and sinister voice chimed in with an intelligent counterproposal.


    "Althos, your undead servants hunger. Why not use them instead? Because sooner or later their minds will begin to degrade if they are not properly used to either fulfill your will or take lives. They thirst for combat. They want to be unleashed. They are clamoring for it. You can be kind to your goblin and in doing so keep up your image as a kind and loving god, while encouraging him to create new life. And you can use the dead to inflict death." The voice said. It was the smug and powerful voice of the subdomain of necromancy.


    Althos mulled over this idea. He was quiet as he did so, as he was reaching out to the minds of his undead minions. He didn''t converse with them, instead, he scanned their minds and studied what he found.


    Much to his annoyance, the subdomain of necromancy was correct. He was unsurprised by this, but he had hoped it wouldn''t be the case. Althos quickly conceded that the subdomain had a point and readjusted his plans. This was a silent process but at the end of it the god had a new and improved plan. And he eagerly shared it with the entities that resided within his mind.


    "I will meet the requirements for the death domain, and use undead creatures to meet the requirements of the soul domain." The deity eagerly explained, beginning the process of mentally readying himself for the labor he''d need to do over the next few hours.


    There was a sinister part of him that was quite excited at the prospect of battle. A part of him that looked forward to seeing the blood of his enemies splatter across the floor, and also relished the idea of vanquishing his foes himself. Wielding the weapons that stole their lives away.


    Althos did his best to ignore this part of himself. Instead, he focused on the subjective and objective good that could come of this. The subjective good that could come from this was him acquiring more power. The objective good was that in doing this he could free people from the shackles of slavery.


    The moment he wisely accepted that it was better for him to use his undead servants to attack his enemies he had begun to recalculate his targets. He had switched from preparing to opportunistically direct Xiax to any injured animals, to instead focusing his desire for souls and a bit of murder on the areas with the most slaves.


    A quick analysis of the not-so-mini-map revealed that the place containing the most slaves happened to be an encampment of reptilefolk located underground but not deep underground. Althos felt a wave of certainty wash over him as he began his preparations for what was to come.


    And within him, numerous domains began to wait with bated breath to see what would happen next.

 83 Preparations

    The prospect of violence and the inevitability of the fall of my foes didn''t thrill me. I recognized that the possession of powers like mine, and the capabilities to enact incredible violence on those I deemed my foes would likely please many mortals, but I didn''t relish the idea of slaying my foes.


    Well... that wasn''t entirely true. There was a part of me, a cruel and malignant part of me, that was thrilled by the idea of violence. It was even more thrilled by the idea of witnessing the aftermath of the sort of battle that I recognized was inevitable if I were to clash with the reptilefolks.


    A part of me, introspective and inquisitive in equal measure, wondered which of the domains and subdomains in me were responsible for corrupting the portion of myself that was excited by the inevitability of violence and death. I recognized the possibility that the part of me that was excited by this was a portion of myself that wasn''t corrupted by external influence but I didn''t want it to be. I wanted this black-hearted part of myself to owe its existence to powerful and subtle external voices.


    My assumption was that this part of me was being subtly corrupted by the influence of the domain of evil, and the subdomains of corruption and necromancy. That said it was very possible that this was an internal excitement that I innately felt and wasn''t due to the influence of any domain or subdomain. And given that gods were creatures of destruction, I didn''t doubt the real possibility that violence and death themselves were what motivated the part of me that was black-hearted.


    I was born a creature of chaos. Living in human society tempered this aspect of me, but it was there and it was real. It lurked beneath the surface of my humanlike appearance. It motivated me to want to cause change. And as I listened to Dr. Cortes lecture me on the importance of potions, I recognized a vital truth: death was a form of change.


    To distract myself from the bloodiness of what I was to do, I turned away from pondering about the portion of my heart that was dark. Instead I opted to focus on something new and beneficial: readying myself and my allies for a conflict.


    My mind turned to the endless natural graves of the world beneath the world. Thanks to my mastery over darkness and my incredible necromantic abilities there was something fun I possessed the power to do: construct an army. An army of the dead.


    "I can use these creatures." I told myself, as I pondered the fates of the countless legions of the dead that lurked within the island of Puerto Rico. I could sense billions of corpses that were perfectly suitable to my dark needs. And I was quickly reminded that my mind wasn''t a perfectly safe, perfectly isolated place when a dark voice spoke to me, urged on by my menacing musings.


    "If you want to create an unstoppable army of the dead... you possess the power to do so. And remember that your undead legions are no longer stagnate. Even now the undead servants you''ve created are powerful, empowered further by the powers you''ve gained since you created them." A voice told me, the quiet and scheming voice of the subdomain of necromancy.


    I heard a smile in its whispers, a cadence that hinted that the speaker felt delighted. I didn''t judge it for that, as I myself felt delighted at this moment. I also felt excited. Excited enough to entertain a number of thoughts about alternative methods of handling the reptilefolk. After all, I recognized this for what it was: an opportunity to unleash my powers. A moment where I could act of my own accord, and proceed how I saw fit.


    And so I took a moment to contemplate how my ideas might play out.


    ________________________________________________


    I took a moment to envision myself alone against the reptilefolks. I pictured myself arriving in their settlement, hundreds of them within it at any time and the scenes that''d result from me unleashing my powers in full at them. I saw myself alone in their lair, reptilefolk blood soaking the floors of their homes.


    I pictured the feeling of countless rays of arcane, divine, and elemental energies shooting out of me. I pictured the fallen reptilefolk immediately rising up to serve me. I pictured the delight I''d feel in taking and defeating countless reptilefolks alone or with the help of their freshly deceased kin.


    But that wasn''t the only thing I could picture. I had options, as I was no longer the inexperienced god I had been days ago. And another route came to mind.


    If I wanted to stage a miraculous escape for those the reptilefolk enslaved I didn''t even need to make myself known to them. I could easily turn the very homes of the reptilefolks against them.


    It would be an easy act. I felt the earth under my feet, even in the doctor''s laboratory, wish to be used. I could feel the thrum of the world under my feet cry out in need of a command. Instantly freeing the slaves the reptilefolk unjustly kept could be done in an instant.


    And even then there were other options. The most dramatic option for me was to raise the army of the dead I knew I wanted to raise. Or rather I knew I wanted to continue raising. I commanded countless legions of sapient ant-exoskeletons. They worshipped me, and they clamored for orders.


    "What if instead of just giving them orders, I gave them brethren?" I asked myself, a cruel grin on my face.


    I pictured an unstoppable legion of the walking dead descending upon the reptilefolks. I pictured settlements crushed under a horde of the shambling dead, and I envisioned the slaves of the reptilefolks staring at their unusual saviors in confusion before I appear and declare that the slaves are to be freed.


    Those images were hauntingly beautiful. I felt them cause a stir in my soul. I wanted to do that. I wanted to create a true horde of the dead. If I felt like rationalizing it, I could say something poetic like that I wanted to show those who had long been taken from their homes that justice took on a myriad of forms, many unexpected.


    That said I wasn''t in the business of self-deception. The truth was that I just liked the idea of a horde of the dead obeying my commands. I liked the idea of a horde of servants who worshipped me as their creator and as their master. And the undead did just that.


    I knew in my heart that this was the option I wanted to pick. I had no way of knowing that even as I settled on this option that I was about to be handed a brilliant excuse to enact it. And the form that excuse took, was a pair of my servants finally asking for their rewards.


    "Master, days ago you informed us that you sought to reward us. You told us that you wanted us to ask for a reward for our assistance in the accomplishment of your goals." Whispered an unexpected voice. It was the voice of Imbrosa, the beautiful drider on whom Sombra''s physical body is partially based. Her voice was songlike, but it was a quiet song. One unlike any I had ever heard before.


    I was quiet while I waited for her to speak more. She didn''t keep me waiting.


    "I have an idea for my reward. I wish for you to reanimate my mate." She told me. I was surprised by this, but more surprised by the fact that I didn''t detect any sort of love in her voice. She spoke of her mate, flatly revealed that he had perished, and she didn''t sound saddened by it. It was odd to hear her make such a request, without sounding emotionally affected by the passing of her mate.


    I didn''t respond to her. I would do as she wished, and the truth was that I suspected that if I looked internally I''d find a part of me that was relieved that that was her wish. The timing of her wish felt like an indication that I was on the right path, even though I knew that it was no such thing and was just a happy coincidence.


    I stayed silent for a moment longer, and right as I was about to reply to Imbrosa she spoke once more. This time she began with a sigh, a careful and measured one. It was a curious thing to hear and made me chuckle.


    "If you''re gonna be silent, I''m assuming you''re waiting for more information. My memories were foggy when I was reanimated. My mate and I clashed with others of our kind, for reasons that escape me, and he died before I did. The fool was always weaker than I was. And he paid for that. And then, later on, so did I." She said, sighing between sentences. Now, this I replied to.


    "Imbrosa, I will fulfill your wish. And... you shall soon find many more like you fighting alongside you." I told her, hinting at the darkness of my ambitions. I heard a peal of soft and satisfied laughter emanate from her, as well as quiet feelings of gratitude.


    A moment later I received a message from Nivar, the grave giant. Her voice was a powerful one, and very curiously her voice was colored by emotion.


    "Master! I have a request I''d like you to consider." She said, excitement audible in her voice. I replied to her, though I had a feeling I knew what she''d ask me.


    "Hello Nivar. Yes? What is this request you''d like for me to consider?" I asked, curiously.


    "Master, I have told you of the strange qualities of my people. I would like for you to reanimate my kind. I can sense that they are still not reanimated. Which is... intriguing." Nivar said, purposefully leaving out details that were almost certainly important.


    For a moment I considered not pressing the giant on this. That said the truth was that her people''s physiology was odd and I was curious about her kind''s circumstances.


    "What are you not telling me Nivar? I have no qualms about reanimating your kin, but if you withhold information from me you will be held accountable for it. And you don''t want that. Tell me what you are hiding." I commanded, revealing that I was on board with reanimating her tribe but also promising to punish her if she tried to hide information from me. I heard her hiss in annoyance, probably directed in equal parts towards myself and herself. That caused me to laugh softly.


    "Master..." She began. I felt a spark of resistance, or hesitation emanate from her. And that spark provoked a reaction from me, my expression sharpening cruelly for a second. But as quickly as the spark appeared it vanished.


    "Master, please accept my sincerest apologies. I did not wish to embrass myself, is all." She started, humbling herself by apologizing. I calmed myself, and waited for her to continue speaking.


    "I was part of a group of... runaways from a tribe of grave-giants. When we fled we said that one of us was supposed to survive a ritual we''d perform and ensure that the others were reanimated as intelligent, free-willed undead creatures. I was chosen for that honor, but I was set upon by a massive monster and killed in the wake of ritual sacrifice my peers performed on themselves." Nivar explained, revealing the humiliating circumstances behind her death.


    Upon hearing that, I could feel a pang of sympathetic understanding for her plight. That didn''t stop me from being annoyed that she took so long to tell me this though. Something I made quite clear with my next remark.


    "You should have told me sooner. Nothing has happened to the corpses of the grave giants, but if I had known about this earlier I would have reanimated your kin far earlier. Do not repeat this mistake. Keeping secrets like this may deprive me of opportunities to gain more power." I told her, making my displeasure with her selfishness clear. I heard her sigh, disappointed in herself and felt her anger towards her sense of pride. And it resulted in me feeling even more sympathy towards her.


    "Hmm... What can I do here?" I asked myself, wondering if I could find a way to use this moment to turn Nivar into a pious adherent of mine. I sensed a vague and ill-defined opportunity, but I wasn''t sure how to use it.


    The grave giants were an unusual race. They were gigantic humanoids and had a striking physiology that empowered them when they came back from the dead instead of weakening them. As a god of necromancy that made them powerful and ideal servants. I could sense the endless applications of their strange powers and adaptable bodies, and that made me want them.


    If I transformed Nivar into a champion of mine, I could easily lure in more grave giants. The real question was how could I do that most effectively?


    I spent the next minute or so recalling the list of necromantic subdomain abilities at my disposal, and in doing so came across a detail that had slipped my mind. And it brought a smile to my face. But first I had preparations to make.


    ________________________________________________


    So that I could begin to inch closer to the completion of my dark goals I recalled the finer aspects of a particular ability. "Darkness manipulation", a darkness domain ability that let me manipulate the dark and cast spells on things as if I was in contact with them if they were shrouded in darkness was incredibly valuable.


    So far in my life, I had never been more grateful to that ability as I was now. Thanks to it I had access to millions of medium corpses, billions of smaller ones, and hundreds of thousands of larger corpses. I was able to use one other power in particular in tandem to create an endless parade of nightmarish undead. "Fleshcrafter" my ability to restore forms to creates whose bodies had decayed to almost nothingness, came in clutch and granted me access to even more corpses to reanimate.


    My magic flooded the world beneath the surface of Puerto Rico. And as corpses began to rise, as an assortment of undead monstrosities, I received the first flood of notifications I had received today. I didn''t doubt that it wouldn''t be the only flood of notifications I''d get before the day was done.


    And I turned my attention in full to my grave giant servant.


    ________________________________________________


    "Nivar, listen to me." I commanded, mentally speaking to my grave giant servant. She fell silent mentally and waited for my next statement.


    "Do you wish to redeem yourself in my eyes?" I asked her, curious as to how she''d respond. I was sure she''d say some variation of "Yes", but it was the amount of excitement in her response that I was curious to hear. She didn''t keep me in suspense.


    "Yes! Yes, I do my master. Do you have an idea of how I may go about doing this?" She asked, pleading with me to give her an answer. I chuckled the sound heavy with excitement.


    "I am willing to offer you a test. You are a necromancer. You possess the greatest suitability of all of my servants to lead the undead legions I am even now creating. But I will boost you further. In exchange, you are to lead this unstoppable legion, and convert my enemies into its newest soldiers." I commanded her, speaking with the authority I imagined an older god of necromancy would speak.


    "I will make you a powerful warrior of death and despair. You will cut down my enemies, a settlement of reptilefolk who are keeping slaves. You and the army that even now crawls to its feet shall defeat, and reanimate the reptilefolk and them alone. If you do this successfully, bolstered by the powers and soldiers I give you to command, then you shall become a chief lieutenant of mine." I declared to the grave giant.


    I heard her silence. It was quite loud in its own very peculiar way. It brought a smile to my face. She was silent for a full minute before she finally replied to my offer.


    "Althos... There is nothing more in this world that I want than to be a chief lieutenant of yours. If you believe I am a suitable tool for you to use to strike out against your enemies than please test me to your heart''s delight." She responded, speaking eloquently. I grinned at her. And without a word I extracted the spark that was animating her.


    "If you truly are to be a chief lieutenant of mine, I suppose I should make you something stronger than a ghoul." I mused, a wide grin on my face. I didn''t share that thought with her. And as I mused about what to do to her, I received a message from the system that brought a smile to my face.


    [Althos, there''s a particular type of creature she''s suited to being. Can you remember what the necromancy subdomain once you told you about magicians and insects?] The system asked me.


    "I do, actually." I muttered. And so I set about creating a particular type of servant, by remaking one I had already acquired. And to start it all off I had to go and dominate some worms.


    ________________________________________________


    In the tower of the eerie god, the giantess suddenly collapsed. She was dead, and not the same kind of dead she had been moments ago. She was well and truly deceased this time. But that was destined to change.


    The first worms arrived a number of minutes after the giant keeled over. They were teleported directly onto the corpse, and they were grateful that their master provided them with this delicious meal. They immediately began to eat the corpse''s healthy amount of skin.


    Every few seconds Althos teleported more and more worms onto the body. Within ten minutes there were enough worms and they had had enough time to eat that the body was visibly losing mass.


    By the time half an hour had passed the body was gone, and the worms were satisfied and full. And their master had gained access to two new subdomains. It was when the body was gone that the fun began in full.


    The worms, in their dominated state, hadn''t thought through the consequences of their actions. Mostly because they lacked the intelligence they''d need to do so. Perhaps surprising some, when Nivar''s spirit returned and found her body gone she angrily opted to use the next best thing. Backed by Althos'' control over the worms, Nivar quietly began an assault on those who devoured her body.


    The worms were swiftly dominated by a singular intelligence that wiped them clean of any memories or feelings they had had. And that angry intelligence used her arcane intelligence to bring the worms together in a very literal sense with a single magically powered and divinely aided attack. Shortly thereafter Nivar''s spirt forcibly bound them into a single semi-solid mass in the shape of a massive humanoid.


    Althos aided the youthful giant by empowering her spirit and going ahead with his plan to make her into a champion. To do this he silently gave her a blessing she could leverage against her foes. Without a word of warning to anyone, including the giant, Althos blessed her.


    At the moment she received the blessing she was struggling to dominate and control the hundreds of worms who''d unwillingly given her their bodies in exchange for hers. And that was the final push that she needed to be able to surge into her new body and seize control of it.


    On that day, for the time time, Althos elevated one of his undead servants. In doing so he took an ordinary but cognizant ghoul and transformed her into a powerful worm that walks. As he studied the strange sight of the tomb giant who was no longer an ordinary tomb giant, he was satisfied with the work he had done on her.


    He sensed the radiant hatred she had for life. And the not at all contained contempt she had for undead who couldn''t use magic. Both of these emotions radiated out of the new and unsettling, writhing body of the undead magician.


    ________________________________________________


    "He is... inscrutable." Remarked one of the domains. It spoke to a gathering of its peers, within the vast mind of the god who was perpetually pursuing power.


    "He is not inscrutable. He is young. With youth comes flexibility." Said another, rebutting the silliness of its peer''s confusion about the moral flexibility of the young god. To that domain, it was clear how the god was so easily able to accept what it needed to do.


    "He is ambitious is what he is. He delights in the acquisition of power. It guides him as surely as any sort of defined moral code could. He doesn''t possess a defined moral code. He isn''t evil, nor is he good. Though in fairness... applying such terms to a god has always been tricky, long before he came into being." Quipped a subdomain, one of the few that he had had influence over for a while.


    This comment generated mutterings of agreement. The subdomain would have smiled if it could since it seemed that the others recognized the wisdom of its comment. It felt that it was correct, that more than anything else what drove Althos at the moment was ambition.


    Althos'' actions so far were driven more than anything else by a desire to acquire more power. His willingness to feed mortals and to heal them always resulted in him acquiring more servants. While withholding much judgment he forgave a demon who possessed a servant of his and turned it into his servant. He pulled off remarkable deceptions that resulted in him acquiring more servants.


    All of that pointed to a simple fact: Althos was ambitious. It was an understated but noticeable ambition that the youthful god himself might not have perceived just yet.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep underneath the surface of the world, dark energies were at work.


    The energies that surged through the unlit tunnels beneath Puerto Rico corrupted and corroded that which they couldn''t control. They poisoned the poisonable, dissolved the dissolvable, and largely ignored what powerful living entities could endure them without succumbing.


    These dark, indiscriminate energies were hard at work. They crept along and through every centimeter of the world beneath the world. The energies were searching for something. They were searching for bodies. And they were finding them, left and right.


    Althos grinned as he felt the number of undead under his control swell. And he grinned, even more, when he realized the diversity of the newly risen. It was a healthy group containing members of every type. And that was what Althos loved to see.


    Every second his preparation drew nearer and nearer to completion. And the hour to strike down his foes grew ever closer. He found that realization to be quite exciting. Almost as exciting as the two subdomains he read the dual subdomain notification for.

 84 Violence

    Dr. Cortes examined my latest creation with a scrutinizing stare. I could tell that he remained shocked by my natural abilities with regard to alchemy, and I didn''t mind that. I enjoyed how impressed he was by my work to date.


    His eyes examined every corner of the bomb I held. It was a small thing, frankly, it was tinier than I anticipated it being. That said, while I had been interacting with Nivar and Imbrosa he had been instructing me on how to craft both the potion he set out for me to make, and then this.


    "Hmm..." He muttered, studying the ball I held in both hands. It was a small thing made of iron and filled with something called gunpowder. The inside of it was hollow by necessity, and the gunpowder it was filled with could be caused to explode from a distance, using magic.


    Dr. Cortes had explained the value of this invention to me while I was using my immense necromantic powers to fill the world beneath Puerto Rico with undead beings. And the reality was that bombs were incredibly useful for me but not for the same reasons as they were for him.


    If an enemy had the same type of bomb that I held in my hands right now I could cause it to explode remotely. I could do this by generating a flame within the bomb from a distance, through my ability to manipulate flames. And without this lesson, I never would have learned that. I was grateful that I had been allowed to learn from Dr. Cortes, even though I was more present elsewhere than here.


    I was also grateful that thanks to it I was able to acquire the first tier of influence over alchemy. Incidentally, I had also acquired a new quest and subsequently completed that quest, while I was raising my army of undead creatures and transforming Nivar into a massive worm that walks. The quest gave me the first tier of influence over the annelid subdomain.


    As I read over the dual subdomain notification I had received I was surprised and impressed at the diversity of powers I gained, powers I was grateful to gain.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual subdomain descriptions:


    Alchemy is the magical science of transforming something from one state into another. Annelids are a type of lifeform that includes earthworms, leeches, and many sorts of marine worms.


    Granting the lowest tier of influence over alchemy grants you powers related to creation, deconstruction, and transformation. Granting the lowest tier of influence over annelids grants you a worms physiology and command over worms, both of which are more impressive than you may realize upon hearing that.


    To gain further influence over the subdomain of alchemy continue to build your alchemical knowledge and create a cult of alchemists that worship you as their muse and master. To gain further influence over the annelid subdomain use your newfound powers over annelids to turn them to your worship.


    Dual subdomain passive powers:


    Alchemical creation (Low level): You can create an assortment of alchemical items from nothing. You can instantly create potions of healing and lesser poisons.


    You can use this to ensure that your troops are never in need of supplies. You can import these items into other people''s inventories, and the items won''t even take up space. Instead space will be created specifically for them. You can also decide whether or not to inform people that they''ve acquired these items.


    Alchemical detection: You can detect alchemical items on your mini or not-so-mini maps.


    Alchemical manipulation (Low level): Thanks to a combination of other domains and subdomains you can influence, you can manipulate the properties of low-level alchemical creations. This means you can edit potions and poisons, thanks to your healing, alteration, and poisonous powers.


    This power can even allow you to transform what looks like a potion of healing into a poison or vice-versa.


    Annelid anatomy: You can transform yourself into an annelid. You become an incredible example of annelid prowess, and retain your other powers while doing so. You become a gigantic, earthworm like monstrosity while able to tunnel through the earth.


    Annelid mastery: You gain immediate and undeniable mastery over all annelids. This power is strengthened by your mastery over vermin and parasites which is why it functions even on sapient or evolved annelids like subterranean death worms, or flame-breathing tunnelers.


    This power is boosted by your influence over the biology domain and thanks to that you can also trigger immediate evolution or devolution in annelids. You can do that at will.


    Annelid awakening: Annelids who become aware of you are automatically awoken and utterly and permanently enthralled by you. Sapient annelids experience further enhancement to their intelligence.


    Dual subdomain active powers:


    Curse of the annelid: You can forcibly transform another creature into an annelid. You can use this power twice per three and a half-day period and you can decide if it''s permanent or not or change your mind and edit it one way or the other.


    When you use this power you decide what kind of annelid they become and if they retain their intelligence. If you transform someone into an unintelligent annelid you can also assign them a quest to do that will become their priority.


    Alchemical destruction: You can destroy an alchemical creation or tool with a sharp glance. No alchemical creation aside from a wonderous item like a philosopher''s stone possesses even a chance of surviving this destruction. You can use this twice per twelve-hour period.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with the alchemical subdomain grants them enhanced natural healing, increases their lifespan, and grants them easier access to wealth. Cursing someone with the alchemical subdomain does the opposite.


    Blessing a non-annelid with the annelid subdomain makes annelids friendly towards them and likely to serve them willingly. Cursing a non-annelid with the annelid subdomain makes annelids, leeches in particular, aggressive towards them and causes them to be attacked on sight by annelids.


    Blessing an annelid with the subdomain enlarges and strengthens it. It grants it nobility recognized by other annelids. Cursing an annelid with the subdomain shrinks and weakens it, and causes it to be considered an enemy by other annelids, or at least strongly disliked if surrounded by sapient annelids.]


    ________________________________________________


    Nearly three hours passed between the time I entered Dr. Cortes'' house and laboratory and the time I left it. I left the good doctor''s home feeling quite satisfied. Not only had I gained new skills, but I had also gained new powers as well. I had learned the barest basics of alchemy.


    Moments after I closed the door leading into or out of my teacher''s home I scanned my environment. When I was satisfied that there was no one who could see me I did away with my physical form and sank into the earth beneath my feet.


    I found myself in an airless space and was grateful for the fact that I didn''t need to breathe. It gave me so many options when it came to travel. I immediately warped to the encampment I was determined to destroy, and set about performing reconnaissance.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself standing undetected and undetectably in the center of the encampment. All around me I could see new sights.


    I stood on a flat area, surrounded by resettled ruins. The ruins took on the form of clearly ancient and weathered stone buildings and inside of those stone buildings labored a number of people. Some of the people were human beings, but most weren''t.


    I saw slaves of countless types, some of which were both surface and dark elves, some of which were dwarves, others of which were rarer creatures like gnomes, and strange creatures that vaguely resembled humans but with arachnid features such as a spiderlike lower-body, or even a scorpion''s tail.


    The slaves of the encampment were the majority of what I saw here. But I detected the reptilefolk. I knew they were close, deeper in the ruin-centered encampment. This area was a pair of interconnected caverns that housed thousands of reptilefolks. Where I was was the outermost cavern where guards watched over slaves who performed menial and manual labor.


    I set off to lay my eyes on reptilefolk guards.


    ________________________________________________


    It didn''t take me long to lay my eyes on a reptilefolk. Thanks to my enhanced vision, and my awareness of where they were hiding, I was able to quickly glimpse one before I took even a hundred incorporeal steps towards where they were.


    The thing was a strange creature. It stood just under two meters tall and was bipedally trotting out of a small opening in a distant wall. It had a natural armor composed of azure-colored scales but still wore artificial armor made out of a fusion of metal and scales that further hid and protected its most sensitive body parts.


    The creature clutched a primitive-looking spear in one hand and a thin shield in another. It opened its mouth and inhaled roughly as if it were suffering from some sort of bizarre condition. When it opened its mouth I noticed the row upon row of sharp teeth that lined the inside of the thing''s maw. I studied the thing for a moment longer, before I felt satisfied.


    "It is time." I told myself, quietly.


    ________________________________________________


    Throughout the hollowed interior of Puerto Rico undead ambled about. But it wasn''t just a horde of mindless zombies or vaguely sapient skeletons that the dark god had raised when he infused the earth itself with his necromantic powers.


    All manner of undead hungrily waited for their master''s command. The only thing that kept them from turning on each other was the fact that they served a single master. His will unified them and directed their anger towards a single target: reptilefolk.


    The more intelligent undead, not the ghouls or the skeletons but the wrights and the vampires, arose feeling a deep-seated hatred towards the enemy their master unconsciously urged them to despise. They arose feeling a powerful urge to annihilate not all of life, but to extinguish the lives of their creator''s foes. Althos was unaware of this, but he was destined to see it play out soon enough.


    Vampires and wrights were naturally violent creatures anyway, but the dark-hearted part of the master of the teeming horde of undead fed into this natural bloodlust and amplified it. And it wasn''t just them who felt it either.


    There was something odd about the movements of even the least of the undead, the zombies. The zombies that made up this horde were unusually active and their eyes burned with something resembling a simple intelligence. Zombies weren''t supposed to be intelligent, so had any living creatures been around to look at the zombies in question they''d have felt considerable fear.


    Some of the undead situated underneath Puerto Rico, awaiting the dark commands of their terrifying creator defied common classification. These were odd abominations that were made entirely of bones. The closest thing they resembled were skeletons, but the bones that made up their bodies were mismatched and damaged. That said, they were colossal entities the length of buildings that dripped poison thanks to the mutative powers of their creator.


    The countless undead weren''t just physical creatures either. An innumerable horde of the spiritual undead, entities like wraiths and shadows, were also created by the titanic flood of unlife energy that had surged into the subterranean portion of the island. For every skeleton and zombie, at least one shadow or wraith had been created.


    This mob of bodiless monsters sought nothing more than to bring about the violence their creator had created them for. Each of them was a fully intelligent entity, and they sprung into existence with a specific understanding of their shadowy sovereign.


    Their understanding of Althos was that he was at his core a creature like them. They believed him to be a sort of incorporeal monstrosity that could temporarily give himself a physical form with which he would enact devastation and spread darkness.


    They came into being possessing a hope that not only were they correct, but that if they served him well then they''d be granted bodies of their own with which they could go out and commit atrocities against the living. They didn''t know it yet, but their creator was an accomodating sort. The truth was that he''d likely grant them their desires, so long as they vowed to obey him.


    "Greetings little ones. The time for you to fulfill your first dark purpose has come. In moments you will witness a portal opening up before you. When you do, step through it and join your comrades. You have one mission and one mission alone: annihilate the reptilefolk that you find beyond the portals you step through." A dark voice whispered, speaking to each of the creatures it had created.


    The faces of the endless hordes of the undead that Althos had created changed when they received the message their creator had sent them. Almost at once macabre and often broken smiles spread out across the faces of the crawling and unstoppable horde of undead Althos'' titanic unlife energy wave had created.


    ________________________________________________


    The first undead creature I summoned to the encampment was a lone warrior. The nameless gug I had reanimated days ago, now not the only undead gug in my service, stepped through a portal I conjured in my tower that I connected to the encampment.


    The gigantic ghoul appeared in the eyes of the reptilefolk anyway, seemingly from nowhere because I opted to make the portal a one-way device. It found itself staring at the much smaller reptilefolk warrior, with a broken, vertical smile spread across its face.


    The reptilefolk warrior was stunned for a moment by my warrior''s size and abrupt appearance. And before it could turn around to alert its allies in the cave I allowed myself to be detected by retaking on my corporeal, human form and abruptly used my mastery over stones to close off the cave in which the creature''s allies were located.


    I looked at my servant and spoke. "Devour him." I commanded the thing, my eyes locked on my servant.


    My creation didn''t turn to look at me, but it did open its horrifying vertical mouth. A bit of drool leaked out and began the long trek to the floor at the gug''s feet. And then the gug took another step forward. This caused the reptilefolk warrior to react.


    The monster let out a fierce roar and chucked its spear at my servant. For a moment I considered intercepting the spear, but I ultimately wanted to see the fight play out without interference. The spear flew through the air between the two warriors, and the nameless giant lazily reached out a single gigantic hand to block the spear.


    The spear crashed into the monster''s hand, but bounced off of the thick fur and muscles my servant possessed. It spun around in the air before landing sideways between the two warriors. I audibly chuckled at this. And after the spear was back on the ground my servant finally decided to truly engage in the battle.


    The gug had always looked slow until now. It had always been ponderous, and somewhat awkward-looking. That ended when the thing took decisive action.


    The creature sped towards the reptilefolk with a speed I hadn''t believed the thing could possess. It made full use of its incredibly long legs and each stride it took significantly closed the distance between the two foes.


    The warrior my monster was intent on devouring didn''t even have enough time to plan his next action before the gug was upon him. Two massive fists, both stemming from the same arm, speedily lashed out from the creature''s body and slammed with bone-crushing force into the reptilefolk warrior.


    The warrior would have been sent sailing if not for the gug''s incredibly speedy reflexes. The creature''s other arm snaked out and caught the reptilefolk warrior in a two-handed bone-crushing grip. The battle was over, but the gug wasn''t done.


    The hand that held the warrior lazily lifted him to the gug''s maw. The vertical mouth opened and then the warrior''s arm was placed gingerly into it. The gug bit down with incredible speed, snapping its maw shut and slashing the arm off uncleanly while also cutting through the armor that the warrior was wearing with the same ease as the warrior''s arm.


    Blood matted the gug''s face and began to grip down from the bloodied stump the reptilefolk warrior now possessed in lieu of an arm. The reptilefolk cried out in agony, and I studied the sight before me.


    My servant was idly chewing on the warrior''s arm, savoring the taste of it. I saw something new in its eyes: joy. It was an odd emotion to see in the absentminded gaze of a ghoul, but I also sensed the pleasure coursing through my ghoulish creation. And I chuckled as I imagined a horde of the undead feeling the same sense of bloody pleasure.


    I took a second to do two things at once. I targeted and teleported all of the hundreds of slaves out of the cave, and near my tower. That was done in an instant. At the same time I created hundreds of one-way portals into the encampment, a wide cavern with a considerably high natural ceiling which made it perfect for housing my hordes of the undead.


    The sound of thunderous footfalls filled the cavern that housed the encampment, as billions of corporeal and incorporeal undead charged into the encampment in a mad rush to obey me. I had to work to resist the cruel sense of pleasure I felt knowing that the gigantic horde that was rushing into this cavern was mine alone to command.


    I was able to keep a calm expression on my face as I summoned my original undead creations to my side, and as I felt a portion of the incredible delight my undead horde was feeling.


    The cavern behind me was filling up quickly. Since I was in front of my army, I was at the head of an army on their way to a decisive battle. And I couldn''t deny that that felt... right. I quietly unsealed the same tunnel that I had previously blocked to allow my warriors and my enemies to see each other.


    At first, the only sounds we could hear were the silent footfalls of the undead hordes. But when they stepped through their portals and drew closer to me, I began to hear some of them shout excitedly and unintelligibly. They recognized me and were excited to see me.


    It was at this point that the bravest of the reptilefolk stepped out of their unsealed tunnel and began to investigate the commotion. The time had come for battle to begin in full.

 85 Battle Lines

    The second that the first reptilefolk warrior stepped out of the tunnel and laid eyes on my reanimated gug servant, the battle began. The gug I had called to my side, just to see firsthand how the thing fought, was still leisurely devouring the warrior it had defeated.


    His agonized cries were music to the undead. Behind me, they ambled, shuffled, and in some cases dashed or flew in my direction. They were lured to my side by so many things, my presence, the smell of blood, and the sounds of both the tortured reptilefolk and his approaching allies.


    The first warrior to lay eyes on my ghoulish companion darted towards us, and hurled a spear much like the other warrior had. This time though I wasn''t a passive observer. I didn''t let the spear get very far away from the warrior''s grasp before I smiled and let loose a single spell: gravity well.


    When I cast the spell it wasn''t aimed at a location per-say, it was aimed at a person. I targeted the very warrior who had hurled the weapon at us, specifically his face. I also filled it with magical energy, overcharging the spell''s power and making it even stronger than it would otherwise be.


    I watched as the spear stopped in mid-air and then flew backward. I was disappointed that it didn''t turn in mid-air, but when I watched it violently slam into the warrior''s face I grinned, satisfied. My satisfaction increased when the warrior slumped to the floor, unconscious and bleeding.


    My horde of undead servants was getting close, and the rest of the reptilefolk hadn''t been bold enough to exit the tunnel. I decided to give them some motivation.


    ________________________________________________


    By now I had a pretty solid grasp on the ways my powers worked. In almost every case I merely had to focus on the power, and envision the end result becoming a reality. And as I considered how to "encourage" the reptilefolk to leave the comfort of the tunnel they were in, I wondered which of my powers would be the most useful.


    Immediately my mind turned to the powers I possessed over the earth. They were fun, reliable powers that were useful in a number of situations. I could use them to cause a cave-in, to separate the reptilefolk from their allies, or even to kill the reptilefolk outright.


    Another set of fun abilities I could easily use in the situation were my powers over the wind and air. I could force them into this cavern and out of their cramped tunnel by manipulating the wind and pulling them towards me. But that didn''t feel sufficiently fun.


    I wanted them to run out of the tunnel of their own volition. I wanted them to come towards me, not to be forced towards me. And as I mulled over the powers I possessed that may achieve that, I realized that the answer laid in a handful of my newest abilities.


    I glanced into the tunnel and envisioned a number of separate things happening at once. A smile crept across my face as I did so.


    ________________________________________________


    Twelve reptilefolk lurked in a tunnel that connected two portions of their strange encampment. It was a tight thing, just a few meters wide and tall. It was wide and tall enough for them, and for something a bit larger than them, but not for the teeming horde they could hear rushing towards them.


    They had been paralyzed with fear for the past few moments. In fairness to them they had watched one of their companions dart out, hurl his spear and then immediately saw the very same spear hurl backward towards him and painfully collide with his face.


    That said, their opponent was a god they had no way of knowing they had upset. He wasn''t kind enough to give the astonished creatures a centimeter of breathing room and he took advantage of their paralysis.


    The first thing the god did was cut off their one other route. He did this, by starting a fire on the other side of the tunnel. The fire came to life with a ferocious boom and was a hideous shade of violet. Even looking at it was painful for the reptilefolks, as it was both hot and bright and threatened to burn their eyes if they looked at it for long.


    The air in the tunnel closest to the other exit then grew incredibly thin, manipulated by their foe, and the creatures furthest from the exit facing Althos'' horde fell to their knees and began to cough, gasp, and suffocate. All of them possessed a warrior''s constitution and instincts and darted forward, trying to get to where their allies were because they didn''t appear to be struggling to breathe.


    Even as the reptilian humanoids closed rank with their companions, the air they were all breathing took on a greenish tint and gained new qualities. Hostile qualities. Their allies began to feel pain wrack their bodies, as invisible, inhalable poison aggressively invaded their lungs.


    As a growing mob, the reptilian creatures were darting forward. This was all going according to Althos'' plans, and the god grinned as he grew the monsters deeper and deeper into his clutches.


    He slowly drew the invisible poison closer and closer to himself. He let it sweep over the entirety of the tunnel, right as the creatures closest to him darted out of the tunnel. And as they did, the speediest of his minions dashed past him. The creature that did was a wright, a bloodthirsty and cruel reanimated and unusually speedy dark-elf.


    Althos heard a cruel, coughing laughter emanate from the corpse as the thing dashed towards the gang of reptilefolks. It held no artificial weapons, but from the certainty the creepy corpse possessed, Althos didn''t doubt that the thing had no need for weapons.


    ________________________________________________


    The squad of guards hurled themselves out of the tunnel, all of them in some pain. I studied them even as the quick dark-elf wright my necromantic powers had created sprinted towards them.


    They all wore armor of various types and held weapons. Most held spears, but some were armed with little more than clubs. That said, they weren''t clutching their weapons tightly and in a few cases even tossed their weapons to the floor as they struggled to breathe.


    The dark-elf wright my dark powers had created continued to laugh sinisterly as it closed in on them and opened its hands to reveal elongated, ebony-colored, animalistic claws. When it was almost within striking distance the creature leaped at them, pouncing like a wild animal.


    It flew through the air and landed right in front of the warrior closest to the horde. It suddenly stopped laughing and lashed out at its chosen foe. Its claws cut through the air and I watched as they raked across the warrior''s face, tearing through skin and scale alike.


    I could hear a slick slashing noise as the claws scarred the warrior who had been approached so speedily that he couldn''t actually dodge the strike and had to take the blow. That said, the wound didn''t appear to be particularly deep.


    I hissed in annoyance, but my servant wasn''t done. Even as the walking corpse retracted one hand, it lashed out with its other hand. And this time it chose a different tactic.


    It closed its fist and hurled a potent punch at the reptilefolk warrior, landing a clean and crushing blow that smashed into the warrior''s nose and hurling the warrior backward into his allies. The creature followed after its quarry, not giving any chance to breathe easy.


    Now the other speedy undead I had created were nearly caught up to me. I quietly lifted myself into the air and turned to face the flood of undeath I had created. As I did I smiled.


    When I turned I could see all manner of undead creatures in front of me. I could see zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghosts, shadows, wraiths, wrights, vampires, and mummies. They were positively ghastly, and the sight of them filled me with joy. As they crawled, flew, dashed, ran, or otherwise transported themselves towards the reptilefolk I could sense their emotions.


    I could feel joy, hunger, and desire emanate out of them. It was a fascinating jumble of emotions.


    They were all overjoyed. Even my oldest undead creations, which were here as well aside from my gifts to the goblins. They were happy to exist, happy to serve me, and above all, they were happy to bring harm to the living. I could sense their legitimate joy and delight.


    They were hungry. I could feel their starvation. It pained me to feel them starve so.


    I could feel their bloodlust. It colored their every movement. It was their desire. They desired not just violence, but the sensation of warm, living flesh on their tongues.


    They weren''t angry. It wasn''t rage that drove them forward. It was joy. Which was altogether more frightening to me.


    I could understand if they felt hate towards the living and it drove them forward, but they were motivated by something else. They were motivated by a desire to acquire joy, and to them, nothing brought more joy than the chance to feast on the living.


    ________________________________________________


    Numerous reptilefolk were able to dash forward and save the lives of their peers by the time the second, third, and fourth speediest undead monsters had reached their ally.


    The warriors lashed out with their spears just in time to slash at a few more wrights who had hurtled themselves past me right as I began to ascend into the sky. Their reflexes were incredible, and even as their enemy, I felt a bit of grudging respect for them on the basis of their physicality alone.


    All that meant in practice though was that their demise would be prolonged a bit longer. If anything the reptilefolk living a bit longer meant that their suffering continued unabated as they were still in great pain from the effects of the poison ravaging their bodies.


    I moved forward and closed in on my enemy while envisioning a razor-sharp blade of air shooting from my fingertips. I rose my fingertips in the direction of one of my enemies and aimed it at the thing''s throat. I watched the creature, it was preoccupied reaching for its weapons and trying to fully recover from my other, less targeted attack.


    And then I unleashed my attack by activating my "Aerial manipulation" ability and allowed the envisioned wind-blade to become a real thing. A sharp current of air shot out of my fingertips met zero air-resistance and impaled the throat of the monster I had aimed it at.


    The reptilefolk warrior flew backward, an airy sword visibly extending from his throat. He continued to fly until he slammed against the wall beside the tunnel that he and his peers had just escaped from. That was when I received a fascinating notification.


    [Alert: One of your minions has killed an enemy of yours. Would you like to activate your ''Soul harvest'' class ability? If you do so, you''ll automatically gain the souls of those murdered by your minions or by your attacks.]


    I chuckled and alerted the system that that was precisely what I would have liked. And then I felt a soul surge into me, and the feeling left me breathless.


    ________________________________________________


    My monsters surged underneath me. They were an unstoppable tide of bodies and spirits. And as they dashed towards the reptilefolks I had gotten out of the tunnel, I felt... strange.


    The sensation of the soul surging into me was an intense one. I felt the pain the reptilefolk whose soul I was acquiring felt in its dying moments rush into me and then spread throughout my body. It wasn''t a fun sensation, as the feeling was one of being torn into by thick and powerful jaws.


    I gritted my teeth and endured the flares of pain that ripped into my body but didn''t actually hurt me. After the fifth bite, I learned to ignore the sensations and was grateful that by the ninth bite the sensations were beginning to slow down.


    The reptilefolk in question was the one that the nameless gug had torn into and defeated. Each of the attacks I felt in the creature''s last moments were echoes of when the thing was torn apart by the gug. Its armless corpse was mostly in the gug''s stomach by now. I was a bit surprised when I received another alert, just moments after I gained the first soul I''d ever steal from a dying creature.


    [Dual alert: You may now complete the quest for the subdomain of pain. To acquire the first tier of influence over the subdomain of pain, endure painful sensations from five separate sources.


    You''ve acquired your first soul. Souls can be acquired in a number of ways. You gain souls when your worshipers die if you haven''t established a divine realm, if you use something like the devilish ability to make contracts and a person you have a contract with dies, or if a person you''re a patron of perishes. You can also acquire souls through powerful magic or class features.


    Souls can be used in a number of ways. You can absorb them for power, which is how you gain the ability to create humanoid life from existing species, or you can transform them into other forms of life. This last one is tricky, but it''s something that all gods can do.


    Gods possess the power to convert souls into other forms of life directly, but only when they gain the third tier of influence over the domains or subdomains closest to the type of life they wish to transform a soul into. For example, if you want to transform a soul into a demon you need the third tiers of influence over the domains of chaos and evil, and in most cases another domain or subdomain pertinent to the specific type of demon.


    Souls are a component in the creation of many powerful types of undead. Dullahans, liches, banshees, and reapers all require souls to be successfully created. Souls can be used as a currency when engaging with creatures from the neutral or evil dimensions, lands like Infernius, the Heart of Darkness, and the Wildlands.


    If left alone souls can eventually reincarnate or will naturally become a type of extraplanar being once they''ve spent enough time in the afterlife. This is in fate what happens to the dead whose souls are not stolen by a god, powerful magic, or some sort type of extraplanar plot.]


    When I finished reading through the notification I was pleasantly surprised at all of the things I could do. It was delightful to be armed with so much more knowledge. That said, the battle below me was now raging in full.


    "I suppose this is the moment in which I ought to begin farming for domains and subdomains to influence huh?" I asked myself, chuckling as I did so.


    I looked out at my enemies, who were currently fighting a losing battle. In order to help speed up the inevitable, I studied them.


    They were in a tight formation, fighting with surprisingly effective tactics. The warriors closest to the undead horde had begun making use of their shields to hold off the impending wave, while the ones behind them were outstretching their spears.


    Some of the undead who were throwing themselves at them weren''t intelligent and were impaling themselves on the spears. That said, more undead were intelligent than weren''t and so many undead were able to dash past the spears and were hammering away at the warriors who were putting their bodies on the line to stop the horde from advancing.


    This sight fascinated me, but it was also the reptilefolks stubbornly refusing to accept that their lives were forfeit. I wondered how I could best disrupt their manipulation, before realizing I had acquired two powerful tools that were perfect for this. And both were biological powers.


    I targeted two of the braver reptilefolk, the ones standing between my servants and the spear-users, and targeted their hands. And I willed for their bones to break, as soon as I activated my "Dermal and skeletal manipulation" power. They both roared in pain as my power shattered their bones, and caused them to drop the shields they had held onto to keep the undead away.


    The horde threw themselves at the newly exposed monsters with terrifying glee, and the ones that managed to reach them first were two vampires. One of them was a dwarven vampire, and the other was a human vampire.


    Both of my servants had been harrying the reptilefolks they were able to overcome when the shields were abruptly dropped, and they proceeded to wrap their arms around their prey and pull them into the horde.


    I kept my gaze trained on the pair and their victims. The other undead left them alone, instead opting to pursue the remaining reptilians.


    The vampires withdrew far away from the battle. I wasn''t sure why they did this but I suspect they did it to show their victims that it was hopeless. And when they stopped retreating into the pile of bodies, they proceeded to savagely bite the necks of their targets. I heard them begin to drain the blood of their victims and greedily guzzle the life-sustaining fluids from their prey.


    I turned my gaze away from them and decided to interfere a bit more. Right as I did so I felt a chill descend over me, specifically in my neck even as I felt echoes of the pain the apparently newly deceased reptilefolks endured while dying. This caused me to receive a single, decently long notification. And that was because I had just completed the quest for the domain of souls.


    I considered focusing on it for a second. But just for a second. I was about to receive a good number of new notifications, so I figured I ought to save myself some time and make it a multidomain and subdomain notification.


    I studied the situation and noticed that now that only a few shield-holders were left the reptilefolks who were the most obstructive were those armed with spears. I decided to mix up my intervention this time, but doing something that was no less negative, but was less directly pain-inducing.


    I was thankful that it was dark because that meant that I didn''t need to bother to make myself invisible. All I had to do was teleport myself behind the defensive survivors of the undead onslaught.


    As soon as I did I approached one of the warriors, and began to softly kiss the creature''s cheek.


    My first kiss ended up landing against a set of scales, and the creature tried to turn back to look at me but before it could I placed my hands on its neck and kept its gaze locked in place ahead of it. My next kiss actually touched the creature''s warm skin, causing the thing to shiver in demonically induced delight. And with my final and third kiss the creature fell under my spell.


    [Alert: The creature is now charmed by you.]


    I chuckled, and whispered into the thing''s ear. I made my voice soft and soothing as I did so. I gave the creature a single, simple instruction.


    "Could you please drop your spear?" I asked it. The creature considered my question for a second, clearly intrigued by it. And then the dimwitted creature actually let go of the spear. Even over the din of battle, both the undead and the reptilian warriors heard the sound.


    The reptilefolks couldn''t afford to glance away from their enemies, but the undead turned their heads towards the newly exposed warrior. And then many of them grinned and redirected their assault. I watched as numerous undead began to dash towards where I was standing, their gaze locked on the newest exposed enemy. I grinned back at my servants, and turned my eyes towards another target.


    I leaped to the side and picked a new spear-holder. As soon as I did, I threw myself at the creature I had selected and immediately reached the unfortunate victim. I snaked my arms around the thing, grabbing it by the waist and began to take steps backward and away from the group.


    I felt the reptilefolk warrior be taken aback by what was happening, and then turn around to face me. I grinned at the thing and got to study its facial features up close and personal. Thanks to our proximity I got to see the mixing of flesh and scales that made up its face, and I even got to see its onyx black eyes.


    The creature was afraid and began trying to force me to walk back by lashing out at me with its elbows but I just endured the blows without flinching. They were nothing compared to the pain I had endured earlier when I absorbed the souls of its fellow reptilefolk.


    As I was walking backwards, away from the fighting, I wondered how I should go ahead and kill this particular enemy of mine. As I did so, I began to sort through the undead I had created.


    I had let my magic run wild and create the most appropriate kind of undead specific to each corpse I had reanimated. Because of this, there was a shocking diversity to the undead that now served me. Vampires, zombies, skeletons, ghouls, and more made up my forces. And there was a fascinating diversity of species that had been reanimated as well. Driders, humans, grave-giants, massive and small spiders alike, dark elves, and more were among my forces.


    When I was far enough away from the other reptilefolk that the warrior I was clutching had no chance of getting back the thing decided to refocus. It was a clever decision, but one that was defined to fail. I sensed the tension in the warrior''s muscles shift before he could flip his spear around and I reacted viciously. I took a page out of my vampiric servant''s book and attacked using my teeth.


    I intentionally hurled my face into the soft neck of my prey and proceeded to bite into its neck. My powerful jaw muscles and sharp teeth immediately broke through the creature''s skin and scale alike tearing apart a jugular vein and causing its contents to coat my tongue.


    Metallic tasting blood began to flood into my mouth and I felt the creature in my clutches weaken immediately. There was a flareup of tension in its muscles, but nothing anywhere near enough for it to shake me off and the tension began to abruptly dissipate as more of its blood thundered into my mouth.


    I felt pain thunder into me again and I hissed while drinking the blood of my latest victim. The notification I received increased in length, and the headings changed as well. I chuckled, aware that this was because I was murdering this particular enemy.


    I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to appear and overtake the darkness that flooded my vision. I studied it for a second, before targeting numerous areas and casting overcharged gravity-wells so that I could add another domain to the list of domains I could influence.


    I felt even more pain surge into me, this time causing my bones to ache from the collisions I had just caused distant lizard-like warriors to endure. But that also lengthened the notification, and brought a smile to my face. The pain also immediately dissipated, fading far quicker than it had up until this point.


    ________________________________________________


    [Multidomain and subdomain details:


    You have acquired influence over the domains of death, souls, physics, and the subdomain of pain. These are all distinct domains and a distinct subdomain that are well-worth endeavoring to acquire influence over. The death, physics, and soul domains are a few of the greater domains.


    The death domain gives you powers that allow you to instantly cause death and is one of the infamous domains involved with the apocalypse quadrangle. By using it you can grant or remove immunities and vulnerabilities to different types of harm, add or take away years to their lives, and you gain other powers as well. To gain greater influence over this domain create a cult dedicated to it, and use its powers.


    The soul domain gives you powers related to soul creation, soul destruction, and manipulation. Souls are the immortal essences of a person or lifeform, needed to create true life. To gain greater influence over it, use the powers it bestows upon you.


    The domain of physics is a powerful domain that governs physical laws. These include things like gravity. By exerting influence over it you can manipulate sound, electricity, and other physical phenomena. This domain is a collection of different, loosely connected things like matter, motion, and energy and force.


    The subdomain of pain is as simple as it sounds. You can cause, manipulate, transfer, or even store pain. To gain increased influence over it, incorporate it into your worship and use the powers it grants you.


    New passive powers:


    Immunity and vulnerability manipulation: This synergistic power is a result of you being able to manipulate alteration and death. With it, you can grant someone immunity to certain types of damage or render them extra-vulnerable to types of harm.


    Electricity mastery: This is a synergistic power granted to you by fusing your influence over the elemental subdomains and your new influence over physics. You can generate and manipulate electricity at will.


    Soul creation: You can create souls. For now, you cannot create specific types of souls, as that requires you to absorb existing souls, but your general-type souls are perfect for a variety of bodies, extraplanars, and more.


    Pain storage and transfer: You can store pain someone would otherwise inflict on you and use it in a variety of ways.


    Alignment change: This soul-domain power allows you to forcibly change someone''s alignment. You can only change them into alignments you possess influence over unless you use this power as an active one so, for now, you can only make someone chaotic or evil.


    Sound mastery: This power grants you dominion over sound. This power turns sound into a deadly weapon or a powerful tool for mental manipulation.


    Death foresight: This is... a stranger power. With it, you gain awareness of someone is destined to die. But there are ways around it and all of them revolve around you.


    Because you''re the curious sort who''d snoop around and eventually try to use this power on yourself, it''s worth noting that your death cannot be predicted. You are a god, and thus fate cannot predict how you will act. You''re a sort of dimensional wildcard. Your actions can also prevent or speed someone else''s death.


    Pain inducement: You can induce moderate pain in someone at will. For now, due to your low divine power and level of influence over the subdomain of pain, you cannot knock someone unconscious with this power.


    This is a subjective power that causes people affected by it to experience different levels of pain based on their individual tolerance.


    Deanimation: This is a synergistic death domain power that allows you to instantly kill anything that doesn''t possess a soul. You can destroy undead, constructs, and more using this power.


    Gravity mastery: You gain total control over gravity.


    Pain dampening: You will never feel pain unless you allow yourself too. Pain you''d have originally felt if not for this power is automatically stored for you to do with as you please.


    Auric control: Auras are manifestations of your control over your own soul. You can now actually use the auras you''ve been accumulating thanks to your influence over the soul domain. You can pick and choose which auras take effect and when.


    Your new auric abilities include the ability to make ranged attacks never touch you, render enemies vulnerable to any and all of your attacks, and cause enemies to be the ones in pain if they attack you.


    New active powers:


    Soul destruction: This active soul domain power constitutes true destruction. By using it you utterly erase someone, permanently and irreversibly. They die and their soul is extinguished. This power is only possessed by a god. This power works on anything with a soul. You absorb their powers.


    Eventually, this''ll become a passive power. For now, you can only use it once every two weeks.


    Death inducement: You can cause something to die with a glance. This is a twice per twelve-hour power. Undead are immune to it, for now. This''ll also become a passive power eventually.


    Attitudes towards pain: This power is a multi-synergistic power that allows you to shift how a target feels about pain. You can turn someone into masochists, sadists, or make them terrified of pain. You can use this power twice per twelve-hour period.


    New blessing and curse details:


    The soul domain is not a domain you can bless or curse someone with. At your current level of influence over it you cannot presently bless or curse someone with the physics domain.


    By blessing someone with the death domain, you grant them immunity to instant killing effects. By cursing someone with it you make them unable to resist instant killing effects. This is a scaling blessing and curse that gains additional effects as you increase your influence over the death domain.


    By blessing someone with the pain subdomain you can grant them pain resistance and increase the pain their attacks deal. By cursing someone with it you cause them to endure greater pain each time they are struck by a blow and cause the effects of pain on their minds to be worse.


    Special alert and note:


    You can now complete the quests to gain influence over the domains of the stars and time and the subdomains of radiation and evocation.


    To earn the first tier of influence over radiation, which only has two tiers, you must bathe in the radiation produced by minerals deep underground.


    To earn the first tier of influence over the evocation subdomain you must manipulate a new type of energy. This must be a type of energy you''ve yet to manipulate and you must use it to inflict harm on someone.


    To earn the first tier of influence over the domain of stars, you must travel to your solar system''s star.


    To earn the first tier of influence over the domain of time you must manipulate the ages of members of three different species. You''ve already done this to two, it just so happens that being able to exert influence over the domain of physics is a necessary part of gaining access to the quest itself.


    As a reward for gaining more influence over the interconnected domains of alteration, biology, and physics you''ve been awarded a special power. Other interconnected domains and subdomains will also grant you additional miscellaneous powers.


    Size manipulation: You can alter someone or something''s size. You can use this twice before it needs to recharge, and it currently takes half an hour to recharge.]


    Even as I read through the notification, I felt my new powers surging into me. It brought a grin to my face to feel my powers expanding. And because of it, I felt like being nice.


    I teleported myself out of the cavern I was in, and reappeared in the interior of the reptilian encampment, far from the fighting. I might as well see how reasonable my enemies were, and see if they were open to having a conversation that may save their lives.


    It was surprisingly peaceful, though I knew that in minutes it wouldn''t be. That knowledge brought a smile to my face.

 86 Pride

    The area I found myself in was wholly unlike the area I had just come from. It was a flat area, but the cavern walls were lined with cavities, and I detected the reptilefolks that lived in those cavities.


    I could see hundreds of open cavities in the walls. I could even see some of the backs of sleeping and dreaming reptilefolk. It was an oddly peaceful scene given the horrors that I had just seen and had now left behind by coming here. The part of me that relished the violence that I had just left behind felt that this sensation of peace wasn''t something deserved by the reptilefolk.


    Hundreds of the creatures were closeby. None of them detected me, amazingly enough. I wasn''t sure if their guards were all standing by the fire that blocked them from going to the aid of their companions, or if they were just not in this interior area for reasons unknown to me.


    The first thing I did was quietly activate my "Religious fervor" power. I was silent as the area all around me took on a dim blue tint. The power''s range actually extended further than it had in the past, which was both helpful and odd but I knew to figure that I had been steadily accumulating power and this was just one outward consequence of that.


    I suspected that the ability to reduce a creature''s innate skepticism would come in handy. I did want to finish these negotiations before my undead horde reached here after all and that power would no doubt help.


    I was quiet while I considered my options. After a moment of contemplation, I figured I ought to go in full powers on display. So I opened my mouth and activated one of my newest powers.


    "Wake up." I said, quietly in my mind but thunderously in the ears of those who heard me. I felt my words escape my lips as words in the language of humanity but I felt the sounds shift and enter the air as words spoken in the language of reptilefolk. I sensed the panic and shock that reverberated throughout the cavern due to my voice awakening the inhabitants of the area.


    And then a moment later I heard the footfalls of over two hundred reptilian-humanoids as they dashed to get to a place from which they could investigate the cause of the thunderous noise that had just woke them all up.


    As I did so, I attempted to get myself into the right head-space for the sort of intensive negotiations I was about to force my enemies into. Doing so properly would undoubtedly require that I start off by clearly demonstrating the brutality of my powers and showcasing my inner pride as a god. And so I quickly decided to ask a question.


    ________________________________________________


    "So I feel this... weird sense of pride in myself." I muttered, speaking inwardly and to the entities that dwelled in my head.


    "I don''t know... why I feel it but it helps in moments like this. I was wondering if you happened to know anything about it?" I asked, directing my question to the domains and the system in general rather than directing it in any particular direction.


    There was a sudden silence as if the voices in my head were conferring amongst themselves. I had to wait a moment, but I was heavily in thought and thus felt the pull of time slow to a crawl while the voices left me in the cold.


    [Althos, you possess a god''s sense of pride. It''s... a skill of sorts. It allows you to enter an altered state of mind wherein you properly and fully channel your divinity. When you do that you effectively become your true, divine self.] The system explained, speaking abruptly after a few moments of awkward silence. It was immediately followed up by another voice.


    "Additionally, gods themselves also evolved over time. One of the things that helped gods gain more power was a speedier acquisition of worshipers, so gods who could do what you can do with regards to pride were more likely to survive." Explained a familiar voice, the voice of the domain of knowledge.


    This shocked me because it suggested that gods had genetics and could inherit traits from their parents if they possessed any. I felt encouraged after hearing the system''s explanation, but the realization that some gods possessed genetics made me feel... alone.


    It was odd to feel alone given my existence as the only and possibly last god in existence. But the reality was that though I knew that gods could arise spontaneously I had never really put together the implications of such an origin until just now, confronted with the possibility that gods could have parents.


    [Even by the middle of the mythic age, there were no gods that were fully alive that had existed at the beginning of time. Killing a god was difficult, but over the course of billions of years even gods died. New gods appeared and either replaced the old or coexisted with them. As more gods appeared they took on traits that had most helped their ancestors or parents.] The system explained.


    I nodded subtly, as this made a certain kind of sense to me. I could imagine that even the strongest creatures would find surviving for billions of years or longer a bit of a challenge.


    "Many young gods appeared and ether built empires, or had empires built for them by their followers. One example of this is the Athenian empire, which was located on a planet called Earth in another universe. Humans built that empire and devoted it to the goddess Athena, an ancient goddess of wisdom, defensive war, and civilization." Said the domain of knowledge, giving me a history lesson about a universe far, far away.


    [That said, your pride is a sign of the heritage you''ve inherited as a god. Use it to shape the world as you see fit. Embrace the pride you feel as a god and use it. Go out and negotiate from a position of strength. You are already the one in control.] The system told me, reminding me of a simple fact: my strength and the strength of my enemies were incomparable.


    I sensed my followers ready to lunge into the tunnel and dash into the second cavern. And in order to aid them, I remotely blew away the reptilefolk warriors that were guarding the exit to the tunnel that connected the outermost and second outermost caverns, while extinguishing the violet blaze that prevented the reptilefolk from rushing to the aid of their allies.


    I shivered as I felt my undead minions experience a rush of delight as they began to dash through the tunnel and spot new enemies to face. My reanimated servants were excited to continue their murderous rampage. And a part of me was excited for them as well.


    That allowed me to relax, and enter the proper state of mind I ought to have been in when entering a negotiation I was guaranteed to come out on top of no matter what.


    ________________________________________________


    As the first of the reptilefolk to lay their eyes on the god who had invaded their territory managed to catch a glimpse of him, he entered his altered state of mind. This didn''t cause a physical change on its own, so all they saw was that same youthful god standing in the center of their cavern.


    He looked out at them, grinning. There was something... unsettling about the air of confidence that he projected. He was eerily calm, and every few seconds he visibly shivered. Those who were able to behold him before he next spoke noticed that he didn''t seem altogether focused but he still visibly exuded a strange, and potent aura.


    He also made sure to will his shadow into not attacking. He knew that if it did it would be calamitous. He wasn''t here to cause devastation, he was here to bring an end to the bloodshed. He wanted less deaths, not more.


    His face fell for a second, and then he opened up his mouth to speak.


    "Reptilefolk! Come and lay your eyes upon me!" When he spoke the sound exploded out of him. Impossibly, the sound was audible throughout the entirety of the cavern, and the next cavern where combat was just about to break out.


    Althos was in his usual form. He looked like a regular, middle-aged human and not at all a deity who could destroy this entire place in the blink of an eye if he wished too. The reptilefolk were deceived by his weak-looking appearance and were beginning to come out of their homes and in some cases even inched towards the dark deity who stood before them.


    Sensing that some of them were growing braver, Althos quickly focused and made eye contact with the few of them were looking at him. He did so peacefully and seemed weirdly serene given the current appearance of his circumstances. And after doing that, he began to increase his size, doing so slowly. As he did so he figured that that was as good a time as any to introduce himself to the reptilefolks.


    "Hello. My name is Althos and I am a god. I have come here to punish you. And I am actively doing so right now." He informed the creatures, who proceeded to look at each other in confusion, unsure of what he was talking about.


    That was when the deity, feeling confident in himself and his ability conjured a massive moving image, almost an illusion, showing the carnage that was occurring in the other caverns. The image appeared in the sky above the bizarre god, and depicted a real-time simulation of the battle between the Althonian undead and the vicious reptilefolks.


    Althos didn''t bother to look up at it. He knew how it was going. He could sense and even heal his minions, and was actively doing so. That was why his forces had yet to lose a single warrior, even though the reptilefolks were viciously and effectively defending themselves.


    Althos enjoyed the sensations his warriors were experiencing. Everything they felt, he felt albeit an echoed and watered-down version of what the undead were feeling. And even that was titillating.


    He sensed when their claws, or jaws tore into his enemies. He felt the sensation of reptilian blood dripping down his face, and the warmth of their guts on his fingertips. It made him feel like a real god of death and undeath to command such monstrous warriors, and to enjoy the violence they were enacting on those he decreed were their enemies.


    That said, though Althos enjoyed this moment and felt like his victory was ensured he wasn''t the only person whose opinions mattered. Many reptilefolk who were now witnessing the brutal savagery of the first true Althonian army were enraged and lost themselves in their fury.


    Dozens of reptilefolk warriors roared and proceeded to hurl their spears at Althos. The reptilefolk at this encampment were warriors through and through and when they felt rage their reaction was to stab the source of their rage.


    Other reptilefolk warriors, ones with somewhat more rational heads but equally bad emotional control, grabbed their spears and dashed towards the exit of the cavern so that they may go and aid their fellow warriors. Althos, to the surprise of the reptilefolks observing him, allowed this. He didn''t speak to or interrupt the warriors as they fled past. He was doing something else.


    The spears that had been hurled at the young god were destined to never reach him. They sailed through the air, aimed at his enlarged form, but they stopped before they ever made contact.


    The air a few meters around Althos was tinted a strange shade of purple. When the thrown spears reached the outer edge of that purple area they stopped. They didn''t clatter to the floor or anything, they just stopped moving altogether. They hung in the air, and Althos looked at them absentmindedly.


    "Oh, it''s cute that you think that that will help." He remarked, while lazily making eye contact with each of the warriors who had chucked their weapons at him. He made no hostile movements, nor did he prepare an actual counter-attack.


    "I speak the truth little ones. I am a god. I am beyond your ability to harm." He said, before allowing the weapons to clatter harmlessly to the floor at his enlarged feet. The sounds of the weapons dully striking the floor amused the god, and he visibly chuckled when the last of them fell.


    He allowed silence to fall over the cavern. In that silence, some of the warriors in the innermost cavern grabbed their weapons and began to move briskly past the god and towards their allies and neighbors who were throwing themselves at the undead horde that was making their way into the innards of the encampment.


    They were smarter than their companions though and kept their gaze locked on the deity in case he tried anything else. That said, he was still frighteningly passive towards them and allowed them to pass undisturbed. He chuckled when they were out of view.


    "I have come here to see if any of you possess wisdom." He said, to those who stayed. His mind was at work, moving frighteningly quickly in ways that only the mind of a higher being could. He was assessing each and every living enemy of his in the interconnected caverns. The reptilefolk who remained here looked at him in annoyance and open hostility. He laughed, openly and loudly.


    "I am willing to be surprised. I hope you''ll surprise me." He told them, an arrogant smirk on his divine face.


    ________________________________________________


    The reptilefolk were a species of warriors. That was one of the two things I had gleaned during the time I began to assess them. Each of them was trained as a warrior and had martial class-levels. It was an exciting development since I sensed that one way or another they''d soon be mine to command.


    There was a part of me wanted to conquer them and add them to my forces, but another part of me knew that murdering and then reanimating them would work just as well or even better.


    The other was this society was wholly evil. It was impressive really, seeing a society of so many evil creatures who didn''t possess the sort of arguably advanced building techniques of the dark elves and were still part of a cohesive society. It brought a grin to my face.


    I quickly assessed dozens, if not hundreds of the reptilefolks still alive and each and every one of them was some variant of evil. The majority of them were neutral-evil, which was an exciting thing to realize as I had no influence over the neutrality domain.


    I could sense the intoxicating mixture of fear and anger I inspired in these odd creatures. And the more I smelled it, the more I wondered if it was to me what alcohol was to humans. I could just bathe in it and enjoy the pleasant light-headedness it caused me to feel. But I wouldn''t, not yet anyway. There was work to do after all.


    And so, while I lazily glanced at the warriors I had already subjugated I smiled and began to speak once more.


    "I told you earlier I came here to punish you." I reminded the lizardlike creatures I was clashing with. This reminder caused them to pause and look at me curiously. None of them spoke though. A sound that was almost a chuckle escaped my lips as I looked out at my targets.


    "Do you wish to know why you''re being punished?" I asked a cruel grin on my lips. None of them responded to me, and indeed many of the older ones either exchanged harsh looks or inched closer to their weapons.


    I sighed and activated my ability to control the earth. I immediately manipulated the earth underneath their weapons, creating a sinkhole just big enough for the tools to fall into. I then swiftly closed that hole and smirked at my foes.


    "I don''t feel like sitting through another temper-tantrum. Listen to me." I told the creatures I was in the process of subjugating. There was a steel edge to my voice, one that hinted that I had a bit of a temper. I wanted to frighten the creatures, and I could tell that I had because now all of their eyes were locked on me.


    "You are being punished because you enslaved other creatures. I have come here to free your slaves and to hold you accountable. I started this battle off by liberating those you pretended to own for years before you even knew who I was." I told the creatures, smiling serenely at them. And this provoked a reaction from them that caught me off guard.


    "What?" One of them shouted, speaking in the reptilian language they spoke. There was a look of genuine anger and shock in its slitted, snake-like eyes. I chuckled, happy to have gotten under its skin. I took a second to let the reality of my words sink in, before haughtily replying to the little slaver.


    "Yes, the slaves you once kept are now gone." I told the monster. In response to me the thing began to roar, and abruptly so did other nearby reptilefolks. The sound they made together was impressively loud and would have intimidated other, weaker creatures than myself. I waited for them to wear out their lungs, which took about half a minute.


    When silence began to fill the large cavern, I was about to speak once again. Annoyingly, I was prevented from doing so by another one of the lizard-like entities clearing its throat and beginning to speak up.


    "If I may interject here, I believe I can explain what is happening better than my friend can." Chimed in a voice, from my left. The speaker was well-mannered enough that I simply turned to her and gazed at her. I looked at her silently for a moment before she realized that I was waiting for her to continue to speak.


    "Excuse me, though I also strongly disagree with your decision to free our slaves... I think you''ll find that we have good reason to be upset." She told me, evidently feeling the need to contextualize her companion''s reaction.


    She was a slim hybrid of a lizard and a human with a mostly human body that was covered in armorlike scales, an elongated snout, and a thick tail. Her voice was gentle and she spoke quite politely enough for me to listen to her without interupting.


    I opted to stay silent until I knew fully what was going on. She realized this faster than before, and quickly began to talk again, speaking more strongly now than before.


    "Althos, though you may be an ideal moralist what we fear you didn''t understand before doing this was that we had an arrangement with a local... tyrant. And the slaves we kept were a part of that arrangement." She said, attempting to chide me but not really committing to it enough for it to emotionally sting. Instead, I chuckled at her.


    "I don''t care about your arrangement. Though I suspect you''ll tell me about it soon enough." I told her, speaking snarkily and arrogantly to her. I felt above her, and in fairness to myself, I was strong enough that how I felt wasn''t incorrect.


    "I understand that, but I really wish that you would have. Because we made an arrangement with a powerful dragon. And it''s... an arrangement we can''t exactly go back on." She told me, teasing a dark deal in a world already shrouded in darkness.


    I considered her words, treating with the seriousness which I felt that they merited. After a few moments of silence, I eventually spoke once more.


    "I am not from here, and you obviously don''t know about the power of a god since you seem to fear this dragon even though I''m here in front of you and you aren''t exactly scared of me. That said... I''m gonna go ahead and guess that you''ve made a deal with the dragon named Ygaynth, didn''t you?" I asked, a wide smile visible on my unusually tall face.


    For the first time, the reptilian humanoid who had spoken to me politely looked at me in surprise. It seemed that my remarks actually got to her this time, which only increased my sense of arrogance.


    "I''m a god. Though I suppose I should explain what that means." I told her, opting to explain my strange powers and odd knowledge that way from now on to cement the differences between us in her mind more readily. And I wasn''t done yet.


    "How about this... You''re in trouble and I''m not a bad guy so why don''t we strike a deal?" I asked, a smug smirk on my face. I watched the color drain from the woman''s face, and sensed that she and her people were in a desperate situation. Apparently in more ways than one.

 87 Victory

    "My kin will be upset... But I suppose this is what we get for being weak." Hissed the strange woman, in response to me asking her if she''d like to strike a deal. She beheld me once more, her serpentine eyes studying my form with a bizarre detachment and near objectivity that I found amusing.


    The coldness of her gaze made it feel as though she was actually assessing me pragmatically. I could admire that and allowed her to study me for a bit longer before doing something I felt I ought to do before we continued our conversation.


    "As I told you previously, my name is Althos. And I know your name, Beithir." I told her, revealing that she was one of the creatures I had used my abilities on. Her eyes went wide again, and she looked at me in fear for a moment. Though I liked surprising her, I was a bit annoyed that the fear that she felt wasn''t because she recognized my strength.


    I could clearly tell she wasn''t afraid of me because I was a god. She was afraid of me because she didn''t know what I was, or how I knew the things that I knew. And the silly creature was still afraid of this dragon, Ygaynth more so than she was of me.


    "I believe it is time that we negotiate." I proclaimed, confident that I could strike a deal with this odd creature. Beithir looked at me, anger in her gaze but she nodded at me and approached me openly.


    ________________________________________________


    When the female lizard-creature was in front of me, I declared my intentions. I made no attempt to hide anything from her, and spoke to her as an equal.


    "Beithir, I am a god. I am in the process of acquiring followers and building an empire. I am more than happy to make deals with evil creatures. I have no problem forgiving your past actions and working to save you." I told her, speaking frankly. Her personal vice was pride, and I knew that if I were to deal successfully with her than I ought to treat her with some respect.


    She gave me a look that told me that she had questions about what I had just told her. I chuckled and waited for her to speak. When she did, her voice was respectful and inquisitive.


    "Althos... I suspect your power is the real deal. I can... just tell." She said, speaking hazily for a second. She quickly regained her focus and spoke more sternly. "But what are you? What is a god?" She asked, genuinely curious. I laughed softly at her question, and considered how to best answer her question. It took me a few moments to come up with a real answer to it.


    "A god is a higher-being. One of the many types of entities that vanished a long time ago. We can manipulate the system, and do many other things." I told her, while opting to manipulate the system to send her a message.


    I activated my power to send messages remotely using the system and wasn''t surprised when a textbox appeared in front of me, asking me to compose a message to send to her. I sighed, and quickly mentally scribbled a simple message.


    [Gods are creatures of creation and destruction. They were the most powerful entities in the mythic age, alongside other lost species like demon lords, archdevils, elemental overlords, and other devastatingly strong creatures. They were once worshipped by quintillions of living beings throughout the multiverse.]


    I chuckled and sent the message. I watched the lizard woman''s eyes widen as she received the message I had sent her, and smiled at her.


    "Gods possess an incredible diversity of abilities. One of them is that we can arise spontaneously. Which is what happened to me. I came to life a few days ago, and I am already powerful enough to begin to build an empire." I told the woman, speaking confidently and honestly.


    She looked at me with an astonished and curious expression on her face. I could tell that she believed me, but I also sensed that she had questions for me. I grinned at her but the truth was that I also had questions for her. So I opted to begin to ask them.


    "I believe it is my turn to ask you a question." I told her, before immediately asking her what I was curious to know.


    "What is the deal your people made with Ygaynth?" I asked her, getting straight to the point. I didn''t believe in not starting with such an important detail. This caused Beithir to cringe, and I could tell it was something she didn''t want to reveal. But after a few moments where I just looked at her, quietly, she could tell that she had no other choice.


    "Althos... Where we''re standing right now was made by Ygaynth." Beithir whispered, speaking of that event reverentially. She looked at her allies, who gave her a neutral stare. There was something oddly cryptic about their reaction to one of their leaders. I had a feeling that I was about to receive a sort of secretive history lesson.


    The lizard-woman glared at her companions, and she gestured at me like I was giving her no choice but to reveal the secret history of this region. I chuckled at her pointed gesture, though I made no effort to react to her actions.


    "When my people first reached Puerto Rico, there were no human settlements here. We arrived on the island long before humans first left their little continent across the sea. We lived in caves until the day that Ygaynth first roared into the lives of our ancestors." Beithir told me, her serious tone causing me to stop even think snarky thoughts and listen to her.


    "We lived in caves until the dragon arrived. He didn''t arrive alone Althos. He was being pursued by dragon hunters." Beithir announced, speaking dramatically. And to this, I actually did react. Mostly because the way she spoke about it suggested that that was something I ought to be surprised by.


    I shrugged at her, which caused her to look at me in disbelief. While she looked surprised at me, I sighed and began to remind her of something.


    "I''m a few days old Beithir! You could write an endless number of books on the things I don''t know. And that includes what dragon hunters are. Or rather... I can infer from the name and context of the history you''re telling me what dragon hunters are, but I don''t have the cultural or historical knowledge to understand why hearing that would shock me." I told her, annoyed at her surprise.


    She listened to my explanation and then quietly mulled over my words. After a few seconds, she nodded at me, understanding my statement a lot more. She was silent for a second while considering how to best reply to me. When she did, a smile settled on her lips.


    "A long time ago, this portion of the world was not inhabited by humans. At all. Only other things lived here. Things like my people. Humans came in pursuit of Ygaynth. And when he arrived, he saw my ancestors who had settled into their caves and lived relatively peaceful lives. But he came and made us an offer." She explained, opting to go back to the beginning and start over.


    "He offered us a grander life. He said that he was tired of being hunted, and wanted to go to sleep. He informed us that he was going to tunnel through the island, and create a lair for himself. He asked if we''d come to guard his realm and capture sacrifices for him. We said yes, and so he granted us the power to tunnel through the earth and capture people to sacrifice to him." The lizard-lady revealed, speaking proudly of her people''s bloody history.


    "He awakens once naturally every few decades, and when he does we tunnel through to him to uphold our end of the bargain. But once after we didn''t have the sacrifices we needed he reacted. And he reacted viciously. He ate many of our members, showing us the steep cost of failure." She told me, speaking sternly and frightfully when thinking of what''d happen if they failed to keep their end of the deal they struck.


    "So the slaves you''d acquired were just going to be dragon food? That doesn''t make me regret doing what I did." I told her, curious as to if there was some deeper meaning to all of this. She sighed and then began to laugh.


    Her laughter was a harsh sound, like that of a dying animal. I wondered what she found so amusing because I wasn''t amused by this. It took her a moment to regain her composure and pull herself back together. When she did she immediately began to speak to me once more.


    "It''s not about making you regret what you did, it''s about explaining why I regret what you did. Why my people will regret it. And the truth is... A lot of people will suffer if Ygaynth decides to continue to rampage the next time he awakens." She explained, trying to get me to see her side a bit more. That said I wasn''t about to passively accept her justifications for her behavior. I wasn''t that nice.


    "What you did was wrong. You took random people and enslaved them and you''re just trying to justify it so that I''ll stop my attack." I told her, not feeling inclined to do so now that I actually knew the annoying justification her civilization had for its immoral behavior. And I still had more to say.


    "Plus, Ygaynth won''t be a problem." I told her, speaking confidently. There was an arrogant smile on my lips and a glow in my eyes when I said this. She looked at me, intrigued by what I said.


    "Oh? And why is that?" She asked, and I could tell by the gleam in her eyes, a strong glow that was surprisingly astute that she knew why.


    "Because I am going to go and ensure that that dragon either never bothers you again, or never wakes up. And in exchange for that you all will join my empire. Those of you I let live anyway." I told her, grinning all while I spoke. And I had one more condition to reveal.


    "In addition to that, I''ll reanimate those of your people who already died as undead you can use to make up for the loss of labor that you have to deal with now that your slaves are gone. I recognize that slavery, though unpleasant, was seen as a necessity before. It''s not now." I told her, speaking sincerely.


    Beithir looked like she had something to say. There was a steely expression on her face and a flare of anger in her eyes.


    "And if we say no?" She asked, sharply. I could tell this was her way of suggesting she planned to refuse my very generous offer. I smiled at her and chuckled.


    "In that case you all die. Well... not all of you. I''d keep you alive. Or anyone who opted to accept my offer. Even the men, though they are unnecessary." I told her, speaking sinisterly and allowing myself to sound as evil as possible. My comment confused my audience though and one of them spoke up.


    "Umm... What do you mean by ''unnecessary''? Men are pretty necessary!" He remarked, calmer than some of his fellows. There was an innocence to the question that made me chuckle. I turned to face the questioner and replied to him.


    "Not for gods! I can cause someone to become pregnant, even a virgin. So long as one female is alive I can ensure the eventual regrowth of a population." I explained, hinting at the diversity of powers I possessed. I then turned back to Beithir with a smile on my face.


    "Don''t underestimate gods. I am a natural-born emperor with the ability to build buildings instantly, and so long as one woman exists, be it you or someone else, I can make full use of my powers to control your population. I could even render you immortal long enough to restore the population to this point and use my powers to make your child grow to adulthood almost instantly." I explained, making it clear that my powers allowed me to inflict a horrible fate on those I wished too.


    The lizard-lady shivered when I informed her of this. I chuckled at her. She visibly deflated, sensing that her defeat was at hand now that she knew about some of the things I could do.


    She looked to her companions once her, her people. There was a sadness in her gaze, and the sadder she looked the happier I did. I knew that I had won, that there wasn''t a way forward for her people without me.


    ________________________________________________


    In the safety of my mind, I realized something. This constituted the third time I was about to add territory to my empire. And it felt right. I wanted to celebrate it somehow.


    I wondered how I could celebrate it. But the truth was, that I knew how I wanted too. It was just something dark.


    I wanted to gain more servants. And I enjoyed the evilness of the servants I had already acquired. I liked the viciousness and the violence of my undead horde, the sophisticated evil and culture of the dark elves, and the basic evil of the reptilians I had defeated.


    I also liked the casual evil of Sombra, my shadowy minion. I especially liked my shadowy minion, and indeed I felt bad that the thing didn''t have more of a chance to shine.


    A sympathetic part of me wanted the creature to have more allies. More peers. And I knew about three types of demons, in particular, that would be well-suited to serving me. Incubi, succubi, and of course praereptor demons. And I even knew about how to learn to bring them to this world.


    Internally, I whispered to my pet. I did so soothingly and kindly.


    "Sombra, I have a task for you." I told the demon. I felt its energy shift and turn towards me, turning away from the drama that was unfolding between myself and Beithir.


    "Oh? Master, what is it?" The demon asked, speaking energetically and eagerly. I chuckled and began to question my minion.


    "I believe that it''s time that we bring more of your kind into the world. Together." I declared. Before I let the creature reply, I continued to speak. I had more to say.


    "I possess a number of powerful abilities and things that I can influence. Among other things I am a god of dreams, undeath, darkness, evil, and lust. I want to summon demons that are like me. I want to summon more of your kind, but I also want to summon succubi and incubi." I declared, speaking honestly.


    "Oh master, are you telling me the truth? If so, what a day! A chance to serve you and to fulfill my kind''s purpose at the same time? Glorious! Truly glorious!" Sombra replied, catching me off guard with the sincerity and energy it showed me.


    "And you even gave me a body! With a body I can make a demonic summoning circle myself!" It almost screamed in my mind. I chuckled, and spoke softly to it once more.


    "Sombra, that is your task. I shall watch and learn from you, but go ahead and build a demonic summoning circle. Just not here. Not quite yet." I remarked. I had a place I wanted to put the circle. A special place. One I was about to build.


    ________________________________________________


    I refocused on the scene in front of me and I began to do something silently.


    I selected the area to my left and locked in on it. When I felt that I could do something with that area, I did the mental version of raising an arm and activated a potent power.


    I silently activated my "Create building" power, and willed a large but ultimately simple building to be made out of the stones that made up the floor. Before the eyes of the gathered creatures, the stones beneath our feet began to shake.


    The stones shook, and visibly changed. The gathered humanoids turned to face the source of the shaking. They watched as the stone changed and as it slowly began to rise out from the rest of the rock.


    A simple structure, as plain as a wooden house but three times as large, rose up out of the ground. It was a windowless, plain place, and it suited me perfectly. It was made from onyx colored stones and rocks and thus matched the overall aesthetics of the rest of the cavern. I didn''t mind that at all.


    The thing continued to divinely clamber out of the floor. I watched this, excitedly, as what I was doing was creating the first-ever formalized seat of worship for myself.


    I felt a surge of power flow into me, and after a second of contemplation I realized that I had gained the worship of one of the lizard-people who I had come to subjugate. And that only increased my triumphant mood further.


    As the place continued to slowly climb out of the ground, I whispered a mental command to my shadowy servant. It was simple, but important.


    "Sombra. Enter that building and go ahead and prepare a summoning circle." I informed my shadowy worshiper. I sensed the creature depart from my shadow and watched as some of the darkened floor at my feet became fluid and began to crawl towards the chapel I had created.


    I grinned and turned back to face the creatures I was speaking too.


    ________________________________________________


    "You all are not foolish. I know in your hearts that you have already accepted my deal. I am ready to put an end to the violence. I have even given you a gift." I said, arrogantly explaining the circumstances which led to the creation of my first ever chapel.


    "What you see before you is a sign of my magnanimity. I have created, for you, the first building dedicated to my worship. Because you see, what you will give me is worship, and what I will give you is a real purpose." I told them, beginning to clearly outline the terms of our peace agreement.


    "I am your god now. You will worship me, and in exchange I shall grant you protection, food, a source of labor, and power." I told the assembled creatures. I let pride fill my voice and I grinned at the creatures before me.


    "You all think Ygaynth is strong? I am power incarnate. And I can give you more than just the means with which to tunnel through the earth. If you come over to me, forsake your old master, I will protect you from all enemies, and I will give you more power than you could have ever dreamed." I told them, speaking to their pride as a species.


    "I shall free you from your dark task of enslaving others. I shall free you from the fear of the sleeping dragon. And I will give you new work to complete. You shall become the first, but not the last of the civilizations lurking below the world that gives themselves over to me. Surrender to my power." I told them, speaking proudly and magnanimously.


    I reprojected the images of the battle, showcasing what would happen to them if they continued to stand against me. They watched their companions fall to my power and saw the darkness of the coming onslaught. It served to remind them that this was time-sensitive and each second they stalled was a second they were closer to death. I didn''t pretend to be kind to them.


    "What do you say, little ones? Will you come and serve me, the king of darkness, the god that lurks below?" I asked, giving myself two easy to remember and grandiose titles.


    I sensed magic beginning to come from within the chapel I was constructing. I could tell that in the time that I had been speaking Sombra had eagerly and expertly begun to work towards constructing that summoning circle.


    Before my very eyes the reptilian creatures began to fall to their knees. They prostrated themselves before me, and as they did I smiled and instructed my horde to cease their relentless attacks. I had won, and so I began to treat my former foes with kindness.


    I targeted all of the warriors who had been bold enough to stand against my servants. They were now mine and I intended to be kind to them. They had courage when many of their peers did not. I recognized that.


    I channeled potent healing energy into them. I cured them of the diseases they had contracted and regrew their lost limbs. As I did, I felt many of them begin to wonder what was going on. It was an understandable confusion.


    I targeted my own hordes and teleported them away. I deposited them elsewhere, scattering them amongst the endless broken tunnels situated throughout the darkened world. My speedy mind allowed me to place them safely in parts of the world below the world that were fitting for their size and body-type. And then I turned my attention back towards the reptilefolks and spoke to them.


    "Come. Come to your innermost cavern. Bring your dead. The battle is over, and the time has come to establish a new order." I said, speaking ambitiously and magnanimously to the newest members of my empire.


    As I said this to them, two things happened at once. The first was that my chapel stopped rising out of the stone. It was a large thing, several dozen meters tall. And the second was that I received a message from Sombra. It was an excited one.


    "Master! The circle is ready." The excitable demon informed me, its voice filled with energy and enthusiasm. A part of me glanced at the chapel and felt a potent surge of magic coming out of it. I smiled and felt grateful to my servant.


    It was at that moment that Beithir finished considering her circumstances. And she too knelt before me, falling to one knee and bowing her head. I chuckled and then began to laugh. The battle was over, and I had won a decisive victory.


    I teleported myself into my chapel, all while shrinking down into a new and regal form. One I made on the fly and was quite proud of.

 88 Summoning A Succubus

    The area I appeared in when I was done teleporting was a simple space. I had an intuitive sense of what parts of a chapel were called, presumably thanks to the influence of the domain of faith, and I found myself on a pulpit on the end of a nave.


    The pulpit was the space on which a speaker stood, from which services were led and the nave was the central area in which participants in the service sat and participated. I could see firm looking seats, pews, situated in the nave that allowed participants to have a place to sit.


    I looked out around me out of curiosity. I could see that this chapel was focused on efficiency and as such there was no gallery for non-participants to watch any services that this place may perform. Instead the doors that led in and out of the chapel opened immediately into the massive nave of the chapel.


    I looked to my right and left and saw nothing beyond the space dedicated to the pulpit. There wasn''t a sacristy, a room for sacred objects or clothing, and there wasn''t a vestry, a room for priests to prepare for services, either. There wasn''t even any living space here. It was purely a spartan chapel which was quite intriguing to me.


    Sombra was here, in her dark-elven form. And to my right was the summoning circle. I could see it because it emanated a scarlet glow and at a glance, I could see that it was made from Sombra''s own rose-colored blood. The demonic dark elf look-a-like grinned sensuously at me, and I could tell that she felt lust.


    She walked over to me, and so I could more readily smell the sweat on her skin, as well as the scent of another bodily fluid. I could see the cut she inflicted on herself to be able to make the circle. Droplets of her oddly floral blood were still dripping down her skin, and the scarlet liquid''s scent intermingled with that of her sweat. It was darkly enticing.


    I had taken on a new form, and my new form was the regally dressed form I had made that was similar to the one I used when I had a conversation with Andrea. I enjoyed it because it was a form meant to be handsome and awe-inspiring, which differed from my usual form.


    When I pretended to be human, I had to hide my strength. I had to hide my capabilities. I didn''t have to do that here. It was incredibly refreshing to be able to unleash my real power, or at least not have to be preoccupied with hiding it.


    When Sombra stood in front of me, I studied her form for a moment. I had taken time to exquisitely craft her body, and to see it so close I felt tempted to take her into my arms. The scent of her blood, mixing with her sweat, was oddly pleasant and I couldn''t tell exactly why but I suspected it was because of me and my personal tastes that I felt it smelled as pleasant as it did.


    Sombra wore "clothes" fashioned from solidified darkness. I didn''t make them either, so I had to suspect that this was a power she possessed. They were intriguing because it looked like someone put silhouettes of clothes onto her shapely body rather than actually dressing her.


    "Master..." She whispered, breathily, in front of me. I smiled at the demon and was surprised when she wrapped her arms around me. I was considerably taller than her, in my current form anyway, and so she wrapped herself around my waist and chest.


    My current form was clad in armor I had fashioned while transforming from darkness. That didn''t stop my demon from hugging me tightly, and it didn''t prevent the warmth of her body from reaching me either. I smiled at the creature, and knew that it was craving a reward. And a part of me felt like giving her the rewards she craved.


    I was acutely aware of what she wanted. Even if I hadn''t been a god of lust, I''d have been able to detect it. Her heart was hammering in her chest, there was a visible blush across her face, and she was subtly trembling. I could also feel a part of her chest harden and push against the surprisingly skin-tight armor she wore thanks to my sense of touch and the sensitivity of my skin.


    I looked down at her and studied the curvature of her dark lips. She looked up at me and I watched her grin as her tongue snaked out of her mouth. It was a thick thing, as dark as the rest of her body, and she winked at me as it traced her lips before sliding back into her mouth.


    It was at that moment that we were interrupted by the sound of the doors to the chapel opening. I wasn''t surprised, but I did grin at my small servant who twisted her head angrily at those who dared to interrupt us. The reptilefolk who entered the temple felt the chill of the demon''s glare.


    "There, there... I''ll properly reward you when we return to my tower." I promised, whispering temptingly into the little demon''s ear. I wasn''t lying either, as I realized almost instantly what a proper reward would be for her: a new class. One that tied the two of us together even more and further reinforced our relationship as master and servant.


    And then I gently kissed the creature''s forehead. When I did, I felt her immediately begin to calm down.


    Partially as a response to the kiss, Sombra began to lean back against me. And a few seconds later, the demon entirely dissipated and faded into my shadow again. She suddenly and rather unexpectedly left me alone in front of the reptilefolks I had gathered to my side. I sighed and looked out at the gathering reptilefolk as more and more began to enter the chapel.


    It took a few minutes for the reptilefolks to finish gathering into the massive space.


    ________________________________________________


    By the time the last surviving inhabitant of the connected caverns had entered the chapel, the place was overflowing. All of the pews, fashioned from solidified darkness, had been filled to their maximum capacity, and creatures were sitting on the floor as well.


    I chuckled and counted that well over five hundred reptilefolks were in here. That said, in total there were well over three thousand reptilefolks in the encampment, a gigantic number and many of them were right outside of the chapel, listening to the best of their abilities to learn what was to happen to them and their families.


    In total, just over 85 of the creatures had been cut down by my forces. I felt their souls within me, and in time I knew I''d need to figure out what to do with those souls.


    I looked out at the crowd, and then cleared my throat. When everyone''s eyes fell upon me I smiled and began to speak.


    "Hello, my name is Althos. I am the new god you all serve and worship." I declared, channeling my inner pride still and using it to make it clear that I spoke the truth. I also activated one of my favorite powers, "Religious fervor", and gave the interior of the chapel a distinct blue tint.


    The reptilefolks looked at me in confusion and I chuckled at them.


    "I am the source of the dreadful army that you all faced. You fought for your lives bravely and boldly, and for that I am here to welcome you all into my service." I began, revealing that I was their dreadful foe. Many of them then began to glare at me, and I smiled back at them.


    "I want you to know that I recognize that you are angry with me. That is fine. Just like you are angry with me, those you enslaved were angry with you. I came to you to deliver death and justice. I have done those things. Now I am offering you a new future. One which your leaders decided to pick. I am strong, and you are weak. That is the way of the world." I calmly stated, making direct eye contact with the angriest reptilefolks I could see.


    "Your leaders opted to have you join my forces in one way. There was another way by which you became mine. Believe me, your leaders chose the more pleasant option" I informed the reptilians I was making eye contact with. For a second there was a murderous glare in my gaze, and I watched the anger in the lizard-people I was talking to slink back in favor of fear.


    "I am a god. Gods are spirits of unfathomable power. I fought against you all not only to liberate your slaves, which I did, but also to test the power of my own minions and to begin to build my own empire." I informed the creatures I had assembled. They began to gasp when they realized that I had freed their slaves from their cruel clutches.


    While they were gasping, I focused and asked a question to the domain of magic specifically.


    ________________________________________________


    "So, I want to conjure demons. I intend to conjure demons I can easily control, so probably succubi, incubi, and praereptor demons. I want them to be my enforcers in this community. How can I do that?" I asked the domain of magic.


    I felt time slow to a near halt as I waited for the domain, the one that I felt was among the greatest of the domains I could influence, to reply. When the reply came, I personally felt like a minute had passed, though I knew that was impossible.


    "Well... The way you''re going about it is unorthodox, but if you summon a total of fifteen separate demons you''ll gain the first tier of influence over the conjuration subdomain. And the subdomain has granted you access to a few mid to high ranking spells that are suitable for your intentions." The domain explained, sounding somewhat tired for some reason. Then it chuckled at me.


    "You are such an odd god. Oftentimes many past deities went for magic like conjuration and evocation first, to gather personal power quickly. And here you are, coming into being possessing power over healing, and acquiring both necromancy and alteration before you acquired evocation and conjuration abilities." The domain said, amused by the odd circumstances of my life so far.


    I chuckled, equally amused by the oddities that led me to this particular cavern underneath the surface of the planet. It was an odd set of circumstances to be sure, and I couldn''t blame the domain for laughing. That said, I appreciated my growing magical abilities and I actually intended to use some of them here in this cavernous lair.


    That said, as a god I wasn''t ever just in one place, doing one thing. Even as I spoke to the domain of magic I was beginning to formulate actual schemes about how to best and most effectively influence the world around me.


    The truth was, I could influence a considerable number of things already. I didn''t doubt that in comparison to youthful gods of the mythic age I was probably weak but I had a number of advantages compared to them and to other creatures.


    The first advantage I had compared to the gods of the past was that I was alone. I was, apparently, the only god in existence. And as far as I knew I was the only higher being in existence. So I didn''t have to worry about following the rules that the gods of old bound themselves too for the sake of lessening inter-divinity conflicts, nor did I have to compete with them.


    The second advantage I had was that I possessed a bizarre mishmash of powers. This included, but wasn''t limited to, the fact that I was on my way to becoming an elemental overlord. I could now answer all sorts of prayers ranging from prayers for healing, to fertility prayers, to prayers for good harvests. These powers allowed me the power to be creative, and now I intended to be.


    I took a deep breath and then activated my power to split my mind so that I could focus on many different things at once. I wanted to begin to observe the universe I was in more readily and more actively, now that I had secured myself my first victory against a defined enemy.


    ________________________________________________


    The sensation of splitting my mind was an admittedly odd one. It felt as though I was physically in two places at once, and I wasn''t. Instead one of the "places" I was in, was the quietness of my own mind. I didn''t intend to let my mind stay a quiet place though.


    The second I was done splitting my consciousness, I did two things of note. The first was that I immediately activated my "domain-sense" power, but I did so fully this time. And the second was that I opened my mind to prayers and other desperate pleas to the cosmos for intervention.


    With regards to domain-sense, I didn''t pick a single domain or subdomain to focus on. Instead, I chose to open my eyes to all of the notifications my potent power had for me. I immediately received an almost comforting flood of notifications and alerts. I took it all in stride and absorbed the information into myself.


    In doing so, I felt my mind expand considerably and for the first time, I gained a true awareness of the planet I found myself within. And that brought a smile to my face.


    ________________________________________________


    Torus was a fascinating planet. And now that I possessed influence over things like air, fire, biology, death, and other domains and subdomains I could fully appreciate the planet I found myself on.


    I received an uncountable number of notifications per second, and my mind nearly instantly adjusted to allow me to make sense of the notifications. The constant flood of information became an understandable, albeit swift tide of alerts that I was able to make sense of and actually sort through.


    That said this wasn''t a perfect process. I still didn''t know the shape of this world. I didn''t know the number of continents or nations it possessed, nor did I know all of the inhabitants of the planet by name. But I possessed a wealth of information and knowledge.


    The knowledge I possessed was incredibly enhanced and expanded by my choice to use my domain-sense ability. And all of that knowledge made me feel... over the moon. Positively triumphant in fact.


    I gained an immediate awareness of an almost uncountable number of animals, animals located throughout the universe. These animals included bears, wolves, countless insects, and distant hordes of vermin. And with the knowledge of their existence came a quick realization: I could easily reach out and gain quintillions of worshippers throughout the universe. And that filled me with pride.


    More than that though, I gained plenty of other types of awareness. I was acutely aware of the location of every poison in the universe. I was aware of the type of poison, its quantity, and its effects. I could sense poisons throughout Puerto Rico, especially underneath the Island, but poisons existed on top of Puerto Rico was well. A few vials could even be found in Comillas.


    I could also sense every disease throughout the universe, and every attempt at healing diseases throughout the universe. Both of these bits of knowledge filled me with pride. After all, if I wanted too I could cure every disease. I was a bit saddened that I couldn''t reach out and inflict anyone in the cosmos with a disease, but I knew that in time I''d gain the power to do so. I just had to be patient.


    More fascinating bits of knowledge that I acquired through my bold decision to use domain-sense included the identity of every alchemist in the cosmos, the identity of every rebel, and every necromancer. Those bits of knowledge felt like keen gossip, that I stored away in the back of my mind. I could feel the potential of those bits of knowledge and I intended to make full use of them soon.


    Despite all of the knowledge I gained in one instant I didn''t just want to gain knowledge. I wanted to begin to subtly influence the world. And I knew that one way I could do that was through listening too and answering prayer. And so my mind wasn''t just inundated with new knowledge, I also began to actively listen for requests for divine intervention. And those came rushing in as well.


    My mind was rushed with prayers from all over the universe. I had opened my mind up to prayers as fully as I had opened it up to my domain-sense ability. And prayers and other forms of begging for intervention flooded my mind as fully as notifications related to my domains did.


    I could hear all manner of requests thanks to my ability to hear prayers. I heard people pray for relief from nightmares, people pray for love or to at least satiate their carnal desires, people pray for health and dealing, and even prayers for aid in revenge. It was incredibly interesting and satisfying to sort through all the prayers that were transmitted to the cosmos. But something about it was odd.


    As I sorted through more and more prayers I felt a question develop in the back of my mind. And when I read my three-hundredth prayer in a minute I decided to ask the question I had.


    "How is that mortals still know to pray? Even the oldest mortals don''t remember the gods and other higher beings right? How can they remember something as specific as prayer?" I asked, directing my question to the domain of faith. The domain had an immediate answer for me.


    "Extraplanar beings. They are the ones who taught mortals who forgot about prayer how to pray and the importance of prayer. Every world in this universe was visited by extraplanar beings of every alignment and type in the days since the end of the mythic age. For various reasons and to varying degrees of success they taught mortals to keep praying even in a cosmos that lacked a higher being." Explained the soothing voice of the domain of faith.


    I listened to this explanation and chuckled. I suppose it made sense that someone was responsible for telling mortals how to commune with the gods in an age of godlessness.


    I decided to take a moment to look at the new spells I had access too. I figured I might as well use this time to familiarize myself with the new tools at my disposal. I mentally tapped on my grimoire, as eager as ever to learn about what new things I could do.


    [Welcome Althos, here is your list of conjuration spells:


    Portal (You can create a portal to another dimension. This spell is the first of your spells to allow for interdimensional travel.)


    Summon (You can use an existing conjuring circle to summon a type of extraplanar being of your alignment, or in your case an alignment over which you have influence over. This being is a real member of their species and isn''t bound to you. It can freely resist your commands, though some types of extraplanar beings will freely obey you due to your power and the domains and subdomains you have influence over.)


    Create (This conjuration spell allows you to create facsimiles of things you can summon. These things serve you, and eventually, dissipate into nothingness. You can use this power to create phantom-versions of things like succubi, praereptors, and eventually, other things you''ll gain the power to summon like angels.)


    Soul Armament (This spell is the upgraded version of the spell that lets you summon your staff. With this spell, you can conjure armor and weapons alike from your soul. That is especially potent in your case, since you can strengthen your soul using the soul domain and souls you acquire using the variety of powers at your disposal.)]


    While filtering through prayers and countless notifications the other part of my mind, the more outward-facing part, was hard at work establishing the rules of the temple I had built to myself.


    ________________________________________________


    "This chapel is one of my gifts to you. It is a neutral place where conflicts with each other are set aside and where the newest of my servants, demons, will reside." I told the gathered lizard-creatures. They looked at me in shock when I explained that I was going to bring demons to serve me. I studied their faces for a moment before opting to continue speaking.


    "It is true. I can summon and tame demons. Indeed, I am already obeyed by one and I intend to one day be obeyed by many more." I explained, smiling at the stunned creatures before me. It was at that moment that I turned to circle next to me and cast a spell.


    I closed my eyes, and rose my hand over the circle while mentally activating my "Summon" spell. When I did so, a new alert filled my vision.


    [Multi-part alert:


    First, by opening your mind to both the full might of domain-sense and to prayers you''ve impressed upon both the domain of knowledge and the domain of faith. The domain of knowledge is actually one of the self-contained domains so you don''t need a cult to advance in it.


    This is a way of saying that you''ll be able to embark upon the quest to unlock the second tier of influence over the knowledge domain soon. Congratulations! Also you''ve unlocked a new title pertaining to your usage of domain-sense and you listening for and too prayers.


    Now the second part of the alert is more... familiar? It''s about the spell you just used. What sort of demon would you like to summon? If you know the type of demon you have in mind, and you want to search for a demon of that type who possesses certain characteristics this is where you can do that. Just inform us as to what you''re looking for.]


    Reading this alert was surprising to me, but it was also exciting. As I read it I began to think about the sort of demon I wanted to call to my side to be one of my agents amongst the reptilefolk. The only thing I had come in knowing ahead of time was that I wanted to summon a succubus or an incubus. I hadn''t thought I''d be able to requests beyond that.


    "Hmm... I suppose it''d be best if I summoned someone who I''d be able to make mine easily. So an impressionable demon with a bit of loyalty... For a demon anyway." I remarked. I wanted someone who''d be an inquisitor of mine, an agent I could trust who''d want to see my will enforced and who would cow the reptilefolk into fearing me and my powers.


    I paused and considered what else I wanted in a demonic follower. This ultimately led me to think about what sort of a cult I wanted to develop amongst the reptilefolks.


    "Hmm... I have a good cult with the goblins, so I suppose this ought to be an evil cult? Balance." I thought, chuckling. "But what does that constitute? Logically, I could incorporate the summoning circle into my worship, and have the summoning of demons be a part of my faith, but what else?" I asked myself. I spent several moments in silence considering what to say next.


    And that was when I realized what I wanted. And it brought a smile to my face. I immediately began composing a message to the system, annoyed that I wouldn''t be summoning my first inquisitor just yet. But in the end, what I was about to summon was worth waiting a moment to acquire an inquisitor.


    "I want a succubus who has as pious a personality as possible. I will make her into the highest priestess of a culture of necromancy and demon-worship. I will make her into a cleric of mine and give her the necromancer class as well so that she can become an extremely skilled necromancer." I told the system, opting to change my focus for now.


    [Understood. We have the perfect candidate. Summoning her in 3... 2... 1...] The system replied right as the summoning circle began to emit ruby-colored smoke. The smoke continued to flow out of the circle for a few moments while an undeniably feminine silhouette appeared within it.


    I could see through the smoke and I was impressed at what I saw. Standing in the center of the circle stood a naked woman about one and a half meters tall with silver skin, huge horns jutting out of her head, a sinful smile pursued on her lips, and slender hands on her waist. She had a tempting figure, and I could detect lust radiating out of her.


    She looked out in front of the circle and was fixated on the reptilefolks that looked at the circle in awe. I could tell by the way she gazed at them that a part of her was enjoying the attention. In fairness to her, the suddenness of the circle flaring to life had done a good deal to distract from me and my general presence.


    It took the smoke a few moments to dissipate and reveal the succubus in all of her unearthly beauty to the reptilians who stood before her. When it did, she gazed at them a few moments longer before turning to me and bowing low, exposing her ass to the gathered lizard-people.


    "Hello Althos. My name is Lilim. Allow me to pledge myself to you, and to be the first of my kind to pledge myself to you as your faithful servant. Do with me as you wish, oh dark lord of lust and dreams." She uttered, speaking my name and the title she had chosen for me with genuine reverence.


    I was taken a bit aback by this but I was also pleasantly surprised. I didn''t entirely trust the beautiful succubus, but the fact that she knew about me was convenient.


    [She is telling the truth. She was the person that the spell chose, she knows about you because she was informed by me, about you and what you are. If you can grant her power, she''ll be yours.] The system explained, causing me to smile.


    "Ambition huh? I like it. Easily manipulable, unscrupulous, and direct. Easy to work with." I muttered, speaking the truth. I found people with pride easy to deal with and convenient allies to make. I suspected that the beautiful succubus and I would get along famously.


    "Welcome to my service Lilim. I am more than happy to accept you into my church." I told her, grinning all the while. I was also speaking the truth and I was genuinely happy to have acquired my very first succubi servant.

 89 Rewards For Hard Work

    Lilim, a silver-skinned, buck-naked succubus stopped bowing and turned back to the audience she had of reptilefolks. The odd lizard-people who had submitted to Althos in exchange for their lives and freedom from the tyranny of the dragon Ygaynth were now more fixated on their god''s pet cleric than they were on their actual god.


    Althos, the god in question, just chuckled at this. He didn''t blame them, she was an incredibly beautiful creature. She radiated an air of both charisma and lust.


    The woman who had pledged herself to the young god was clearly and proudly inhuman. In addition to her horns, a pair of long things that jutted out from the top of her head, she had thin wings on her back that her new followers had noticed after staring at her round ass when she had bowed to her dark overlord. She did lack a tail though, but to offset that her skin was the color of unmelted silver so as to ensure no one doubted that she was something other than human.


    Althos himself was far from unattractive. Though his attractiveness was less sensually focused than hers was. And he was at least as inhuman as she was.


    The god who had conquered the reptilian creatures was himself a creature of considerable attractiveness. His present form was that of a regal and magnanimous emperor. He was clad in a full suit of armor the color of the night, and the only part of him that was exposed was his face.


    He possessed an incredibly muscular body that he hid underneath the obsidian colored armor, forged from darkness by his eerie powers. In his current form, he stood well over three meters tall, and he towered over the reptilian creatures he had made into the first members of an empire he had dark ambitions for.


    He had a full beard that covered the lower half of his face and obscured his tanned skin. The facial hair was a distinguishing feature that he liked that made his apparent age ambiguous. Not that any adult form would have matched his age. The dark god had been alive less than a week and he was already a creature of dark majesty and truly sinister powers.


    While the audience was silent, their new dark master quietly bestowed his newest subject with considerable power. He did this without even looking at her, by targeting her with one of his more unusual abilities: the power to grant classes.


    He targeted her and did something he had never done before: he granted her two classes. And in the moments before she learned of this, Althos was asked a funny question by the system.


    He was asked what kind of spells should his new cleric be given access to since he had never turned someone into a cleric directly. While he answered this question, time once more slowed to a near halt.


    When Althos was done, his newest cleric received great news. She was alerted to this great news via an alert from the system. One that excited her ambitious heart and soul.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    Althos has targeted you and activated one of his godly powers. Thanks to his influence, you now have the first level in two separate but powerful classes: the necromancer class, and the cleric class.


    Dual-class details:


    You are now a possessor of the ''Cleric'' class. Clerics are the most fervent of a god''s followers. They are powerful spellcasters who cast spells granted to them by their divine lords and they seek to enact their god''s wills.


    Clerics can be of any alignment permitted by their gods. Althos is an accepting god who allows clerics of any alignment to serve him. As an Althonian cleric, you have been granted an interesting mixture of spells that grant you incredible healing powers, while also allowing you to reanimate the dead.


    You are now a possessor of the ''Necromancer'' class. Necromancers are feared spellcasters whose magical capabilities include the dreaded ability to raise the dead.


    Statistically, the majority of necromancers are evil but this isn''t actually a requirement of the class. Necromancers who naturally earn the class experience some limitations like a limited number of the undead at their command.


    Necromancers like you, who are given the class as an award by a powerful higher-being or by the system itself have slightly different rules they abide by.


    Dual-class features:


    Spellcasting: Both clerics and necromancers are spell-casters. Clerics are given their spells by their gods, though all of the spells you''ve just earned the ability to cast you''ve been given by your god.


    Necromancer spells you can now cast:


    Cure cut (You can restore up to 10 HP to a living creature)


    Reanimating spark (The most basic of the reanimating spells. Due to the fact that you earned this spell as the servant of a divine being this spell won''t fail. Can only create zombies or skeletons.)


    Etc.]


    [Dual-class features, continued:


    Prayer: You can pray to your god and if you ask a question your god or the system will provide an answer. This is a feature that is unique to clerics, though warlocks, witches, and wards all possess unique methods of communicating with their patrons.


    Unlife energy channeling: You can channel unlife energy, the source of the reanimating spark that drives the undead. You can use this to invigorate the undead, or to harm the living.


    Lifeforce absorption: One of the abilities of a first-level necromancer is that they can directly absorb the life-force that keeps others alive. You can use this to harm your foes while healing yourself.


    Channel essence: This power is a fascinating one. Its effects are up to the god you serve and each cleric''s might be a bit different.


    Currently, you can use this power once per day, unless you perform an act pleasing to Althos, but you can cause a target to temporarily experience a mind-breaking amount of desire for you. This power allows you to control the target, and they do as you bid for one minute while they believe that in doing as you command they are currying favor and may get to have sex with you.


    This is power is tied to the corruption subdomain and was chosen by Althos. If you wish to change the power you''ll need to pray to your master to change it for you.]


    ________________________________________________


    The look on his face was one of mild amusement as he studied the scene before him. He had eyes the color of the darkest hour of the night and his lips were upturned in a bemused smile. He allowed his subjects and worshipers to stare at Lilim for a few moments longer.


    He wasn''t kind enough to do this for no reason. He did it because he felt a handful of people beginning to turn over their hearts to him. He felt their awe become worship, and he relished that feeling. That said, he did return their attention to him by loudly clearing his throat. The audience the demon and the god had turned their gaze back to their god, looking somewhat sheepishly at him.


    ________________________________________________


    After getting everyone to focus on me, I chuckled. I then motioned for my new priestess to come to stand beside me. When she did, she wrapped her arm around mine and pressed her warm body up against me. Even through the armor, I could feel the warmth of her skin, and it caused me to shiver. I turned back to the audience of gathered creatures and smiled once more.


    "I''m glad you''re all taken with your new high priestess as she will serve a deeply important role. Lilim''s role in this community will be to serve as my mouthpiece. She will be the first recipient of my will and will work tirelessly to ensure that you all are obeying me." I informed the gathered creatures. As I spoke about her role, Lilim looked out at those I had gathered and winked.


    I glanced at her and smirked. I intended for her to do quite a lot of work so I was happy that she was enjoying herself right now.


    "Among other duties, my priestess will be mediating conflicts, reanimating the dead, and leading in the... dark rituals you all will be performing." I explained, twisting my gaze back in the direction of the chapel''s guests. I said the last part of my statement vaguely, as the truth was I did intend for the dark rituals to be sexual in nature.


    Amusingly, some of the reptilian men I had turned into my subjects reacted to this news with cheers. I grinned at them and chuckled audibly when they broke the audience''s silence with their childish reactions.


    "I am a god of a variety of wonderful things. I am a god of death, and of necromancy. I am a god of the earth and of the air. I am a lord of the harvest and a spirit of starvation. By pledging yourselves to me, you all have guaranteed that your dead will never have to waste away in tombs or be a meal of last resort." I said as I stared out at the audience once more.


    "I will reunite you with your ancestors. And when death comes for you, it will not be an ending of something, instead, it''ll be a beginning. By serving me loyally and faithfully you can attain a kind of immortality." I suggested, grinning at the gathered creatures with a wide smile on my face.


    The truth was that things like age and mortality were already things I could do away with if I wanted too. I didn''t. Or at least I didn''t want to do away with them for every single reptilefolk. One of the schemes another part of my mind was working was how to use the fact that I could bestow immortality to my followers as a way to secure fanatical minions and worshippers.


    I wanted to use my full array of powers. I wanted to build a diversity of cults throughout the world who worshiped me for dozens of reasons and to attain dozens of results. I could tell that having a diversity of followers was one of the things that would make me more powerful and enable me to attain greater power and mastery over my surroundings.


    "This moment was the destiny of your people." I told the reptilefolks who had come to hear me speak. I wasn''t being insincere either.


    "This moment, the one you''re in right now, was always destined to be something that''d happen to you all. And where you go from here is up to you. You have two choices: You can accept this new position and work with me to increase the overall influence of your people on the world, or you can rebel against me. If you decide to not follow me and rebel, your fate is to join my service. In fact, allow me to demonstrate just what I mean." I explained.


    At that moment I opened a portal from where some of the reanimated reptilefolk undead had been stored and tied to right outside of the chapel.


    "Come." I commanded the newest of the undead to join my forces. Mere seconds after I commanded them to come to me, they did. The creatures walked through the portal, and opened the doors into the chapel.


    ________________________________________________


    The sound of the doors being knocked on caused one of the reptilefolks nearest to it to turn and open them. He was the first to lay his eyes on the undead reptilefolk warriors who had clashed with the Althonian horde nearly half an hour ago. But their smell wasn''t as slow as they were, and the scent of their recently deceased forms caused reptilians to turn around and face their nightmare without preparing themselves.


    The sight that greeted the reptilians who did turn around was a macabre one. A pair of skeletons quietly shuffled into the chapel, followed by other, fleshier undead. The skeletons were nude, their bare-bones exposed to the chapel''s inhabitants.


    The other undead wore the armor they died in. It was miraculous really that they were still clad in the armor they wore to their final battle, and wasn''t due to any particular desire by Althos to intervene.


    The living reptilians fell utterly silent as some of their deceased brethren walked into the chapel. Althos himself chuckled at the dramatic display he had decided to put on for the sake of reminding the reptilians of what happened to his enemies. Lilim enjoyed the cruelty of it all and especially enjoyed the sorrow that etched itself onto the faces of those who lost their loved ones.


    Althos was not a cruel god, but as he watched the lizard-people he had subjugated be shown the consequences of rebellion or disobedience he felt a cruel and pleasant shiver go up his back. He liked what he saw, what he felt, and the feelings of hate and fear he had caused some of his new worshipers and subjects to feel towards him. That said, he wasn''t silent for long.


    "This is the fate of those who oppose me. To be brought back and to serve me eternally. But this need not be your fate." Althos told the gathered community of the reptilefolk. They tore their gazes and their glares from the simple undead Althos had turned their companions into and back to him.


    "If you serve me well, if you are faithful to me and if you work hard, you will be rewarded. You will come back after death. To this world. As something powerful. But that is to be earned, it is not to be given to the unworthy." Their new god explained, speaking powerfully of a future wherein death was merely an inconvenience.


    The reptilefolks who heard him say these things had a variety of feelings about their new emperor. Many of them felt awe, even if they also felt other things when they looked up at his eerie majesty. Some of them felt fear when they looked at the alien god, who spoke with a startling coldness about murder, warfare, and invasions. Others felt pride in knowing that they were serving such a powerful god, one who was unafraid and willing to do what he had just done.


    Althos himself had a smile on his face as if he were speaking of happy things and not exploiting the weakness of the lizardfolk warriors to remind them of what they had lost.


    ________________________________________________


    Althos''s mind was currently split in two. One portion of it was present in the moment of where his body was located and busied itself by interacting with his mortal followers. The other part of his mind was elsewhere.


    The fraction of Althos''s mind that was elsewhere was in many places at once. That was because it was using two of the powers owned by gods to allow themselves to feel present in more than one place at a time. This part of his mind was reading through prayers and keeping itself up to detect with a lot of different things at once.


    Of particular interest to that part of the strange god''s mind were prayers related to infertility. There was a reason for this. It was because Althos was ambitious.


    Althos had acquired a set of powers, one of many really, that he hadn''t had a chance to use yet: powers over fertility and pregnancy. He was being careful with these powers though because he understood the reality that these powers were intense ones that created life. He was curious, sometimes to the point of recklessness, but most of the time he wasn''t that reckless.


    That said, in order for Althos to acquire influence over the domain of life he needed to complete a quest. And the quest''s conditions were deceptively simple: all he needed to do was cause three pregnancies.


    A part of him wanted to do this the easy way and just make three animals pregnant. But there was another part of him that felt that for a domain this potentially powerful he ought to do things formally, respectfully almost. He wanted to pick three special people. People who deserved to bring life into the world.


    Althos had made a difficult choice, and he felt that a domain like this merited it. In his own way, Althos was a deity that was all about life. He didn''t like fighting needlessly, he frequently healed people, and he was respectful to virtually all forms of life.


    The god patiently sorted through prayers, diligently reading each and every one he received. When he read them they were stored in the back of his mind and he could effortlessly review them.


    The god must have sorted through thousands of prayers before he found one he particularly liked. It was a delicate plea from a princess of a kingdom on Torus, the very planet the god himself lived on!


    "Hello! My name is Rachel, and I come from a culture of pious dwarves. We have been told all our lives to pray when we need guidance or help. We know that no more higher-beings exist, but it is a tradition we have a long history of following and so I am giving it a shot. I am praying, though no part of me believes this will be answered, for intervention." The dwarf''s prayer began.


    "I am a high-born princess. I dwell in a subterranean kingdom named Atlantis and I am to be wed. The problem is that I don''t want to be wed. For political reasons, I am to be wed to the king of a nearby dukedom that has the resources to go to war with my family." The prayer continued.


    "There is a way out though; my culture has myths and legends about virgin births that dictate that virgin mothers are to acquire status as saintlike figures and to remain unwed all their lives. I am praying and asking for the impossible: for some deity to get me pregnant and give me a way out of this wedding. If there is a price to pay... Well, frankly I''d like to know what it is. I''m saying that I am flexible and want out of this wedding, so if you can help me then please do." The prayer explained.


    The god who read it couldn''t believe how perfect it was. He found himself surprised and overjoyed to receive such an ideal prayer. He was so overjoyed, that he immediately reached out to Rachel and established a mind-link with her.


    ________________________________________________


    As soon as I established the mental link tying Rachel and I together I set out and began to compose an introductory message to her. I knew wherever she was she was still awake and that it was possible that I''d get a message back from her quickly if I was active now.


    "Hello, my name is Althos and I know this will surprise you but I am a god and I have tied our minds together. I would like to speak to you. If you want to reply then all you need to do is think out your message." I mentally wrote, trying to keep things simple. I then sent the simple message to the young woman.


    Immediately I received a form of reply through a sense of shock that I felt her display upon suddenly hearing a voice in her mind. It took a few moments after that for her to reply to me, but when she did it was with considerable politeness.


    "Hello, Althos. You know my name, and I now know yours. Is there any way you could possibly demonstrate your divinity?" She asked me, curiously. I could hear a touch of desperation in her voice, but it was one that she was struggling to keep under control. I chuckled and focused on her.


    I kept her locked in my mind, and honed in on her through the mental-link we now shared. When I was certain I had her targeted, I began to bless her. I kept it simple and targeted her dexterity.


    I blessed it twice and then began to compose another message. I suspected that she''d receive a notification alerting her to the blessing and the source of said blessing. Composing my message didn''t take long at all.


    "You have just received two of my blessings. Both of which increase your dexterity. I want to aid you, and my price isn''t very expensive at all." I told the young woman, ready and happy to help so long as she paid my price.


    There were several moments of silence. Nearly a whole minute of silence. But after that, I felt a sense of relief wash over the person with whom I had a mental link.


    "So it''s true? You really are a god? If you are, and you possess the power to impregnate me... Please, name your price." She said, speaking in such a way that her relief was audible through our connection.


    "My price is very simple. Worship and obey me. I am a god of life, abundance, and healing. I do possess the power to impregnate you. If you agree, I will not only impregnate you, I will advance the age of your pregnancy to the point where it is visible. Assuming you want that, of course." I told her, speaking honestly.


    I had just acquired a considerable number of evil servants. The truth was that by freeing their slaves I had likely acquired a number of good worshipers, but I wanted to be as close to neutral as possible so for now, I was going to work to acquire more good-aligned worshipers and focusing on myself as a god of life and abundance was probably a profitable way for me to do that.


    "Is that really all? What is that you wish for? A chapel in the nation? For your religion to be the state religion? I''m only asking because I want to know what to prepare for if I say yes, and if I tell people that a god is responsible for the creation of my child my people are going to want to know about you." She asked, speaking sensibly about all of this. I chuckled and was a bit impressed with her.


    "I admire your caution and pragmatism. The truth is that I am an extremely young god and I am in the process of acquiring more and more power. I currently live on the colony island of Puerto Rico, and from here I am building a sort of theocratic empire bit by bit. But I am being sincere when I say that all I want is for you to worship me and serve me. And in exchange for that, I will grant you your desires." I declared, speaking truthfully and sincerely.


    At that moment I received an alert. My mood changes when I read through it because the end of it contained a surprising quest. One I wasn''t exactly a fan of.


    [Alert: Your tendencies towards honesty and your good-faith bargaining with Princess Rachel of the dwarven kingdom of Atlantis have allowed you to take the quests for the domain of law, and the subdomain of truth.


    To earn the first tier of influence over the alignment domain of law, you must strike and complete three bargains pertaining to your divine power.


    To earn the first tier of influence over the subdomain of truth, you must tell the very first person to ever be deceived by your human appearance about your true nature as a god.]


    "The subdomain of truth... Wow. Of all of the things to make me do..." I muttered, taken aback by the surprising nature of the quest I was asked to do.


    That was the moment when I received an affirmative response from Rachel. I was grateful to read that message, given the bombshell of a quest I was just tasked with doing to acquire the first tier of influence over the subdomain of truth.


    "Althos... If you can impregnate me, please do. I feel as though whatever you''ll ask me to do wouldn''t be as bad as being married to someone I don''t want to marry, who''d also impregnate me. So personally I''d rather be single and pregnant than married, pregnant to someone I can''t stand, and stuck with that person for the rest of my life. I''m that desperate here." She told me, sounding sincerely relieved to have someone in her corner.


    I chuckled, and activated my "Pregnancy manipulation" ability, targeting Rachel with it. I immediately told the system that I was intending to impregnate Rachel, and the system did the rest. I was silent while the effect took hold, and when I heard Rachel begin to laugh I was unsurprised.


    The next thing I did was activate my ability to manipulate time. I targeted Rachel''s new pregnancy and advanced the pregnancy by just a few weeks, just enough that an astute observer might guess that Rachel was pregnant. That was when I received one of several domain notifications I was destined to receive over the course of the next few hours.


    ________________________________________________


    The next few hours passed in a blur. I did a few big things and several smaller ones.


    The first big thing I did was summon two more demons to aid Lilim. I summoned an incubus inquisitor named Alexei, and a powerful-looking monstrous demon with the body of a gigantic bear that I swiftly made a templar and commanded to begin to whip the warriors of the reptilefolk into shape. Shortly after that I finally departed from the encampment and returned to my home.


    I met the people who I had liberated from the cruelties of the reptilefolk. As soon as I explained who and what I was the majority of the seven-hundred former slaves bowed to me and vowed to worship me. Their feelings surged into me, and I felt my power grow in strange new ways.


    I had a conversation with them about their futures. I asked if they wanted to return home, and was surprised when they almost universally said that they had no homes to return to. They explained that this was because when they were captured their captors burned everything they could to the ground so as to leave as little a trace as possible of what was left behind.


    The conversation continued until I asked them what they''d like to do and officially extended them invitations to live in the proximity of my tower. I was surprised when half of them accepted my offer. This half included the driders and girtablilus, half-men half-scorpion creatures, the dwarves, and the dark-elves. The other half, humans, gnomes, and surface-elves, all wanted to return to the surface.


    The next hour of my life at that point was filled with village construction. First in the area next to my tower, where I built the very bare basics and was grateful to leave the more advanced and challenging work to my newest worshipers.


    At this point in the day, I received two new subdomain quests. One of them was for the subdomain of arachnids, and I was astonished to find that I immediately fulfilled it, having met its requirements through my treatment of driders. The other was for the Crocodilia subdomain and tasked me with healing seven Crocodilias, which I accomplished in a snap of my fingertips using my healing powers.


    I transported the half of the rescued slaves who wanted to return to the surface to a remote part of the Puerto Rican coast. Together we set out to build a brand new settlement. And together we did. I built most of the buildings, around sixty or so, and the town walls. We built it on the very edge of the shores of Puerto Rico, and named it "Libertad".


    I went and dove into the ocean and immediately received the quest for the final elemental subdomain: the subdomain of liquid. It was simple: I was to use liquid in three separate ways. I had already used it in one, to heal people through potions.


    I went ahead and got bitten by a snake and then made it and a few of its siblings my friends evocation magic, completing the last of the original subdomain quests I had gotten days ago. All of this while also inching closer to earning the final subdomain I needed to earn to be able to do the quest to become a lesser elemental overlord.


    While this was going on, the other part of me was hard at work accomplishing two tasks. The first task was finding and making deals with two other noblewomen who were hoping for babies.


    One of the women was in the Reconquista empire itself, and the other was in a country named Menanam in another world. This not only netted me the successful completion of the quest to acquire the first tier of influence over the life domain, but it also earned me the first tier of influence over the law domain.


    Successful completion of the quest to acquire influence over the life domain, resulted in another spectacular reward. I immediately gained the first tier of influence over the spirit domain as well, as the quest for that domain was to summon, create, or otherwise engage with three spirits. And I was shocked to discover that extraplanars were spirits.


    The second thing that the other portion of my mind did was go ahead and convert two of Gustavo''s companions into Cosechcians, earning the first tier of influence over the trifecta of the domains of trickery, lies, and the subdomain of enchantment.


    ________________________________________________


    Night had fallen fully over the island of Puerto Rico when I finally made it back to the exterior of the Silver Xana. The truth was, after everything that had happened I just sort of stumbled over here uncertain of a number of things.


    By coming here, even unconsciously, I felt that was indicating that I was ready to tell Isadora the truth. She was the first person who laid eyes on me as a human. I knew that to earn the first tier of influence over the substance of truth I needed to tell her who and what I truly was.


    Though I was uncertain of a lot, I knew that if I told Isadora what I truly was my relationship to Comillas would change. I wasn''t sure of how it would change, at least not entirely, but I knew that telling her would change things forever.


    I stood in front of the door leading into the Silver Xana silently. By the time I finally mustered the courage to put my hand on the door handle that''d let me pull the door open, a full minute had passed. But it took me that long for a reason. My mind was swirling with the few casual memories I had, many of which took place in here. I was smiled when I pulled open the door and looked into the inn.


    "Hey Isadora, could you and I go on a walk? Outside?" I asked as I stepped into the inn. The young woman looked up at me and smiled. And she replied not with words, but by stepping out from behind her desk and walking over to me.


    "Sure!" She told me, when she was almost right outside. I chuckled and opened the door for the two of us, waiting for her to walk through it and then stepping behind her and back out into the night.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual domain details:


    The life domain and the spirit domain... Wow.


    The domain of life is the domain that governs the creation of lifeforms that are actually alive. With it, and the domain of souls, gods can create actual lifeforms. It is also the domain that is needed to create an entirely new species.


    The domain of spirits is the domain that governs extraplanars and other sorts of spirits. Spirits are a type of lifeform that doesn''t need a physical body to interact with the universe. With this domain under your influence, you can begin to create creatures like you, ones that don''t need bodies to be alive.


    To advance in both of these domains, you need to use your powers and build a cult dedicated to worshipping you as a creator of life, and as a spirit king, respectively.


    Dual-domain passive powers:


    Life creation: The spark that is needed to bestow life is something you can create within yourself. With this spark of life, you can fill corpses with new life. This does not bring back the deceased person but allows a new life to fill the body. With it you can also complete the process for creating new life.


    False resurrection: This synergistic power is a particularly wicked one. With it, you can fill a body with necromantic and evil energy while also investing a life-giving spark into the body. In doing so you can create a new life in the body that has the memories of old life but is instead entirely and holistically evil. This power can be used to easily create evil cults in places populated by good people.


    True spirit creation: Synergistically fusing the domains of souls and spirits ensures that any spirits you create are born fully alive. It also invests any of your currently created spirits with a true soul.


    Body creation: You can create bodies. This power is a synergistic one that fuses biology and life. Bodies that you are that are left without a life-giving spark are just inanimate corpses, but if they are given a soul and a life-giving spark they come to life. That said, we''re sure you can find something to do with lifeless bodies.


    Currently, you can only create bodies for ants, parasites, humans, elves, and dwarves. As you gain more worshipers that''ll change.


    Spiritual blow: Your attacks can now damage the spirit. You can damage someone''s magical energy with your strikes. You can even choose to have an attack deal only spiritual damage. If someone loses too much spiritual energy at once they''ll fall unconscious.


    Spiritual replenishment: You can now heal someone''s spirit. This is a synergistic power that you have been awarded due to your magical abilities, your healing abilities, and spiritual abilities.


    Dual-domain active powers:


    Extraplanar creation: Your influence over souls, spirits, and life gives you the ability to create extraplanars. At the moment you can only create angels. You must research and gain more experience with other extraplanars before you can create them.


    You can construct angels related to each domain or subdomain you have influence over. This is an extraordinary power and as such can only be used twice per two and a half weeks.


    Spiritual devouring: You can consume someone''s spiritual energy. Upon activating this power you reach out and extract someone''s spiritual energy and consume it. This power can be used twice per twelve-hour-period.


    Dual-domain blessing and curse details:


    You cannot currently bless or curse someone with the life domain.


    If you use the spirit domain to bless someone, you increase their spiritual energy. This is more than their magical energy but that is a part of it. If you curse someone with this domain you lessen their spiritual energy and remove their ability to regenerate it naturally.]

 90 Unexpected Truths

    [Special alert notes:


    For the sake of simplicity until you read through the domain and subdomain notes for all of the things you just unlocked we''re send you domain and subdomain notifications in pairs rather than one large block of notes.


    Dual subdomain details:


    The subdomain of arachnids governs spiders, scorpions, and their relatives. This is the subdomain tied to both regular spiders and scorpions, as well as driders, jorogumos, tsuchigumos, arachnes, girtablilus, and other powerful spider or scorpion evolutions.


    The serpentes subdomain governs snakes and their evolutions. This subdomain is tied regular snakes, as well as their evolutions into both bigger, more deadly snakes, and powerful hybrids of snakes and other creatures.


    Both of these subdomains are tied to the subdomain of poison and thus both are strengthened by you influence over that subdomain. Both are also tied to lust, and the serpentes subdomain is tied to the subdomain of enchantment.


    To gain further influence over the subdomains build cults and make use of your powers.


    Dual subdomain passive powers:


    Mastery: Whenever unevolved and unawakened snakes or arachnids detect you or otherwise become aware of your presence they become your worshipers. As you''ve been steadily acquiring influence over subdomains pertaining to animals this will now also increase their intelligence.


    As you''ve gained influence over more and more animal subdomains your powers have begun to be able to influence evolved or awakened animals. Evolved or awakened snakes or arachnids are now less likely to attack you unless you attack them first.


    As a gradual evolution of the mastery powers, you can also grant creatures the abilities and characteristics of the animals whose subdomains you possess influence over. This means you can grant creatures poison and venom, pit-organs, the ability to shed, wall-climbing, and silk generation. And of course you can make them were-creatures.


    Web mastery: You can generate silk and create webs instantly. You can use this to a variety of ends, from capturing prey to marking territory, to binding enemies or sacrifices for future interrogation.


    As part of the mastery over webs you''ve gained, you can also infuse your webs with other characteristics. You can make creatures trapped in them fall asleep, you can infuse them with acid or poison, burn creatures with them, petrify those trapped in them or a number of other things.


    Monstrous forms: Redundant power due to your innate shape-shifting. Due to the influence you''ve earned over a number of animal subdomains you can now consistently take on monstrous forms related to the animals you have influence over. So now you can take on terrifying snake and spider forms that are in essence massive snakes or spiders.


    Shedding: You can shed. This power isn''t quite the same as a snake''s ability to shed. Yours leaves behind a full corpse that looks identical to the form you were in when you used the power.


    Heat-sense: You can sense heat around you. You can also grant this to others.


    Camouflage: Like the snakes you have influence over, you can now change the coloration of your skin at will.


    Evolution: Due to the number of spider-based worshipers you had already acquired, you can now cause spiders to evolve directly into driders at will. Driders who come into being this way become fanatical worshipers of yours.


    Limited limb mastery: You can now create and graft spider legs, pincers, eyes, venomous glands, venomous fangs, and scorpion tails onto creatures through your other abilities.


    Dual subdomain active powers:


    Hypnotic gaze: This synergistic power is a result of the subdomain of enchantment and serpentes mixing together. As a result twice per twelve-hour period, your gaze can just dominate a person whose eyes meet your own. This isn''t a themed charm or dominate ability like ''Gratifying gaze'', so it''s more universally applicable.


    Snare: This arachnid power allows you to ensnare victims in a silk-cocoon even if wasn''t a web around them. This is a four-times per six-hour period power.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    When blessed by these subdomains the type of creature in question is friendlier to them and they can attempt to tame one such creature per day, even if normally the creature was impossible to tame. When cursed by these subdomains, not only are such animals extra aggressive towards them, their poison is extra dangerous to cursed people.


    When blessing an arachnid or a snake with its own subdomain it becomes larger, stronger, and more loyal to you. When cursing a creature with its own subdomain it becomes smaller, weaker, and afraid of you.]


    ________________________________________________


    The moon shone high over the town of Comillas. As Isadora and I walked towards the outskirts of the town, my friend was showing a side of herself that I hadn''t really gotten to see.


    "You know I wasn''t born here." Isadora told me, as we made our way past a few houses. I looked at her, a bit surprised by this, and tilted my eyebrows in an unspoken question. Isadora looked at me and giggled.


    "Nope! I sometimes tell people I was, but I was actually born on the mainland of the Reconquista Empire." She explained, casually mentioning the empire Puerto Rico was a part of. She looked at me and smiled, and then asked me an important question.


    "So Althos, where were you born?" She asked, her facial expression told me that she was genuinely curious. I chuckled at her and considered how to answer her question. It took me a moment to come up with a response.


    "Well Isadora, I was actually born here. Well... Not in Comillas, obviously, but in Puerto Rico. I was born in a community that existed before the Reconquista empire arrived, decades ago." I explained, casually suggesting that Puerto Rico was my home. And in fairness, it was.


    I came to life here. I had spent the entirety of my life to date here. I intended to protect this place, and to become its true ruler. Puerto Rico was my home as surely as it was Isadora''s. That said, I also knew that my time here was coming to an end.


    I casually reached out and touched the mind of a simple spider. It was a small thing, the smallest of its brood. In touching its mind I gained it as a worshiper, and I immediately willed the thing to evolve into a drider. I had plans for it.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later, Isadora and I found ourselves on the very edge of town. We were where someone would walk if they wanted to go to San Gerardo, the only other Reconquista settlement in Puerto Rico.


    I had learned a lot about Isadora''s childhood. And she had learned that I didn''t have one. We had been silent for a few moments when I decided to jump the gun. The first thing I did was activate my "Religious fervor" power, and wait for the familiar blue mist to rise up out of the floor and surround us. When it did I began to speak.


    "Isadora I need you to know something. I... want you to know something." I told her, speaking hesitantly. I felt genuine hesitation as I prepared myself to speak. Isadora looked up at me sympathetically and cut me off before I could speak again.


    "Oh Althos, it''s okay. I know. I know you probably aren''t going to spend another night in the Silver Xana." She told me, looking at me with a kind gaze. This shocked me, and I took a step back. The truth was, I didn''t mind her jumping to that conclusion but I hadn''t even really thought about that since I gained the power to teleport.


    "What? Well... The truth is a bit more complicated than that Isadora." I told her, chuckling. She looked at me quizzically and I took on a decidedly more serious facial expression.


    "Isadora, do you know anything about higher-beings?" I asked, meeting her gaze with my own. As she looked at me her face twisted in confusion. I could tell that I was confusing her, so it caught me off guard when she did reply to my question with a more detailed answer than I thought possible.


    "Well... I know that they existed. I mean I don''t know much, but as a child books about mythological and ancient history were some of my favorite ones to read. Unfortunately, I had to get my uncle to read them to me." She said, reminiscing about the past. As she did her gaze grew distant and I could tell she was remembering a far off place and a time in her childhood.


    "Oh! So you do know about us..." I said, so thoroughly surprised that I accidentally said the word "us" instead of "them". Fortunately, Isadora didn''t notice what I said as she was so engrossed in her silent recollection of her childhood. It took her a minute to return fully to the present.


    "Sorry, what were you saying?" She asked when she finished her trip down nostalgia lane. I chuckled and felt emboldened. I quietly activated "Unfettered Divinity", wanting her to believe me and sensing that this was a worthwhile usage of the power.


    Isadora and I were both bathed in a sudden and inexplicable column of radiant light. It illuminated Isadora''s tan skin and she sighed in relief as if the light were healing her or at least relieving of some long-standing affliction. She closed her eyes and allowed the light to wash over her.


    I chuckled and watched her bask in the light. It took her a moment to come back to me and to the present.


    "Isadora, you deserve to know the truth about what I am." I told her, as she gazed at me. She was studying me, or at least she was trying too. I could tell that she was having a hard time focusing. I grinned at her, happy that she was enjoying the feeling of the radiant light.


    "Isadora the truth is that I''m a god. A member of the strongest species of higher-beings from the mythic age." I revealed, smiling at her all the while. Isadora''s eyes went wide at my confession, and a look of confusion suddenly etched itself onto her face.


    "But... But that''s impossible. The gods, they all vanished. It was a total disappearance." She said, pain visible in her eyes. I looked at her in confusion, surprised that my power didn''t quite work on her as it had on the assorted elves I had brought to the zone of unfettered divinity yesterday.


    Her face started to contort, and I was surprised to get domain-sense notifications alerting me to the fact that she was in pain. I quickly and almost immediately cast "Numb pain" and began to channel healing energy directly into her.


    "Whoa... What''s going on? You''re standing in the area of one of my powers, you shouldn''t be able to deny its effects." I muttered, thinking aloud as I placed one of my hands on her face. I abruptly stopped receiving the notifications alerting me to her being in pain, which caused me to sigh in relief.


    [Althos, assess her right now. The truth subdomain''s quest might have a hidden meaning behind it.] The system instructed me, which confused me but I didn''t hesitate to do as the system told me.


    ________________________________________________


    [Name: Isadora Santiago


    Species: Nephilim (Angelic ancestor: Angel of lies)


    Alignment: Neutral good


    Personal virtue: Diligence


    Personal vice: Sloth


    Magic sensing: Isadora is a nephilim. Nephilims are hybrids who had a mortal parent and either an angelic parent or an ancestor who was angelic.


    Nephilims are naturally magical creatures, though it is possible for their angelic genes to enter a dormant state and only reawaken if they encounter another angel or nephilim or a higher-being. The sort of magic a nephilim is capable of using is dependent on their angelic parent or ancestor.


    Isadora is in all likelihood capable of using enchantment magic naturally.


    Faith sense: Isadora has strong emotional ties to her family, especially her uncle. Her uncle is a secular monk in Espana, the capital city of the Reconquista empire. She also has significant ties to her community, Comillas. As a child, the young hybrid dreamed of meeting a higher-being.


    Authority detection: Isadora is a respected member of her community. She has worked at her family''s business almost her entire life. Isadora is probably the most respected young member of her community.


    Soul-sense: Isadora''s childhood dream was to meet a higher-being. She was raised on tales of the mythic age and wanted to stand in the presence of a creature capable of creating life from nothing.


    That said, Isadora is now a normal person and though she has a soul that leaves her likely to become an incredibly pious person she has too much of an independence streak to be a particularly skilled member of the religious classes.


    Special notes:


    Isadora, as a hybrid with dormant genes, possesses many especially fierce vestigial abilities. Past attempts to assess her would have in all likelihood classified her as a human. It was exposing her to the power of a truth-oriented ability that caused her quiet genetics to abruptly awaken.


    Normally a nephilim would still be affected by your power. Isadora''s ability to resist comes from the fact that she has a special heritage: she''s descended from an angel of lies. Angels of lies are innately resistant to abilities that focus on truth, and even their children have some resistance to such powers.]


    "So that''s why..." I muttered, shocked as I read through Isadora''s information. I was positively floored by this discovery.


    [An angel of lies huh? Wow, those are rare. Though if they liked this planet that might be why we couldn''t detect the volcanic angels from earlier. That might even explain the minds of volcanic angels being broken... Angels of lies in large numbers can do... a lot.] The system muttered, providing an explanation and an excuse for its earlier ignorance.


    [Still... a nephilim? Wow. And she was the first person you met too!] The system said, as shocked by this development as I was.


    I chuckled and began to tend to Isadora, including taking her out of the range of my ability.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later Isadora was fully recovered and back to her old self. And more than that she still remembered what I said. And so she was currently looking at me with the expression of a mouse caught in a snake''s gaze. Or she was until she began to talk.


    "So wait... You really are a god?" She asked, and I nodded at her. We were currently standing face to face, or at least face to chest. I was taller than she was.


    "Wow... Wow!" She replied, as floored by this as I was of her status as some sort of hybrid of an angel and a human. I chuckled.


    "Do you have a divine realm?" She asked, her eyes lighting up as she prepared to question me. I chuckled. I shook my head at this, and she deflated for a second. I could see her disappointment on her face and it almost made me audibly laugh.


    "Can you enter dreams?" She asked, having remained deflated for an instant before perking back up. I nodded at her and grinned at that question. Her eyes widened when I told her that I could.


    "How strong are you?" She asked a second after her eyes widened. This was a trickier question, so I actually had to speak to her to answer it.


    "What are you asking precisely? Are you asking in terms of physical strength?" I asked, aware that that had a separate answer than if she was asking about something like divine strength. She contemplated my question for a second before giving it an answer.


    "Physical strength." She said a smile on her face. I chuckled at her and nodded.


    "I''m infinitely strong." I confessed, before adding to that statement. "I can do any feat related to physical strength." I explained, just to clarify.


    We''d spend the next hour together and she''d ask me question after question. I took her home after a while, and promised that I''d answer more of her questions at a later date. I still had things I wanted to get done tonight so when I let her go I immediately teleported to my remote coastal community.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself standing on a beach. To my left I could see the ocean, teeming with aquatic life and even bioluminescent lifeforms. To my right, I could see the village I had created, complete with lit torches and other tiny sources of light. The truth was that I was here for a reason.


    I walked down the shore to the actual edge of the water. The tide was low, so I had to spend a few moments walking before I reached the edge of the warm ocean. When I reached it I stopped and let the water lap at my feet.


    The water was an exquisitely clear blue and was beautiful to behold. I studied it for a moment, before kneeling down and beginning to think about how to proceed.


    "I need to use liquid in three ways. I''ve already used it to heal." I muttered to myself. I considered the wording of the quest for a moment.


    "Use". So the liquid had to be the one to do whatever I wanted it to do. I mulled that over, while willing myself lightly into the air. I then began to walk over the ocean and look down into it.


    Out of curiosity, I decided to perform an experiment. I targeted a fish, one of many dozen in this shallow part of the coast, and willed the water in front of it to turn poisonous, shortly before said water entered its throat.


    I didn''t change the water''s state as a liquid, rather I just changed its qualities. The fish began to slow and shiver as the poison took hold, but I then immediately cured it of the damage it was suffering using magic.


    At that moment, since my plans had changed, I decided to summon my new drider companion to my side. He appeared below me, standing tall and deeply confused as I teleported him to my side without warning. I chuckled as I looked at him, and commanded him to catch.


    I looked at and targeted another fish. I grabbed the thing by chilling the water around it enough to slow it down but not freeze it and then used my power over air to hurl the thing at the drider. My monstrous companion, alerted to my antics ahead of time, was ready and caught the fish as it approached him.


    He looked at it with hungry eyes and lifted the thing to his face using one of his human hands. As he did so, I received a welcome notification. One that alerted me that I had gained access to two new subdomains: the subdomain of evocation and the subdomain of liquids.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual subdomain details:


    The subdomain of liquid is the final elemental subdomain you needed to unlock to gain access to the quest to become a lesser elemental overlord. It is the subdomain that governs water, blood, and other fluids.


    The subdomain of evocation is a magical subdomain. With it you can manipulate energy and cast offensive spells that deal considerable harm to those struck by them.


    Both subdomains require all of the conventional tasks for you to acquire more influence over them.


    Dual subdomain passive powers:


    Animate element: This synergistic power stems from your powers over life, spirits, and elements. Now you can animate an area of flames, water, earth, or air. By animating it you bring it to life. Unless you grant it a soul whatever you animate will revert back to its natural state within an hour. Once animated you can give it commands it will follow.


    Aquakinesis: You can manipulate water. This power is very similar to the manipulation abilities you''ve gained for all of your other elemental subdomains.


    Aquatic freedom: You can grant others the ability to breathe and move freely underwater. You also gain these abilities though you had them naturally. Creatures who are granted aquatic freedom by you also gain immunity to the damaging effects of water pressure.


    Class granting: You both become and are now capable of granting the following classes: magician, and sorcerer. Sorcerers are those who study magic academically and learn about it through conventional means, while magicians are innate spellcasters who are tuned to all things magical.


    Cryokinesis \u0026 Hygrokinesis: You can manipulate ice, water vapor, and steam. Ice is the solidified form of water, and by manipulating it you can launch powerful attacks, paralyze foes, or even create pathways connecting areas separated by water. Steam and water vapor manipulation allow you to obstruct foes, burn enemies, and make areas difficult to navigate without changing the landscape.


    Elemental senses extension: You gain the ability to detect life and other things in water. Your power that was originally known as tremorsense has now reached a new level of power and range.


    Evocation manipulation: Spells that manipulate natural energy are subject to your whims. You can make such spells fail altogether, bounce back at the caster, or be magnified several times over.


    Generation: You can generate water, blood, and other elements you control at will.


    Hemokinesis: You can manipulate blood. This is a weakened form of an upgradeable power, so, for now, you can only manipulate blood that is outside of the body. That said you can see through blood and even animate it.


    Ooze mastery: You gain total dominion over slimes, oozes, and jellies. These lifeforms are among the simplest in existence, and now they are yours to command. They are animated puddles of water, acid, lava, poison, and other liquids that now serve you.


    You can create and awaken these creatures at any time.


    Water alteration: You can alter the traits of water. You can deoxygenate it, make it possible to be walked on, make it acidic or poison, superheat it, or other things.


    Spirit creation: You can create any type of elemental spirit. By acquiring this power your overall spiritual power has increased.


    Dual subdomain active powers:


    True-Hemokinesis: For a period of an hour per half-day you can temporarily upgrade your hemokinesis power. By doing so you can manipulate blood anywhere it can be found.


    Magic amplification: For a period of up to half an hour a day you can amplify the effects of spells cast by you or someone else.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with the evocation subdomain makes evocation spells stronger and cheaper. Cursing them does the opposite.


    Blessing someone with the liquid subdomain grants them water-breathing and lets them heal faster while underwater. Cursing someone with the liquid subdomain makes liquids actively painful for them to touch and reduces their ability to hold their breath.


    Special note:


    You''ve obtained access to the quest to become a lesser elemental overlord. To do so, you must create a sustainable, flying island. Once you do you''ll gain access to the abilities granted to the weakest elemental overlords.


    This flying island must have spaces dedicated to all four of the elements.]


    ________________________________________________


    And for the next few days, I entered into a routine that gave me valuable time to practice my current powers and establish a new normal. I''d continue to complete quests, and be trained by Dr. Cortes during the day, and then visit the four communities that were either officially or unofficially a part of my empire during the night.


    During this time I was careful to not actively create more undead, or cause any major changes to the world. I used this time to make sense of the knowledge I had gained, and begin to slowly gain allies using dreams to meet intriguing creatures and making offers to creatures I suspected would be interested in power.


    By the time I was 10 days old, I felt more organized and ready to take on the world than ever before. And so did my servants and worshipers.

 91 The Water Temple

    One day, a community named Libertad abruptly arose at the edge of the shore of Puerto Rico''s most remote coast. This community arose over the course of a few minutes and was inhabited by a diverse collection of humanoids who had been rescued from slavery by a young god.


    This community started off as a humble collection of buildings surrounded by a small stone wall. As days passed, that changed. And it changed in large part because of the strange god responsible for the community''s creation.


    On the first day after he built the community, the god dug a hole on the outskirts of town. And later that day things skittered out of the hole. When they did, the god reappeared and introduced the town''s humanoid inhabitants to its non-humanoid neighbors.


    The neighbors were an empire of myrmekes ants, oddly beautiful and handsome ant-humanoid hybrids who Althos revealed were also worshipers of his. Althos told the myrmekes ants that both communities were to be friends and that the humanoids were fellow Althonians.


    Much to the surprise of the humanoids who inhabited the town Althos had created, the myrmekes ants were overjoyed at this news and volunteered to serve the town as guards. Ever since that day the towering ant-human hybrids were a common if off-putting sight in the town and later on even in the ocean just beyond the edge of town.


    On the second day Althos appeared as the sun was setting and began to bestow blessings upon the town''s people. He freely gave his people a number of potent blessings, so that they were more likely to survive if they found themselves in danger.


    Some blessings he bestowed upon all of the town''s people. Those blessings included the death-domain blessing, the poison domain blessing, and the blessing of the subdomain of air, as well as the "Aquatic freedom" ability. Others he had to be asked to bestow upon them, but if he could then he did.


    On the third day, their god appeared and made general improvements to their community. He built a building specifically to tend to the injured, and he used his strange powers to make it into an area wherein pain is numbed and wounds can be overcome merely by sitting down and relaxing.


    He also built a small park and filled it with flowers. He offered no compelling reason for this, he appeared to have done it solely because he wanted to.


    The third day also happened to be the most significant day for the community. It was on the third day that Althos reminded everyone that he was a being whose mind was alien to their own because of what he did in the ocean.


    Some hours after he finished his general medical building, Althos trotted off into the sea. He was silent as he did this, and he didn''t walk far into the ocean but he did walk farther than even the most curious children had been brave enough to explore. Some of his followers followed him into the sea to behold whatever their god and savior was doing.


    At a seemingly random point, the odd god stopped and set to work. The god immediately created and rose a temple to himself using his civilization based powers. The temple was made of the same stone as the seabed off of Puerto Rico''s coast. It was a beautiful building to behold, made from greenish serpentine, a mineral named after a serpent''s scales.


    Althos then walked into the temple and began to use his magic to create rooms and even furniture, something his followers hadn''t known he could do as he hadn''t done it for them. The truth was that it was their worship of him that allowed him to do that, and he was merely testing the ability.


    By the time night had fallen on the community, the mortals who had followed after Althos had returned home. And Althos himself decided to spend the night in the eerie temple, alone aside from the occasional fish that wandered into the submerged building.


    That night he entered the dreams of various aquatic creatures, some of them were animals, some were humanoids, and some of them were things that were less easy to define, thanks to his boosted powers. He gave them dreams of his temple and of him as a strange aquatic god of the depths.


    The fourth and fifth days following the community''s creation, Althos engaged more directly with the people of the community. On both days he gave them weapons, tools, and armor he hand-crafted from light and darkness, and he even spoke to them directly.


    On the fourth day, he told them it was important that they decide on a government and begin to organize fully. They did as he commanded, and began to rudimentarily organize themselves. After he gave them his commands and they set out to obey him he went into the ocean and began to use more of his new powers.


    He fused his agricultural abilities, his life abilities, and his powers over water to gain the ability to create simple aquatic life. It was a simple power, but it was one that let him fill the water off of Puerto Rico''s coast with many, many more fish than it had once had. Because of this the bay was exploding with life and it was a tempting place for Libertad''s hunter-gatherers to go out and hunt.


    He also went out deeper into the ocean and saw settlements of strange aquatic creatures, mermaids, sharkfolk, and other powerful and beautiful creatures. When he entered their dreams on the second night, some of them began to open themselves to the possibility that he was indeed what he claimed he was: an aquatic god.


    On the fifth day, he gave his followers an important command. He commanded that they explore the ocean and that they chart the ocean floor. He also commanded that they treat strangers with kindness and hospitality.


    He explained that the deeper parts of the ocean had strange and wonderful aquatic life, mermaids, sirens, evolved sharks and other creatures that could be engaged with meaningfully and kindly. He encouraged them to do so, as the creatures in the depths already knew about him as well.


    ________________________________________________


    In the middle of the afternoon, five days after Althos created Liberad, named for the Reconquista word for "freedom", his orders were being obeyed. The ocean-floor off of the coast of Libertad was indeed being explored and being mapped by Althonians.


    Some parts of it were being explored by driders and myrmekes, unusual companions to be sure but ones who worked well together. Other parts of it were being explored by the humanoid inhabitants of Libertad.


    Two humans and a single gnome silently and slowly walked along the bottom of Puerto Rico''s epipelagic zone, better known as the sunlight zone. The three companions were close friends and were skilled collaborators. They were able to breathe underwater and move freely while submerged thanks to their powerful god.


    They wore skin-tight armor fashioned from blue light. It was one of the many gifts their strange god had given them in the days since he rescued them from a lifetime of slavery. And the final gift he had given them that was relevant to their current situations were tridents fashioned from darkness.


    They were scouts and hunters, though they tended to focus on the hunter-aspect of their work. At the moment though, their inventories were stuffed with fish thanks to the work they had done all day so they were doing as their god commanded and mapping the ocean floor.


    The three of them were three of the volunteers who had set out into the ocean following the command they received from their god. They were far enough from Libertad that they could see the strange temple their town''s founder had created. They watched elves swim into the temple, and looked at each other. Almost in unison all three of them had sighed.


    "So we aren''t going there right?" The gnome asked, looking at her companions exasperated. They looked at her, the disappointment in their eyes matching the disappointment in her tone and shook their heads.


    "Alright, I guess we ought to just keep going huh?" She asked. They nodded. She sighed but didn''t put up a fight. Of the three she was the most talkative.


    Her reaction might have felt strange to someone who didn''t know why they wouldn''t just go where others had been. The three-person team had made a pact that they would go and chart unvisited territory. Since another group of people were charting the temple Althos had created, they lost their chance to map it. The three explorers readied themselves to go out into the oceanic wilderness.


    ________________________________________________


    Perhaps the strangest thing that had happened as a consequence of my escapades in Puerto Rico''s underground region was that all of my powers were upgraded. I initially didn''t even realize that they were upgraded too.


    Days ago I learned that what I felt when I first met the freed slaves I had rescued was their awe giving me an overall boost to my power. It was incredibly useful and because of it I unlocked several new powers and was left far more powerful than before.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual domain details:


    The alignment-domain of law is a critically powerful domain that governs governments, law, tradition, business, pacts, stability, obedience, authority, bargains, and honor. This is the third alignment domain you''ve acquired to date. Law as a domain grants you influence over devils, ancients, logicae, and a few other extraplanars.


    The domain of time is a greater domain with a particularly unusual set of powers, related to history, and fate. With it, your other abilities related to time, such as your power to manipulate age and peer into the past are greatly improved. In time you gain powers that grant you powers that allow you to manipulate fate and edit the fate of those you target.


    Each tier of influence over the time domain reduces the cooldown you have on your active powers by one increment. If a power can be used twice per half-an-hour you can now use it freely. If a power was twice per-twelve-hour-period you can now use it three times per six-hour period. If a power was usable once or twice per three and a half days then you can use it three times per day. So on and so forth.


    To gain further influence over the law domain you need to create civilizations and cults that worship you as a provider of order and as a champion of stability. And to gain further influence over the domain of time you need to practice your powers and gain greater knowledge of history, and how time works.


    Dual domain passive powers:


    Autocratic authoritarian: You gain an auric ability which grants you the power to force lesser creatures to obey you. It doesn''t dominate them but it can force them to cease any attacks. This is stronger than your "Patience palm" but "Patience palm" changes someone''s attitude and this power doesn''t.


    Authority detection: You can detect who someone serves. This power is less reliable on chaotic and non-lawful beings, but if someone is some variant of lawful than you detect who is their source of law, be it a person or a cause, without fail.


    Awaken: Synergistic power between the domains of nature, knowledge, mind, and law, but you can now awaken a creature at will. This power is related to law tangentially, as it is an authority related power. You can access it as a figure with authority over nature and minds. Creatures you awaken become some variant of lawful.


    Awakening a creature allows it to speak a humanoid language and learn more, as well as granting it sapience.


    Contract creation: You can create a contract and make a deal with a lawful or neutral being that confers power to them in exchange for their soul. You can grant them non-chaotic powers and upon their deaths their souls are yours. Unless you will it otherwise these souls automatically undergo a devilish transformation at the moment of their deaths.


    Constitution command: You can use your authority as a lawful god to force a community to organize themselves more effectively. This power compels all lawful members of a community, no matter where else they fall alignment-wise, to come together and to try and organize their community into a more organized one.


    Devil duke: As someone who can influence the evil domain you gain the power to interact more successfully with devils, creatures of law and tyranny. Devils are more likely to serve you or can be convinced to serve you more easily. This power is necessary to eventually become an archdevil.


    Hierarchy establishment: You can establish hierarchies. This is a power that affects social structures and is an inherently lawful power meant to reorganize societies.


    Historic touch: With a touch you can absorb the history of an object. Absorbing the history of an object allows you to learn the object''s secrets, and this valuable power can be used to solve mysteries, perform thefts, or even alter objects.


    Lawful soul: Lawful creatures see you as an inherently lawful creature. This doesn''t mean that your alignment changes, just that lawful beings see themselves in you and are more likely to respect you and obey you.


    Time theft: If you strike an enemy with a blow you can snatch away up to five years of their lifespan, as calculated by fate, and store those years to do with as you see fit.


    You can only use this once per target unless you don''t steal the maximum number of years, in which case you can use it again. You can give those years to someone else, use them to force an enemy to do as you say, or even just destroy them.


    Dual domain active powers:


    Authority: This law domain power grants you considerable power. With it you can declare an area your territory and gain nearly total power over it to the point that even instant death effects become a power you can use within it. You can use this power four times per three and a half days.


    Gerascophobia entrapment: This is an age-manipulation power afforded to you by the synergy between the domains of death and time. With it, if you touch someone you can trap them in a vision wherein they are stuck in a body on the verge of dying of old-age. You can leave them stuck in this vision for up to an hour. This power can be used freely.


    Devilish transformation: If you detect a mortal who is lawful evil and they are going to die you can cause them to transform into a devil the moment they perish. They become a type of devil that most fit their personalities and skills and become utterly loyal to you. You can only use this power once a day. Synergistic power fusing the domains of law, evil, death, and souls.


    Resurrection: Once per every six months you can perform a true resurrection.


    True resurrections are resurrections that cure curses, diseases, allow someone to live past their species'' maximum old-age for up to a decade at this tier of influence, and otherwise come back to life fully healthy. They even rebuild bodies if the person on whom it is being used lacks a body for their soul to return too. This synergistic power is the result of the domains of life, death, and time.


    This power does not work on higher beings. It can resurrect any non-higher-being, but cannot resurrect a higher-being. It also doesn''t work on someone whose soul has been destroyed or devoured.


    Dual domain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the lawful domain you improve their business success, their reputation in their communities, and their overall stats so long as they remain in lawful lands. By cursing someone with this domain you do the opposite.


    You cannot bless someone using the time domain. At least not at your current level of influence over the domain.]


    ________________________________________________


    During the last five days a lot in my personal life changed. One of the little things that changed was that I moved out of the Silver Xana. I did so only after converting all of Isadora''s family, including her distant uncle, into my worshipers, but I still moved out and into my tower full time.


    It turned out that Isadora''s relatives were lawful and thus adjusted to worshipping me quite easily. I had a funny knack for engaging with lawful worshipers that I suppose I probably gained mostly by engaging with the swarm, something I did far more aggressively now than I did before.


    Isadora''s uncle, in particular, was an excellent convert. He was a monk who lived in Reconquista and I entered his dreams three days in a row and easily turned him into my worshiper. He was a curious fellow who especially liked asking me questions about godhood. In exchange, I freely asked him questions about the world.


    Thanks to him I gained two big things: I got to start my own monastic order with an existing monk, and I got to gain more knowledge about the world.


    I learned that the Reconquista empire was humanity''s largest empire in this world, and was the most aggressive power in the world. I learned that there were four major landmasses in this world, only one of which was populated mostly by humans. I also learned about the three major empires in the world, one run by humans, one run by elves, and one run by a coalition of monstrous races.


    Despite gaining an incredible amount of power over a wide variety of things, perhaps the area I had gained the most power in were the elements. Unsurprisingly, as someone on the cusp of becoming an elemental overlord, I possessed significant elemental powers, and the recent upgrade I received had only increased my powers over the elements further.


    One of the upgrades I had earned allowed me to manipulate more things. In the case of the earth subdomain, I could now manipulate metal, in the case of the air subdomain I could now manipulate gases in general, in the case of the fire subdomain I could manipulate plasma, and in the case of the liquid subdomain, I could now manipulate something called "oil".


    I had also begun to spend more time exploring my environmental menu. I used it to study the world''s climate, with a special emphasis on Puerto Rico. It was eye-opening in a fun way as I occasionally messed with it but I kept my mischief to the minimum, opting to make warm days chilly ones and vice-versa.


    ________________________________________________


    Off the coast of Puerto Rico, I had created the largest temple I''d create to myself to date. To be fair I had only created three, but this one was the most impressive by far.


    It was a large and imposing thing that''d surely catch the eyes of any sapient creature not just for its size and style but because it is underwater. It was also where I spent plenty of my time. And you''d think that eventually my worshipers would learn that, but so far they hadn''t.


    In front of me knelt three elven worshipers of mine. They were slender high-elves with a complexion that surely marked them as high-elves but they lacked the haughtiness of their fellow high-elves. Perhaps their trials and tribulations had caused them to lose the pride of their fellow high-elves, or perhaps they were just naturally humbler than their peers, but one way or another I quite liked them.


    "Why do you kneel?" I asked the trio, all of whom were women. They had courageously approached me while I was here, and then immediately knelt before me. I was confused by this display, as I had never particularly demanded that one show obedience to me by kneeling in my presence.


    I had visited the temple twice since I created it. I planned to make a habit of visiting this place every day at the same time so that my followers who explore the coast know that they can reliably see me if they venture into the temple below the waves.


    The three elves wore the armor I had crafted for them, and when they looked up at me to speak I could detect their feelings of awe emanating from their gazes. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder as if to indicate that they were equals, and I was a bit surprised to see that they were lawful neutral and their sources of law were all the same when I appraised them.


    Each member of the blonde trio held me as their source of law. That was deeply flattering. It meant that their sense of morality and ethics were all anchored in their religion and the god they worshiped: me.


    "Althos, if you''d let us know... We merely wish to know what you plan to do with this temple?" One of them asked. She spoke softly, and there was a tremble in her voice. Another spoke as soon as her peer was done and provided an explanation.


    "If our question oversteps please let us know, but if you have plans for this temple and they require aid we''d be happy to provide said aid. You are our god, and we wish to enact your will." She said, hoping to soothe things over with me in case I was annoyed by the question.


    I looked at her and chuckled. To be fair to them I hadn''t ever told them that I was going to build a temple to myself underwater. On the third day after I made Libertad I went into the sea and erected this odd temple for no explicitly stated reason.


    I studied the elves for a second and mulled over how to reply to them in a way that suggested that I had some grand design. It didn''t take me long to come up with a creative lie that might as well have been true.


    "I have worshipers on the surface, and underground. I want to begin to gain worshipers under the sea. This temple will serve as a sanctuary for all of my worshipers who dwell under the waves or whose livelihoods are affected by the seas. I constructed this temple as a neutral place for aquatic creatures to come and rest, while praying and offering me the proper tribute." I explained, lying but speaking with confidence.


    "I want to begin to interact meaningfully with the denizens of the deep, and also with humanoids who dwell along the coasts. My intention is to build temples like this off of major coastal cities all over the world, and near major cities underneath the waves. This temple is just a prototype, though I must admit... I do love it here." I told the pious elves.


    I was only lying to them about that plan being the origin of the temple. I actually really liked that idea and mentally stored it away in the list of ideas I had that I needed to better develop but were themselves good ideas. I had gotten quite a few of those over the last few days.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual subdomain details:


    The subdomains of truth and lies are two polar opposite subdomains. It is interesting that you acquired both at more or less the same time.


    The subdomain of truth governs things like honesty, secrets, peels past illusions and enchantments, and abhors lies. The subdomain of lies governs deceit, misinformation, and propaganda.


    At the first tier of influence, these subdomains don''t seem like much. Don''t be fooled though, they possess many synergistic powers that make these subdomains far stronger than you may think right now.


    Both of these subdomains require the usual things that subdomains ask you for in order to continue gaining influence over them.


    Subdomain passive powers:


    Lie manipulation/Truth corruption: As a god of lies, you can detect a lie the moment it is uttered. A lie is a deliberate falsehood, not merely an incorrect statement. If you wish you can force creatures in your presence to only lie. You can also target specific creatures and affect them with this condition.


    Truth detection/Banishment of lies: As a god of the truth you can detect when a creature is being honest. Honesty doesn''t mean accuracy, an honest statement could be incorrect but be sincerely believed by whoever uttered it. You can force creatures in your presence to only utter the truth.


    Eyes of truth: No illusion or enchantment can affect you, and no technology can hide something from your view.


    Cut the lies: At will you forcibly deactivate technology or dispel magic that puts up illusions or hides something from view.


    Subdomain active powers:


    Believe me: You can tell a lie once per day that is believed by anyone who hears it for at least twenty-four hours no matter how obviously wrong that lie is.


    The truth hurts: You can tap up to twenty people per twelve-hour period and they automatically learn who last lied to them. They are filled with rage towards whoever they learn lied to them last and will attempt to destroy them or otherwise cause them pain. If you know of a specific lie told to a target you can instead cause them to be filled with anger towards the person who told them that specific lie.


    Lies destroy: You can cause someone to experience excruciating pain for a minute for every lie they uttered in the last twenty-four hours. Synergistic power fusing the subdomains of truth and pain.


    Secret detection: You can pick a creature and learn a secret about them. This power can only be used once a day on a target, but so long as the targets are different people it can be used up to twice per half-day.


    Agony: By merely speaking to someone you can cause them to believe they are experiencing pain. The pain isn''t real, but it lasts for an hour and nothing can convince the person suffering from it that isn''t. This power can be used twice per twelve-hour period and is a synergistic power that touches the subdomains of pain and lies.


    Naked truth: Synergistic power tying together the subdomains of truth, corruption, and the domains of evil and knowledge.


    If a person is attracted to someone, especially someone they shouldn''t be attracted too, they are overwhelmed by a wave of lust too strong for them to overcome. This evil power can be used to destroy relationships and cause pain. This can be used twice per twelve-hour-period.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with the truth subdomain causes them to gain strength when they tell the truth. Cursing someone with the truth subdomain weakens them whenever they lie.


    Blessing someone with the subdomain of lies grants them temporary charisma each time they lie. Cursing someone with the subdomain of lies causes them to lose charisma, temporarily, each time they lie.]


    ________________________________________________


    As I continued to converse with the elves, I did something I had turned into a daily ritual: I opened my religion menu and tapped on a relatively new section of it entitled "Families, sects, cults, and churches".


    This section of my religion menu was one of my favorites. It allowed me to swiftly learn about the conditions of the assorted individuals, communities, and species that worshiped me.

 92 Swarms And Hordes

    [Retrieving information on your followers and worshipers... Compiling information... Preparations complete.


    Families:


    Santiagos: The Santiagos are a family of humans and nephilims living in Puerto Rico and on the mainland of the Reconquista empire. There are over 150 members of this family, of which about a third of nephilim. The majority of the family live on the mainland of the Reconquista empire.


    Your hard work has led to over 50 of them worshipping you. 10 of your worshipers from this family are nephilim.


    The nephilim who''ve been brought to your side are especially reverential worshipers who entreat you for aid in your capacity as a deity of shapeshifting, trickery, and lies. Your 50 worshipers from this family are working to persuade the rest of their family to become your worshipers.


    This family knows you by a unique title: the kind deceiver. Some of them worship you as a god of positive change, healing, and trickery. Others worship you as a god of progress, shapeshifting, and nature.


    Mondragons: A human family that lives in Puerto Rico. Made up of the relatives of Alma, Gustavo, Marlena, and Sophia Mondrago, numbers about 25 total people. 12 of them worship you as your alter-ego the serene spirit of healing, agriculture, and prosperity named Cosecha.


    Silverstones: The elder council of the Silverstone family have all become Althonians after witnessing the powers of their leader, Lilith, who herself has become one of your witches. Lilith herself, a power-hungry enchantress is your faithful servant for she recognizes the reality of your power and hopes to ascend to even higher lengths with it.


    There are over 500 dark-elves who possess the Silverstone family name. Only twenty of them worship you.


    Dragonspears: Drow Dragonspear is a templar in your service. He has seized command of his family, a militaristic family, and turned them to your worship.


    Their worship of you is pretty rare because they worship you as a god of conquest and of war. Only they and the reptilefolk you conquered worship you in such a fashion.


    When you intend to take the city of Aronms, they will fight alongside your forces. Drow has turned them fully to your worship, through displays of the power you have granted him, and thus they are your most fanatical dark-elven worshipers.


    Sects, cults, and churches:


    Cosechians: The term ''Cosechian'' applies to a worshipper of Cosecha. Cosechians are typically either neutral or good and worship you without knowing that they worship you.


    The majority of Cosechians are farmers. And the majority of them can be found within the Reconquista empire, especially but not exclusively within Puerto Rico.


    Althonians: The term ''Althonian'' applies to one of your worshipers who worships you as you.


    Some of them believe you to be a god of goodness and freedom, such as the people of Libertad and the inhabitants of the Rodan forest. Some believe you to be a god of necromancers and necromancy like the reptilefolks of the encampment. And some believe you to be somewhere in the middle like the people of Oscuridad, the settlement next to your tower.


    The two beefiest bodies of faithful that you possess are the swarm, whom number over several billion, and your undead horde. Your swarm, composed solely of ants and the simplest undead, is a gigantic, potentially world-changing force. It is more than large enough and more than dangerous enough to combat at least a minor country without your help.


    Your swarm worships you as an omnipotent deity. They sense your influence in all things and believe you to be the decider of the fate of the world.


    Your horde worships you as a patient enemy of life and awaits your next commands, eagerly hoping to feed on an entire community next time.


    Other Althonians worship you in specific ways, such as a small cabal of women in the kingdom of Atlantis who worship you as a god of abundance, life, and healing.]


    ________________________________________________


    I chuckled as I read through the entry. In total, I possessed a few billion worshipers, and I was about to go ahead and increase that number further thanks to a few new abilities I possessed.


    I closed my eyes and allowed my familiar not-so-mini-map to consume my vision. The sight that greeted me when I did was my mini-map, and also more. I was greeted by a positively enormous map that showed me the area that surrounded me in real-time.


    My not-so-mini-map had undergone one final upgrade when I gained access to the liquid subdomain. This caused the thing''s range to dramatically, allow me to see life in water, and also see things in real-time.


    My divine perception wasn''t just limited to Puerto-Rico anymore. Now I could fully explore the sea around me, and even perceive entire kilometers of Iredale in real-time. And that opened up a world of possibilities for me.


    I quickly and quietly selected every single ant, wasp, and bee in the area on the not-so-mini-map. Before I did anything else, I cast a single and very familiar spell: "Create food". I smiled as I felt an ocean of magical energy pour out of me and felt enough food to feed entire communities be created in other parts of Puerto Rico, and along the coast and plains of the edges of Iredale.


    I twitched a mental muscle and turned the minds of the creatures I had targeted towards the food. They were surprised by the food''s sudden appearance and for a moment were frozen.


    And a heartbeat later I felt trillions of tiny feet dash towards the food at once, countless legs, wings, and other appendages move towards the food, and began to consume it. And for the first time in several days, I was pleasantly overwhelmed by notifications.


    Though I didn''t actually need to feed them, I was just doing it for fun.


    ________________________________________________


    Ten minutes passed by the time I had finished sorting through the tidal wave of notifications I had received. The information I had sorted through brought a smile to my face. As had how I passed the time in addition to reading.


    My ever-constant mind began experimenting with the creatures who fell under my influence and in doing so dominated them. This was because I possessed a fun new toy to play with: the ability to awaken and dominate members of the Hymenoptera order outright the instant I make contact with them. That was one of the five new powers I had recently earned related to the Hymenoptera order.


    The second ability I had earned was the power to cause unevolved members of the Hymenoptera order to evolve at will. I hadn''t used that power yet, but I planned to change that today.


    My third new power was the ability to take a hit and then cause my body to dissolve into swarms of flying ants, wasps, or bees that attack my attacker. My fourth new power was the ability to generate insectoid wings and vibrate them to confuse my enemies. And my fifth new power, an especially brutal one, allowed me to attack enemies and implant Hymenoptera eggs into them.


    That said, I didn''t intend to use those three powers today.


    ________________________________________________


    "What should I do with these new babies?" I asked myself, lovingly referring to the insects I had newly acquired and added to my swarm as "babies".


    "Should I make them evolve?" I wondered, in the safety of my mind. I knew what sort of creatures ants, wasps, and bees evolved into.


    Ants evolved into variations of bigger, beefier ants or myrmekes. Bees evolved into larger, fiercer bees or into Thriaes, which were enterprising bee-people who supposedly built city-sized colonies above and below ground. Wasps evolved into massive variants of their more youthful forms and if left to their own devices create sprawling hives that can be measured in kilometers.


    Of course, all of the aforementioned insects can be evolved into other, more unique forms as well thanks to my unusual and alien mixture of powers, domains, and subdomains. And there was a part of me that wanted to experiment with that.


    "If I make them evolve I inch closer to acquiring the next quest, I gain powerful new servants, and I expand my empire into the relatively uninhabited coast of Iredale." I muttered to myself.


    The truth was that I was hesitating. I had a reason to hesitate, and I felt that the reason I had was a good one. My reason was that I didn''t want to waste the potential of the swarm. The swarm was probably my most valuable force. It was a positively enormous force of slavishly loyal insects, and with it, I didn''t doubt that I could change the world.


    That said, so far I had kept them on the back-burner, despite them being my first minions. A part of me knew that needed to change. And that with the swarm I could practice active expansion of my territory into the largely uninhabited coastal territory of Iredale''s coasts.


    And so, I decided that that was precisely what I would do. I started off by giving my newest servants their first command.


    ________________________________________________


    Throughout Puerto Rico and the southern-most coast of Iredale alike countless ants, bees, and wasps were going about their business until a god intervened. Gods tended to do that.


    They had been living simple, largely unambitious lives, and were quite successful at it. But that changed, as things often did, when a god got involved.


    The god was kind to them. He started off by feeding them. It was an easy act for him to do after all. But then he spoke to them. And he asked that they change.


    "Evolve. Serve. Build. Worship." He commanded them, whispering in their minds and commanding entire hives to transform not just overnight, but unbelievably he was asking them to evolve instantly. And what was even less believable than that was that they could and that they did.


    Ants and wasps were teleported out of their colonies, bees were booted out of their hives, and members of all three species began to change. They all began to glow a radiant light and their bodies underwent dramatic changes.


    Ants and bees in many but not all cases took on entirely new forms. Their new forms were eerie ones, ones resembling winged humanoids or in the case of the ants, centaur-like humanoids but with a bug''s details rather than those of a horse.


    Wasps, on the other hand, grew to horrifying proportions. They grew to be larger than horses, or even carriages in the cases of the queens.


    Their transformation only took a few minutes, but by the end of it, there was a swarm of an unfathomable size that was ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting countryside. And in obeying their new lord, members of all three species formed a quiet and united front and embarked on a massive quest to do as their lord commanded: serve, build, and worship.

 93 Eyes & Ears

    Even minutes after joining the strange hive-mind that was the swarm the insects in it displayed a terrifying efficiency. The orders the insects received were not argued against or questioned, nor did they stir resentment or fear. Instead the orders were obeyed.


    In Puerto Rico about a tenth of the ant population began to trek towards Iredale. The tenth of the Althonians who began to creep towards their new home did so silently. They trudged through the underground labyrinth of ant tunnels that led them to Libertad, and then out of the hole that allowed the ants to explore the town. And when the ants reached the ocean they dove into it.


    The residents of Libertad watched this, curiously. The stream of insects were polite and non-aggressive even when they bumped into someone in Libertad or when a child began to cry at the sight of them. They walked in a single-file line and their formation was perfect and uninterrupted.


    The ants that dove into the ocean immediately began to benefit from the powers of "Aquatic freedom", the ability their god possessed that let them breathe underwater and move freely even while submerged. The ants used it to begin a trek through the ocean-floor.


    They walked past the Althonian temple their god had created for himself, and then into the open-ocean and were left alone. This was because their god charted a path for them that led them through uninhabited parts of the sea, and even the few animals that did try to attack them were prevented from doing so by Althos'' intervention.


    Ocean currents carried them across the sea at an incredible pace, contributing to their ability to cross the several hundred-kilometer distance that separated Puerto Rico and Iredale smoothly and over the course of a few hours.


    On the other side of the sea, Althonian insects were hard at work building their first communities. Kilometers of shoreline and adjacent regions were taken over in an instant by the alien-dominated swarm. Ants, wasps, and bees weren''t supposed to work together but since they did and they shared a consciousness they were terrifyingly good at it.


    Althos played an active part in this early and aggressive success. He did so by issuing odd commands to some of the insects under his control.


    To the ants, he ordered that they spray their stores of acid onto the floor at their feet. His ants obeyed him, not mindlessly but in full-faith that their god knew what he was doing. He didn''t disappoint. When the ants sprayed their acid, Althos animated and awoke the puddles of the stuff, transforming them into oozes that immediately began to serve the ants who made them.


    He ordered his massive wasps to conduct patrols. Perhaps the most direct thing he himself did was build nests for the creatures under his command, especially the wasps. He reached out with his mind and quietly terraformed areas suitable for his massive worshipers, rending the ground at their feet and creating tunnel complexes in an instant that were suitable for creatures of their size.


    He was gentlest with the bees. There was no particular reason for this, he just was. Perhaps it was some sense of unconscious kinship he felt with them that he didn''t feel with the others. After all, the bees were the ones with the most human-like transformation.


    The bees had become Thriae. Thriae looked highly human but possessed multiple pairs of arms, two sets of eyes, one human and one compound, had insectile wings and possessed the enlarged abdomen and intimidating stingers bees were known for.


    ________________________________________________


    I felt a sense of gratitude towards my insectoid minions. They were efficient creatures, who took my orders without complaint and because of that I knew that I could leave Iredale''s coast to them.


    I knew that these creatures were efficient beings because of my interactions with the original members of the swarm, the ants who''d become myrmekes and would inhabit portions of Puerto Rico''s subterranean region. They had worked hard, despite me not giving them any orders, and billions of them still kept portions of the underground safe, areas including my tower and the settlement I had built next to my tower.


    I spent an hour working with the insects to get them prepared for colonizing the coast of Iredale. While doing so I began to devise ideas for how to best use their abilities. I intended for the Thriae to become the diplomats of the swarm, insofar as the swarm needed or used diplomats.


    The Thriae looked human. I could use that to my advantage and I intended to do so. The wasps were just massive and thus terrifying-looking wasps, and the myrmekes could be compared to centaurs but with an ant''s lower-half instead of a horse''s. I could use the ants and the wasps to achieve other ends, while using the Thriae to establish communications with other species when possible.


    For now my plans with the Iredale colonies were to let them develop naturally. I wasn''t hugely focused on Iredale just yet. And I knew that wouldn''t change anytime in the nearish future.


    That said, I was grateful for all of the practice commanding large swarms of creatures. I figured, since I had already started commanding large swathes of creatures, I might as well keep that up.


    I reopened my not-so-mini-map and began to fiddle with the filters. After a few moments, I had selected an entirely new group of creatures that I suspected would be incredibly useful in their own ways: vermin and parasites.


    ________________________________________________


    I had come to life possessing the first tier of influence over a nebulous subdomain: the subdomain of vermin. At the time it was regarded as an ominous power. And I hadn''t ever really used it to date. That said, it was upgraded as thoroughly as my other powers were.


    Over the course of my life, I had earned two overall boosts to my power. The first one was when I finished the tutorial and the second one was when I rescued the enslaved creatures. In both cases, I had received boosts to my powers over vermin and parasites.


    At the time I hadn''t made use of those powers. I chuckled as I mentally reviewed those powers and found that many of them were very similar to the Hymenoptera powers. They included domination, awakening, and even forced-evolution powers, as well as a number of offensive powers.


    One of the more intriguing passive powers did cause those bitten by parasites to fall under my influence, which was incredibly neat. Another empowered my parasites to learn a bit about those they bit or otherwise infested. That, coupled with my ability to awaken them, gave me an amazing tool: spies. And something that I could tell I would use in the future was a synergistic ability that let me target humanoids and force them to take on the shapes of parasites and vermin.


    The active powers were a bit more interesting as those included a number of offensive and mind-related abilities. One of them included transforming those bitten by parasites into the form of parasite they got bitten by, and another was a powerful sound-based attack that caused parasites to focus on a specific target.


    That said, my not-so-mini-map revealed something fascinating to me that I hadn''t known ahead of time. The majority of the parasites and vermin I could detect, especially in Puerto Rico, were located in the city. Which was something that immediately made me feel stupid for not utilizing these powers earlier.


    After pondering my silliness for a few moments, I entered the minds of the simplistic parasites and vermin that could be found throughout Puerto Rico, in the ocean, and along the coast of Iredale. This act permanently transformed these creatures and granted me eyes and ears in places I hadn''t had them before.


    ________________________________________________


    Though parasites and vermin could naturally be found all over Puerto Rico, they were concentrated in one particular area: the city of San Gerardo. The city was a sprawling mess populated by tens of thousands of humans and their closest relatives.


    Rats, cockroaches, hookworms, ticks, and more could be found in abundance throughout the city. And because of this, the number of eyes and ears Althos gained were immeasurable. He chuckled, underwater, as he gained these eyes and ears and all of the knowledge that came with them.


    Althos quickly and quietly explored how he could evolve these creatures, and whether or not it was worth it. He skimmed over information alerting him to creatures like the Colo-Colo, a surprisingly handy evolution of rats that could eat energy and leave people lethargic, to cockroach humanoids who tended to become rogues, assassins, and stealthy classes, and was delighted.


    This both further annoyed the god, who felt as though he ought to have been more fully and creatively using his powers, and also excited him. The god fell into an introspective state of mind while silently assessing which of the awakened animals he would transform. And he began to scheme.


    ________________________________________________


    "I should transform... Maybe a quarter of the mice, and a twentieth of the cockroaches. It''s a shame none of the others here have any particularly interesting abilities though." I admitted, after a few moments of introspection.


    "That said, if I am strategic and use the Colo-Colos to their maximum potential I could make either capturing the city or fomenting the right types of wicked cults there an easy task." I muttered. I was now alone in my undersea temple and free to scheme.


    My mind was flooded with new messages, many of them newly awakened creatures thanking me for entering their minds, and others quiet prayers to my eerie and unholy glory. The part of me that was tasked with gathering information was amused by the awareness the parasites seemed to possess of themselves or of me. They either knew they were disliked, or they knew me as a dark god.


    When I tore myself away from the messages, I refocused. My worshippers were swelling, but I wanted to be worshiped by more than just insects and animals. And I wanted to build renown in more than certain sections of underground cities, or in small settlements I myself made.


    The truth was that I wanted to become known throughout the world. I always had. I was ambitious and it fueled my actions in various ways. But for now that ambition allowed me to carefully and clearly focus on my next target: the city of San Gerardo.


    ________________________________________________


    San Gerardo was the capital of Puerto Rico. At least for humans. It was a massive city by human standards, and very possibly the largest frontier community in the world. San Gerardo was the last bastion of human civilization in the furthest most eastern portion of the world.


    I had learned from Isodora''s uncle that it was led by a colonial governor who was directly appointed by the queen of the empire. I didn''t particularly want to visit the city, but I did want to come to influence it, which put me in a fascinating position.


    To date all of the areas I had taken over I had done so through direct action or by creating those areas in the first place. A part of me wanted to test my less direct capabilities and learn to trust my followers, even those I had never met.


    I wanted to create cults that took over the city without me directly entering it. And that would test my subtly, my ability to corrupt, and my leadership. And it''d be fun.


    I was never more thankful for the multitude of powers at a god''s disposal as I was right now. Because thanks to those powers I could reach out and begin to learn about the city''s many inhabitants.


    ________________________________________________


    I focused on the area of Puerto Rico I knew to be San Gerardo, and I smiled. I could detect thousands of lives there, all of which I wanted to reach out and touch. But I wasn''t foolish or arrogant. I knew I needed to be methodical if I wanted to build something that would last.


    I toggled filters and began to gather information on which people were which alignments. I took it in order, starting off with who all was lawful. I was a bit impressed when I saw that over half of the city''s inhabitants were lawful individuals. I then applied an extra filter: I added that I was searching for lawful-evil people.


    Lawful-evil people and creatures were people and creatures who wanted to take advantage of laws, customs, traditions, and other systems to advance their own selfish interests. Lawful-evil people were willing to back tyrants so long as the tyrants promised and gave them power, and they were orderly individuals who didn''t want to buck the system.


    When the system was done applying that filter, the total population of the city that remained was about six percent. It wasn''t a bad number, and I knew that if I needed too I could change it.


    I reset and then applied a new set of conditions to the not-so-mini-map. I began searching for chaotic individuals. About two-thirds of the remaining population of the city were outed as chaotic individuals. I chuckled at this.


    Chaotic individuals had no respect for authority or governments. They valued freedom and spontaneity, and they were useful. If I wanted to undermine the city, I''d need the help of both chaotic individuals and lawful ones.


    I added the additional filter of searching for chaotic individuals who were also evil and found that only two percent of the city''s inhabitants fit that bill. That was disappointing but unsurprising.


    My final two inspections of the city for fun qualities I could manipulate were a bit different. The first of them was for a specific type of personal vice: lust. A city was the perfect place for me to build a cult of corruption, and I wanted to see who all would be susceptible to lust-based temptations.


    I was delighted when I saw that almost nine percent of the city were extra vulnerable to lust. That meant that with the right preparations I could at least use the place to house a decent number of succubi and incubi.


    Out of curiosity, my final inspection of the city was to investigate to see who all hated either the governor or the Reconquista empire itself. I didn''t find many people at all who felt that way, which was a bit disappointing. It would have been fun to test the governor''s capabilities to resist a rebellion against either his administration or the Reconquista empire itself.


    That said, night had now fallen over Puerto Rico. I had spent the day scheming. And now that the night was falling, I had work to do. Foundations to build, people to meet, and worshipers to gain in the most conventionally godly of ways: through dreams.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual domain details:


    The domain of trickery and the subdomain of enchantment are two handy areas and have similar interests.


    Trickery is the domain that governs all deception. This includes lies, falsehoods, tricks, enchantments, and more. It is a neutral domain that cares not what end results are brought upon by dishonest means but only that dishonest means help produce them.


    The subdomain of enchantment is a magical subdomain that governs illusions, enchantments, and other falsehoods created by magic. This powerful subdomain allows those who make use of it to trick others. Gods who influence it are masters of deception who use both magic and mundane means to trick others.


    Dual domains passive powers:


    Custom magical effects: You can use magic to create specific desired effects so long as you possess one tier of influence over the domain that governs the sort of effect you''d like to cause. This is a synergistic power that requires influence over several magical subdomains in order to be earned.


    With this power you could disguise an army of the undead as an army of golden holy knights, or kill someone using evocation magic while pretending to heal them in the eyes of anyone who would be watching. This is a terrifying power for a trickster like you to possess.


    Divine illusionist: Illusions you create are not magical in nature. This means that they are not dispelled by anti-magic fields, and greater illusions are even capable of limited interactions with the world around them.


    Aura of normalcy: You can bend reality around you in such a way that people are not capable of sensing why you shouldn''t be in a place at any time you opt to activate this power. People affected by this aura sense something is off, but they can''t pinpoint it.


    Divine invisibility: You can become fully incorporeal and truly undetectable. Normally outsiders and a few mortals, as well as various undead can detect incorporeal creatures, but this divine invisibility is the strongest invisibility, that can only be detected by another higher-being.


    Divine enchanter: Your enchantments are buffed, and can even be contagious. Depending on the enchantment, so long as you''ve cast it if someone suffering from an enchantment of yours interacts with someone who isn''t then the enchantment may also begin to affect them. Your enchantments also can''t be dispelled unless you allow them to be.


    Sense manipulation: You can directly assail the senses of mortals. This power doesn''t work on the undead or extraplanars, yet.


    Projection: You can project an illusionary version of yourself that can fully interact with the world around it. This is a projection with all of your powers that you control directly. Attempts to attack it reveal it as an illusion and if it is hit it vanishes or explodes, your choice.


    Class acquisition and granting: You earn the rogue and assassin classes. These are classes that epitomize the tenants of trickery, stealth, and deception. And you can grant these classes as well.


    Trap mastery: You gain the knowledge needed to make traps related to your domains and subdomains. You can also automatically detect and disarm traps.


    Steal: You can steal things from those who oppose you. These things need not be physical. You can steal stat points and redistribute them, steal beauty, steal abilities, or even steal memories and personality traits. You cannot copy these things, you can only steal them.


    Drug mastery: This power synergizes the trickery and deceptive domains and subdomains, the mind domain, and the alteration subdomain. With this power you can create drugs, and manipulate them. You can also now ambiently cause their effects to take hold in people you select.


    Dual domains active powers:


    Reasonable: You can persuade someone to take action once per day. This power only works on a single target, and the action cannot be something that would directly harm themselves.


    Mesmerizing aura: This once a day power activates an hour-long aura that prevents creatures from being hostile towards you.


    Enrichen the illusion: Once per week you can create an illusion of something inanimate and make it real. Or once per month you can turn an illusion of a living thing into a true lifeform.


    Dual domain blessing and curse details:


    You can bless someone with the trickery domain and make them more persuasive, easier to be comfortable around, and better at theft. If you curse someone with it then they become less glib, more unsettling, and worse at theft.


    By blessing someone with the enchantment subdomain you boost their beauty and magical power. Your ambient control over magic has gotten strong enough that your blessings alone can allow someone to use magic, and that is the case with this subdomain and all magical subdomains moving forward. If you curse someone with this subdomain you make them uglier and drain their magical energy.]


    ________________________________________________


    I smiled as I began to extend my divine, arcane, and eldritch tentacles and influence across Puerto Rico and towards the most remote bastion of humanity: San Gerardo. I knew they had no idea what was coming their way.

 94 Corruption And Crocodiles

    Empowered by a vast array of new abilities, the submerged god quietly contemplated how to proceed. Even now he had followers who were doing their best to evangelize and to persuade people to submit to him and to whisper his praises, so he needed to focus on where he would be the most effective.


    In Puerto Rico there were still plenty of places where his influence was either nonexistent or minimal. And he didn''t like that. It wasn''t conducive to his goals, so he set about changing it.


    A portion of his mind turned its lofty intelligence and powers to the city of San Gerardo, a portion turned to the settlements of the orcs, hyenoids, the community of kobolds, and another portion turned to the dark elven settlement of Aronms.


    That said, though the god wasn''t happy with his limited control of Puerto Rico, he was a patient sort. He knew from successful allies like Drow and Lilim that oftentimes all he needed was a single skilled ally. He was allowed to be annoyed, but he needn''t pretend that his hard work would be for naught if it didn''t succeed today. He had all the time in the world.


    ________________________________________________


    The land beyond the Rodan forest was strange territory. It was a valley at the edge of a mountain that housed four distinct civilizations: hyenoids, ogres, orcs, and kobolds.


    The hyenoids were the most numerous of these civilizations, numbering over several hundred members. As a species, they resembled bipedal hyenas, and their attitudes matched their appearance.


    Althos had actually encountered two of these creatures in the past. He fought against them and won, and revealed that he was the guardian of the vast and mysterious Rodan forest. The two Althos had met scouts, sent out to explore the forest before they encountered the creature they now identified as its "angry guardian".


    After his initial conflict with him they had rarely crossed his mind again. He knew a bit about them, thanks to his ability to detect when people do things related to the domains he can influence, but he had paid them little mind to date.


    Althos was more interested in the ogres. A tribe of a few dozen ogres lived in the valley beyond the Rodan forest. These ogres included the ogresses named Iret and Okig. Althos had successfully converted both of them into his worshipers, though Iret took a bit longer than he would have liked to convert.


    The ogres were a violent species of massive, evil humanoids and though over three dozen of them lived in the area beyond the forest, only 7 of them worshiped Althos. That didn''t prevent Althos from being fond of them though. They were Althos'' favorite kind of worshipers.


    ________________________________________________


    Over the course of the last few days, I had gradually mastered a new technique to increase my efficiency as a god and worker. It was simple, and only possible thanks to a handy trickery domain ability.


    First, I split my consciousness into the number of portions I thought I''d need to accomplish a task. Second, I created projections of myself equal to the number of portions I split my consciousness into. And third, I teleported myself wherever I was going to go to get a task completed.


    Once I had split my consciousness, I teleported each portion of myself to a new area. Because of this I was active all over the island and doing different things in each place.


    In a flash, I was not just located in the undersea temple, I was also located at the edge of the ogre camp, the outskirts of Aronms, and even just outside of San Gerardo itself.


    In each case, I wasn''t alone. The part of me that was located in San Gerardo was accompanied by a shape-shifted earth-bear, the part of me just outside of the ogre encampment was accompanied by my amarok wolf and a drider, and the me on the outskirts of Aronms was accompanied by a Sobek, the evolved form of the black caiman I had once befriended.


    ________________________________________________


    Each night in the ogre encampment one of my followers devoted herself to the pursuit of her desires. This was a rather primal, carnal practice that I encouraged while she slept in her dreams. Tonight I was paying her a visit, though she didn''t know that. Which was why I could hear her from a healthy distance away.


    The truth was I didn''t need to rely on hearing to detect her and her two mates, men she had convinced to come live with her. She lived on the outskirts of her people''s encampment and the fire the tents of her and her companions happened to be centered around was located far enough that I could differentiate it from the other fires the ogres set.


    I began to slowly approach it, followed by two of the creatures I had awoken and then evolved days ago, and as I did so I could hear Iret''s sybaritic moans. As I listened to them, I chuckled.


    I looked at my two companions and began to tell them the story of how I first met the ogress we were on our way to see.


    ________________________________________________


    "So all she wanted was to beat the fuck out of her superior?" My drider companion asked me, by the time we reached the fire that we had set off towards. I nodded at the evolved-spider, and the thing began to laugh. He had a way with words, and his choice of vocabulary was something I liked about him.


    "How strange." Remarked the amarok wolf, somewhat idly. The shadow-furred creature was one of the very first wolves I had willed to evolve when I gained power over the Canis subdomain. It was now no longer alone, but at the time it had spent nearly a day alone aside from the company of a gregarious earth-bear I had created to experiment with my powers.


    "Well it wasn''t just that. She was repressing herself. Getting her to beat the shit of Okig was a part of getting her to stop repressing herself." I explained, after giving the matter a bit of thought.


    Aside from our idle conversations and the sounds of the crackling flames near us, I could hear the muffled moans of one of the first mortals to worship me. She and two more of my ogrish worshipers had shacked up in the days since my undead horde defeated an encampment of reptilefolk.


    The moans were muffled because of the fact that their threesome was taking place behind a thick and impressively large tent made of many layers of tanned animal skins. But that didn''t stop me from receiving the energy of their lust-filled prayers. The truth was, of all of the payers I had received it was the lust-filled ones I liked the most. That said, I had come here for a real reason. I only intended to wait a bit longer.


    Iret and Okig both had their own forms of worshipping me. Iret''s was focused on sex and sexuality and I tended to get my prayers from her when she was being mated with by her two mates. This caught me off-guard when it first happened but in the days since I''ve gotten used to it. Even now I could feel a strange sense of piety emanating from the tent not far from me.


    Okig''s form of worship came across most distinctly whenever she successfully finished a hunt. This was the case during the first few days after she became a worshiper of mine and has become more the case in the days since I granted her the rogue class.


    ________________________________________________


    The fraction of myself that was within the city of San-Gerardo was guarded by the gregarious earth-bear I had created days ago. I was quite fond of the bear. Some of the Althonians had taken to calling him Fluffy, as towards me and his fellow Althonians he was friendly and approachable even if he wasn''t towards other people.


    As the two of us made our way down a crowded street inside of San-Gerardo, I found myself studying his form. The bear currently had the appearance of a powerfully built and large man, and I had the appearance of a traveling merchant.


    My ally stood well over two meters tall. He was actually naked, but I had wrapped him in an illusion that made him look like he was wearing simple overalls.


    I wore a plain outfit that was a replica of what I had once seen Mateo wear in the days since I had discovered the truth about Isadora. It was a simple merchant''s outfit made up of white pants, and a white button-up top, hidden from view by a vest that was the color of emerald snake''s scales.


    I had actually made this outfit myself using a collection of my powers. I quite like constructing something real that wasn''t just solidified light or darkness.


    All around us human and almost-human denizens of San-Gerardo were hard at work. I could hear thousands of conversations concerning just as many topics throughout the city. And many of them were inspiring.


    "Now... how can I most maximize what I can do here tonight?" I asked myself. I had come to the city tonight to begin to actually lay my eyes on the place, and determine where and how I could best create a variety of cults.


    San-Gerardo was a large enough place that I could easily create a number of different cults here. All I needed to do was decide which sorts of cults I wanted to plant the seeds of tonight. I had so many choices I could do.


    I was unsure of where to go at first and kept walking aimlessly while exploring my not-so-mini-map. And then I found it. The perfect place for corruption: a clandestine brothel.


    ________________________________________________


    [Crocodilia subdomain details:


    The crocodilia subdomain is the subdomain that governs alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and a few other predatory, reptilian species. As a subdomain that governs predatory creatures, it is a powerful subdomain that grants you considerable powers.


    To gain further influence over this subdomain, build lizard-cults and master the abilities this subdomain grants you.


    Special note:


    As you gain an expanded catalog of powers some of yours may start to seem redundant. Keep in mind that in most cases you can grant these abilities, or at least a watered-down version of them, to your worshipers. This is especially true for animal subdomains.


    Crocodilia subdomain passive powers:


    Internal flexibility: You can rearrange the location of your organs or those of your followers. This is an ability that allows your servants and worshipers a more flexible body while also granting them enhanced durability.


    Aquatic mode: You can bestow upon your followers an amphibian form which grants them enhanced mobility and strength underwater. They can enter this form at will.


    Vibration detection: You gain enhanced sensitivity to the vibrations other creatures give off.


    Dermal armor: At will, you can generate a tough layer of scale-like skin, known as scutes.


    Crocodile king: You are the undisputed lord of unawakened and unevolved Crocodilians. You can evolve them into reptilefolks, lizardpeople, and other, more primal forms of Crocodilians at will.


    Crocodilia subdomain active powers:


    Sonic strike: By fusing the power of the physics domain and the Crocodilia subdomain you can launch a sonic strike at your enemy that assails their reptile brain specifically. When you use this once a day power, nearby humanoids begin to experience heart palpitations as you assault the part of the mind that dictates the heartbeat.


    Crocodile curse: By focusing on the domain of chaos and the Crocodilia subdomain you can transform someone into a crocodile against their will. They become a crocodile for up to a week.


    Crocodilia subdomain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with this subdomain grants them kinship with crocodiles and their relatives and improves their ability to swim and hunt. Cursing someone, predictably, does the opposite.]


    ________________________________________________


    For a brief moment, Althos recalled the moment when he first read through the notification alerting him to the powers of the Crocodilia subdomain. At the time he had smiled and muttered something about starting a reptile cult that gradually wrapped its members into humanoid-reptile hybrids.


    He actually quite liked that idea. It was one of many he had stored away for when he came across the right type of humanoid and the right environment that that humanoid would flourish in.


    He could imagine that the right type of humanoid who had access to both a crocodile''s strength and a snake''s poison would be a fantastic servant and a great enforcer. He just had to keep his eyes open.

 95 Denizens Of Darkness

    Though a portion of myself had joked about creating a reptile cult, I did have a few servants and worshipers who were reptiles. One of them was an ebony-scaled Sobek who was clad in onyx-armor and carried a dark Warhammer.


    The creature, the very same Black-Caiman I met on my second day of life and had recently made evolve, was now a powerful dark paladin. She walked beside me with discipline and while doing a surprisingly good job of holding back her innate aggression towards others.


    I turned my head and began to examine her. She was huge now that she was a Sobek, a creature that was, at its core, a bipedal crocodile. All of her equipment was equipment I had crafted for her, and she was visibly proud of that fact. I liked it too. Ever since I used my Crocodilian powers on her she had wanted nothing more than to serve me.


    This wasn''t just because of my powers either. This was because I had interacted with her earlier before I gained the ability to awaken and then enthrall her. It was nice to see that I was capable of invoking such earnest feelings in my followers. While I kept my gaze locked on her, I began to test her.


    ________________________________________________


    "What is your name?" I asked her, my eyes locked onto hers. They retained their amber-color and snake-like slits even through her evolution.


    "My name is Jezebel." She told me, having asked me to name her in the days since I caused her to evolve. I nodded at her, grinning.


    "What are you doing here?" I asked, intending to make sure she remembered everything I had told her earlier.


    "I''ve come to go to the Dragonstone family and both witness and receive their training." She repeated, telling me exactly what I was hoping to hear. I nodded at her.


    "Who is your master?" I asked, intent on hammering this home and ensuring she remembers it perfectly. The truth was I was doing little more than dropping her off. As she readied herself to answer this question I saw a flash of pride in her reptilian gaze.


    "Althos is my master. And I am his faithful servant." She told me, adding that last part herself. I grinned at her.


    We were trodding down a largely empty road at the edge of the city. At this point, we were just minutes away from the edge of the property that was known to be owned by the Dragonstone family.


    I could have warped us there right away, but I wanted this chance to test my servant and I wanted her to adjust to one of my gifts: the ability to see in the dark. It was one of several gifts I had given Jezebel.


    ________________________________________________


    Jezebel was unlike any of my other servants. I had plans for her that were unlike any plans I had for them. When I made her evolve it wasn''t to create a pet or a companion, it was to create a crusader. And the Jezebel that stood beside me knew that. She knew her purpose.


    I was planning to create an empire of sorts. My empire would, by my own admission, be rather strange but it was still an empire. And empires weren''t usually built peacefully. I intended to create soldiers, and in making Jezebel into a Sobek, one of the different types of evolutions that a Crocodilian could undergo, I was making a soldier.


    I had given her gifts fitting for a soldier. Blessings that increased her strength and her adaptability, and bolstered her with mutations that would make her a more efficient soldier. Not that I wanted her to be a mere soldier... I wanted her to be like Drow: to be a general. One of many I''d command in the future.


    When I envisioned Jezebel''s future I envisioned something I could make real. A life filled with enemies to bring to heel, warriors to command, and temples to raise to my glory. And I told her that. I told her what I wanted, which was for her to lead armies in my name. And she was inspired by that.


    When I recounted the day I went to battle against the reptilefolk she had listened attentively. When I told her of my powers over the dead she was delighted to know that not even the dead deny my power. When I explained to her what I wanted, worlds to worship me, she began to share that desire. And together we began to plot, to scheme.


    In many ways Jezebel was already my foremost military commander, but only because she wanted to help me build a military. I didn''t consider what I had to be a military. Not yet. I had soldiers, disorganized but powerful and skilled, but nowhere near the infrastructure to be considered a military. Though the more I thought about it the more I liked what I did have.


    ________________________________________________


    Militaries were organized structures. They had hierarchies and leadership. They had resources and budgets. What I had was a mess.


    I had soldiers aplenty and I could acquire more without much difficulty. Both thanks to my odd powers as a god and my skill as a necromancer, I could easily create or acquire soldiers. What I couldn''t so easily acquire was a military. And that was unfortunate.


    Over the past few days I had acquired the ability to complete numerous quests related to subdomains and domains. Some of them were fascinating.


    One of them was the quest for the domain of war. The final domain I hadn''t yet earned influence over that was part of the apparently infamous "Apocalypse Quadrangle", a collection of domains and one subdomain with utterly devastating powers.


    I was actually going to complete that quest today, in the next few minutes. All it asked was that I appoint someone a general in my armed forces and I knew exactly who that ought to be.


    As Jezebel and I neared the dark-elven compound I reminded myself of the domains and subdomains I could acquire influence over. I also recalled the details of my first real quest.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    You may now complete quests to acquire influence over the following subdomains and domains.


    War: Appoint an Althonian general.


    Suidae: Heal either a pig or their most common evolution: an orc.


    Bovidae: Feed a member of this family.


    Fungi: Plant fungi somewhere.


    Chiroptera: Cause a bat of some sort to evolve.


    Knowledge: In order to acquire the second tier of influence over the knowledge domain you must build an order of monks at least fifteen people strong and provide them with a monastery in which they are to do their work.]


    ________________________________________________


    The other quests were easy. I could, in fact, complete most of them here in Aronms. But the knowledge domain quest... that was going to be a lot harder. It was the first quest in my life that felt like... well like a quest.


    I thought about it until I faced the gigantic gates that led in and out of the Dragonstone family''s holdings. They stood well over eleven meters tall and were made from vivid, almost golden-colored, orichalcum and as such, they were eerily bright against the dark backdrop of the subterranean city.


    Dark-elven sentries armed with crossbows and their own innate magical prowess patrolled the top of the gates, and Jezebel and I were well within their line of sight. They had never seen me before so when one of them spotted us and began to speak to her superior I was unsurprised.


    I looked up and made eye contact with the dark-elf who had spotted me. I smirked at her and I watched her gasp in shock as she realized that I could see her as plainly as she could see me. I wasn''t close enough to talk to her just yet, so after staring at her for a few moments I lowered my gaze, a smile pulling my lips upward.


    The dark elf I had studied was a beautiful creature. She had resplendent golden hair, blue orbs for eyes, and silver skin, unlike the other dark elves I had seen. She also radiated magic, and it was a color I had never seen someone radiate before. A soft pink aura surrounded her and to me, with my ability to visibly see magical auras, that made her stand out like a sore thumb.


    She was a dark-elf, I regularly inspected the Dragonstone family holdings using my powers and confirmed that much well before now. I even knew her name: Zelda. She was just... unusual.


    Jezebel and I walked for another minute or so before we were close enough to the gates leading into the one part of Aronms that was well and truly my territory that we could be approached, magically, by the gate''s guards. They greeted us with what I could only assume was typical dark-elven hospitality.


    "Halt!" A magically amplified voice shouted, speaking in a tone that revealed that this person felt they could speak with authority, and also had no idea who I was. I knew who he was though. I grinned and motioned for my companion to obey the order at the same time as I did.


    A few moments later I heard the speaker chuckle, despite the fact that the chuckle wasn''t magically amplified, as he saw us do as he commanded.


    "You are entering Dragonstone territory. Identify yourselves." The same voice said, once more magically amplified, seconds after its chuckle. Now it was my turn to chuckle.


    This was one of the moments where I enjoyed being worshiped by beings who hadn''t ever seen me physically. It made exchanges like this all the more amusing.


    "Hello, Merlin Dragonstone. I am Althos. I am quite pleased to see you taking to your job with so much enthusiasm." I told the zealous guard-caption. There was a smirk on my face as I spoke. I heard the captain fall silent for a moment. His heart skipped a beat.


    "Fuck." He whispered, a few moments after falling silent. His heart was hammering against his chest. As a member of the Dragonstone family, he was one of my worshippers. And then he spoke, using magical amplification once more, presumably for Jezebel''s sake since he knew that whoever she was she was someone I had brought with me and thus was deserving of respect.


    "Lord Althos, please come right in. And do accept my sincerest apologies. If I had known you were coming today I would have been right behind the gate to greet you myself. In fact..." The dark elf turned and leapt off of the wall, casting a spell in mid-air to slow his descent even as the gate in front of me that obstructed my path began to rise out of the way.


    I smiled as I waited for the dark elf to land and greet me in a way that he felt would be proper.

 96 An Evil Education

    While Merlin descended to the floor, another of my companions made her presence known. My companion and the first of a handful of demons to serve me, the praereptor Sombra stepped out of my shadow. She was wearing her dark-elven guise. There was a look of displeasure on her face.


    I could sense her anger, and I found it amusing. Her scowl would no doubt frighten Merlin, who was for all of his arrogance a somewhat cowardly dark-elf. The dark-elf in question began to finish descending and in a matter of seconds, he was kneeling on the floor before me just beyond the portcullis that blocked the way.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello Merlin." I muttered, greeting the captain of the guard of the Dragonstone household. The dark-elf stayed silent, in part due to Sombra'' withering glare. I chuckled at the demon''s openness when it came to her emotions, and placed a hand on her shoulder.


    She tensed up and turned to look at me. In an instant, the emotion in her gaze turned from anger at Merlin''s previously improper attitude, to frustration. I could feel it in her heart. Thanks in no small part to the perpetual connection she and I shared since she was now a witch and I was her patron.


    Her emotions and indeed many of her thoughts were known to me. They were conveyed to me in real-time by the insidious power of the pact and the brand that marked her as mine. No one could see the mark at the moment, as her bare flesh was hidden underneath the mortal clothing she wore. Mortal clothing given to us by my dark-elven cultists days ago.


    The pact that tied her to me was a powerful one. And in part because of that, she was a powerful witch. Her overall strength had risen many times over thanks to the pact and her obsessive desire to perfect her new magic.


    Merlin was no magician. The dark-elf who was now kneeling before Sombra and I was a warrior through and through. The only magic the dark-elf could use were the familiar powers over darkness that all dark-elves possessed innately, and even with that he was less skilled than the average dark-elf.


    He wore a spider-silk robe that hung loosely over his shoulders and a suit of familiar skin-tight material that protected his body from the dangers one could find in abundance in this corner of the world. He stood about two and a half meters tall and normally he had an imposing countenance though it was gone in my presence.


    The dark-elf was meekly bowing before me when I stepped past the portcullis and I kept my gaze trained on him. I let him continue to bow for a second longer before I spoke to him mentally and gave him permission to rise. The dark elf quietly got up off of his knees, and looked at my chest rather than meet my eyes.


    "Lord... I once again ask your forgiveness. I meant no disrespect earlier." He commanded, knowing full well that I was who I claimed to be. I chuckled at the dark-elf.


    "Merlin, I know no disrespect was intended." I told the warrior. I was telling the truth, and so was he. Among my other abilities was the power to detect lies, and the dark elf''s words did not out him as one who was lying to save himself.


    Merlin visibly relaxed, and he turned to greet my constant companion. "Lady Sombra, it is a pleasure as always to see you." He said, having met with my shadowy servant a handful of times over the past few days. He wasn''t lying, and indeed one could say that his delight at the sight of Sombra was a bit too heartfelt. There were some parts of him in particular that were excited to see her.


    Like a cat, Sombra hissed at her suitor and turned away from him with a prideful sneer. I chuckled at this sight and motioned for Merlin to pay her no mind. The warrior frowned, his pride hurt, but he made no moves towards her and instead meekly motioned for some of the other guards to come towards us. They started to as I began to speak again.


    "Merlin, do you know where your son might be?" I asked, curiously. Merlin heard my question and scratched his beard in puzzlement. The dark-elf had a light beard that framed and further darkened his face. He thought about the question but provided me with no audible answer.


    It was only when one of the nearby dark elves, a male that Merlin had beckoned to come to us, approached that Merlin next spoke. He tilted his head in the guard''s direction and uttered a command.


    "Boy! Go fetch my son would you? We stand in the presence of our deity." The elder dark-elf commanded, issuing his command quickly while dropping a major bombshell on the lad he had called over.


    The dark elf looked at me, his purple eyes filling with shock, before bowing and then turning to go and retrieve Merlin''s son. Merlin''s son was the same warrior who had defeated and overthrown him days ago: Drow Dragonspear.


    ________________________________________________


    In the minutes that passed since we watched the dark-elven errand-boy walk off to retrieve Drow Merlin led us past the gate, and then into the grand courtyard of the household. What awaited us beyond the portcullis was an impressive sight.


    We stood at the edge of a massive courtyard, just under two hundred meters long. It was filled with dark-elven warriors either on patrol or practicing martial drills. Each of them wore the skintight armor their kind was known for wearing, as well as identical helmets that born a distinct insignia on the side: a stylized spear that came to an end in a pool of equally stylized dragon''s blood.


    The patrols were made up of five dark-elves each. All of them had spears strapped to their backs and carried crossbows. Most of them were silent, curiously starring at myself, Jezebel who had remained silent this whole time, and Sombra. I made no motions to meet their stares and opted instead to focus on the warriors in training.


    The dark-elves that were training were openly practicing their battle skills. They sparred with one another tirelessly, using practice blades and blunt arrows for their crossbows. Their practice sessions were elaborate and the way they trained was fierce. The courtyard was filled with the sounds of their bodies and weapons striking each other. It was riveting to watch, and it marked the first time in my life I was able to watch warriors practice and train in a large group like this.


    That said, as my night was to be busy and filled with other activities I was grateful when I noticed Drow''s dot on my mini-map begin to make a beeline towards us. I turned and alerted everyone that soon my servant would be here and that we ought to be ready when he arrived.


    ________________________________________________


    When the dot finally drew in near enough that I could turn in its direction without startling my followers I did so. And in doing so I saw my worshiper, the dark-elf templar named Drow. His face brightened as he saw mine, and he did something odd for a dark-elf: he opened his arms wide and as he approached me drew in close for an embrace in lieu of a handshake.


    I chuckled and returned the gesture, pulling the dark elf in tightly with my deific strength. I heard him gasp in pained shock and then let out an unseemly chuckle a second later.


    "I did not know... How strong you were." He said breathing in sharply as a response to my actions. I chuckled and released him. He let out a breath and smiled at me.


    The dark-elf before me looked happier than any dark-elf I had ever seen. There was a life to him now that he lacked before. A purpose in his motions and relatively new energy in his gaze. I liked it. But I did not let it distract me.


    "Drow, it is good to see you again." I told the dark-elf, speaking to him with a warmness that probably surprised the others in my presence. There was a smile on my face, an expression which I liked but didn''t often make as much anymore. The realities of the weight of my powers were beginning to sink in and that took an emotional toll.


    "Master, it is good to be in your presence. Have you come here for any particular reason or are you here merely to gaze upon your people?" The dark-elf quickly asked, curiosity audible in his tone. He kept his gaze locked on me, relatively, but I saw moments wherein the orbs swiftly stared at my gathered followers in confusion and curiosity. I chuckled.


    "Yes there is. Drow I''d like to introduce you to someone." I told the dark-elf, speaking gently. After a second of thought, I considered correcting myself and saying that I''d like to introduce the head of the Dragonstones to two people, but ultimately I opted to not retract my comment. Instead, I turned and motioned towards Jezebel.


    "This is Jezebel. She is a Sobek, a powerful sort of lizard person. She''s also an evolved servant of mine." I informed the dark-elves who I had gathered. I smiled at my creation, and she nodded at the two dark elves, doing so rather politely. She was silent though, waiting for me to speak further or grant her permission to speak.


    "I have brought her here to you because I believe that you possess the best ability to mold her into an effective leader and trained warrior. She has received some of my gifts, as you have, and I want her to become a trained and able leader of my forces." I explained, hinting at what I wanted Drow to do.


    The dark elf''s eyes shot open in shock as he realized what I was saying. And then he began to grin. He wasn''t displeased by my request, nor was he off-put by it. Indeed he appeared to be quite pleased to have been asked.


    "Althos, are you saying that you want her to become a commander?" He asked, his eyebrows arched up in gleeful curiosity. I could sense his amusement and delight at that idea and nodded at him. The dark-elf began to laugh once he saw me nod.


    "Oh wow! She must be something special. That said... training her will be a bit of a challenge." He confessed, speaking truthfully to me. He looked at her and admired the armor she wore as well as her stature but also eyed her critically.


    I studied his studious gaze. His mind was a tangle of thoughts and concerns and I could imagine him doing logistical and logical calculations as he considered what to say to me next. I was surprised that the dark elf was at least somewhat considering refusing me. I was actually glad that he still had his independence and was willing to show that in a real way: attempting to reject his deity.


    The internal debate claimed his thoughts for nearly half a minute before next speaking. When he did he had considered all of the potential gains from this endeavor and was now looking to me for some help.


    "Master... this is a most unusual request. I''d like to attempt to complete it but it is not I who''d be training her." The dark-elf explained, half-heartedly. I chuckled and sensed the intentions behind the words. My worshiper was asking to be convinced of Jezebel''s value to someone who wasn''t me.


    It was a fair move and one that I respected. I mulled over how to reply to it for a moment before replying. I made it an extra challenge for myself by pushing myself to make arguments that didn''t hinge on my divinity and my own power.


    "Hmm... That''s a fair point." I said, acknowledging the need to make an argument directed towards someone else and not necessarily someone as loyal to me as Drow was.


    "Well to start off a dark-elf can''t exactly fight well underwater can they?" I asked Drow, my eyes lighting up with mirth as I thought about one of the reasons why I liked having servants like her and why I granted the inhabitants of Libertad "Aquatic freedom" days after establishing their new home.


    Drow thought about my words for a second. And then he humbly shook his head.


    "And dark-elves can''t exactly fight well on the surface, can they? At least not in the bright-light." I said, asking a question and immediately adding a quantifying statement to more correctly contextualize it.


    Drow pondered my statement for a moment before shaking his head and admitting that I was correct. My smile widened.


    "I am interested in granting my servants an evil education. And I thought that this place would be a good place to start to teach her such things." I told the dark-elf, appealing to his pride in his family. But I wasn''t done yet.


    "I wish to teach my servants the glory of the dark elves, and the majesty of my chosen house. I wish for them to lay their eyes on the property and techniques of the Dragonstones." I proclaimed, speaking mightily of the dark-elven household I found myself in.


    Drow smiled at me, and there was a boldness and mirth in his gaze that many others might have found unsettling but I knew was a sign of my victory. "Hmm... Well if you put it that way then there''s no chance any self-respecting instructor among my kin could refuse could they?" He asked me, a glimmer of amusement visible in his gaze.


    I shook my head at him, signaling my agreement with his assessment. He looked at his father, the fallen leader of the family and gestured for the guard-captain to lead Jezebel away from here. The captain looked up at the large creature and motioned for her to follow him.


    The two left without uttering a single word and I watched them walk in the direction of the actual property. Ahead of us, beyond the courtyard, stood a number of gigantic residences. They were filled with soldiers and family members and I knew that in order to accommodate my servant adjustments would need to be made. I didn''t mind that though and if it came to it I''d help using my powers.


    With the two of them gone, I looked to the family leader and motioned for us to go somewhere private. Drow''s eyebrows arched upward in curiosity, but he wordlessly began to lead us towards a door situated inside of the gate that enclosed the family''s property. It didn''t take us long to reach a quiet, solitary place from which we could speak unheard by other ears.


    ________________________________________________


    "So we have much to discuss." I said, beginning to speak as I reached and sat down on a chair. I wasn''t alone either, my two companions Sombra and Drow also found and sat in chairs.


    We were inside of a plain room meant for these sorts of clandestine meetings. There was a table in the middle of this room that was surrounded by chairs. And then aside from the table and the chairs there were a number of doors leading in and out of the narrow and low-ceiled room. It was a great place for conspiracy making.


    "We do? I''m delighted to hear that but I don''t know what all we need to tell each other." The dark-elf confessed, confused as to why he was here. He still had a pleasant expression on his face, having enjoyed our previous discussion and verbal sparring. I nodded at him, a serious expression on my face.


    "I am beginning my efforts to build an actual empire. And I plan for that empire to include Aronms. I also want for it to include the whole of this region, the world that lay underneath Puerto Rico. I will need you and your forces." I told the dark-elf, a glimmer of ambition in my eyes.


    The dark elf''s expression turned serious as he listened to me. He had a look of uncommon and intense thoughtfulness.


    "I see." He muttered, but there was a soft tone of excitement in the two words.


    "You and your family are the first of the dark-elven families to turn to me. I will not forget that." I told the dark-elf, speaking sincerely. I was grateful and excited to know that the family was mine to command. And I intended to reward the family in the days to come. Drow smiled at me as I told him that.


    "Thank you." He replied, a sincere smile on his handsome features. A silence fell between us for a moment, until Sombra interrupted the quiet moment.


    "Ugh, you''re so... sappy." She muttered, jealousy and annoyance mixing in perfect amounts in her voice. I chuckled at her, reminded by her quips of the work I needed to do. I turned back to Drow and the resting smile on my lips widened and changed, becoming a smile of pride and not happiness.


    "Drow, I''d like for you to become a general of mine. I think it is a fitting role for you." I told the dark elf, refocused on the matter at hand. Drow''s eyes widened at this remark of mine, and the look on his face told me he was thoroughly caught off guard by the idea.


    "You are a skilled warrior who has taken control of your family. You''ve converted them all into my worshipers and you are a creature of loyalty and objectivity. You proved this by being open to the idea of your family training Jezebel, and by asking me to make a real case for her." I told the distinguished warrior. I was speaking sincerely, and I knew that he could tell.


    He mulled the idea over, and I wondered what he''d say while formulating more of an argument to convince him of his worthiness for this role.


    "Granting someone status as a general affords me more strength. But I chose you because you''ve demonstrated your strength and valor in battle and in deed." I told the warrior, speaking honestly to him while also showcasing my own objectivity. He closed his eyes, and in doing so closed himself off to all distractions, and think more critically about what to say. His next words surprised me.


    "Who all would I be commanding?" He asked, his eyes still shut. I grinned, amused that the first words this mortal uttered after being offered the status of a general within a god''s military were to inquire about the status of the forces he''d be commanding.


    "Well, for now, you''d be commanding your own family as you already do. But in the days, or heck maybe even the hours to come that''ll change." I explained, teasing at some of the developments I had planned for the next few hours.


    Drow looked at me, his eyes alight with curiosity but he said nothing. He knew that I would tell him what I deemed it useful for him to know.


    "Hmm... Is this truly what you wish?" He asked, his eyes gazing boldly into mine. I could tell that he was searching for the truth. I nodded at him and readied myself to speak. I knew he wanted to hear me say the words, it was the only thing I could glean from his mind as thoughts of the desire crowded out all other thoughts.


    "Drow Dragonstone, I, Althos the god of change and chaos, wish for you to be a general in my armed forces. I trust you and I believe in your judgment. You constantly display more than just skill at battle, but also openness to new tactics and a willingness to question even those mightier than you. I desire such an even-hand to guide my forces into battle in my name." I told the dark-elf. There was a smile on my face as I said those sincere words.


    There was another moment of silence. And then the dark elf began to nod. His acceptance of my offer was known to me not just by his physical display, but also by the notification that appeared in my mind''s eye. I smiled as I felt the familiar sensation of new power welling up within me.


    The power that rushed into me was breathtaking. It was also an overwhelming sensation that filled my mind with images of blood-soaked battlefields, ruined cities, sprawling armies, and grim soldiers covered in blood, dirt, and other less pleasant substances.


    It was at this moment that my mind turned to my other allies in the city: Lilith, and the mysterious evoker Qu''Ren. Both of them were among the few allies I had made so far within the city. I was hells bent on changing that tonight. By the end of the night, I planned to have many allies within the city.


    That knowledge made me smirk. Tonight was the first night since the night my horde defeated the reptilefolk that I felt myself gaining power. And gaining power was an addictive feeling that I had come to really relish.


    Stopping myself from building my power for five whole days so that I could practice the powers I had gained had been a challenge and it was one that I was excited to be done with. I looked forward to what I''d be able to do by the end of the night. That said, I still wasn''t done with Drow.


    "Believe it or not, we still aren''t done." I told the dark-elf. He looked at me, amused now, and waited for me to inform him as to whatever I needed to say.


    I paused for a second, unsure of whether or not I should reveal one of the things that were on my mind. The truth was that I wanted to reveal my intentions to at least converse with the ancient dragon Ygaynth. I wasn''t sure if I should though.


    The dragon was a fierce and apparently incredibly ancient dragon that lived in another cavern underneath Puerto Rico. The creature was possibly responsible for the existence of this entire region, or at least that was one of the myths that the reptilefolks told about it. I had promised the reptilefolks that I would protect them from it, and I intended to keep my word, though how I did that was something I was willing to be a bit more flexible on.


    So far honesty tended to win out more often than not, and after a few seconds of internal debating, this moment proved to be no exception to that pattern. I opened my mouth and confessed one of my intentions to my new general.


    "In the days to come, I am going to speak to Ygaynth." I told Drow. I said the dragon''s name with a certain level of casualness, as one might mention a rival, but Drow''s reaction was not a casual one.


    The dark-elf fell silent and I watched the color drain from his face. He had been on the edge of his seat for a while now, but a few seconds after I spoke the dark-elf slumped back in his seat. For once he was at a loss for words. I smiled at him and nodded as if to confirm that he had correctly heard me.


    "That... Yeah that''s more or less the reaction I expected." I told the dark-elf. I was lying, and I did this partially to see how someone who wasn''t a reptilefolk would react to the name. Drow was quiet for a moment, before looking up at me and speaking.


    "So that damn monster isn''t a myth? Figures." The dark-elf complained, speaking about the dragon as if it were some mythic bogeyman. I nodded at the dark elf. It turns out that telling him was a wise move and revealed something to me: the dragon was well-known enough to inspire fear or at least loathing in creatures like dark-elves. Great.


    ________________________________________________


    [War domain details:


    The final domain of the dreaded ''Apocalypse Quadrangle'', the domain of war is a potent domain that shapes and reshapes worlds, solar systems, galaxies, and even entire universes.


    The domain of war governs battle, combat, violence, anger, and genocide. It is a brutal, ammoral domain that grants those who influence it greater power over battlefields, hearts, violence, and tactics. The domain of war cares not for why people wage war, only that they do.


    To gain greater influence over the domain of war build militaristic cults, empires, and military units loyal to you and encourage them to go out and wage war on those who are not.


    War domain passive powers:


    Anger detection: You can sense anger lurking in someone. This allows you to more effectively gauge who would be easiest to manipulate into battle or worse. This power stacks with wrath powers from the corruption subdomain.


    Anger manipulation: You can sap away at someone''s patience and cause their anger to tick up with a series of slow and subtle mental attacks. You can also focus on a target once a day and cause them to experience a wave of intense anger that makes them easy to prod into battle. This power stacks with powers from the wrath set of corruption subdomain abilities.


    Army command: You can direct armies more effectively. This power is a straight stat-boost that grants you keen insights into battlefield tactics and allows you to recognize little things quicker than you would otherwise. You can also bestow this power on someone else, provided they swear loyalty to you first.


    Class acquisition/Class granting: You gain the classes of berserker and warrior. These are the two most traditionally martially oriented classes and as such, they are invaluable for building up new armies or improving existing ones. You can also grant them to your followers.


    Death empowerment: You can bestow your soldiers with the power to feed off of the deaths they cause in battle. This power can be used to get someone addicted to battle or to murder, and both of those can start a war.


    Hate manipulation: You can use your mind to amplify the hatred that lurks in someone''s heart. This can and often does lead them to conflict with others. This power stacks with many wrath powers you''ll gain once you gain greater influence over corruption.


    Minion empowerment: This power boosts the stats of all soldiers who worship you or who would follow you into battle. It also causes them to fall under your influence.


    War detection: More enhanced than a mere domain-sense, this power actively broadcasts the details of any war taking place in the world you are on into your mind. It allows you to more readily manipulate battlefields and battles.


    War rationalization: Your attempts at justifying wars are more effective. Amplifies the effects of your charisma when it comes to discussing war.


    Auric ability: Creatures in the range of your aura who are neutral towards you or are your enemies are more likely to start a conflict.


    War domain active powers:


    War never ends: Once per day you can utilize this hour-long power. You gain the power to automatically raise any dead slain in wars as undead under your command. This power can be easily vicious if your forces are at war with someone else as it means someone has to kill your servants twice, and each death of theirs bolsters your own minions.


    Heart of war: Once per month you can make it so that any and all people killed in wars on the planet you are on have their souls absorbed by you for an entire day. This exceedingly powerful ability rewards you for fomenting wars throughout the planet you are on.


    War domain blessing and curse details:


    If you bless someone using the war domain they become a better commander and a more skilled strategist. If you curse someone using the war domain they become a worse commander and a less skilled strategist.


    Special note:


    The war domain has three enemies among the domains and subdomains. The first is the subdomain of purity''s patience powers, the second is the domain of peace, and the third is the emotion domain''s love powers.


    The domain has many allies though. It is allied with the death domain and the greed and wrath powers of the corruption subdomain.


    Domains and subdomains are complex and have relationships with each other. Navigating these relationships is a critical component of increasing your own strength as a god. As you gain more influence over the knowledge domain you''ll gain more notifications like this.


    Remember that your powers allow you to act directly or indirectly and you can take on a number of roles if you wish. The war domain is an especially handy domain for empire-building gods like yourself.


    To gain the first tier of influence over the destruction domain, destroy an object or building that is over 5,000 years old.]


    Reading through the war domain''s details were fascinating and I chuckled as I felt those new powers lurking within myself. In a city like this the power to detect and manipulate both hatred and anger caused me to feel a million jolts as my senses expanded further even in an abstract way. And that wasn''t even going into the alerts I was receiving for wars going on worldwide.


    And the quest for the destruction domain made me smile. I knew exactly what I could destroy that''d help me advance more than one goal at a time. I wasn''t even particularly far from the place.

 97 Interludes And Musings

    Nearly an hour after Sombra, Drow, and I entered the tiny room wherein I appointed him a general of my armed forces, Sombra and I found ourselves leaving the Dragonstone family property.


    As we walked past the gigantic gate that helped control foot traffic into and out of the estate I took one last, quick look at it. It was an ornate thing, and I didn''t doubt its effectiveness. I also didn''t doubt that I could destroy it if I wanted too. That said, I had my eyes on a different target.


    I turned back in the direction leading back towards the interior of the city. I found myself smirking as I thought of destroying one of the few structures in the city and maybe even the whole of Puerto Rico that would count towards fulfilling the requirement laid out by the destruction domain.


    Despite the way I felt about doing away with the dark eye-sore I wanted to eliminate, I knew that I had more important things to do right now. And as if to give me a chance to explain my intentions, Sombra looked at me and asked a question.


    "Where to now?" She asked, her eyes gleaming with curiosity and her voice still radiated annoyance. She was still a bit angry about what happened with Merlin. I knew what I planned to do at the end of the visit would please her, so I let her hold onto that anger a bit longer.


    "We are going to stop by the property of the eerie evoker Qu''Ren. Her family is a noble one, like the Dragonstones and Silverstones." I explained, having vaguely mentioned that name every once in a while but never really expanding on it until now. Sombra looked at me, intrigued by the possibility of meeting more dark-elves and then she mentioned something surprising.


    "The person we''re visiting is named Qu''Ren and she''s a noble? I know who we''re visiting!" She said, sounding amused by the thought of paying her a visit. We were walking down a mostly deserted residential street, though I sensed that eyes were everywhere.


    I glanced at my companion, curiosity now visible in my gaze, a question unspoken that I communicated to her without words. I knew a bit about Qu''Ren and her family myself, thanks to the conversations I had had with Lilith in the days since I first arrived in Aronms and forever changed her life. That said I was curious to know what Sombra knew.


    "Yeah! Her father is a conjurer. I approached him and offered to teach him how to summon demons. It wasn''t hard to get him to agree." Sombra revealed, a wicked smile on her lips as she did so. I could see the glimmer of mischief in her gaze.


    "Qu''Ren is powerful. Or she was, at one point." The demon explained. I chuckled at that, amused at the fact that the demon hadn''t picked up on the fact that the evoker had recovered from the infamous incident that made her withdraw from public life.


    "Why are we paying her a visit?" Sombra asked, curiosity coloring her voice. I smiled at her and didn''t answer the question.


    ________________________________________________


    Reaching the familial holdings of Qu''Ren''s family, the Darkstars took us about half an hour. We could have reached the place faster but I didn''t want to get used to always using my powers and I didn''t want to spoil my pet demon. That said since I hadn''t ever laid eyes on the property I was a bit surprised when I first saw it in the distance.


    What laid before my demon and I was an unimpressive house. It wasn''t even a particularly big house. It was made out of obsidian, and I could tell that it would withstand any sort of blow by most creatures with less physical or magical strength than myself.


    Sombra and I kept walking until we made it all the way to the front door. It was a large thing, more than capable of accomodating our unimposing frames. I knocked on it and then waited a moment before someone, a dark-elf, on the other side opened it and looked at us.


    "Who are you?" The dark-elf asked. His words were blunt and direct but his tone wasn''t curt. He was genuinely asking us for our identities. My current form was that of a dark-elf, and Sombra''s default form was that I crafted for her.


    "Hello, I am Althos. Qu''Ren told me that if I came here and told you my name you''d know it." I explained, smiling pleasantly at the guard. The guard was still for a moment, his surface thoughts revealing that he was attempting to recall where he had heard my name before and what to do if I came by. After a moment he smiled pleasantly at me and beckoned me inside.


    Sombra and I stepped beside and then past him and walked into what was, somewhat oddly, a house with a single massive chamber.


    Before us was a gigantic and plain room. It was utterly undecorated, and the only defining feature was a stairwell at the end of the room that went straight down. Annoyingly, now that I was inside of the room I could detect a thick atmosphere of alteration magic. I hadn''t been able to detect it from the outside though.


    "Lord Althos," The guard said, causing me to turn around briefly. The expression on his face betrayed that he now fully remembered who I was. He was beaming at me.


    "When you get to the bottom of the stairs, tell the guards that you are Qu''Ren''s most honored guest. They''ll take you to her." The guard told me. I nodded and thanked him for his help. And then I turned around and Sombra and I set off for our destination: the interior of the Darkstar home.


    ________________________________________________


    Minutes after I initially discovered the clandestine brothel I approached it by myself. I had teleported my ursine companion away, back to one of his favorite locations: a newly opened bar in the small town of Oscuridad, the settlement built near my town, so that I could more efficiently explore the place I was visiting.


    As I approached the entrance to the brothel I quietly activated one of my new abilities: "Aura of normalcy". This convenient power made people see me as though I belonged anywhere I went, allowing me to wander and enter all manner of situations with ease.


    The entrance to the brothel was a tiny door guarded by a pair of young men. The young men were actually behind me, and they were placed in such a way that they might intervene whenever someone uninvited entered the door I was walking towards.


    I had actually learned of the precise location of the door thanks to them. Their surface thoughts were focused on the door and they were dutifully doing their duty. I almost felt bad for them since I was able to walk past them so easily.


    I reached the door, undisturbed by anyone. I walked through it, unnoticed and unfollowed by anyone who may have found my powers odd if I hadn''t used my trickery powers with ease.


    On the other side of the door laid a staircase. I sighed and began to walk up it. Fortunately, it was only a single flight and so it took me less than a minute to reach the top. What greeted me was a fancy, empty parlor.


    ________________________________________________


    While my projections were out and about enacting my will, my true form lounged under the sea. I sat casually along the sandy seabed in my human form and occupied myself by controlling my projections.


    It wasn''t especially taxing to control the all-too-real copies of myself that were currently wandering throughout Puerto Rico. I actually enjoyed it. I was able to enjoy the comforts of an aquatic existence while gaining power and deepening my relationships with my followers who weren''t aquatic themselves and make them feel as though I was right beside them.


    This wasn''t the first time I had done this either. I started this practice yesterday, and now I was more comfortable with it thanks to my particular set of powers like my speed-of-light reflexes and my ability to disincorporate myself. That helped my projections stay undisturbed and be able to engage with the world around them safely.


    And because of that, I was able to quietly gain access to two more subdomains: the Bovidae and Suidae subdomains. I did that by quietly healing a pig close to Comillas and creating food in front of a cow that wasn''t far from San-Gerardo. The notification that I received as a consequence of that action was delightful.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual subdomain details:


    The Bovidae and Suidae subdomains are animal subdomains. They are subdomains that are likely to be especially interesting to you since they govern pigs and cows, animals that humanoids have domesticated and now use as livestock.


    Both pigs and cows also have another interesting component to them: they evolve into especially aggressive and dangerous humanoids. Pigs evolve into orcs, and cows evolve into minotaurs. By gaining influence over these subdomains you can eventually become a true god of orcs and minotaurs.


    These are conventional animal subdomains and you can gain further influence over them in the conventional ways you gain influence over other subdomains.


    Dual subdomain passive powers:


    Agricultural creation: This is a synergistic power intersecting agriculture, life, and these subdomains. It creates a shortcut that lets you automatically and easily create pigs and cows. You can use this to reward farmers loyal to you or to more easily create more intriguing creatures by creating numbers of orcs or minotaurs with just a few minutes.


    Mastery: You gain total control over unawakened or unevolved cows and pigs who become aware of you. You can awaken them freely, or allow them to evolve into their other, more dangerous and skilled forms.


    Material generation: You can generate foods and other materials made from these animals at will, as well as other substances produced from them such as skin or blood. This means that you can now use your abilities to create food to create something other than fruits or vegetables.


    This power is also synergistic. It intersects agriculture and the dual subdomains you just acquired influence over.


    This also means that you can create the rough materials needed to make armor, and bones that can be shaped into weapons or undead creatures you control.


    Dual subdomain active power:


    Forced transformation: You can forcibly transform someone into a cow or pig three times per six-hour period.


    Dual subdomain blessing and curse details:


    These subdomains, at this tier of influence and your current overall divine strength, when used to bless someone increases a person''s natural defenses and makes them stronger. When used to curse someone they sap strength, make the person more suggestible, and make them lazier.]

 98 Curiosity And Dark Elves

    Whenever I allowed myself a moment to be introspective my thoughts went to dozens of places at once. I suspected this was due to the absurd nature of the powers I possessed.


    One of the strangest things to happen to me over the course of my life was my mind gradually... expanding. And not just in the mortal sense, wherein I''d grow more and more aware of the world over time.


    With each domain or subdomain, I earned influence over I felt my mind grow in an almost literal sense. This sensation was present in the days before I activated my domain-sense, but my choice to permanently activate that ability absolutely kicked it into overdrive.


    Having earned influence over domains like life, death, war, and agriculture, I was receiving trillions of notifications per second. It was an incredible sensation, especially because it didn''t actually interfere with my ability to get by on a minute to minute to basis. At first, it was almost frightening but now I actively enjoyed it.


    Another factor that made it feel as though my mind was perpetually active was my choice to listen for prayers. I only rarely intervened, but I listened for prayers and obliged the requests from time to time if I felt that my intervention was truly warranted. Still, the state of being open to prayers flipped a part of my mind and caused me to be cognizant of the prayers of all manner of lifeforms throughout the universe.


    From time to time I wondered how much of my ability to operate given the... enormous stress my mind must have been under was due to the powers of the mind domain. I even considered asking the thing from time to time but ultimately opted to wait and see how my mind reacted to new stimuli whenever I came across unfamiliar things. And that encouraged my routine, in so far as the daily shenanigans I got up too counted as a routine.


    Each day I went on quests and helped out the people of Comillas, as well as interacted with my worshipers. During the day my behavior wasn''t unlike that of a powerful, driven mortal. By making use of the impressively diverse abilities I had acquired over the course of my very brief life I had earned the trust of many of Comillas residents, and I had made life safer and healthier for them.


    Each night I had visited the dreams of people all over this world and nearby worlds. To date, replying to dreams and prayers were the only ways I engaged with the other worlds throughout this universe. I knew I could change that, if I wanted too, but a part of me felt nervous about it.


    I wasn''t entirely sure what made me feel so nervous all things considered, but I knew that what I felt was real. I took it seriously, and it was part of why I hadn''t really tried to leave the world yet. I hadn''t even really flown all that much either.


    ________________________________________________


    Even though I was seated in the ocean, in my aquatic temple, my mind could see and perceive everything around me for kilometers in every direction. Or at least, most things. My senses weren''t perfect, but they were close to perfect.


    Puerto Rico''s surface was dark. Night had fallen over the surface of the island, and the only things illuminating the sky were bright stars and a beautiful full moon. Small light sources here and there provided additional illumination, such as torches and a small bonfire that had been lit on the beach that connected Libertad to the bay that my temple was located on.


    My temple felt lonely, as even though I was a known inhabitant of the strange place my followers were mammals and they preferred the surface to the sea. I was alone, aside from nearby fish and the occasional clam.


    As a way to kill time and entertain myself while underwater I occasionally targeted fish for touch and experimentation. I did so via my mental abilities, reaching out to them with telekinesis and even did other less overt things like feeding the fish or clams and healed them. Another thing I did was play with the weather.


    I had grown fond of using my elemental abilities in tiny ways. The first time I saw rain in my life had been a few days ago when I manipulated my weather abilities to summon and command a weak storm over the sea beyond my temple. Yesterday I made it rain over San Gerardo.


    Today had been a temperate day and a clear one in Puerto Rico, and an overcast one in the region of Iredale that my minions controlled. That was mostly because I allowed it to be since at any time I could alter the weather.


    ________________________________________________


    "So what kinds of weather could I create right now? Could I create all the naturally occurring types of weather in this world?" I asked the domain of nature, curious as to what all I could do. I sensed the interest of the domain itself flare-up in my mind as the domain inspected my abilities and domains. And then I heard a soft chuckle.


    "Wow... You can actually!. That''s amazing! I can''t believe you gained this power so early..." The domain remarked.


    The awe in the domain''s voice made me happy and I felt quite pleased with the array of powers I had earned over the course of my life. The grin on my face that sprang about as a result of the domain''s shock wasn''t aimed at anyone in particular and was more a result of me expressing my satisfaction with that news.


    There was a part of me that wanted to begin to experiment with this power more actively. I recognized that this power gave me the ability to exert a lot of influence over mortals, as the weather I could create wasn''t limited to gentle weather.


    "So I could create tsunamis and firestorms too?" I asked, rhetorically. This power further cemented my status as one of if not the greatest creatures in this world. The weather I could create was in some cases dictated only by what I could imagine thanks to the nature of my powers.


    "I really do need to experiment with this power." I muttered, well-aware of this power''s potential to easily earn me worshipers. It was one of a handful of powers that I could use to reward or punish people.


    "So why isn''t the nature domain part of the ''Apocalypse quadrangle''?" I asked the system when I realized how easily this domain and its weather manipulation abilities could be used to annihilate a planet''s population.


    The voice that answered me wasn''t that of the system, but rather that of the knowledge domain.


    "Hmm... That''s an interesting perspective! I suspect it''s mostly because of the three domains and one subdomain in the quadrangle were ones with an active interest in life. The nature domain isn''t especially interested in life, and what interests it has aren''t hostile to life. That is not the case with the domains and subdomain in the quadrangle." The domain remarked.


    I considered that perspective for a moment, before realizing something strange. "Are you telling me the subdomain of agriculture is hostile to life?" I asked, finding the thought a bit much to wrap my mind around. I heard a chuckle, right before a new voice spoke.


    "Well... It''s a bit more complex than that. You see I was once the subdomain of famine. But mortals didn''t like that." The voice remarked, sounding a bit annoyed. I chuckled, able to infer from the way it spoke that it was the subdomain of agriculture, and had at one point been the subdomain of famine.


    "Mortals can influence gods as well as domains and subdomains. That''s a part of the reason why some subdomains don''t like them." The subdomain of agriculture explained, but not expanding on which subdomains weren''t fans of them. That said, I could imagine at least two that weren''t.


    "And by the way... Actually use my abilities!" The subdomain said, annoying and apparently feeling that I was neglecting it. I chuckled at this remark and quickly promised to do so.


    And then I turned my mind in another direction and sent a message to a particularly powerful domain and a fascinating subdomain.


    "So... Can either of you help me understand how to make use of my enhancement abilities?" I asked, curiously. I heard an annoyed sigh from a familiar voice, and then an excited gasp from a new voice.


    "Oh hello Althos!" The new voice said, greeting me excitedly. So far I hadn''t really made use of my alteration abilities, but I had one question that could cause me to change that.


    "I can absolutely help with that. I''d love too in fact!" The alteration subdomain, its voice like that of an excited child, remarked. I grinned, a question on my mind.


    "So... I have an idea. An idea I quite like. As you know I possess power over the elements and I obviously have your enhancement ability. I was wondering if I could create something that would allow me to mix the two." I said to the excitable subdomain. It fell silent, and I could sense that it was waiting for more information. I chuckled again, impressed by its ability to calm itself.


    "So a weakness I''m concerned about is that my tremorsense or my... elemental sense now, I guess, is tied to my current physical location. Well... aside from with regards to holy sites, but right now those are only volcanoes. And frankly, this is a major weakness of what is otherwise a truly excellent power. And it''s one of the reasons why I''m hesitant to leave Puerto Rico." I explained to the subdomain.


    I had confirmed this myself by testing the limits of the ability during trips to other parts of Puerto Rico. The power''s range was gigantic but tying it to my physical location made it tricky to use skillfully, especially once I inevitably left Puerto Rico. I wanted to prepare myself for that day and viewed this problem as one of the things I needed to overcome before I did so.


    "What I want is something that''d let me overcome this weakness. I want the ability to make permanent beacons that''d allow my elemental sense power to inform me of movement in an area no matter where in the universe I happen to be." I explained to the subdomain, determined to see if my conundrum had an answer. The subdomain was quick to reply.


    "Oh is that all? Yeah, you can definitely do that." The subdomain told me, almost laughing as it did so.


    "All you need to do is grab the object you want to enhance, and infuse it with your power which is a purely mental process. And then you can leave the staff wherever you want it to be." The subdomain explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And it wasn''t done talking either.


    "''Enhance'' is a powerful and critical ability of mine that lets you reshape the world using the domains and subdomains you can influence. Many gods were born possessing it as their innate school of magic because it is one of the schools of magic that is most useful for the gods. And it''s precise;y because of ''Enhance''." The subdomain casually explained.


    "If you wanted too you could go ahead, make a whole bunch of the... ''Beacons'' was what you called them right? Yeah, beacons. You could make a whole bunch of those and deposit them all over the world. Do you mind if I give you a recommendation?" The subdomain told me, and then asked me something with a smile audible in its voice. I mentally nodded, transmitting the sensation to it.


    "Something you could do is bestow a bunch of effects on the beacons. Positive ones that your followers would clamor to have for themselves. And then you could give them to your servants and tell them to plant the rods at the center of their communities." The subdomain suggested. There was something mischievous about that, that I genuinely liked.


    "So it''s that easy huh?" I asked, as I used my power over the earth to will a stone-staff into being next to me. I mentally reached out and brought the thing close to me using my mental powers.


    I didn''t bother to examine the stone staff, instead, I just targeted it and then activated "Enhance". I chuckled as I felt the stone begin to vibrate excitedly.


    "Now what to do with you..." I muttered, smiling as I wondered how to most effectively make use of this staff. I mentally envisioned my "Elemental sense" power latching onto the staff and was delighted when I felt the staff receive the power.


    I was mostly silent as I considered what to do with this staff. I had three options: I could give the staff to Rachel and in doing so learn a lot about the kingdom of Atlantis. I also knew that I could give to Drow and thus forever be aware of what was going on in Puerto Rico. Or I could send the staff across the sea to Iredale and thus be better equipped to explore that continent.


    Part of why I wanted to consider this now was so that I could create a personalized staff for each region and the peoples that lived in it. Or a personalized beacon that wasn''t a stone staff. If I was thoughtful here I could create beacons with intelligent enhancements that not only increase how aware I was of the world, but also grant me more worshipers.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep underneath the already subterranean city of Aronms, Sombra and I were seated across from a dark-elf and her personal body-guard. The two of them studied us, as carefully as we studied them.


    One of them was dressed in something I had only seen one other dark-elf wear: metal armor. He was a powerful-looking creature, who held an imposing war hammer as easily as any of my worshipers could hold a stick.


    The other dark-elf was a woman. She wore a diaphanous dress that clung to her incredibly wafer-thin skin. She was possibly supernaturally thin. She was smiling at me and was genuinely excited to meet me. Her bodyguard wasn''t. He scowled at me, and I grinned at him which only made matters worse.


    "It''s nice to finally meet you Qu''Ren." I told her, grinning at the dark-elf who I had healed days ago. Her grin only widened as I spoke. I felt her excitement, and I could tell that she had probably been beginning to doubt that I was real. I was happy to prove my existence and to be here sitting in front of her.

 99 Echoes And Mysteries

    The dark elf stared at me, awe visible in her eyes. I could tell she was appreciative of the fact that her sight had been returned to her. The pride I felt as we stared at each other wasn''t small at all.


    Qu''Ren had once been a blind dark-elf, something quite rare for her species. The quest to gain influence over the domain of light had been to restore sight to the blind. She was one of the blind people whose sight I had restored.


    I only later learned the reason behind her blindness: she had evidently made a mistake when casting an evocation spell and evidently her spell backfired as a result.


    After restoring her sight she had apparently asked the system for information about whoever it was that was responsible for healing her. The system informed her about me, and she prayed to me sometime later.


    In that prayer, she asked me to come and meet her some time at her family''s property. Minutes ago I arrived in her familial home and was promptly escorted to where we were now.


    We were pleasantly seated around a table, and the moment was quite nice. It felt like I was being treated like royalty, or at least like nobility. It was a bit unusual, but frankly, I could get used to it.


    ________________________________________________


    "It''s so nice to meet you Althos!" Qu''Ren said, speaking emphatically. If not for my powers to detect lies I''d have thought she was being insincere or polite. Her attitude differed from that of the other dark-elves I had met, and even those of her species who worshipped me.


    I studied her for a moment, eyeing her cautiously. She noticed and the grin that was on her face only widened. On the other hand, her bodyguard''s scowl also widened. I could hear his muscles tensing, and his knuckles whitened from the strain of his grip on his weapon.


    "Is there anything I could provide for you? Some refreshments perhaps?" Qu''Ren asked, in her thus far perpetually bubbly way. I smiled at her and shook my head to decline her offer before turning to look at Sombra.


    "Would you like anything?" I asked. My shadowy assistant was seated to my left. Sombra looked at me and then at Qu''Ren and wordlessly declined the offer. She did so with a surprisingly polite gesture and with a smile on her face.


    Her presence intrigued Qu''Ren, and one of the first things that the dark-elven evoker had done when my minion had shown up beside me was question the praereptor. Sombra had remained silent though and thus far had shown more interest in studying the dark elf than permitting herself to be studied.


    Qu''Ren wasn''t deterred for a few moments, but eventually she did give up. That said, I didn''t blame Sombra for being interested in the odd evoker, Qu''Ren was fascinating. Her friendliness was so unusual for members of her kind and Sombra''s interest only amplified my own since my demonic pet told me she knew the dark elf before today.


    "Well... If you''re sure." Qu''Ren said to us, giving us a funny look. I chuckled and considered what to say for a few moments before beginning to converse with the dark elf.


    "So Qu''Ren... Why don''t you tell us about yourself?" I asked though I considered for a moment merely using my powers on the mortal.


    I ultimately decided against that, preferring to see what would happen if I let this moment play out naturally and without the usage of my godly powers. Qu''Ren considered my question for the amount of time it took her heart to beat, before beginning to speak.


    "Hmm... Okay, where do I begin? I know you''re young... Very young as far as I know, so I honestly don''t know what you know." She asked, looking at me with an amused smirk on her face. I chuckled at her, appreciative of her candor.


    "Well, if you feel comfortable discussing the day you lost your vision, I''d love to hear about that." I asked, hoping that I hadn''t said something that made her feel uncomfortable. She chuckled at my recommendation and locked eyes with me.


    "You''re very direct aren''t you?" She asked a cocky smirk on her lips. I laughed audibly at her statement before replying.


    "I didn''t mean to be. I apologize if I asked you something delicate. It wasn''t my intention." I replied, grinning at her. She shook her head at me to indicate that she wasn''t offended before speaking up.


    "You didn''t. I have no problem explaining what happened the day I went blind." She told me, speaking casually and easily before her eyes began to mist over as she reminisced about the past.


    "A few months ago a demon came to my family. This demon taught us what it knew about conjuration magic. The thing was actually an excellent teacher! And some of our family... Well, they took to conjuration a bit too well." She explained.


    I had to work to contain my shock when she implied that a demon was indirectly responsible for her misfortune. I was able to do so, but not before sending an annoyed mental message to Sombra. It seemed that the playful praereptor demon had had her fill of mischief and inflicting misfortune before I came and twisted her mind into its present state.


    "My family is filled with ambitious people. It makes sense that the spiteful creature chose us. We had fun summoning demons and using them to act as enforcers. Until the tiny asshole who taught us turned on us." She told me, beginning to frown a bit.


    "The little shit liked watching us suffer. We had mistakenly summoned something that was more than we could handle under the assumption that it would work for us." Qu''Ren explained. Sombra turned her head, pretending to cough, but I turned and saw her smiling.


    "Demonic conjuring circles are finicky things. All it takes is for one part of it to be adjusted slightly and the magic that makes them actually bind demons to someone is weakened." Qu''Ren told me, revealing something that I immediately stored away in my mind.


    "The spiteful shadow demon adjusted the circle slightly, using its innate mastery over darkness to do so without us noticing. In doing so it allowed the final demon we summoned to run amuck. I was there when the creature the demon was summoned. Incidentally the praereptor demon... wasn''t. It had left the day before." Qu''Ren said, anger twisting her facial features into a cruel grimace.


    "The battle against the demon was long. Nearly three hours long in fact. Many of my relatives died. Others... survived. They are currently locked away, for their own safety." Qu''Ren told me, and I had to suppress a grin.


    Mortals who survived being attacked by demons contracted a vicious disease. A magical one. I could cure it, but if I wanted too I could also take advantage of this opportunity.


    "Towards the end of the battle, when our side was beginning to lose more ground to the demon I stepped in. I was actually a major player in defeating the demon!" Qu''Ren explained, her eyes alight with pride as she said that.


    "I hit the demon with a flurry of magical spells. I helped put it on the ropes. But evocation magic is tricky. All it took was one moment where I wasn''t focused and the spell I was using turned on me. And exploded in my hand. I was blown out of the room the fight was going on in and knocked unconscious." Qu''Ren explained, a frown pulling her lips down.


    "When I woke up I couldn''t see. That was months ago. And then one day that changed. All of a sudden, I could see. All of sudden, seemingly from nowhere, my sight was back. For months I couldn''t see at all and then all at once I could. You gave me back my sight. And what''s more is that you didn''t ask me for anything. You didn''t bargain with me, you just gave me what I lost." Qu''Ren told me, turning and looking intently at me.


    Her eyes were quite literally luminous at that moment. Light was pouring out of them, casting a warm glow on the air between us and thus illuminating what was otherwise a nearly utterly dark chamber.


    "Althos... I don''t know if I can ever repay you for the act of kindness you showed me that day. It''s just so odd. Kindness is suspicion inducing to dark elves. I don''t know how many of us you know, but we are not a species that is known for kindness." Qu''Ren revealed, while speaking reverentially to me.


    Sombra looked at the dark-elf, and then her bodyguard. There was an odd expression on her face. It took me a moment to identify it. Sombra was suspicious. The demon couldn''t believe what she was hearing. I grinned at my minion, curious as to what was on her mind. And so I took a look using my powers. When I activated my powers to peek into Sombra''s head I was suddenly and momentarily overwhelmed by something. A vision.


    ________________________________________________


    I was suddenly and instantaneously hurled out of my body and into something less distinct. One moment I was seated in the chamber with Sombra, Qu''Ren, and the dark elf''s surly bodyguard, and in the next, I was in the same chamber but a version of it that no longer existed.


    I found myself standing at the edge of the room, unseen and unnoticed by its occupants. Darkness surrounded me, and I could see a large number of dark-elves, around fifteen, encircling a monster the likes of which I had never seen. Everything around me had an incompleteness to it, a sort of visible brokenness that made it clear that this was an imperfect recollection of whatever I was about to see.


    That wasn''t the only change either. In the present there was a large table that separated myself and Sombra from Qu''Ren and her bodyguard. In this memory that table was gone.


    The creature was standing in the middle of a large circle made of a dark substance, and at a glance, I could tell that it was standing on top of a more advanced circle than the one that was located in my temple in the lair of the reptilefolks I had conquered.


    The monster, a demon of some sort, growled at the dark elves who had brought it to this dimension. Its voice was supernaturally low, and seemed to rumble throughout the room as if coming from everywhere at once.


    It had two pairs of serpentlike eyes but its body was anything but serpentlike. It had a thick, blocklike body made of dark-blue muscle and possessed three sets of muscular arms. Each of its eyes locked onto a separate dark-elf, and though the thing wasn''t moving its eyes were dancing around, working to stay locked onto a separate target.


    I recognized three of the dark-elves in the room. Each of the members of Qu''Ren''s family I had met so far was in the room working to contain the demon. The guard I met earlier, and Qu''Ren''s bodyguard were close to the monster, while Qu''Ren lingered by the entrance she and I had taken to walk into this room.


    None of the demon''s eyes were focused on Qu''Ren, though that changed when the dark-elf rose her hands in the direction of the demon and suddenly hurled a pair of flaming spears at the thing. It rose its treetrunk like arms to block the spells but I still distinctly heard the monster roar in pain when the spears connected with it.


    The instant after the creature rose its arms and prevented the spears from reaching its chest, the other dark elves dashed in close and slashed at the beast. This time the beast''s wails were more distinct, and I even saw its blood begin to drip from the wounds the elves inflicted on it. But even though the monster was bleeding and in pain, there was a macabre, possibly masochistic grin on its face.


    That was when I heard the sound of the first droplet of blood hitting the floor underneath the beast. And that was the moment of its triumph. The creature made eye contact with Qu''Ren, all of its eyes locking in on her in an instant. The beast dashed forward, allowing the spears of the dark-elves to cut the beast more deeply, while running towards Qu''Ren.


    The thing was like an out-of-control wagon, unstoppable and terrifying. It was almost upon Qu''Ren when she frantically began to prepare another spell. In Sombra''s memories, I was unable to actually see auras but I could tell by the look of frantic concentration and fear on Qu''Ren''s face as the monster rose a heavy fist to strike that she was weaving magic together.


    Her back was to the door, which was closed shut. It was an odd construction made out of some sort of thick fungal matter.


    Sombra focused on it for reasons I didn''t know, and when Qu''Ren''s magic exploded I was able to watch her unconscious form be shot back through the door by the force of her own spellcasting. The unconscious spell-caster hit the floor and the shouts of some of her dark-elven allies filled Sombra''s ears and therefore mine since I was relieving Sombra''s memories.


    The unconscious Qu''Ren''s arms were covered in wicked black burn marks that hadn''t been visible before. Some of her hair had fallen out too. That struck me as mildly amusing because the Qu''Ren I was conversing with was bald. She had a smooth, almost egg-shaped head.


    The dark-elf who now seemed to be Qu''Ren''s bodyguard paid chillingly little mind to his fallen companion. He actually had a grin on his face, and it had first appeared on his lips when Qu''Ren''s magic failed and sent her sailing from some sort of internal explosion. He was still present in the moment though and his eyes never strayed from the demon in front of him.


    The last thing I heard before everything turned hazy and indistinct was the sound of Sombra giggling evilly at the carnage unfolding before her.


    ________________________________________________


    In an instant, I was returned to the present. I once more found myself seated in front of Qu''Ren and her questionably devoted fellow dark-elf. He had remained silent this whole time and had only scowled at me and Sombra.


    "Hmm... So Qu''Ren''s condition wasn''t of concern to the dark-elf at her side?" I asked myself, intrigued by that. That said, I knew that this wasn''t the time to do much more than quietly scan the dark elf''s mind. I did so without any particular movement, and chuckled when I sensed his impatience and suspicion.


    "Why won''t this asshole get out of here?" The dark elf wondered, his impatience mounting more and more with each second we spent together.


    "Does Qu''Ren really believe this guy is a god? I know her mind hasn''t been the same since that day but still..." He thought, anger mixing with impatience. It seemed that Qu''Ren''s belief in my divinity wasn''t shared. That wasn''t exactly shocking, but it was annoying how rude the dark elf was about it.


    I took advantage of the silent moment to question the mind domain about what had happened just now. I worded my question politely.


    "Hello, so I just saw memories. That''s kind of new. I mean... I think I saw memories? I''m honestly unsure. Can you explain to me what''s going on?" I asked, curiously. I transmitted my question instantly, before getting an unbelievably speedy response.


    "Well Althos, you''re a growing god! When a god gets old enough his body starts to undergo... some changes." The mind domain told me, clearly joking. It let its bad joke hang in the air for a few seconds before sending me a real explanation.


    "No reaction? Jeez, tough crowd. What''s actually happening is that your powers are expanding and the sheer intensity of Sombra''s thoughts allowed you to experience a moment from her perspective. The... What did the dark elf call her? A ''little asshole''? Yeah, that sounds right, the little asshole must have been in the room, incorporeally, and watched the confrontation." The domain explained, and I sensed the amused grin in its voice.


    "But that''s enough about me. Althos, it''s your turn. Tell me and my husband all about you." Qu''Ren suddenly exclaimed, leaning forward in her seat. The dark-elven spellcaster was gazing at me expectantly. My eyes widened, and for a moment I considered how honest I ought to be.


    I momentarily debated actually making use of my powers over lies, and unbelievably it was actually tempting. I figured I could actually have fun making up something, and seeing how believable it was.

 100 Transformations

    Qu''Ren looked at me expectantly. I could see curiosity and excitement visible in her gaze. I smiled at her and began to speak.


    "Well, as you know I''m a young god. I aspire to be a deity of everything. To be... The deity I suppose." I revealed, smiling gently at the dark elf and her body-guard. Qu''Ren looked at me happily, evidently excited by my ambition even though the way I spoke wasn''t very ambitious sounding.


    I glanced at and targeted her body-guard and without a word activated my "Secret detection" power. An instant later I received a notification, the contents of which I truly wasn''t expecting.


    [The targeted dark-elf was a woman at birth. She is now suffering from a cruel curse that transformed her into a male dark-elf. Her birth name was Zelda Moonstone, and the name she gave herself when she became a male was Behemoth Shatterstone. Only one dark-elf knows the truth and even Zelda doesn''t know that. Zelda desires a chance to be freed of her curse.]


    I read through the contents of the notification and grinned. I figured I''d give Zelda a nice scare, and immediately established a link that tied our minds together.


    "Hello, Zelda." I wrote, chuckling audibly as I transmitted the message to her. The dark elf bodyguard''s eyes shot open and she made eye-contact with me. Sombra noticed this and tensed up, ready to intervene but I reached out under the table and placed a hand gently on her lap. I mentally wrote out another message while readying myself to speak more. I had things to say after all.


    "Calm yourself. You stand in the presence of a creature who can save you. I am a god of healing and of the truth. I can overcome the curse that''s affecting you in an instant." I revealed, smiling at both of the dark elves, but at Zelda especially.


    "As a god, I gain power primarily through two separate means." I began, opting to reveal bits and pieces of the truth to the two dark elves.


    "I increase in overall strength by gaining worshipers. Though that method is... Well, it''s less efficient than the other method." I told my audience.


    "The other method gods gain power by is earning ''influence'' over things called ''domains'' and ''subdomains''. ''Influence'' is how much power you have over a ''domain'' or ''subdomain'' and ''domains'' and ''subdomains'' are concepts that gods can influence." I told the audience of creatures before me. This was new information to all of them, and I noticed Sombra paying special attention to my words.


    "I go to new places seeking three things. I seek to gain worshipers and I seek opportunities to earn either increased influence over domains and subdomains I can already influence or chances to be able to influence domains and subdomains I can''t already influence." I revealed, smiling as I did so.


    "What can you already influence?" Asked ''Behemoth'', and ''his'' decision to speak up caused Qu''Ren to look over her shoulder at the dark elf and smile. I looked at the dark elf and my expression took on a pensive quality.


    "Well... I can influence light and darkness. I can influence biology. A few different schools of magic, including evocation and healing. And many more things." I told the dark elf, making direct and confident eye-contact. Obviously I was also writing out a mental message.


    "If I healed you, what would you be willing to give me in return? What is the truth, your truth, worth to you?" I mentally asked the dark elf. I wasn''t going to ask a high price or anything, but I wanted Zelda to be the one who started thinking about what the chance to live her truth was worth to her.


    "I am a deity of transformations, change, and the truth. Through me, all will come to embrace their desires and to be who they truly are. No more masks. No more deceptions." I told "Behemoth", making purposeful and intense eye-contact with the dark elf.


    Qu''Ren was delighted by that idea and began to laugh happily. I turned to her and grinned. And then she turned to her husband and asked a simple question.


    "Well honey? Aren''t you going to ask for Althos to remove your curse?" The dark elven evoker asked, the question sounding innocent enough but revealing a lot and implying sinister things. I looked at Qu''Ren, and Zelda looked at Qu''Ren. Though our gazes were tinged with different emotions.


    Mine was tinged with curiosity. Zelda''s was tinged with rage. The dark elf jumped back, her leap carrying her a good distance. It was an impressive display of athleticism, though the context behind it wasn''t great. And Zelda pointed a fist at Qu''Ren shortly before beginning to shout at her wife.


    ________________________________________________


    "What are you talking about? How... How did you know about that?" Zelda asked, her masculine voice colored with suspicion and rage.


    Qu''Ren had a look of innocent confusion on her face. She seemed genuinely puzzled by her husband''s outburst. Sombra was watching all of this delightedly and was positively engrossed in it.


    "Honey, of course, I knew about your curse. I''m a high-level spell-caster did you think that I was only capable of using magic to blow things up?" The evoker asked, a look of something close to hurt pride making itself visible in her gaze. This revelation only served to further hurt Zelda, albeit unintentionally.


    "You knew... How long have you known?" The dark elf asked, rage gaining more and more prominence in her eyes. I watched this and readied myself to intervene. I could feel Zelda''s rage beginning to bubble over. An eruption was bound to happen.


    "I''ve known for years. I thought eventually you''d tell me but you never did. I don''t know why you never told me... It didn''t make much sense to me that you never did." Qu''Ren admitted.


    Zelda heard this and paused. And then she began to laugh. That was when the dark elf''s muscles tensed and even mid-laugh she was able to hurl herself at her wife. I chuckled and focused. And everything slowed down.


    ________________________________________________


    Zelda slowed to a crawl, and I got up out of my seat and walked over to her. She was still moving, but I was moving at a speed that was impossible for her to perceive. A speed beyond her reflexes.


    I merely walked in front of her and then relaxed enough for my perception of time to speed ever so slightly up. I waited until the dark elf noticed me in front of her, and I punched her in the gut. Her health took a massive hit and she crumpled to the floor.


    I looked at her mangled and bleeding form and sighed. And began to heal her. I did so by quietly channeling healing energy into her guts.


    Her bloodied form immediately began to recover. I could sense her lifeform growing stronger as she received healing. All it took since I was as strong as I was when it came to healing, was a few seconds of effort for the dark-elf to recover.


    When I was done with that, I looked at her and broke the curse. I did so by activating my innate ability to shatter curses. Undoing the curse should have felt exciting to me, this was the first curse I''d ever broken, but the truth was I felt inconvenienced by the whole thing.


    I felt inconvenienced by it, even as I received a notification alerting me that I had earned the first tier of influence over a new subdomain. Apparently "Gender" had its own subdomain, and the subdomain liked the way I handled this situation. Even that wasn''t enough to leave me feeling satisfied. I could tell I still had more work to do.


    Before Qu''Ren''s, Sombra''s, and my eyes, the dark elf I had knocked unconscious began to change. "His" features softened and became her features. Zelda''s. I watched for a few moments as her body took on a more feminine appearance and as some of her anatomy changed, before diving into her unconscious mind.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself standing in the middle of a vast plane made entirely of darkness. I had to wonder what was going on just for a second before the domain of dreams snapped at me abruptly.


    "Zelda isn''t dreaming! You''re in her unconscious mind. The only reason you can be here at all is because you healed her." The domain told me, evidently as annoyed about this as I was about this whole scenario.


    "We''re retrieving her right now, but your expanding powers are... really annoying." The domain told me, suggesting it was performing a minor intervention of its own to aid me.


    In an instant Zelda, in her true form, was uncouthly thrown in front of me. I chuckled as the woman landed on her face, and then was still for a few moments, before picking herself up off the floor.


    "You!" She hissed, as soon as she saw me. She looked at me intently, rage in her gaze, before she suddenly paused and thought about something.


    "Wait a second... My voice. My voice!" She said, experiencing shock and confusion in equal measure. I grinned at her and gave her the time she needed to process what was going on. Nearly a minute of dream-time passed before she pieced it together. When she next made eye-contact with me there were confused tears gathering in her eyes.


    "Althos... Is this something that''ll fade when I wake up?" She asked me, her voice soft and filled with both fear and hope. I smiled at her and shook my head.


    "I''ve made you, you again. I broke the curse that was cast on you. And before you ask, the person who cast the curse died some time ago. Before I break curses I get notifications about the type and the caster. Yours was intense enough that even the caster dying didn''t undo it." I explained to the unconscious dark-elf.


    Her face fell when she learned that she couldn''t kill the caster of the curse herself. She was silent, and I could tell that she was debating what to say next.


    She was, in her own way, probably going through some sort of grief. That was when she looked up at me and had a determined expression on her face.


    "You know... I can''t forgive Qu''Ren." She told me, her face filled with angry determination. I sighed and looked at her.


    "Why not?" I asked, annoyed with her emotions. I felt as though she was being childish all things considered.


    "Because she lied to me!" The dark elf angrily declared. I gave her a single sharp look, one filled with anger. It caught her off-guard and I felt fear flow out of her for a moment.


    "What do you mean she lied to you? You were the one who didn''t tell her about your curse!" I replied, keenly aware of the difference between Qu''Ren uncovering the fact that her husband was cursed, and Zelda explaining her condition to Qu''Ren. I felt a swelling of dark anger emanate from the elf.


    "Listen, Qu''Ren was in all likelihood looking for a way to help you break your curse. When I healed her she wanted me to come here. She prayed to me, asking me to come. Don''t you find it strange how she looked to you and asked you to talk about your curse?" I pointed out, annoyed that the elf couldn''t put two and two together.


    This remark caused the dark elf to pause. A look of puzzlement flashed across her face, and I saw her finally beginning to piece together the obvious.


    "You were so angered by the fact that your wife didn''t force you to reveal everything to her until something could be done about it that you attacked your wife. Think about that for a second." I told the dark-elf, fed up with her childishness.


    A look that mixed embarrassment with frustration flashed across her features.


    "When you awaken, ask her about this. Just so you can hear it from her." I told the dark elf. And then I turned around and willed myself out of Zelda''s mind. As I did so I felt a familiar rush: the rush I felt whenever I earned a new worshiper. The notification I received documenting the gender subdomain also widened. I chuckled as I realized why.


    ________________________________________________


    "When Zelda awakens, which she will, she and you will have to have a conversation. I was able to calm her down though." I explained to Qu''Ren, the second the part of me that entered Zelda''s unconscious mind returned to the rest of me. Qu''Ren smiled at me, happiness pouring out of her.


    I studied her for a second before asking her a curious question. "So... is your marriage to her over? Because Zelda''s Zelda and not Behemoth." I asked, legitimately curious as to what was going to happen to the two of them. Qu''Ren laughed when I finished speaking.


    "No silly! Our marriage will be fine. Unless... ''Zelda'' wants to separate? In that case we''ll have to cross that bridge when we get to it. But I want to stay married. It''s not like I love her or anything, but it''s a convenient marriage. Separating wouldn''t be convenient." Qu''Ren explained, dismissing anything like "Love" with startling ease. She looked at me and then laughed. My shock at her comment must have been visible to her.


    "Oh Althos, are you from the surface or something? Dark elves don''t marry for love. We marry either for power or for convenience. I like power but my arrangement with Zelda, I didn''t know that was her real name, by the way, is one of convenience. For both of us. Zelda no longer being Behemoth doesn''t change that." Qu''Ren told me, revealing a lot at once.


    I considered her words and chuckled. All of the married couples I knew were surface-dwelling couples. I even knew some married former slaves. All of them had married for love.


    "I don''t care for love. Zelda is pretty. ''Behemoth'' was handsome. I can slake my lusts with either form." Qu''Ren told me, speaking oddly dismissively about this whole thing. I mulled over her words and considered what to say next before opting to hint at the true power of the gods.


    "Well... If Zelda wants to split and you still want someone... I can create Behemoth." I told my companion. And for the first time aside from when I came to her in the first place a few minutes ago I got to see Qu''Ren be truly surprised. Her eyes widened and I could tell she wanted an explanation.


    "Okay fine, you''re practically begging for more information. I''ve never seen someone do that with their eyes before..." I muttered.


    "I am a god of enchantments, souls, and life. By mixing those things together I can create life. I mean I can create life in other ways too, but I can absolutely give you a ''Behemoth'' that can be your husband if Zelda wants to end your marriage." I told the dark-elf, and in doing so revealing a way that gods were extraordinary and world-changing beings.


    Qu''Ren gazed at me, newfound awe and respect in her eyes. I chuckled at that. She couldn''t even speak, she was that stunned by the awe-inspiring powers I could use. I felt her emotions radiating off of her, and grinned as I absorbed them into myself.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dual domain and subdomain details:


    Your method of acquiring influence over this domain and subdomain was unusual but that''s not your fault. Your handling of a delicate situation was enough that these two entities felt you earned your influence over them.


    Personally, I feel as though you have earned your influence over the domain of peace, not so much for the subdomain of gender and sexuality, but their choices are their own.


    The domain of peace and the subdomain of gender and sexuality have awarded you their first tiers of influence. You''re also the first deity to ever earn influence over this pair in a single series of events.


    The domain of peace governs peace, tolerance, and absences from conflicts both big and small. It is an exceedingly powerful domain, especially for a deity as relatively non-violent as you.


    The subdomain of gender and sexuality is the actual subdomain that governs sex, sexual desire, and the components of charisma that relate to physical attractiveness, sexuality, and attraction. It is also the subdomain that governs gender and the physical component of someone''s sex.


    It is a subdomain of the biology domain. It does not govern love. Love is governed by the emotion domain. Beauty is also not governed by this, beauty is governed by the art subdomain.


    These are both conventional and to gain increased influence over them use their powers and build cults that worship you in ways that incorporate them. These powers also bounce well off of each other and a single cult could easily worship you in ways that incorporate both sets of your new abilities.


    Special note:


    Many of these powers are either direct or indirect upgrades to powers you already possess. This is because this domain and subdomain are effectively either a more generalized version of something you already have powers over, in the case of the virtue you have powers over and the domain or a more specialized version of something, in the case of the vice you have powers over and the subdomain.


    Dual-domain and subdomain passive powers:


    Attraction mastery: Your powers over lust, the mind, and sexuality have granted you the ability to detect the sexual attraction a creature feels and manipulate it. You can increase it, decrease it, or even transfer it to someone else. You cannot transfer it to someone the creature cannot be attracted too.


    Attractivity: Your form adopts subtle shifts that maximize how attractive people who can be attracted to you find you. Some of these are subjective, such as how you smell, while others are less subjective. For example: in your base human form your hair will begin to silver, making you a ''Silver fox''.


    Aphrodisiac creation: This is a synergistic power mixing your powers over lust, biology, and alchemical with your powers over sexuality. It allows you to create foods, drinks, vapors, and drugs that stimulate sexual desire. This power turns your bodily fluids into aphrodisiacs unless you will it otherwise.


    Beauty manipulation: You can modify how conventionally attractive someone else is for their species.


    Bliss inducement: You can cause someone to experience bliss. By making them experience bliss they lose all desires to harm others and instead are filled with a desire to share the bliss they feel. This is a mind-affecting power but it works on the living and the undead. Not on extraplanars though.


    Blissful creatures worship you as their source of bliss and obey your commands unless they involve harming someone else in anything other than self-defense.


    Bloodlust dismissal: You can reduce the amount of bloodlust a creature feels. You cannot do away with it entirely, but you can reduce it and make it easier for a target to be talked out of committing violent acts.


    Dream manipulation: Even without walking into a dream yourself you can now cause sleeping creatures of any kind, even those whose dreams you can''t walk into, to experience sexual dreams.


    Gender and sex transformation: If the target is willing you can cause someone''s gender and sex to change. This transformation is permanent unless you undo it and not only swaps someone''s sex, but it also causes them to be truly perceived by others as the other gender.


    Hormone mastery: You can increase or decrease the hormones in someone''s body. Hormones do a wide range of things, and this power is a synergistic one stemming from your influence over biology and sexuality.


    Enhanced allure: This togglable power causes you to exude an aura of sexuality that rouses desire in others. Even creatures not attracted to you that are capable of sexual attraction feel enhanced desires in your presence, though those desires are not aimed at you.


    Kiss: Your kisses can now cause a number of effects on targets. They can cause them to fall asleep, be filled with an urge to commit violence, to cease violence acts committed in front of them, inflict pain on themselves, pleasure themselves, and a number of other things.


    Non-violence: You can hit a creature with a curse that makes them less effective at violence, reducing their effectiveness in battle and also making it more amenable to efforts to end violence.


    Peace aura: Creatures who want to fight in your presence must resist an incredible urge to cease violence. It can be overcome, but it is difficult to overcome especially if you apply other status effects on targets.


    Pheromone mastery: You can create pheromones, and will them to have a variety of effects on those who smell them. Pheromones are exuded by the body and affect other living things.


    Pleasure manipulation: This grants you the ability to induce pleasure in someone and to manipulate it as you see fit. Too much pleasure can cause other effects.


    Sexual soothing: You can cause creatures to be healed by performing sexual acts. This power can also be applied to areas, creating zones in which creatures who have sex are healed.


    Sexuality detection: You can determine someone''s sexuality at a glance.


    Siren''s song: You can unleash a sound that causes creatures who could be attracted to you to temporarily lose themselves unless they possess indomitable wills and be filled with a desire to be close to you. This power can be excellent for crowd-control.


    Violence detection: Creatures in combat and acts of violence are automatically detected by you.


    Dual-domain and subdomain active powers:


    Lust manipulation: You can manipulate the amount of lust someone feels. This allows you to make them more suggestible and can be also be used to enhance the effects of the mental conditions you can inflict on someone. This can be used three times per hour.


    Peaceful persuasion: You can speak to someone and prevent a violent clash before it happens. Synergistic power fusing the domains of enchantment, peace, purity, and the mind. This power can be used once a day.


    Unholy radiance: Once per week you can transform yourself into a vision of handsomeness and sexuality so potent that it overwhelms anyone who sees it. Doing so causes anyone who beholds you to worship you as an embodiment of divine sexuality. This power is also moderately mind-breaking. This power lasts for an hour.


    Blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the peace domain you make them twice as likely to engage in peaceful behavior or end violent conflicts peacefully. By cursing them with it you doom their attempts to cause peace altogether.


    By blessing someone with the sexuality subdomain you increase their attractiveness, and you increase their sexual stamina. By cursing them with it you doom their efforts to have sex with others by lessening their attractiveness to anyone they''re attracted too and tearing apart their sexual stamina.


    Second special note:


    Now you can bless or curse someone''s charisma in a way that actually affects their physical appearance.]


    ________________________________________________


    The notification alerting me to the new powers I had gained made me feel conflicted. Many of these new powers were astoundingly powerful, and I felt that I could use them in legitimately amazing ways.


    I felt their power within me. I could tell by the way that Sombra was looking at me that my physical changes were significant. But these powers, at least the sexuality ones, were corruptive and felt... wrong.


    That said, I already knew how I''d test them. These new powers, all of them really, gave me incredible tools with which I could easily free the slaves who were stuck in the Ardor family''s property. They deserved to be free, and I enjoyed knowing that I''d be taking these powers for a test run.


    I quietly bid Qu''Ren farewell and departed from her family''s property minutes later. It was time for me to pay the Ardors a visit. And for me to make good on my promise to free the enslaved peoples of Aronms.


    Every step I took filled me with a quiet determination. There was a smile on my face as I began to approach the massive property owned by the one family I was ardently opposed too. I was ready for whatever came next.

 101 Face To Face

    A female dark elf quietly and piously knelt in front of her homemade shrine. She was kneeling in her personal chambers and was quietly attempting to quiet the loud voices in her mind. The object she was devotedly praying too could have been interpreted as a sign of her broken mind or as an accurate representation of the formless, lightless god she devoted herself too.


    A small, square block of obsidian was placed on top of a small table, and that was the object to which Milene Ardor was quietly praying. That said it wasn''t what she was worshipping.


    She was an Althonian, but one whose mind was brutally claimed by her master in a move meant to weaken her family. It had worked, and the days since Milene''s mind had been attacked and claimed by her master had been the easiest days the Ardor family''s slaves could remember.


    Not once had their vicious daughter used them for experiments or made their work harder, indeed she had even started to punish her family members who slaked their bloodthirst on the slaves. None of them knew why, as the dark elf hadn''t explained her new religion to them, but they were grateful for the reprieve.


    The rest of her family, at least the leadership of it, hated Althos. Althos hadn''t shown a single member of the family kindness, indeed he had actively brutalized them. Not only did he make them sick, but he also made them suffer persistent nightmares. The deity had even walked into some of their dreams and watched their suffering.


    Only Milene had been spared the cruelties of restless sleep and constant nightmares. And she was the only member of her family who would have liked to have them. She would have enjoyed knowing her suffering amusing her master.


    The dark-elf, a relatively young member of her species, was on her knees. Words of love and piety escaped her lips, and her mind was filled with thoughts of devotion to her master. She was so focused on her prayers that she didn''t even sense her master warping into her chambers.


    ________________________________________________


    In an instant, I went from walking through the streets of Aronms to standing inside of Milene''s personal chambers. I was alone, or rather I had been when I teleported.


    My last order to Sombra had been to go to my tower and construct a demonic conjuring circle on the top floor. I planned to go ahead and gain the first tier of influence over conjuration magic when I was done here.


    In front of me, Milene was kneeling and facing something odd: a small, square block of obsidian. I was keenly aware that she was praying, and I could physically hear her utterances of love and devotion. I silently walked over to the obsidian and grabbed it. When I did, Milene fell silent.


    I turned and looked at her. She was staring back at me, and there was an odd look in her eyes. The emotion that emanated from her pitch-black, appropriately obsidian-like, eyes was one that mixed love, devotion, and hope. It was the first time I had ever seen such emotion in a dark elf''s eyes, though whenever I stared into Drow''s eyes I could see vaguely similar emotions. Milene''s eyes were locked onto my form and her lips trembled as she began to ask me a question.


    "Are you... Are you Althos?" She asked, awe filling her voice as she did so. I chuckled and nodded at her. Tears began to fill and then stream down her large eyes. I turned and then targeted the block of obsidian.


    I had long ago mastered my ability to use an unlimited form of telekinesis. I targeted the block of obsidian and lifted it into the air and silently brought it over to me. It was a roughly hewn and treated block, and it wasn''t magical in any particular way. After studying it for a few moments I turned to my servant and began to question her.


    "Were you praying to this block?" I asked, mostly rhetorically. I was trying to wrap my mind around it. It was an odd action and one that frankly made no sense to me. Milene nodded at me, her eyes lighting up with excitement even as tears continued to roll down them.


    "Yes I was! I didn''t know what you looked like... I still don''t know what you look like." She explained and then wisely added. I chuckled and mentally conceded that that was a good point.


    "I don''t have a true form. The old gods did, but I don''t. Not by choice, mind you. I came to life lacking one." I explained, grinning at the dark elf. She looked at me sympathetically, and I laughed at the expression on her face.


    "I don''t particularly want one. Not having a true form isn''t a weakness. It''s certainly odd, but it''s far from a weakness." I told the dark-elf. I could tell she was waiting for me to expand on that after a few moments went by when she didn''t make any remarks. I sighed and then went ahead and did so.


    "Not having a true form makes it easier for me to expand my church." I told the dark-elf, satisfied with that explanation. She mulled over my words for a few moments before nodding and smiling in understanding.


    I locked eyes with her and then readied myself. I wanted to go ahead and get to work. There was a lot to do after all.


    "Come Milene. It is time that we set out to enact my will." I told the dark-elf, entering into the proper, proud state of mind that I knew would serve me best in this situation. My dark elf servant''s eyes widened and then she smiled eagerly at me. She nodded and got up.


    "Yes Althos! What is your will?" She asked, her eyes wide as she considered my words.


    "My will is that slavery is wrong, and we will free the slaves. But first I must speak with your family. Could you gather them in a single place for me? Your siblings, your parents, and your cousins." I explained, giving my servant one of the first direct and specific orders I had ever given her.


    She looked at me, a look of amusing determination on her face, and nodded. And then she walked out of her room and into a hallway just beyond it. I made myself invisible with but a thought and then set out to watch my servant at work.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later, thirteen people were gathered in the bedroom of one pair of the heads of the Ardor family. The two couples who ruled over the family lived in two bedrooms on other sides of the familial, palatial estate.


    Eleven of the thirteen people who had gathered in the bedroom were visibly diseased. Even though anyone who looked at them could tell that they had once been beautiful or handsome members of their species, they were now covered in grotesque sores, had pus seeping down their faces.


    Their sores and scars looked painful, but for some reason, the members of the family felt better than they had in days. They had obediently gathered and were now waiting for what Milene had to say.


    Milene was one of the middle children, but her cruelty and knowledge made them treat her with respect. They were all hoping that she brought them news about how to defeat their foe, Althos, or how to at least heal themselves of the nightmares and sicknesses he had heaped onto them.


    Althos himself was one of the people who was in the room. He lurked silently and invisibly in a corner of the room, undetected by anyone but Milene. He nodded at her, mentally transmitting that it was time for her to begin to talk. She received her instructions and began to obey them immediately.


    ________________________________________________


    "I know how we can be rid of our enemy and of the conditions that are weakening all of us." Milene said, speaking abruptly and powerfully. She looked out at her family members, who merely looked back at her, clearly confused.


    "We must surrender to our foe." Milene told her family members. She was expecting jeers and cries labeling her a traitor or a coward. None came. This actually surprised her. Instead, she only received one question.


    "Milene... Are you certain that surrender would grant us a reprieve?" Asked Dianos, one of the two patriarchs of the family. He looked at her, uncertainly, and I could tell that he wanted mercy but he was too proud to do anything that wasn''t a guaranteed success. Milene looked at me, and I smiled and nodded. And then she spoke again.


    "Yes I am. Though... I suspect that our enemy will have... demands for us to fulfill." Milene said, uncertainty creeping into her voice as she said so. I chuckled and winked at the dark elf.


    "Our enemy is not without mercy, and he has no real desire to hurt us. He... wanted us to know that we are weak in comparison to him. That''s it." Milene explained. There was a frustrated look on her face as she said that. I could tell she didn''t really believe it, though she was doing her best to make it believable.


    "Althos... Has specific desires. And he''s here to communicate them." Milene revealed. I sighed, and stepped out of the corner of the room. I made myself visible and walked to Milene''s side.


    At last, I found myself face to face with the leadership of the Ardor family. I smiled pleasantly as I wove myself a new form.

 102 Power And Pride

    Eleven dark elves watched in stunned, disturbed silence, as a figure appeared as if out of nowhere behind them and walked until it was next to one of their own family members. The figure was an entity composed entirely of shadows, and it was silent.


    The powerful creature activated a number of its abilities as it came to a stop. One of the most prominent of the powers it activated was one of its newest: "Banishment of lies", a potent power that made it impossible for creatures in its presence to lie. It also activated an assortment of auric abilities to truly set the stage for the confrontation it had waited for, for nearly a week.


    The shadowy, vaguely-humanoid shape was a totally dark silhouette and its appearance was enough of a distraction that when a thin blue vapor appeared out of the floor of the bed-chamber they were in none of them noticed. But when the entity suddenly bathed the room in radiant light, the dark-elven family did notice.


    They had to shield their eyes to prevent the sudden illumination from temporarily blinding them. Once their eyes adjusted to the light, they moved their hands away from their faces and laid their eyes on the god responsible for their diseased suffering and for the explosion of illumination that now kept their room mildly illuminated.


    While it was bathing in the sudden burst of light, the figure responsible for the abrupt illumination had smoothly taken on a new appearance. It went from a dark-elven sized silhouette to a disguise inspired by actual dark elves. Unlike in the past when the strange god had taken on an appearance that was an enlarged version of Drow Dragonstone this new form it took on was a wholly original one.


    The god took on the appearance of a male dark elf, one with purple skin. He constructed an original face for himself by mixing and matching the facial features of his worshipers from the Dragonstone family. He did this in an instant, having grown familiar with weaving together disguises and forms over the course of the days he spent practicing his powers and abstaining from acquiring new ones.


    He clothed himself in pants made of silk-like darkness and allowed his muscular upper body to be free from the confines of clothing. He was an unfairly attractive dark-elf, thanks in part to his decision to attempt to use his powers to achieve his goals without violence. He radiated strength, charisma, and power, and his aura was one of peace and intrigue.


    "Hello. I''ve waited for this meeting... Well, I''ve waited for it longer than I''ve ever waited for anything in my life. Have you enjoyed the small sampling of my power that I''ve provided you?" He asked, his voice an eerie baritone. There was a sinister smile on his lips as he spoke.


    His eyes were void-like orbs that radiated no heat, making them appear even darker when peered at by the dark-elves who could see shades of heat as clearly as they could see light. The god was greeted with silence, as none of the dark elves dared reply to him. He chuckled and with the same ease as he inflicted the diseases that had plagued the family for days he undid them, as a gesture of something akin to good-will.


    In an instant, the sores that had covered their once beautiful and handsome forms and the pus that made them grossly slick disappeared. This left the assorted familial elders and their children feeling better than they had in days. The chamber was filled with the sounds of dark-elves sighing in relief, thankful for the mercy the eerie god had just shown them.


    "We have much to discuss. And I suppose it''ll be better for everyone involved in all of you are at your best as we discuss our... shared futures." The god told them, speaking freely and boldly. His sinister smile had never once left his lips.


    ________________________________________________


    I undid the plagues and poxes I had inflicted on the once beautiful family in an instant. Their emotions flared up and their hearts raced as they felt the weight, pain, and discomfort they had endured for days leave their bodies. They immediately regained their former beauty and handsomeness, and before me now stood a gathering of darkly and evilly sensual creatures.


    "This was fun. If I do again... I''d be wise to make it worse for my victims." I thought as the emotions of my victims rushed into me. I felt their hearts react to both my presence and my powers. Their reactions were complete since they were in the space of my "Religious fervor" power and my "Unfettered divinity" ability.


    These two powers together bathed this room in light. Even a human''s eyes would have been comfortable in the light that bathed this room. It wasn''t harsh by any means, but it was vibrant enough for a casual viewer without heat-oriented vision to be able to see me, and the family of dark elves I was hells-bent on making my servants.


    "I have come to secure the freedom of the slaves you have abused for untold centuries. I will put an end to this abhorrent practice. But I am not here to make an enemy of you. If you would wisely obey me I will instead make you more powerful than you have ever been." I proclaimed to the gathered dark-elves.


    They looked at me skeptically and even hatefully. I chuckled at them, understanding their bitterness and the complex emotions they were feeling. I had made myself an unstoppable foe of theirs, one who hurt them from a distance and who made them feel powerless for days, and now I was offering them both peace and power.


    That said, the family refused to speak unkindly to me, instead contenting themselves with their glares and skepticism. I allowed silence to fill the air for a minute, before speaking once more. As I did so, I recalled the day I met Lilith Silverstone.


    "I was once told that dark-elves value ''power, pleasure, and pride''. I have come here to offer you and your family new means to acquire all three of those things." I told the dark elves, a cruel glimmer sparkling in my eyes as I spoke. This intrigued the dark-elves, a few of whom looked at me with renewed interest and emotions more nuanced than hatred or fear. I smirked at them.


    "I have not come to deprive you of power, friends. I have come to persuade you to pursue a new means to greatness." I told the gathered creatures. Their interest did not wane, and so I opted to dive right in.


    "I am a god of undeath and necromancy. Among many other things. I would like to propose a deal with you. One that I believe fairly compensates you for what you will lose in peacefully liberating the people you have long considered your property." I explained, a smile on my face as I did so.


    "For every slave you free, and you will free them all, I will give you control over two tireless undead. The undead are far more efficient laborers than the living and far more cost-effective. I will give them enough intelligence to obey any of your commands, and I will take pains to ensure that they can serve you as laborers as well as additional guards." I explained, pausing for a moment to feign catching a breath. I did this mostly to give the family a chance to absorb the offer I was making.


    "In addition to that, you all will become my worshipers. And in doing so I shall grant you society-wide power. You will enter into an alliance with the Dragonstone family, gaining the prestige that comes with being allied with the best-armed noble family in the city." I added and in doing so revealed that the Dragonstones were among my servants.


    I stopped talking and smiled patiently at the family. They took to this news, especially the bit about the Dragonstone family, somberly. They lost a bit of their bravado and bluster, and the hate that once filled with their gazes was replaced with a cautious, almost respectful, fear.


    The Dragonstones, not just Drow but his entire family, were well-known as a largely apolitical family interested exclusively in warfare and battle, not the machinations of the local nobility. The fact that I could truthfully call them my servants signaled at the depths of my power and added weight to my overall bargaining position.


    The dark-elves turned to look at each other and I could see the shifting emotions in their cautious and steely stares. Milene, still beside me, looked at me and whispered something as quietly as she possibly could.


    "Althos... They are communicating mentally. Our family is one of the last remaining bloodlines in the city that possesses that power. Even now they are frantically whispering to each other about what to do." The traitorous dark-elf, who happened to be betraying her family to me, muttered. I smiled at her, genuinely surprised by the revelation that her family possessed telepathic abilities.


    I established a mental-link that tied her and I together and then spoke to her through it.


    "Thank you for sharing that secret. You have done well." I informed her, causing the dark-elf to smile eagerly at me. She visibly relaxed and transmitted a message to me.


    "The men are in favor of your deal. The women are not. It''s an even split along gendered lines." She told me, revealing the contents of their discussion with great eagerness. I appreciated her sharing that with me. That did make me curious about something though.


    "If you all can speak mentally, why did you communicate out loud just now? When you were introducing me?" I asked my one faithful servant. She was mentally silent for a moment before answering.


    "I do not know the depths of your powers. I did not wish to assume you could hear me if I spoke mentally to my family." She revealed a gentle grin on her dazzling features. I chuckled, appreciating both her decision and her candor.


    "And my family has long kept our ability to speak to each other mentally a secret. We have a family... tradition of replying audibly if one of us speaks out loud. In the distant past, we did it as a defense mechanism, but now our defense mechanism is reverting to our inaudible language, and speaking aloud is the default. Times have changed." Milene mused, seeming to find some sort of comfort in speaking with me mentally. I grinned. And then I readied myself to speak aloud some more.


    "I know that you are chatting amongst yourselves." I said to the dark elves, revealing my newly gained knowledge of their defense tactic to keep their thoughts and impressions a secret. This caused them to turn as one at me and stare at me in primal terror. I was delighted to realize that they must not have heard Milene explain their familial gift to me.


    "My offer is a generous one, my friends. I offer you power at no cost to yourselves, a chance to increase your prestige in the city, and increased access to pleasures accessible only to the wealthy. I am also willing to give you more if you would but surrender yourselves to me and free those you mistakenly consider your property." I told the dark-elves, speaking soothingly to them.


    "Why should we, a people of darkness and cruelty worship a god of goodness and freedom?" Asked one of the dark elves. She was a sibling of Milene, and she stared furiously at me. I chuckled and looked her in the eyes.


    "Do you truly believe me to be a god of goodness and freedom? I am, by my own admission a god of undeath and necromancy. Are those good things to you?" I asked the outspoken elf. She kept her gaze locked on mine and spoke with a steely tone.


    "In my eyes, you are at most a god of disease, light, and liberation. Your opposition to us is based on our practice of slavery, and you possess... powers over light and disease. I admit you are a god, I find... stating otherwise impossible. That said, I see no evidence that you are a god of necromancy." She said, practically spitting the words at me. I chuckled, as she made a simple but good point.


    I stretched a hand out to my right and closed my eyes. As darkness enfolded me, a familiar view came to dominate my mind''s eye: the not-so-mini-map. I studied it for a moment and then targeted all of the corpses situated throughout the family''s holdings.


    There were only a few corpses in the area worth targeting. Whatever the family did with the corpses it inevitably acquired was unknown to me at the moment though I could wager a few gruesome guesses. That said, I effortlessly created a number of motes of unlife energy that at my command would infuse corpses and bestow them with an unholy, unlife.


    I paused for a moment to consider what to do with the corpses. I knew that I was targeting dark elves, and more than that I was targeting dark elven relatives of the family whom I was courting. That meant that I ought to show them the elegant nobility undeath offered by bestowing their relatives with the classiest forms of undeath possible. That really only left me with a single option.


    ________________________________________________


    Houses throughout the city of Aronms tended to contain two levels. One of the levels was customarily built within the unyielding earth and stone of the cavern that housed the city rather than atop it. This subterranean part of a familial home was typically where the dead were stored. And this tradition was common among both the nobility and the common dark-elf. It was also upheld by the nobility of the Ardor family.


    Three corpses, ancient dark-elven corpses to be exact, were laid to rest within ornate sarcophagi within the crypt that was itself located in the lower level of the estate owned by the Ardor family. Invisible motes of potent unlife energy descended into the luxurious crypt that housed these once-mighty dark-elves.


    These motes were undeterred by physical obstacles. They had sunken through the floor beneath their creator with eerie, supernatural ease and ethereally inched closer and closer to their destination: the dark-elven corpses. When they reached the corpses they were created to animate, they did so in a flash of motion and activity.


    The corpses they infested and reinvigorated slowly began to reanimate. The dark-elven corpses were still and stiff as the energy the motes were made of began to circulate through them.


    Normally this process took a number of days. And normally it was a significantly painful one for those who were returning from the dead. This time though the creature who was orchestrating the process was a god. This afforded the privileged dark-elves who were defeating death, years, and even centuries after their deaths, a painless and speedy reprieve.


    In a matter of moments, the three corpses moved as one. The first thing that they, the ancient and almost forgotten leaders of a family with a history spanning hundreds of centuries, did was open their eyes.


    Their eyes were no longer the colorless orbs of living dark-elves. Instead, their eyes were vivid, colorful orbs, orbs the color of the fluid they thirsted for: blood. And then they slowly and carefully moved their arms. They were delicately testing their muscles. The almost pitiable creatures were confused and needed a few moments to orient themselves but even in such a state they were wise and were quickly adjusting to the bizarre reality of their new unlives.


    All three of them remained entombed within ancient and richly decorated sarcophagi. When they possessed their wits, something even the youngest of them hadn''t possessed in centuries, they began to act beyond the strange reflexes they had been imbued with.


    Their first order of business was to escape from their lavish coffins. And to do so, all they needed to do was move their powerful arms and push away the lids of their coffins. Which they did a minute after they were reanimated. The three ancient dark-elves then proceeded to push themselves out of their laying positions and take stock of their surroundings.


    It was at that moment that the dark crypt that stored their corpses lit up. A scarlet portal had been created by the same entity that reanimated the corpses and was waiting for the trio of noble undead to step through it.


    An otherworldly voice whispered into the minds of the newly reanimated dark-elves and informed them of the purpose of the portal. This news, caused the trio of ancient leaders to smile. And then, as if controlled by a singular puppet master, the trio stepped out of their coffins and walked into the portal.


    The ancient Ardors stepped through the portal and in doing so were smoothly teleported from their crypt to a place that reeked of the unclean stenches of the living. Their abrupt appearance in the crowded bedroom that temporarily housed Althos and the living heads of the Ardor family elicited gasps of shock, terror, and delight from the occupants of the room.


    Althos, their reanimator, looked at them and smiled. They smiled back. The god had reanimated them from a distance, and while doing so made them into unusually sinister and intelligent undead.


    Althos looked back at the same dark-elf who had spoken out of turn before. He spoke haughtily at that moment.


    "Does my ability to reanimate your long-dead ancestors from a distance and create a magical portal that brings them to us sufficiently prove my powers? Or need I do other... crueler things to prove I am all I say I am and more?" The god asked, a playful smile on his lips.


    His creations turned to their descendants and smiled. Their grins revealed their elongated canine teeth, a feature that was one stereotypically thought to be possessed by all vampires, and one that all three of Althos'' newest minions now possessed.


    The living members of the Ardor family turned from staring at their newly reanimated ancestors, to stare at Althos. He was looking at them with a look that clearly communicated that he was aware that this was his victory. But he didn''t rub it anymore. Instead, he spoke with focus and ambition.


    "Imagine... The power to overcome death. To live forever." He told them, his eyes sparkling with pride and ambition.


    "Come. Serve me. Surrender yourselves to me and never spend another moment afraid of mortality." He whispered, his voice taking on a singularly seductive tone, but not a sensually seductive tone. A corruptively seductive one.


    While he spoke he felt the emotions of living dark-elves surge into him as his powers brought more hearts to his worship. This brought a new, and dark grin to his face.


    As a way to demonstrate his powers and his goodwill, the living god targeted all of the living dark-elves in his presence and bestowed upon them the necromancer class. As one they closed their eyes and shuddered in delight as they felt dark new powers seep into their souls, sinful magic staining their already stained innermost essences.

 103 Worship And Freedom

    Whenever a creature began to worship me I experienced a sensation that I was growing more and more accustomed to. I felt a rush of alien emotions that surged into my heart.


    This odd sensation was addicting and more than that it was unique, subtly different each time. This was true even now, even though I had billions of worshipers. Every single time I gained a worshiper I felt the sensation once more. It was even better when I gained more than one worshiper at a time.


    The Ardor family, a clan of noble dark-elven slavers, were in the process of submitting to me. And each of them that did so, that devoted their hearts to me, I felt a great and potent surge of dark power seep into my soul.


    This sinister feeling delighted me and made me feel the strange sensation of my sins crawling on my back. I liked it. I felt my own power growing thanks to these recent events.


    ________________________________________________


    The living dark-elves knelt before me. In the moments since they saw their reanimated ancestors, they all dropped to their knees in front of me. I hadn''t spoken since I told them to surrender themselves to me. And my words were effective.


    I studied them and smiled. Their hearts were mine, gripped in a mixture of ambition and fear, and they recognized that I was basically the embodiment of power. They themselves were powerful creatures, but compared to me their power was nothing.


    I then studied the newly reanimated dark-elves. They were three elves, all of whom were males. They were wickedly handsome, and the powers that reanimated them only accentuated their handsomeness.


    They had muscular bodies and faces that looked to be chiseled from assorted dark metals by divine artisans. Their scarlet eyes were charming and I could sense the hypnotic power they possessed. I was also able to sense the thirst they radiated. I knew that if I unleashed these vampires freely, I''d be tacitly ordering a bloodbath. The knowledge of the weapon I had acquired in the form of the vampires made me chuckle.


    "You all are to form a new order in my name. One that devotes itself first and foremost to me. And whose second devotion is to necromancy." I told the assembled elves, living and dead alike.


    "In exchange for your loyal worship and service, I shall protect you from your enemies and I shall allow the remainder of your mortal lives to be filled with prosperity and decadence. And upon your deaths, I will return you to this world as mighty undead beings." I told the dark-elves. I looked at the vampiric dark-elves who were openly looking at me.


    "I am a generous god. I can and will give your family a new avenue to wealth. I possess power over metals, and I would like to establish a mine below your familial crypt. I understand that such a wish might be seen as... disrespectful, but I have a reason for wanting this." I explained, looking at my newest minions.


    The three of them gave me amused looks, and waited for me to explain. I chuckled at them.


    "Establishing a mine below the familial crypt, though it may feel... disrespectful, is actually a really wise move. None of the family members who''d be buried in the crypt will ever need it moving forward, but also this means that stealing from it will be virtually impossible. Since any thieves would have to escape your beautiful home with whatever loot they could carry." I explained, a smug grin on my face.


    This explanation caused my minions and worshipers to also cruelly smile. I sensed that they could keenly sense the wisdom in my words, however disrespectful they might have seemed.


    "I can create skeletons to mine the metals in the mine and we can create a vault underneath another part of the estate. And since I can manipulate metals I can generate a literally unlimited amount of precious metals for you to use however you see fit." I explained.


    I felt keen gratefulness to one of the most significant upgrades I had gotten when I first gained access to the quest to become a minor elemental overlord. By that day''s end, I gained the ability to manipulate and generate metals. It was an altogether incredible power, one that I have yet to truly abuse despite its incredible potential for abuse.


    [Alert: You''ve created your first secret cult! Secret cults are orders of followers of yours whose activities are not known to the public.


    Typically secret cults are cults made up of followers that are opposed to the societies they live in. This means these cults might be made up of secretive spies from foreign nations, assassins who follow your orders and at your discretion might also work as freelancers or families whose influence is increased by their affiliation with your followers.


    Secret cults are one of a number of types of cults that you can create and command. They are probably your most influential cults for sowing dissent or disorder in complex societies since they possess freedom not possessed by other types of cults.


    Cults can change their type over time, and at your discretion. Each type of cult has its uses and as a god, if you wish to control a large territory it is necessary to balance the needs and uses of various cults of a number of different types.


    Secret cults often struggle with retaining and recruiting members though... Your first secret cult is a familial one and it is one that incorporates both the living and the undead so you''ve effectively curtailed that problem right away. Good job!]


    ________________________________________________


    In the privacy of my own mind, I couldn''t contain my joy. This was a decisive moment. This marked the establishment of my first secret cult devoted to evil ends.


    I had gained a community-wide evil cult in the form of the reptilefolk who worshiped me as a god of death, war, and angry justice. I had gained a publicly evil cult in the form of the Dragonstone family who worshiped me as a warrior''s god and as a god of laws and hierarchies, but now I possessed something incredibly valuable: a secretive cult.


    By taking the Ardors and making them into a secretive, reclusive cult I could finally begin to make some serious progress among two specific subdomains that I had wanted to gain influence over for a while now: corruption and necromancy. Both subdomains were enemies of life and virtuous societies, and I knew that in making the choices I was making I would finally be able to gain needed progress for them.


    It was actually while I was thinking about this that I received another notification. One that brought a smile to my face.


    [Subdomain alert:


    The subdomain of necromancy recognizes your labor. It is conscious of the work you''ve done as an unholy necromancer and the impact that your undead hordes have had on the world.


    You are a most unusual necromancer. Your undead creations have unintentionally saved lives and protected people. That said, in order to do so they inflicted terror on the living and killed.


    The subdomain of necromancy isn''t just nihilistic, it is actively opposed to life. It has mixed feelings about the way that you''ve handled its powers so far, but it is still happy to offer you the quest to acquire the second-tier of influence over it. It senses how bloodlust affects you and is eager to give you more tools to sate that bloodlust, hoping that you''ll more readily surrender to the dark temptations that it so readily offers.


    In order to acquire the second tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy, you must use an army of necromancers and an undead horde to totally destroy a settlement of over 5,000 individuals. All 5,000 individuals living in the settlement must die and if possible become undead. If they don''t become undead then at the very least their souls need to be captured.


    Once this is complete you''ll acquire the second tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy.]


    "So that''s all it takes huh?" I asked myself, a grin on my face. I didn''t hate the image of a town on fire as my servants explored it, hunting down every last lifeform.


    That said, I didn''t want to go out and actively destroy just any old settlement in the name of the subdomain, so I would need some time to do some research and pick a target worth destroying, a place that should actually be wiped out.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes later, I was actually sitting down for the first time in the last few minutes. I was accompanied by several dark-elves, handsome men who looked at me respectfully and demurely. I smiled at them, and knew they had something to say. It took them a few moments to gather the necessary courage to do so.


    "Althos... We feel as though we should be the leaders of your new cult. Your order." One of them, a sibling of Milene''s said. He spoke softly at first, but after a few moments wherein he spoke his voice grew stronger. I grinned at him and motioned for him to continue speaking. He gave me a smile, and grew bolder.


    "Our sisters doubted you! They don''t deserve to stand at the top of our family if they didn''t believe in you from the start. We sensed your greatness. Your divinity." The dark-elf proclaimed, as his siblings and other relatives began to smile at me.


    I chuckled. I sensed that this was going to take a bit of time. These sorts of negotiations always did.


    A fragment of my mind, one even smaller than the fragment that carefully animated and controlled the projections of myself that were running around Puerto Rico focused its attention on the real reason why I had come to the Ardor family holdings.


    I kept my eyes wide open even as that small part of my mind focused on ensuring that the guards who had been ordered by the senior family leadership to enact my will actually enacted it.


    ________________________________________________


    A small contingent of elite dark-elven guards spent many years of their lives closely and carefully supervising the daily activities and labor of the hundreds of slaves owned by the Ardor family. It was boring and unchanging work. Or at least it had been, until a few minutes ago.


    The dark-elven guards were now furiously working to gather all of the slaves, a challenging task given the sheer number of slaves who worked the gargantuan property owned by the Ardor family. This was a first for them, and they weren''t sure what the night held for them.


    The order they received from Modred, the unusual prime patriarch of the family solely instructed them to gather every single slave and keep them still near the edge of the familial property. It''d take them over an hour to finish that work.


    Little did they know that they were about to undertake a thankfully uneventful trip into the depths of the subterranean region in which Aronms, the encampment, and Althos'' eerie tower were all located. The main reason why the trip was uneventful was because of Althos'' careful guidance, and his caution. He kept the dark elves and the slaves they were watching over safe from the start of the trip to its end hours later.


    As Althos'' 11th day alive began, hundreds of new individuals were safely able to reach the eerie and freed settlement of Oscuridad. Their first impression was that it was odd that an abandoned town existed next to an sorcerer''s tower.


    The town was, as far as they knew, utterly abandoned. And it would continue to look that way until after the dark-elves who had escorted them through the tunnels and other dark regions of the subterranean world were well on their way back home.


    Once the guards were gone, the seemingly abandoned settlement began to come to life, as driders and other creatures stepped out of their empty-looking homes and revealed themselves. For the life-long slaves who had endured decades of torture and forced labor at the cruel whims of the Ardor family, it was a strange but exciting way to begin their new lives.


    Althos, meanwhile, had been forced to help his newest cultists navigate intrafamily struggles and drama for far longer than he would have liked.


    That night his other projections were able to explore a sinister brothel and meet more of the ogres he sought to one day rule over as only a god could. All in all, it was a productive night.

 104 To The Stars

    "To earn the first tier of influence over the star domain you must travel to your solar system''s star." The words of that quest sat in my mind. As my eleventh day alive began, I mulled them over.


    They ruminated in my head and before long I made a decision. It was time for me to gain the first tier of influence over the domain of the stars. But first, I wanted to do one thing. Ask questions.


    ________________________________________________


    "I''m going to go ahead and acquire the first tier of influence over the domain of the stars." I, the real me that was currently relaxing in my water temple, said. I was conversing with the system, a few hours after I successfully led the once enslaved victims of the Ardor family to their new home.


    "I was wondering if there was anything I should know before I went." I inquired, curious to know more about the strange destination I was going to be heading towards. I was sending a message to the system.


    [So you''re finally going into space huh? And to the sun no less. Wow.] The system exclaimed a few moments after hearing my initial statement.


    "Space? That''s a new term." I muttered, both aloud and in my mind, to the system. I heard an almost robotic chuckle come from the system itself.


    [The term ''space'' in the context of the cosmos is often part of a larger term. The term ''Outer space'' is used to refer to the spaces between celestial objects. The domain of the stars is one of those domains with more expansive powers and affiliations than one may realize at a glance. The domain of the stars governs stars, a type of celestial object, astronomical objects, and also powers related to outer space itself.] The system explained.


    This new knowledge filled me with excitement. It also explained why the domain was considered one of the greater domains.


    [The domain of stars is... an enormously powerful domain. Those who use it and master it gain the ability to form whole new galaxies over the span of a few heartbeats. They gain power that allows them to destroy entire solar-systems in the blink of an eye.] The system revealed, speaking reverentially of the power I would soon have one tier of influence over.


    [They can increase or decrease the distances between celestial bodies, which in and of itself can cause unparalleled destruction by changing the effects gravity has on objects or increasing or decreasing the temperatures of worlds.] The system told me, speaking softly.


    [In addition to that, the domain of stars grants those who use it some of the mightiest powers granted by any of the domains aside from the domains of life and death. With the domain of the stars and the physics domain, being utilized together one can form event horizons, a part of black holes, with such immense gravity that not even particles or light can escape from their pull.] Said the system, revealing some of the incredible powers I might one day possess.


    [Supermassive black holes exist that form the center of many if not most of the largest galaxies. There will come a day when you can create those types of black holes.] I heard the system say, and that almost floored me. It was a sign of how incredible my powers were and would become if I dedicated myself to gaining more knowledge and more power.


    I began to ready myself for my journey, thinking that I already had everything I needed, when the system decided to tell me one more useful tidbit.


    [There is also radiation in space. I actually recommend that you go ahead and grab the first tier of influence over the radiation subdomain before you venture off into the cosmos.] My companion suggested, causing me to pause and ask it a question of my own.


    "Am I vulnerable to radiation?" I asked curiously. The system chuckled and replied to me a few moments later.


    [No you''re not. That said, gaining the first tier of influence over the radiation subdomain before you go into space will allow you to absorb the ambient radiation you fly through while in space which you can then use freely when you return.] The system explained, shortly before my minimap abruptly lit up.


    [I''ve done you a favor and updated your minimap to display locations where radiation can be absorbed ambiently. If you go to those locations you''ll be able to fulfill the requirement to gain the first tier of influence over the radiation subdomain once you''ve sat in them for a few minutes.] The odd entity explained.


    I grinned and teleported to the closest location that was illuminated on my minimap.


    ________________________________________________


    Whenever I teleported somewhere my body automatically adjusted to fit whatever circumstances I found myself in. I learned this during the days I was practicing my powers, and it was handy because on more than one occasion I had teleported myself into lava or other uncomfortable places.


    That strange ability of mine was used once more when I teleported to the nearest source of radiation. My corporeal form vanished when I teleported, and I found myself existing as an incorporeal specter with a vague, vaporous appearance of the corporeal form I had had underwater.


    I found myself inside a layer of solid stone beneath Puerto Rico. I chuckled and waited for a few moments. Within a matter of heartbeats, I felt a wave of heat wash over my incorporeal form. It was surprising but not uncomfortable and once I adjusted to it mentally I just had to wait for a minute before I received a pleasant notification.


    [Radiation subdomain details:


    The subdomain of radiation is the subdomain that governs radioactivity, the process by which the nuclei of unstable atoms lose energy by emitting particles of ionizing radiation. This process is dangerous to many types of objects and living beings.


    Radiation occurs throughout the universe and in virtually every other universe. By gaining power over it you gain access to a number of strange yet powerful abilities.


    At your first tier of influence over this subdomain, you don''t gain the power to induce radioactivity but you can manipulate existing sources of radiation. You can absorb radiation and expel the radiation you''ve absorbed.


    By utilizing the subdomain of radiation you can control battlefields, power machines, and certain types of constructs, as well as eventually manipulate all matters of radiation. To master the subdomain of radiation, you must absorb a total amount of radiation that is... gargantuan. It will take a long time.


    Radiation subdomain passive powers:


    Radiation absorption: You can absorb any and all radiation. You were already immune to any damage radiation could do, but now you can absorb and store radioactive energy within yourself to unleash at will.


    There are different types of radiation. The types of radiation you absorb will be used to power your abilities.


    Radiation detection: You can detect radiation. It shows up on both your mini-map and your not-so-mini-map.


    Radioactive aura: You can wrap yourself in an aura of radiation. This aura weakens solid objects and sickens living creatures.


    Radioactive blast: You can unleash a blast of radioactive energy from your palms provided you have radiation stored within you.


    Radioactive breath: You can expel a devastating burst of radiation from your mouth.


    Radiation glare: You can emit stored radiation with a simple glare.


    Radioactive malleability: Absorbed radiation can be shaped into other things, such as wings or armor that you can graft onto yourself.


    Radiation subdomain active powers:


    Radiation-power: You can use the radiation you''ve absorbed to power an object or construct that requires external power. This is a once a day power at the moment.


    Radiation-immunity: You can grant someone immunity to the harmful effects of radiation. This power is currently a once a week power and is permanent until you decide to remove it. Someone immune to the harmful effects of exposure to radiation is instead healed by exposure to radiation.


    Radiation blessing and curse details:


    You cannot bless someone with this subdomain at the moment.]


    I chuckled as I read through the powers, and was suddenly keenly aware of the changes my mini-map was undergoing. It was steadily revealing to me the locations of the closest clusters of radiation.


    I smiled and teleported myself up out of the depths of the planet I was and into the sky high above Puerto Rico.


    ________________________________________________


    An instant later I found myself high in the early morning sky. It was actually almost chilly for a second before my temperature manipulation power made me feel quite warm. I was keenly aware that this high in the sky it was actually quite cold though.


    I was above the highest clouds I could see, and if I looked down I saw them, while if I looked up I could see the sun shining down on me. I oriented myself in the right direction and then shot upwards, propelling myself in the general direction of the sun. I didn''t take off at my maximum speed though, I wanted to appreciate this portion of the journey.


    I felt the subtle pull of Torus'' gravity, attempting to drag me back to the surface of the planet. Or maybe it was my own body somehow wanting to go back to the planet''s surface. I considered activating my powers over gravity but realized that it wasn''t necessary. I could easily ignore the pull without the help my power would provide.


    I sped through the sky, sailing further upward every second and as I did so I gained valuable knowledge curtesy of the system.


    [You are currently in an outer layer of the atmosphere. Atmospheres are layers of gases that surround planets and are retained by the gravity of the planets they surround. Torus''s atmosphere is divided into six primary layers and a number of secondary layers. You are currently in the thermosphere, which is the second-highest layer.] My companion whispered into my mind.


    [As atmospheres are made up of gases you will one day get to create and control atmospheres, once you''ve gained more control over the subdomain of air and gained more elemental overlord powers.] The system revealed, giving me further glimpses into the power I would one day wield.


    [Atmospheres help control planetary temperatures, create pressure to allow liquid water to exist, and even absorb ultraviolet solar radiation thereby reducing its impact on planetary life.] The system told me, happy to educate me as to the impact of the atmosphere. I was just happy to be learning more.


    I felt appreciative of the knowledge I was receiving and when the system was done talking I quietly thanked it and focused on my journey.


    ________________________________________________


    It took me less than a minute to escape the atmosphere and enter outer space. I felt myself escape the gravitational pull of Torus indirectly. It wasn''t like I was suddenly free to go wherever I wanted, but more like the pull that was trying to suck me back to Torus was gone.


    I took a moment to properly study my surroundings. If I turned around I could see Torus. I wasn''t very surprised to see that it was mostly water, with four large landmasses visible from space taking the portions of its visible surface that wasn''t water.


    Most of the rest of what I could see was space filled with tiny particulates, and what appeared to be clouds of fine, silvery dust. I couldn''t see radiation, but I was keenly aware that I was absorbing it. I felt it seep into my skin, harmlessly.


    [What you''re feeling is solar radiation. It''s some of the energy ambiently produced and released by the sun.] The system explained.


    Now that I was outside of Torus I could see the moon off in the distance, spinning away from me. It was a large, gray sphere that was moving away from me at a surprising speed. A part of me wanted to explore it, but I quickly decided to focus on my main mission.


    I turned and faced the sun. It loomed larger than ever in the distance and I closed my eyes and teleported to it.


    ________________________________________________


    In an instant I found myself only a few hundred kilometers away from the sun. Up close to it I could feel the immense heat of the sun, as well as observe it.


    The sun was an unbelievably massive sphere of elements in their plasmic state. It was so incredibly hot that even I, a literal god, could feel its heat. It didn''t hurt me, but it was so immense that my ability to regulate my temperature was pushed into overdrive and I could only barely cool myself down.


    At the moment I was floating in the sun''s corona, one of the layers of the sun''s own version of an atmosphere. I felt their immense heat surround and embrace me. This heat was minuscule compared to the heat of the sun itself so I shrugged it off. I floated freely in space for over a minute, before I realized something odd: I hadn''t yet gotten the notification that would inform me that I had successfully acquired influence over the star domain.


    "Hey... Why haven''t I gotten my notification? I''m here, at the sun. Isn''t that where I am supposed to be?" I asked the system, annoyed that I was still here and not back on Torus.


    [You haven''t gotten close enough silly. You need to at least reach the photosphere, the sun''s outer shell.] The system explained. When I heard this I sighed and grumbled inaudibly, before going ahead and getting on with the travel I needed to do.


    This time I sped up and traveled at my maximum speed. Moving at the speed of light allowed me to easily reach the photosphere, the odd "surface" of the sun. Up close the heat of the sun felt even more intense but was still not painful.


    I didn''t set foot on any area of the sun, partially because there was no solid surface for me to do so when I finally received the notification I wanted to receive. It filled my vision and brought a grin to my face.


    The photosphere of the sun was a strange place of reddish-orange light that completely surrounded me. I was deep inside of it when I got the notification, and in every direction, I looked all I could see was that same eerily colored light. I stood in it for a few moments, before teleporting myself back to Torus. As I vanished from the sun''s "surface" I read over the notification I had just received.

 105 Bold Exploration

    [Star domain details:


    The star domain is a greater domain that governs celestial bodies, outer space, and the phenomena one might witness if they could freely and incorporeally explore the cosmos. It is an incredibly powerful domain, and even at the lowest tier of influence, it grants you considerable power.


    Gods who mastered the star domain were capable of creating entire galaxies in the blink of an eye. They could have created all manner of cosmic phenomena and could manipulate stars from across the universe. Their powers were incredible, planet altering powers.


    To gain further influence over this domain you must build interplanetary cults. This means you must build cults with membership on multiple planets, and at higher tiers of influence, you must build cults with membership in multiple galaxies. You must also actually use the powers you''ve gained before the star domain deems you worthy of earning more influence over it.


    Star domain passive powers:


    Asteroid awareness and mastery: You gain total power over asteroids. Asteroids are rocky celestial bodies too tiny to be considered planets.


    This power grants you the power to create asteroids, using your power to generate stones and manipulate gravity. Asteroids are too small to be considered planets, and they can now be controlled by your will.


    Asteroids exist throughout the universe and one component of this power is that you are granted an awareness of the asteroids that exist in your solar system. As you gain more tiers of influence over the star domain the awareness you have concerning asteroids increases as well.


    You can devastate a planet by willing an asteroid a few kilometers in diameter to collide with the world you wish to inflict chaos upon. Asteroid collisions with planets can precipitate extinction events and other horrifying natural phenomena.


    If you want you can also allow creatures to survive on asteroids as part of your mastery over the rocky bodies. Asteroids can be mined or can serve as bases for interstellar exploration. They aren''t just weapons.


    Comet awareness and mastery:


    Comets are tiny, icy celestial bodies that are not planets, dwarf-planets, or natural satellites. When they approach the sun or other stars they begin to expel gases that produce visible atmospheres and sometimes tails as well.


    This power is just like your other power but it applies to comets. To form comets you utilize powers over gravity, temperature, and ice.


    Lunar energy manipulation:


    You can absorb and manipulate lunar energy. Lunar energy has a distinct effect on some creatures like were-beasts and you can use that energy, provided you''ve absorbed enough of it, to force such creatures to forcibly shift. You can unleash it in breaths, beams, glares, or bursts like you can other energies you can manipulate.


    Meteoroid mastery:


    Meteoroids are small rocky or metallic bodies in outer space that are smaller than asteroids. Meteoroids become meteors when they enter a planet''s atmosphere and begin to heat thanks to collisions with air molecules in the upper layers of a world''s atmosphere.


    This power is just like your powers over comets and asteroids.


    Solar energy manipulation:


    You can absorb and utilize solar energy. By standing in the light of the sun you absorb its rays and use them as you wish. This power can devastate certain types of creatures and can be used to inflict devastating damage to others. You can unleash it in breaths, beams, glares, or bursts like you can other energies you can manipulate.


    Stellar awareness: Your mini-map and not-so-mini-map gain full functionality anywhere your sun''s light can reach. Your maps can also map the cosmic bodies you have powers over and can map what''s around them as well. Your maps are currently updating to reflect this.


    To increase the number of stars this power allows you to use as mapping points you must visit more stars. By using domain-sense you can the knowledge needed to teleport to other stars across the cosmos.


    Your mini-map and not-so-mini-map have a slightly unique quality that allows them to be extra useful. If one of the powers that powers them reaches a boundary it cannot cross but another power powering them can cross it their detectable distance increases.


    Functionally this means that if the sun''s light cannot illuminate the depths of an ocean your elemental sense power allows the maps to continue functioning for the hundred or so kilometers that power can map on its own. Your maps are really, really good now.


    Star domain active power:


    Mini-star creation: This is a super attack power. It creates an incredibly tiny star that unleashes heat half as hot as the sun in an area a few dozen meters across, melting and destroying anything in range. It can be used twice a week.


    Star domain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the star domain you allow them to survive the strange conditions they encounter in the emptier parts of outer space, though they can''t survive coming close to the sun with just this blessing. Currently, you cannot curse someone with this domain.]


    ________________________________________________


    I felt the new powers I possessed surge into me. And as they did one of the biggest, immediate changes was that my maps were expanding. I felt them grow to sizes I never before imagined. It felt odd, in a glorious way, to feel my maps expanding.


    Entire worlds were suddenly known to me, all at once. Kingdoms, continents, untold numbers of civilizations and species were suddenly within my awareness. All at once, my mind was bigger than I ever dared dream it could be.


    I also felt a keen awareness of the smaller celestial bodies I had gained mastery over surge into my mind. I learned their locations but I also learned more than that.


    Power over the tiny things felt... right. I already possessed power over components of them, such as gravity, earth, and ice, but now I possessed far greater power. A huge number of the tiny celestial bodies falling into my control all at once.


    I wasn''t sure how, though I suspected it was a "gift" from the domain of the stars, but I could sense the magnitude of the new powers surging through my body. If I wanted to I could clearly visualize the impact crashing an asteroid into a planet would cause based on the size of the asteroid, among other factors. I could also innately sense the ways I could manipulate solar and lunar energy.


    My mind felt... sharper and stronger than ever before. It was strange, but also wonderful.


    ________________________________________________


    Knowledge of secretive places in the world was one of the awards I had gained in earning influence over the domain of the stars. One of the secret places I gained knowledge of was the location of the ancient kingdom of Atlantis.


    The kingdom of Atlantis was where the dwarven princess Rachel lived. It was a land I possessed subtle influence over, thanks to the fact that I was worshipped by Rachel and by a few of her fellow nobles.


    The first place I teleported myself to was a new destination. I was being brave today, so I supposed I might as well continue that trend, just to see where it led me. For the first time ever I set foot in the subterranean kingdom of Atlantis. Specifically, I warped to the royal palace of the dwarven kingdom.


    I found myself standing in a gargantuan cavern, one more than twice the size of the one in which Aronms was located. The cavern had a natural ceiling that was visible to me even though it was hundreds of meters above me. I stood on top of a path of paved stone.


    Behind me was a city inhabited by over two thousand dwarves. I could keenly sense their life-force, and detect their movements as if they were right in front of me, even though I couldn''t see them. I was grateful for the nature of my powers since they afforded me my supernatural awareness of the world around me.


    In front of me was the kingdom''s royal palace. I could see it both thanks to my divine vision and the few sources of light that were around the palace. It was a beautifully designed thing made of a variety of precious metals that shone so brightly that they glimmered even in the low-light of the underground area.


    I was incorporeal and indetectable. I sighed and began to walk the paved path I was on top of, a smile on my face as I did so. I was aware of Rachel''s location, she was in her chambers and accompanied by a lone handmaiden. I just wanted to walk and explore the palace alone for a bit.


    ________________________________________________


    When I was just outside of the palace I took a long, hard look at it. I was standing close enough to the thing that it was all I could see unless I turned away from it and faced the city.


    It wasn''t a huge palace, though I suppose for dwarves it probably felt massive. At its tallest point, it was tens of meters tall and had turrets made from materials as precious as emeralds, sapphires, and other stunning gems. It was lovely though it felt a bit wasteful to use gems that valuable in such a frivolous way.


    Dwarven warriors were stationed outside of the entryway into the palace. They were dressed in heavy armor, made from metals more solid and more valuable than iron or steel. They held axes or swords in one hand and shields as large as themselves in their other hands.


    The warriors paid careful attention to their surroundings. I could feel their tension and confusion.


    "Do they sense me?" I wondered, in the safety of my mind. They were good guards, focused, and cautious. But when I passed by them they didn''t turn in my direction. They didn''t even glance at me. Which was unsurprising, but a bit disappointing. It was because of that that I realized that their tension must have come from somewhere else. Which was curious.


    I studied them for a second, waiting to see if they''d speak and address the odd, unsourced tension in the air. They didn''t.


    I silently sighed, disappointed at their professionalism, and turned my attention back to the palace. I walked into it, curiosity and excitement powering my swift, silent paces.

 106 Palatial Plots

    A few moments after I stepped past the guards I found myself within the outer boundary of the palace, within a courtyard to be exact. It was a pretty place, one a few dozen meters wide and equally long.


    Between myself and the entrance to the interior of the palace was a path paved with white stone, providing a faint path for those whose eyes needed light. On the sides of this path were massive crystals that radiated a faint pink glow and obstructed any visitor''s views of the guards who patrolled the courtyard, as well as providing a sort of pretty decoration.


    I began to walk down this path and noticed the relative emptiness of the palace''s exterior area. I didn''t know if the place was always like this, but I sincerely doubted it. All I could see were well-armed and well-trained guards going through the motions of their tasks, each of whom was as tense as the guards I had walked past earlier.


    "Should I read their minds? It''s one thing if a few guards are like this but now I''ve laid my eyes on ten of them and they are all like this. That''s a sign of... something." I mused, internally. After a few moments of quiet debating with myself I chuckled and targeted the closest guard.


    She was a squat dwarf, more muscular than the others I had seen. The guards I had seen were of both genders, and of a variety of sizes. The one I selected as my target could accurately be described as "Barrellike". I quietly activated my power and a few moments later I heard her thoughts.


    "I wonder if the king is feeling better." She thought, in the supposed privacy of her mind. This intrigued me, but the superficiality of my power didn''t allow me to peer any deeper into this. I chuckled, silently of course, and continued my exploration of the palace.


    ________________________________________________


    I made it to the edge of the courtyard after a minute or so of quiet walking. Along the way I scanned three more minds, and in doing so learned that the king was currently sick. This wasn''t true, but it appeared to be a sincere belief of the palatial guards.


    I knew that the king wasn''t sick, because I hadn''t heard that he had gotten sick. And when I mentally inspected his status I confirmed that he wasn''t sick. I did see something that intrigued me though. The king''s personal vice was the sin of sloth.


    "I''m glad that Rachel''s dad isn''t sick." I mentally muttered though I found the theory I had in my head quite amusing. I suspected that he was faking an illness to get out of work. A part of me considered speaking with Rachel about this, but I knew I could discover the answer myself if I felt like wandering through the palace. Which I did.


    In front of me was a massive door, one far larger than any of the dwarves I had seen to date. I put a hand on it, simply to phase through the thing, and as I did I received a notification.


    [Alert:


    You have made contact with a historic object. As such your ''Historic touch'' power is now activating.


    You have touched the Emerald Palace. The Emerald Palace is the royal palace of the kingdom of Atlantis. It is a gigantic, by dwarf standards anyway, palace made up of stunning gemstones and precious metals.


    The palace is thousands of years old and has been the seat of Atlantis'' power for as long as the kingdom has existed. It has housed every king and queen of the kingdom and has been the birthplace of continent-spanning schemes. This place was the birthplace of King Abel and his daughter, Princess Rachel.


    It contains a chapel once devoted to the ancient dwarven creator-god Morehammer who was also the overgod of blacksmithing. It is where ancient items once owned by the long-deceased god rest and the palace was once the god''s seat of power in Torus.


    The items are incredibly ancient divine artifacts. Recovering them would be a major victory for any god who seeks to become a true dwarven god. Not to mention the powers they themselves possess and would grant any deity who recovers them.


    The items themselves are protected by ancient, impenetrable barriers made by Morehammer himself. To bypass them you must pass trials they place before you. All of the powerful gods left behind ancient artifacts. Recovering them is one avenue to power.]


    I read through the entry with an interested smile on my face. That expression changed when I learned about Morehammer and the artifacts he supposedly left behind. My smile was replaced with a look that mixed shock and delight into one pleasant expression.


    I prepared to badger the system with questions.


    ________________________________________________


    "So... Morehammer. Is there anything I can learn about him right now? He is one of the first higher-beings I''ve learned about by name and the only other one I''ve learned about and also been close to one of their lairs was Morthos." I asked the system. I felt excitement well up within me.


    The system replied to my question by chuckling. It then went silent for a few moments, considering my question. I proceeded through the door shortly after I asked the system my question. I found myself inside of a grand foyer, one larger than ever the one in Morthos'' grand manor in Aronms.


    The truth was, I had plans for the Morthonian mansion. I wanted to do something to it to symbolize the changing age the dark-elves of Aronms were living in. I hadn''t yet, but I wanted too. It was one of the many things that I had mulled over throughout the last few days.


    The mansion was an ugly reminder of an older age, and what was worse was that it was in my eyes unnecessary. This palace, as ostentatious as it was, was not unnecessary. It was still being used and still had a distinct purpose.


    My thoughts were interrupted by the system''s response to my question.


    [Morehammer... That''s a name I haven''t heard in a long time.] The system mused, amused by my question.


    [Morehammer was a long-lived deity of dwarves and blacksmithing. He was also a god of metals, blacksmithing, and the hearts of mountains, in a way not unlike your connection to volcanos. Dwarves were his people and he was the head of the dwarven pantheon.] The system told me, revealing that other dwarven gods existed.


    [Morehammer''s people have moved on from their once incredible devotion to the ancient god. That said, he created his chosen race to be faithful to his teachings, and even though he himself is long-gone his teachings still define the cultures of dwarves throughout the cosmos.] My companion revealed, causing me to wonder if piety was still important to dwarves.


    [Morehammer was a blacksmith and tactician of unequaled skill throughout the multiverse. His people can still be found throughout the multiverse which in and of itself is a testament to the god''s teachings and the intelligence of his people.] The system declared, speaking of Morehammer fondly.


    As it spoke I was carefreely wandering the palace, while moving in Rachel''s general direction. I was currently on the third floor of the building, and examining the furnishings of an empty hallway. This was the floor Rachel was on.


    [Morehammer was a kind god who valued both his people and all blacksmiths. He respected everyone who sought to use the bounty of the planet in peaceful and civilization-expanding ways. I miss him.] The system revealed, speaking personally for a moment. As it did so I focused on my initial reasoning for coming here: I oriented myself in Rachel''s direction and began to move towards her.


    [Morehammer and I collaborated frequently. He was fond of me, of the order I represented. Together we worked to create a vast dwarven empire that transcended universes. It was one of the first of its kind.] My companion confessed, speaking reverentially of an era in the distant past.


    [Morehammer, like a few other overgods, was a transcendent being. He was mighty enough to cross over into other universes. And his people followed him into them. Together we created all sorts of new powers.] My old friend told me, reminiscing about the distant past.


    It was at that point that I found myself just outside of where Rachel was, and all that separated me from her was a single metal door. The system fell silent as I stared at the door, waiting to see if it had anything else to say. When it was quiet for nearly a full minute I stepped forward through the door and laid eyes on the dwarven princess for the first time.


    ________________________________________________


    I stepped through the metal door that separated me from the princess who owed her newfound freedom to me with ease. It didn''t resist me in the slightest thanks to my power to determine my own corporeality.


    I found myself inside of a huge chamber, several dozen meters long and more than a few meters tall. It was a perfectly square room, and each corner of it served a purpose.


    One corner of the place housed a desk whereupon several documents laid in a messy pile. Another corner housed Rachel''s bed. A corner housed the door I walked through to enter here. And the final corner of it housed the entrance to another room.


    Beside the door that led to the other room was a small statuette of what appeared to be Rachel''s newly pregnant form. I could tell because Rachel was kneeling beside it, her face facing my general direction but her eyes closed in silent mediation. The statuette looked exactly like Rachel.


    Rachel was a tiny dwarf woman, shorter than the other dwarves I had seen. She stood just around a meter tall, while most of the dwarves I had come across stood around one and a quarter meters tall. Rachel had auburn colored hair and a soft face. She had oval lips and a button nose.


    Rachel was wearing brightly colored robes, which helped illuminate her in the otherwise dark room she was in. A single royal handmaiden dressed in a smith''s smock stood over her and silently watched her. Rachel was every bit as silent as her handmaiden was.


    I quietly spoke to the dwarf via our shared mental link.


    "Open your eyes." I telepathically whispered, allowing myself to become corporeal once again as I did so. The corporeal form I had chosen for the occasion was my regular human form.


    Rachel let out a single shocked breath and opened her eyes just in time to see my body beginning to form within her chamber. Her handmaiden kept her eyes locked on the princess.


    "Princess! What''s going on, are you okay?" The dwarven woman asked, her voice low and stoic as she spoke. There was little emotion audible in it. As the handmaiden spoke I continued to corporeally materialize behind her.


    "Amaris! Turn around!" The dwarven princess said, her voice much louder than that of her servant. Rachel''s voice was an exact match of her mental voice, which was unsurprising. So far that''s been consistent with my experience on the rare occasions I''ve met individuals I''ve telepathically spoken with.


    The handmaiden turned around and gasped softly when she saw me. I was just now fully formed and I smiled serenely at both the princess and her handmaiden.


    "Hello. Rachel, I believe you know who I am. Amaris might not though." I said, as I took a careful first step towards the pair. Amaris turned to fully face me, and stepped in front of her mistress. I chuckled.


    "Amaris... Has Rachel not told you about me?" I asked, enjoying the handmaiden''s bold protectiveness. I didn''t blame her for reacting the way she did. I was a stranger and a human-looking one at that. Her reaction was quite reasonable, even if it wasn''t the wisest one she could have chosen.


    I looked at Rachel silently. I was waiting to see how she reacted to my presence. She was quiet, still absorbing the suddenness of my appearance in her chambers. She was quiet for a few moments and there was a look of obvious confusion on her face. I chuckled gently at her expense.


    "Rachel... I''m hurt that you don''t recognize me. Not very long ago you prayed. And I answered. I am your friend. Your god." I told the young princess, enjoying the game I was playing with her.


    Amaris stiffened at this, surprised by the revelation I had just dropped on the princess. The handmaiden turned to look at her mistress, who was paralyzed by a different kind of shock now. And then the princess''s eyes were filled with recognition. When she next spoke her words were reverential and soft.


    "Althos? Is it truly you?" She asked, an awed grin on her face. I nodded at the dwarven woman, and watched as she looked at me uncertainly.


    "Althos... To what do I owe this... honor? Pleasure? I''m unsure of which would you prefer." She told me honestly. Amaris watched this in silent confusion. And then the princess turned to her with a serene smile on her face.


    "This is the deity to whom I owe... My freedom? My life? Both?" She revealed, causing her handmaiden''s eyes to widen. The woman turned and faced me, an uncertain look in her eyes.


    "Is this true? Are you the god who answered my mistress'' prayers?" She asked, her voice containing more emotion than before. I silently nodded at her. She had a look if skepticism on her face, and spoke once more.


    "I understand that my mistress wants to believe you... But can you prove it? Can you demonstrate you are who you say you are?" She asked, a hopeful tone audible in her voice.


    I looked at her and wondered how I could go about doing that. I had so many powers at my disposal now that deciding how to answer that question would always involve a bit of creativity on my part.

 107 Demonstration Of Power

    Amaris kept her eyes glued onto me as I pondered how to best prove my divinity. I contemplated using my "Unfettered divinity" power but quickly realized that using such a powerful ability would be wasteful if done here.


    I looked at the handmaiden and opted to ask her a simple question. But not before I rechecked and confirmed that one of my flagship powers, "Banishment of lies" was active. It was.


    "Amaris, tell me... What would sufficiently prove to you that I am a deity?" I asked the handmaiden, my eyes locked onto hers. She was brave, and our eyes made reasonably intense contact. She was silent for a moment as she considered her position and my question.


    "Hmm..." She said after a few moments. A look of confusion and hesitation crossed her face as she considered how to reply. I saw her facial muscles tense up, and a smile crossed my face when I realized a likely reason behind the slightest tension she was showing: she probably wanted to lie and my powers made it impossible for her to do so. I didn''t call her out on it though. Instead, I waited.


    Her muscles relaxed right before she opened her mouth to speak. "Why don''t you know what would prove to me that you''re a god?" She asked, a satisfied smile on her face as she spoke. I looked at her and chuckled.


    "Do you think that''s something I would know because I''m a god? That''s an odd leap of logic. Do you think the gods of old knew everything?" I asked her, curiously. I found her question amusing. She gave me a curious look and then mulled over my question.


    That said, it was actually interesting for me to hear a mortal talk like that. For a moment I wondered about how much mortals actually knew regarding the old gods.


    It wasn''t impossible for them to believe that the gods of old were actually all-knowing creatures. I knew they weren''t, logically, but that doesn''t mean the mortals knew that. A moment after my introspection though, Amaris spoke once more.


    "No, you''re right. I was being... silly." She said a smug smile on her lips. "That said... I honestly don''t know what would prove to me that you''re a god." She confessed. I sighed.


    To be fair, it made sense for her to not know. I couldn''t blame her for having that attitude. That said, I had an ability for moments like this.


    I rose a hand and pointed it in her direction. This was actually unnecessary but it was useful for demonstrating that I was targetting her. Without uttering a word I activated my "Entropic manipulation" ability and began to rapidly age the dwarf.


    ________________________________________________


    The princess''s handmaiden was a spry hundred-and-fifty years old. She was positively young for a dwarf. That didn''t matter to the god who she was trying to get to demonstrate his divinity.


    Before the princess''s very eyes the handmaiden began to age. It was slow and subtle for a second, as the servant''s lengthening hair was hidden underneath a cap she wore in the presence of her mistress. Other signs were also difficult to spot since the handmaiden wore a blacksmith''s smock over her toned and muscular body.


    The princess watched her servant and did her best to hide her shock as her closest ally rapidly aged in front of her. The aging process stopped being slow when the servant''s face began to droop downwards, and as the rapid onset of old age caused the woman to begin to feel abrupt but slight bone pain.


    The dwarf began to shrink ever so slightly. She also widened a bit, as old age took a toll on her physique. Althos, opting to be merciful stopped when wrinkles began to emerge on her face.


    "I just proved that I''m a god." He declared, confidently. She looked at him in confusion and uttered a reply.


    "What? Wait..." She said, questioning him and then questioning herself in confusion. She paused as she heard herself. The god smirked at her.


    "Is there a mirror anywhere close by? You might want to take a look at it." He told her. Her eyes widened in fear, as she turned and walked into the room she and her mistress were next too. A second after she vanished past the part of the room the god could see from where he stood she screamed in shock.


    "What... What happened to me?" She asked, loudly a second later. Althos replied to her without skipping a beat and without lying.


    "I aged you. I''m a god of chaos and life. And... many other things. Advancing your age is something I can do easily. That said, hold still. I''ll undo it right now. That''s something that is easily within my capabilities as well." He said, speaking loudly enough to be heard by her with ease.


    The god easily reached out to the handmaiden with his mind and began to undo what he had just done. He gently reversed the aging she had just endured and brought her back to her actual age within a few seconds. As he did so a smirk remained etched onto his face.


    A few moments later the dwarven handmaiden returned, a humble and awkward look on her face. She looked thoroughly mortified.


    ________________________________________________


    I studied the dwarf for a moment. There was a look on her face that mixed a number of emotions into one strange look. The three of us were silent, and then I began to talk.


    "So I''m a god." I reminded the two of them, and as I spoke I began to grin.


    "I can do a lot. I can do more than what I just did actually. If I wanted too I could actually make you a baby! I''ve never aged someone that far backward though." I told the handmaiden. A look of fear filled her eyes, and I chuckled internally as I saw it.


    "That said, I''m far from malicious. I like helping people more than I like harming them. Especially when doing so grants me more power. Which it did when I helped Rachel." I told the pair, speaking frankly. This surprised them.


    "Wait, how did helping me grant you power?" Rachel asked, sincere confusion coloring her question. I looked at her for a second, quietly studying the dwarven princess.


    "Should I tell her the truth?" I mused to myself. It was tempting. I liked the truth. I tended to be honest when I thought that being honest wouldn''t hurt me. And in this situation, I didn''t really see how it could. I had all the power here and I wasn''t trying to make a deal with Rachel or Amaris.


    I studied the pair for a second longer and noted their curiosity. After a moment of hesitation, I ultimately realized that this was a moment for truth-telling. I smiled, not arrogantly or excitedly, but a genuine and relaxed smile.


    "Now''s the time for honesty. I''ll tell you two a story. My story." I said, speaking relaxedly to the pair. Their eyes widened in excitement as they looked at me and waited for me to begin.


    "I''m gonna tell you the whole truth. So let me go back to the beginning. To when I came to life. A whole eleven days ago." I declared, my grin turning more mischievous when I said that last part. The pair of dwarves looked at me, stunned, when I revealed my real age to them.


    I feigned offense and gasped, in unreal pain, when I saw Rachel''s expression. She reared back, flinching at the display.


    "Rachel! I told you I was extremely young when I answered your prayer. Don''t you remember?" I asked, pretending to be offended. She nodded, but her look of shock didn''t change.


    "You said ''Young'', but you''re... a baby!" She told me, reacting fairly albeit perhaps a bit too honestly to my actual age. I grinned again, and expressed, using my hands, that it was no big deal. And then I began to tell the pair of dwarves the wild adventures that led me to where I was now, in front of them.


    My projections were still out and about in Puerto Rico even as I told the dwarves my life story.

 108 The Swarm Expands

    Telling the two dwarves my life''s story took almost an hour. I skimmed or simplified some sections of the events of the past week and a half but by the time I was done talking my companions knew more about me than most of my mortal worshipers did.


    The two silently mulled over the tales I told them. They considered the world-changing implications of some of what I said, including the undead horde I possessed, and my ant swarm. I had been honest with the pair about my powers and the resources at my disposal.


    While the pair mulled over what I told them I was in the process of actively expanding my followers. And I was doing so in what was arguably the most distinctly Althonian way possible.


    ________________________________________________


    The part of my mind that was focused inward was doing a number of things. First and foremost it was actively making use of my powers over dreams. I was engaging with a number of humanoids at once, including a Htrean human, nobles on Torus, and another world''s dark-elves. None of them were particularly special, but I liked engaging with dreamers and my abilities to do so were ones I frequently used.


    That said that was little more than a distraction. The part of my mind that mattered right now was utilizing one of my newest abilities to its maximum potential: "Stellar awareness". This fantastic power expanded my map and my ability to detect things to an incredible degree.


    I was now actively aware of goings-on in multiple worlds. My entire solar-system was within range of my detection and information-gathering powers and I was ready to act on that.


    I willed my not-so-minimap to appear in my mind''s eye. On it, I saw a total of seven worlds, counting Torus, and a number of moons and other celestial objects decorate the map. All of the worlds were teeming with life, and even a few of the moons had life on them as well.


    I explored the planets and learned the names of kingdoms, people, and communities. I then began to mess around with the filters until I could only actively identify insects and anthropods that I could awaken and evolve. The number of creatures I could still identify numbered in the hundreds of quintillions.


    The part of me that was focused inward began to smile when I saw that. The number was gigantic, an exponentially larger number than I could wrap my mind around and between my current undead horde and the swarm as it existed right now that was a number that was in the multiple billions.


    This moment also served as a handy reminder of something important: I was far from done exploring Torus. Over a quadrillion ants existed on Torus. And ants weren''t the only creatures that were currently selected. Ants, bees, wasps, and even a few types of distinctly alien creatures that were both similar to them and related to them were all currently selected.


    I waited a moment just to be sure that this was what I wanted. When I was sure, which didn''t take me long at all, I began to think about what I actually wanted to do with the unimaginable number of beings I was about to add to my followers.


    "Do I want my empire to begin right now? Because I can in all likelihood conquer entire worlds with the horde I''m about to create." I asked myself. I was genuinely unsure.


    "I should use this moment to gain the second tier of influence over the Hymenoptera subdomain. And that''ll likely require that my forces take a town..." I realized, well aware that the Hymenoptera subdomain was like the necromancy subdomain in that it was an aggressive, destroyer type subdomain. That was when the system chimed in.


    [That''s absolutely correct! When you cause enough bees or wasps to evolve, which you will by the time you''re done here, you''ll be tasked with using the swarm to conquer a town. And by ''conquering'' I do mean destroy.] The voice revealed, speaking proudly. It sounded delighted at the prospect of such violence.


    I wasn''t as excited as it was. I wouldn''t hesitate to make the order but I wasn''t eager to do so. I knew that this was necessary and that in doing this I would gain greater powers, but none of that changed the fact that I wasn''t enthused to do this.


    "I want to create, not destroy." I muttered, annoyed at the destruction I was about to have to inflict on some community. That said, I recognized that it was a sacrifice I was going to have to make to become a god of everything.


    I was quiet for a moment before muttering something else. An idea. I turned my eyes towards the two branches of the swarm that currently existed.


    One branch of the swarm, a less diverse one, existed underneath Puerto-Rico''s surface. And another branch existed on the coast of Iredale. The second branch had members of the three Hymenoptera creatures that existed in Puerto Rico: ants, wasps, and bees. As soon as both groups turned themselves towards me I gave them a mental order.


    At that moment I was grateful that my expanding powers kept expanding when I ordered my minions to colonize the coast of Iredale. Because that granted me handy new powers.


    "Build a chamber underground. It will be the seat of worship dedicated to me, and also house portals to allow for travel between the worlds." I told the creatures, making use of another of my new Hymenoptera abilities: the power to command them fully.


    ________________________________________________


    The Hymenoptera subdomain was an empire-building subdomain. It gave me powers that not only strengthened my Hymenopteric followers and worshipers, but also made them more intelligent and gave me greater control over them. Since I was already interested in building an empire, I might as well embrace it.


    The first part of building an empire was connecting it. Fortunately for me, connecting things was easy. I possessed far more than the power to teleport myself from area to area, but the power to build permanent portals connecting even distant parts of the universe together. Until now I hadn''t really used that power. That was about to change.


    I sensed my followers in both places scrambling to distinct, existing caverns and beginning to get to work. I felt their energy, passion, and the violence with which they expanded the chambers they had selected as the locations of my newest temples. The members of both branches moved with equal, inhuman passion, zealously working to fulfill the order they had been given.


    I pictured the temples they were going to build as simple, functional places. I didn''t care to order my followers to build me ornate temples. The temples I handbuild were somewhat ornate structures, but those temples were for humanoids who were impressed with such things. Insects were simpler, more efficient.


    I wanted the temples the swarm built to me to be places that mattered to their communities from a needs-based point of view. For now, building my temple and the sort of future-highway that would come to exist when the swarm''s territory expanded in the same place made sense.


    ________________________________________________


    By doing the mental equivalent of flexing I activated my power that dominated members of the Hymenoptera order. And in doing so I instantly gained minions and worshipers throughout the solar system of my birth. I felt the number of worshipers I possessed swell to unheard-of proportions.


    I physically fell to my knees, surprising the pair of dwarves I was with. It took me a moment to reassure them that I was fine but it wasn''t hard. I merely explained that when I gained new worshipers powerful emotions surged into me, and I had just gained a handful of new worshipers at once. They accepted that without much protest, opting to believe me since I was a god.


    All seven of the planets that revolved around the sun of my solar-system now teemed with Althonians. And those Althonians were about to get much stronger. I focused on the unimaginably large swarm I now commanded and gave the unevolved members an order.


    "Evolve." My mental voice reached across the solar system and every single new member of my swarm heard it at once.


    ________________________________________________


    When the young god was focused he was capable of incredible, world-changing acts. And his latest action was a great example of that.


    All over the solar-system ants, bees, wasps, and their alien equivalents on other worlds gained a single master at the exact same time. The first thing their master did was order them to evolve. Which they did. Ants became myrmekes and other bigger ants, wasps became dire wasps and giant wasps, and bees became thriaes or other larger bees.


    The creatures evolved at the same time, stunning the few humanoids who studied them. In each of the seven worlds that orbited Torus'' sun, there were humanoids who were fascinated by Hymenopterans. And they were the first victims of the swarm.


    The evolution of the swarm''s membership took only a few moments. The creatures who made up the swarm expanded in size over the course of three seconds each and their minds expanded equally quickly. And when they were done evolving, they lashed out at anyone who had "owned" them.


    This universally led to the deaths of the entomologists who felt that they could "own" insects. And in some cases other deaths as well. This wasn''t something Althos planned, but he was momentarily distracted. He had just gotten a new quest. One he immediately acted upon.


    [Alert: In evolving billions of bees you''ve gained the ability to acquire the second tier of influence over the Hymenoptera subdomain. To do so, have your Hymenopteric minions conquer an existing settlement.]


    The deity, having access to stores of information, moved to complete this quest more efficiently than any mortal or even extraplanar could. He found the smallest possible town he was aware of, a community with less than fifty people in it, and targeted that community. That community was actually near the colony the swarm had built on Iredale''s coast.


    Mere moments after gaining the quest and after the mass evolution was completed a portal appeared beside a hive of bees. The portal connected the small community with the hive of gigantic and newly evolved bees. They received a new order of their own, supplied to them by their god.


    "Kill." The order commanded. It was a simple order and one that the gigantic bees and thriaes immediately set about fulfilling. In less than a minute over two hundred of Althos'' newest minions dashed through the portal and invaded the town on the other side of it.


    ________________________________________________


    Calling the "town" a town was a bit of a stretch. It was a collection of a few dozen buildings built around a mine. And it was usually a quiet place, but that morning that changed forever as enormous insect wings carried gigantic Hymenoptric invaders into the small community.


    A swarm of massive insects descended upon the town en-masse and moved with inhuman efficiency. The insects silently moved to enact their orders. They split off into groups with a single thriae as a leader and over a dozen massive, dog-sized bees as reinforcement and muscle.


    Some of them were frightening looking creatures that fused the features of humans with insects, having the faces and basic bodily structures of humans but having extra arms, compound eyes, wings, and stingers. Others were simply bees of horrifying size.


    Althos wasn''t inactive during this time either. The distant god carefully selected the thraies in the town and bestowed upon them a new class: necromancer.


    He then gave them an additional order. "Reanimate." He commanded. He was trying to maximize his efficiency and doing so in this case meant maximizing the resources he acquired as a result of this raid.


    The insects were basically extensions of their god''s will. They surged over the town in moments and had invaded every home, shop, and building, less than ten minutes after their arrival.


    Within a matter of minutes, his minions were enacting a brutal wave of violence on the residents of the town. And since there were only forty-five residents of the town, it only took minutes for the violence to come to an end and for the final member of the town to be reanimated.


    Perhaps their only relative redeeming quality was that they weren''t deliberately cruel. Each time one of them killed a human they did it in less than three attacks. In the cases of the thraies, they did it in less than two. All in all the invasion took less than a half an hour to complete from start to finish.


    The sovereign of the swarm was pleased when he gained a new notification, one alerting him to the success of his minions


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Your minions have successfully conquered the settlement named Florida. This means that they and you have completed the quest needed for you to acquire the second tier of influence over the Hymenoptera subdomain.


    New Hymenoptera passive powers:


    Hive creation: At will you can create hives of any size less than a quarter of a kilometer wide.


    Honey creation: You can create honey at will and manipulate it freely. This is synergistic with the liquid subdomain and the agricultural subdomain.


    Self-size manipulation: You can shrink or grow at will. You could already do that, so this is a redundant power.


    Undead swarm creation: Members of the swarm who perish automatically rise up as the strongest possible undead beings they can become.


    Bee and ant creation: You can create bees and ants at will. This power fuses the powers of the life domain, the soul domain, and the Hymenoptera subdomain. It allows you to spontaneously create true lifeforms that can evolve and everything. This power is a shortcut.


    Swarm expansion: Spiders can now be considered part of the swarm. This is an expansion of your "Sovereign of the swarm" power, not so much an expansion of the Hymenoptera subdomain powers.


    New Hymenoptera subdomain active powers:


    Bee-sting: Once per hour you can target someone and cause them to endure no less than five bee-stings at once. This power synergizes bee-based abilities and the subdomains of pain and poison. This power can kill someone who is allergic to bees.


    Death of a swarm: You can target members of the swarm and cause them to die. Moments later they rise up as undead under your control.]


    ________________________________________________


    "Althos... What you''ve told has world-changing implications. Between your swarm and your horde, and the fact that there are demons who are not only idly eying the planet but actively preparing for an invasion... That''s serious stuff." Amaris told me, minutes after I finished telling her and Rachel my story. I nodded at her, in agreement. And then I responded to her.


    "It''s all serious stuff. The fact that there are angels and their children in this world, the fact that I exist at all, the fact that Rachel is a virgin and pregnant... That''s all serious stuff." I explained, agreeing earnestly with the dwarven handmaiden.


    Rachel looked at me, grateful for my honesty. She was silent longer than Amaris was, but after hearing my response she spoke.


    "Could we possibly tell my father about this? He''s far from perfect but if nothing else he''ll be able to connect us to other nobility and royalty who can do more than we can. Atlantis is not a powerful kingdom." Rachel asked, and then explained.


    I looked at her and considered her words. She was serious about this and had a look of innocent determination on her face. After a few moments, I nodded at her. She smiled at me and got up.


    "Well, in that case, we ought to get going. This is definitely a priority." She said, a more eager look on her face now. I could tell she was excited.


    Rachel, Amaris and I would spend the next hour telling her father about me. But that wasn''t what mattered. What mattered was the swarm. And they were bigger and busier than ever.

 109 Dwarves and Volcanoes.

    The morning chill felt through the ruined town would have bothered lesser insects. Unevolved ones. But the swarm that was responsible for the devastation that decimated Florida was not made up of lesser insects.


    The soft, unkempt dirt roads that crisscrossed and connected the buildings within the tiny community of Florida were busy and more well-traveled now than ever. But the feet that strode over them were not human or dwarf feet. They were the feet of gigantic, evolved, and sapient insects.


    The town was no longer silent. The droning sound of insects skittering and flying over the town filled it with noise, a sort of dull and maddening noise. The noise was dull but deafening since the town was now populated by thousands of insects.


    The air smelled of blood, death, and decaying corpses. It also smelled of the nauseating venom that the bees, even the thraies, used in the massacre they inflicted on the Floridians. The venom Althos'' worshipers used induced paralysis, and it also numbed the pain receptors in the body. Those who felt its sting died painlessly, aside from the pain they felt when first stung by an Althonian.


    Bees and the eerily human-like thraies were far from the only creatures wandering the town. Ants, and their relatives: the myremekes wandered the streets as well. As did enormous wasps. The insects, not always friendly towards each other or even themselves, did not bother each other. They weren''t freely communing, but they weren''t aggressive towards each other. It was a strange, unnatural sight.


    And far from the town of Florida, silent observers were keenly aware of the unnatural nature of it all. Silent, terrified observers. One of them, a half-elf with wide green eyes, looked to his commander. His commander was a human on a horse. Both the man and his horse were dressed in light armor. The human and the half-elf had binoculars in their hands and scared looks on their faces.


    "Insects... But ones unlike anything I''ve ever seen..." Muttered the mounted man. His voice was quiet, and his underling noticed the fearful tremble in it. There was a look of fear in his jade eyes. His underling, the half-elf, studied him carefully. And then he asked his superior officer a question.


    "Do you think this is the work of a druid? If it''s someone like me..." The half-elf asked, wondering aloud if there was a member of his species and class who was powerful enough to command the insectoid swarm that had destroyed Florida.


    The mounted human shook his head. The half-elf stopped speaking, unsurprised by his superior''s response. Neither of the military-men had ever heard of anything even remotely powerful enough to command a swarm of evolved insects of that size.


    "Come. We should get back to Midas." The human told his underling, before dismounting the horse and motioning for the half-elf to come and get on. They were egalitarian and took turns riding their shared mount.


    Far away from them, within the boundaries of Florida, one of the thraies turned in their direction. He was aware of them but said nothing. All of the human-like creatures, thraie and myrmekes alike were well-aware of the two humanoids. They only stayed their collective hand because their order was to destroy Florida. Not anyone or anything outside of the small settlement.


    After a few moments, the bee-man looked to his comrades and went to join them. Each insect had more important things to do than gawk at strangers.


    ________________________________________________


    An hour after Florida fell I found myself standing in a royal chamber that dwarfed the chambers belonging to Rachel. It was also more inhabited.


    I was surrounded by dwarfs. All of them wore either heavy-looking metallic armor or ornate robes denoting their status as high-ranking government officials. The dwarf in the most ornate looking robes was King Abel. He was a tall member of his race, standing just under one and a half meters tall.


    He wore purple robes, which were unnecessarily dark given the fact that we were in a nearly lightless chamber belonging to the monarch of a subterranean monarchy. I had just finished telling him and his closest advisors, the other dwarfs that were around Rachel, Amaris and I, about my life so far.


    The cabal shared knowing looks, furtive glances, and concerned body-language and I could tell even with a glance they were communicating in some way. I studied them for a moment, focused on those in robes more so than those in armor, and came to suspect that this wasn''t telepathy. Eventually, I spoke up and shattered the tense silence that had overtaken the room.


    "Will someone please share their thoughts with me? I can only read so much of one''s mind, I''d rather us just... talk to each other." I said, annoyed with the subtleties of the politics I had allowed myself into.


    When I was done speaking, one of the heavily-armored guards turned to me and lifted the sword he held. I turned to him and sighed. There was a look of anger in his eyes, and he was tense, his hands tightly gripping the sword and shield they held onto.


    "You can read our minds?" He asked equal parts angrily and defensively. I sighed at the soldier, unsurprised that he was reacting that way.


    "Yes I can. Now please put the weapon down. I am no enemy of yours, and if I was then that sword and shield wouldn''t be enough to stop me." I told the warrior, speaking honestly. The dwarf kept his tools up and looked around at his companions. When his fellow warriors gently encouraged him to put his weapons down, he reluctantly sighed and did as they suggested he do.


    "Tsk..." The dwarf guard hissed, glaring at me angrily. Out of curiosity, I did scan his surface thoughts, but they contained nothing of interest to me. More than anything else he was jealous of the fact that both Amaris and Rachel were close to me, as far as he could tell.


    Shortly after the guard and I exchanged words the dwarven king, Abel, cleared his throat and looked at Rachel, and then at me. He had deep brown eyes, and the fullest beard I had ever seen. There had been a twinkle in his eyes as he had listened to my story, and there was unexpected energy about him given that he was faking being sick and had sloth as his personal vice.


    "Althos!" He said, speaking loudly after he and I locked eyes for a few moments. His voice was loud, far louder than I would have expected.


    "First, allow me to express my gratitude. You have done much for this kingdom, far more than you appear to realize. Freeing Rachel from the lecherous and ambitious desires of my rival, Duke Dagwood, was an act of great kindness and mercy on your part. And now, trusting us with the information you''ve shared..." The king said, speaking rather regally of the events of the past hour.


    "You are far kinder than you may realize. And the knowledge we''ve gained from you is what will allow us to help safeguard the underground from the machinations of the demons." The king proclaimed, speaking as if I had handed him information on the demons themselves. I hadn''t.


    I now possessed a keen awareness of the demons I knew I needed to oppose. This awareness came to me thanks to my newest detection ability, the one that allowed me to map places illuminated by the light from the star at the center of my solar system. Thanks to it I had a live-action map of all of Torus.


    There was a specific faction of demons who sought to remake this world and turn it into a part of the dimension they were from, the dreaded "Heart of Darkness". This faction originally included Sombra, the praereptor demon who possessed Troik and was now my servant.


    They were my foes, and I intended to stop them from enacting their vile machinations. Doing so would be much easier since I now knew their locations. This was knowledge that I hadn''t shared with Rachel, Amaris, or King Abel.


    The truth was, I wanted to meet these demons myself. I was eager to make more demonic allies and to learn more about the demon named Agustino. Agustino was the demon at the center of the plot to twist Torus into a world compatible with the Heart of Darkness. After thinking about this for a moment, I looked at Abel and smiled.


    "Thank you King Abel. I was happy to help Rachel." I told the king, speaking quite honestly. Aiding Rachel was a smart move on my part that granted me this opportunity and the worship of a number of dwarven nobles who Rachel spoke too and then I converted, through dreams.


    I was worshipped by three separate dwarven nobles, all of whom were located in different parts of Atlantis. All of them were lawful in alignment, and so far I had found them to be useful allies. I looked forward to building deeper connections with them in the days to come, especially since I wanted to gain access to Morehammer''s artifacts eventually.


    "Althos, do you seek more worshipers? Please tell me and my advisors what your goals are. If they are compatible with ours we should consider an alliance. It would be a fitting reward for one who safeguarded my daughter''s freedom and protected us from our foes." King Abel said, speaking as though he had the unanimous consent of his court. That said, none of the dwarves voiced any opposition to the king''s remarks.


    "I am seeking more worshipers. My goal is to safeguard this world, while also expanding my own powers. For now, as a newborn god, I am... being cautious. I engage more readily with those who pray. Like your daughter did." I told the king, smiling as I spoke. I looked him in the eyes and added a bit to my remark.


    "You raised her well. You taught her about the old ways. The ways of Morehammer. Those ways saved her. Those ways are righteous ways." I told the king, assuming that her free form of piety was a cultural cornerstone that was a result of Morehammer''s influence.


    The king smiled at me. There was a genuineness and a gentleness in his smile. It was the smile of a father, not a king.


    Behind me, I sensed Rachel''s happiness as well. My actions had transformed this family''s life. It wasn''t the first time I had done something to save a family, but this moment felt... special. It felt like I had used my powers for good, and in doing so I had kept a family together. I felt joy well up within me.


    "No Althos... You saved her. I know not the hows of what you did, but you did this. You spoke to her. You gave her this gift. Thank you." The king told me, tears visible within his eyes. The king might have been lazy, but the love he possessed for his daughter was genuine.


    This moment of warmth and solemn joy lasted a few moments longer before I decided not to overstay my welcome. I took a step back and smiled at the dwarves around me. "Friends, it is time for me to depart from this place." I told the dwarves.


    "I am your friend, and I intend to earn your worship. In the days to come, I will meet with you again. And in the meantime, I shall aid your people. You shall know, and feel my presence. I possess... many powers. Remember me, and pray to me. Allow me to know you, and I will come to your aid when you need assistance." I said to the dwarves who had gathered around me.


    Sixteen total dwarves were crowded into the chamber. Three of them were either royalty or direct aides to royalty. Five of them were guards and military leaders. The other eight were valuable advisors, skilled experts the kingdom relied upon for advice and leadership. All of them silently watched, as I smiled and willed myself out of royal chamber.


    I teleported from the dwarven kingdom to the top of a tall, active volcano.


    ________________________________________________


    In an instant, I went from a stuffy, well-populated chamber to a point high in the sky, at the top of a volcanic mountain. I was standing on the edge of the volcano''s crater and if I looked down not only could I see the magma located dozens of meters below me, I could also see creatures swimming in said magma.


    "Hello there!" I said, practically shouting into the crater. I quietly used my powers over sound to ensure my voice carried the dozens of meters that separated me from the ocean of magma, and from the angels that swam in the magma as if it were a temperature ocean.


    The angels, a pair of the things, froze when they heard my voice a mere instant after I spoke. All I could see of the things were tall, bony spines that broke through the magma they swam in. The spines had previously been lazily moving through the lake of magma they were in, but now the spines froze, tensed up.


    I had been expecting them to come to me excitedly. The system, just two days ago, had informed me that the things were ready to come and serve me. They hadn''t.


    "It''s me! Althos!" I said, after the angels froze and didn''t move a muscle. But my second remark did provoke a reaction. The pair of angels shot out of the ocean of magma, flying to the top of the magmic chambers that contained the magma they lived in.


    I watched, fixated, as the creatures sailed out of their home. They had wings of flames, bodies that loosely resembled those of butterflies, and the antenna of assorted types of insects. They flew with frightening speed, and only flapped their wings twice while ascending to the peak of the volcano that housed them.


    As they drew nearer and nearer to me I began to feel the heat radiating out of their bodies. I chuckled and relished it since it was nothing compared to the heat generated by the sun. As they closed in on me, I heard the voices of the system and assorted domains cheer in excitement in my head. I grinned, sharing their excitement. I was about to meet angels for the first time!

 110 Angels And Conjuration

    The two magmic angels came to a sudden stop in front of me. Up close they were enormous, easily more than twice the size of a human man. They had glimmering red bodies, a darker red than magma.


    Both of the ridiculously warm entities floated over the crater they had flown out of. They seemed to suspend themselves in mid-air as their wings weren''t flapping yet they floated, undisturbed by gravity.


    I studied their insectoid bodies. I hadn''t expected volcanic angels, creatures of magma and heat, to take on such a familiar form.


    The creatures studied me as readily as I studied them. They had all of the strange and distinctive features of butterflies, including their compound eyes. In both cases, their eyes were fixated on me. We stared at each other in silence, until I broke said silence.


    "What are your names?" I asked, looking at both of the entities with a curious, almost childlike joy. I was excited to have encountered angels.


    ________________________________________________


    Angels were a species of extraplanar beings. In the mythic age of the old gods, they were a species of creatures who loyally served the gods.


    What I knew about them was actually fairly limited. I knew that these angels were volcanic angels, creatures of magma, and ash. I also knew that these specific beings were volcanic angels with wrecked minds, which was in and of itself a mystery waiting to be solved.


    These specific angels had now recovered to a functional state. And that was why I was here, engaging with them. I wanted to meet them, and to truly recruit them.


    ________________________________________________


    "We lack names. Please give us names." One of the creatures replied, a few moments after I asked the pair of entities for their names.


    "Hmmm..." I replied, making a sound rather than actually speaking. It took me a moment to come up with names I actually liked.


    "Your name is Lahar, and your name is Pagsabog." I told the creatures, speaking confidently after spending a few moments in contemplation. The flying creatures considered my names for a few moments. As they did so they began to approach me.


    As I was doing this, my projections were busy. One of them was readying itself for another day of lessons with Dr. Cortes, and another was inside of my tower. The one inside of my tower was making itself truly useful.


    It was finishing up the requirements to earn the first tier of influence over the subdomain of conjuration. It had been hard at work for nearly three hours now, inching towards the completion of that subdomain.


    ________________________________________________


    The conjuration circle within a small room within my tower was a beautiful thing. It was made from Sombra''s own blood, and it gave the otherwise drab room a splash of color. I was accompanied by another demon as well. A newcomer.


    Sombra was beside me, staring at her work with masterful attention to detail. She visually inspected every centimeter of her blood-circle.


    Conjuration circles were finicky things. Even a single mistake would make an imperfect circle, and imperfect circles gave those who were summoned by them the freedom to step out and lash out at anyone who called them to this world.


    I allowed Sombra to do as she wished, but I had already used this circle. I had already summoned and unleashed several demons using this circle. I sent them to various parts of the world, most notably the city of Aronms and the city of San Gerardo.


    I had summoned eleven demons. Three of them were succubi who like the other succubus I had summoned freely acknowledged me as their king once they received the notification that they were being summoned. I then proceeded to unleash them on the city of Aronms, where they were to investigate the noble families.


    Five of my demons were incubi. Incubi were handsome, powerfully built male sex-demons. The other three were different, stranger types of demons.


    One of them accompanied me. It was a beheman, a powerful demon of sloth with the lower body of a serpent and the upper body of a corpulent male human. It held a warhammer in its hands, and its long serpentine form took up space around the chamber we found ourselves in.


    The other two had already left to enact their duties. One of them was an asesinato demon, a demon of murder and bloodshed. I had gifted the bizarre being a human form, and commanded it to begin to search for murderers who could easily be converted to my worship.


    The other demon was an arana demon, a gigantic spider. I gave that one a simple task: awaken spiders. I gave it a stick that I enhanced with my awakening ability and commanded the creature to build up an army of spiders dedicated to me, and bestowed the beast with the cleric class. The creepy thing crept off to exact my wishes.


    All in all I had summoned fourteen demons. I just needed to summon one more. I was quiet as I thought about what to summon, as I wanted it to be something special. I spent a minute in silence before I heard a quiet voice.


    "What are you thinkin'' about?" The voice asked. It was a voice that came from within me, so I knew it was the voice of a domain or subdomain. I replied to it mentally.


    "I''m thinking about what is the final sort of demon I ought to summon." I explained. A second later the voice had an interesting suggestion.


    "Is that so? Why not summon a pesadilla demon? Pesadilla demons are nightmare demons. Making them into your followers will increase your ability to torment mortals and to make societies more vulnerable to your influence." The voice suggested. It was an interesting suggestion.


    "Nightmare demons? Hmm..." I thought, in response. I mulled it over, before realizing that the voice, most likely the dream domain, had made a really good point. Having an army of nightmare demons at my disposal would give me an incredible tool with which to weaken mortal societies.


    "You know what? I like the idea of an army of nightmare demons." I told the voice, speaking to it in the confines of my mind. The voice began to chuckle, sounding rather sinister.


    I quietly activated the ancient spell I had used to summon the other demons and chuckled when I saw the same notification I had grown familiar with over the last few hours. It was a simple thing, asking me to describe the sort of demon I wanted to summon. I was a simple man, with simple tastes.


    "Call to a demon that seeks to inflict nightmares on mortals and is willing to do so at my command. One would enjoy tormenting families, and would happily serve as an attack dog of the god of nightmares." I commanded the notification, speaking to it with the familiarity one would speak to an old friend.


    A few moments later a purple smog abruptly began to come out of the ground on which the circle was etched. And within the circle, within the smoke, a hazy form began to come into being. The creature in the smog was a strange, amorphous being.


    The creature in the circle didn''t have a physical form. Its body was a misty thing, indistinct and incorporeal. I could sense it, and it could sense me, but I knew that I reached out to pull it out of the circle I''d be pulling on demonic gas.


    The creature looked, in so far as it could anyway, in my direction. I chuckled and walked over to the circle. My two servants, Sombra and Servente, watched me curiously. They gasped when I placed my hand on the circle, and in doing so undid the thing''s protective properties.


    The creature in the smoke began to scream. The sound was one of triumph and elation, utter delight at the freedom it had just acquired. The sound the creature made was like the sound of boiling water. As it made that noise I received a new notification.


    [Conjuration subdomain details:


    The conjuration subdomain... This subdomain is your first real tether to the other dimensions that exist in this universe and in other universes.


    Conjuration magic is potent magic that creates portals and pathways that can link together even other dimensions. They cannot, at your current level of influence anyway, tether together separate universes.


    Conjuration magic allows you to call to extraplanar beings and summon them to serve you. You can conjure phantoms, which are mere shades of actual extraplanar beings, or you can conjure actual extraplanar beings. Conjuring actual extraplanar beings is an act of great power, and it brings real beings over from other dimensions. You''ve already felt its power.


    This school of magic is tied to your alignment and the alignments you have influence over. This is because extraplanar beings, true extraplanar beings, are entities whose alignments directly influence them in real, material ways.


    Each alignment has a specific type of extraplanar it holds influence over. These extraplanars are fanatically devoted to gods of their alignment and serve them zealously.


    To gain influence over this subdomain, use its powers and summon more extraplanar beings. Gaining their worship also helps increase your sway over this subdomain.


    Conjuration subdomain passive powers:


    Multidimensional portals: You can now create portals that link together separate dimensions. These portals still can''t link you to other universes, but any dimension that is tied to this universe can now be traveled too.


    Angelic creation: You can create angels. This synergistic power fuses the domains of life, faith, souls, and the subdomain of conjuration to create angels. For now, you can only create minor angels, such as angels of agriculture, and angels of the mind.


    Angelic knowledge: As a god with power over the domains of life, knowledge, souls, and the subdomain of conjuration you now possess knowledge about angels.


    In the distant past angels were the legendary servants of the gods. They were the feared or loved messengers and warriors of the gods who enacted their wills in the mortal worlds. Angels cannot hide from your detection abilities, and you can immediately learn what kind of angels dwell int he worlds you can detect.


    Angelic summoning: You can summon angels. With this power, you can construct angelic summoning circles.


    Banishment: Upon striking an extraplanar being you can banish them to their home dimension. This power can be resisted by greater extraplanars, and cannot be resisted by lesser extraplanars. If you opt to do this your strike is rendered harmless, even if the banishment is resisted.


    Demon knowledge: Synergistic fusions of powerful domains like knowledge, chaos, and evil, allow you to more effectively study demons and gain knowledge of their strange home. Demons cannot hide from you, no matter their power. The Heart of Darkness, the home of demons and other... stranger beings, is now also something you can study.


    Devil summoning: You can summon devils. This power teaches you to construct infernal summoning circles.


    Leye knowledge and summoning: Leyes are a class of lawful extraplanar beings. They can be of any alignment on the good-evil axis.


    Leyes are servants of gods of law. They are fanatically devoted to such beings and are incredibly intelligent, orderly entities. You can now summon them.


    Pain-bringer knowledge and summoning: Pain-bringers are a class of evil extraplanar beings. They run the gamut in terms of their other alignment-position. They can be summoned by you.


    Pain-bringers are servants of gods of evil and pain. They worship and serve such gods eagerly. Morningstar pain-bringers are the lowest class of such creatures, and they will eagerly serve you once you summon them.


    Salvaje summoning: Salvajes are the chaotic class of extraplanar. Like pain-bringers and leyes they worship and serve gods of chaos. This power is their equivalent of the powers for pain-bringers and leyes.


    Class granting: You can grant your followers the "conjurer" class.


    Conjuration subdomain active power:


    Phantom army: Once per week you can conjure an army of phantoms of up to a hundred phantoms to serve you. This army lasts up to an hour and a half and follows your orders for as long as it exists.


    Phantoms are semi-corporeal copies of extraplanar beings. They serve you eagerly, and loyally.


    Conjuration subdomain blessing and curse details:


    If you bless someone who has the conjurer class they can summon stronger creatures and more easily bargain with those they summon to acquire their services. If you curse them then they lose some of their summoning abilities and creatures they summon are harder to bargain with.


    If you bless an extraplanar being with this subdomain their ties to this dimension are strengthened, granting them increased power, hitpoints, and increasing the experience they gain while here. If you curse an extraplanar being with this subdomain they are weakened. Their power decreases, they begin to suffer daily hitpoint damage, and lose the ability to recover naturally from wounds.]


    I chuckled as I read through the notification. This didn''t quite increase my own power, but it was an extremely handy subdomain that greatly diversified the sorts of potential servants I had at my disposal. And even in reading through the notification, I had just received I gained a good deal of knowledge about both my powers and the sorts of extraplanars that existed in the multiverse.


    The nightmare demon "looked" in my direction, in so far as it could, curiously. As did Sombra, and Servente. I looked back at the trio of demons and chuckled.


    "I just gained new powers. And it''s all because of you all." I told them, obviously happy. They shivered, unsure of what new powers I had just gained.


    ________________________________________________


    As I received the conjuration subdomain''s notification the pair of angels floated just a few meters away from me. We had silently observed each other for a few minutes. The angels turned to face each other and then spoke.


    "We accept our names. Do you have any orders for us, Althos?" They asked, speaking in a strange and otherworldly unison. I smiled at the angels, and considered their question. It was an important one, and one that I knew I needed to answer carefully.


    The system once remarked that these creatures were in all likelihood the strongest creatures I had met to date. They were immensely powerful and eerie entities, and I needed to be careful with them so as to not misuse their power or accidentally cause meaningless destruction.

 111 Curiosity And The City Of The Dead

    The newly christened angels watched me. Their compound eyes tracked my movement, and even the slightest shifts I made were noted by them. As I mulled over their question, whether or not I had any orders for them, they kept their eyes glued to me. It was odd to be the subject of their gaze.


    "What have you been doing since your minds were destroyed?" I asked the pair of angels, studying them carefully. They were quiet for a moment, before speaking in unison.


    "We have been here. As have our comrades, though in other volcanoes. We have been... existing." The pair of angels replied. I watched them carefully, studying them as they replied to me. My eyes narrowed when they replied that way.


    "And is there a reason why you two are together?" I asked, looking at the angels with something akin to suspicion in my gaze. They gazed back at me, reverentially while formulating another answer to my questions.


    "We are together because we are a mated pair. Angels can reproduce in a manner similar to terrestrial butterflies." The angels replied. For a moment their monotonous voices becoming somewhat warmer as they spoke that time. I smiled, understanding their connection a bit more.


    "You''re a mated pair? So are you... in love?" I asked, curious to hear their answer. They nodded at me, at least as far as they could nod.


    "What is that like? I don''t... feel emotions in the same way you do." I asked them. I also hadn''t had many chances to engage with creatures in love yet.


    The two biggest examples of loving relationships that I knew of were the parents of Isadora, and Gustavo and his wife. I couldn''t ask Gustavo without looking odd, and if I asked the parents of Isabella they would badger me with questions. They had before when I had spoken with them. So this presented me with a neat opportunity to learn about something without being badgered.


    The pair of angels studied me for a moment. And then only one of them spoke.


    "Being in love means wanting to share your life with someone. It means that you care for them as much as you care about yourself. More even." The one closest to me, Lahar said. Then Pagsabog closed in and spoke.


    "Being in love means you care enough to protect that person. It means you care enough to risk your life for them. It''s when you feel, truly deeply feel, that your life is better because they are in it. Being in love is... a willingness to sacrifice your own happiness for someone else. Have you ever felt anything like that?" Asked Pagsabog.


    I thought about that for a moment. I was silent as I mulled it over. It didn''t take me long to realize that the answer was no. A moment after I came to that realization I looked at the angels.


    "No. I haven''t. I don''t even know if I like people in general." I told the angels. They were silent as they thought about my answer.


    "Hmm... Maybe you should think about that." Lahar suggested, encouraging me to be introspective. I grinned at the angels, appreciating their advice. And then I refocused and decided to ask them another question.


    "So wait, if you know you''re a mated pair of angels does that mean you have other memories as well?" I asked, looking at them expectantly. They subtly shook their heads at me.


    "We don''t. We know we''re in love, and that we''re a mated pair, but our memories... They are stuck behind a mental... wall." The two angels said, speaking in that almost monotonous unison once more.


    I looked at them and then reached out a hand. They glanced at the outstretched appendage and were silent. I chuckled.


    "I''m gonna heal you. Eventually. Your minds were destroyed. And when I heal you we''ll discover whoever did this to you. I... want to speak to them." I told the angels, a wry grin on my face as I spoke.


    "We see..." The angels muttered, the spines on their backs lighting up as they spoke. The spines were one of the only features that ruined the illusion that they were ordinary giant butterflies. The objects were dark red, almost blood-like in color, and protruded from their backs. Their faces subtly twitched in discomfort when they spoke, and their abrupt silence clued me in on something.


    I sensed that the pair of angels had just tried to lie to me. It made me want to chuckle.


    "Did... did you just try to lie to me?" I asked, a grin on my lips. Both of the angels looked down, radiating guilty energy. I chuckled at their discomfort.


    "I have an ability that prevents mortals from lying to me. I suppose I know now that it can work on angels too." I told them, speaking smugly. They were silent, and I allowed the silence to fill the air between us for a few moments.


    "For now, my orders are to stay here. In the days to come this will change, but before I use your powers I need to master my own." I told the pair of angels, once I decided to interrupt the silence that had overtaken the air between us. When the entities nodded at me, I grinned and vanished from view, teleporting away from the pair of creatures.


    I was teleporting to a place where I could be alone with my thoughts. I needed a moment to think.


    ________________________________________________


    I teleported myself to an unusual location. I went from standing in the volcano to standing within one of the areas populated by the undead horde I had created. In an instant, I went from standing at the edge of a hot volcano to standing within a city built by and for the undead.


    I found myself within a large, unlit plaza, one that was only partially completed. Even the unstoppable tide of undead couldn''t complete this within five days mostly because they were too disorganized. Their disorganization was one of the things that made this place a perfect place for me to go to when I needed to think.


    The necropolis was a project that was started by a few of the more intelligent undead I had created. It was led by a council of Grave-giants, who were themselves organized and led by Nivar. Nivar was the first of the Grave-giants I had reanimated, and one of the very few I had reanimated and then later deanimated so that I could transform her into something else.


    My thoughts turned to her and the unusual trajectory of her life as I examined the plaza in detail.


    The plaza around me was surrounded by ramshackle buildings. At the center of the plaza stood a number of open tents, inhabited by a number of minor, even by the standards of my powers, undead. The open tents were inhabited by ghouls and zombies.


    I looked into a tent and saw a single ghoul, one who was originally a human male. It stood still, eerily inanimate. There was a thick crust of dried blood on the thing''s face. I looked into another tent and saw a female dwarf who had been reanimated as a zombie stand around lifelessly. The dwarf zombie had beautiful blue eyes, but they were vacant and lifeless.


    The other tents were inhabited by corporeal undead, and the air above us was rife with incorporeal spirits. It was an eerie, albeit fantastic sight. I examined it for a few moments before making myself incorporeal and deciding to play around for a few moments.


    I rose a single hand, aiming it near the tent that contained the dwarven zombie. I then activated one of the life-creating "shortcuts" I had recently acquired. A second later a fully formed adult cow appeared, as if out of nowhere, and came to life with a single loud moo. This noise carried far in the strange city and provoked a flurry of action and violence.


    A tidal wave of the undead suddenly dashed towards me and my bovine creation. Undead exploded out of their tents, and hateful incorporeal beings swooped down on the cow. I watched, lazily, as the closest undead reached my creation and tore into the thing.


    The cow mooed in pain, as the zombie reached the beast and bit into its hide-covered loins. The zombie energetically bit into the thickest part of the cow, but the other undead were more efficient. One of them, a powerful wright, held an iron axe and used it to swiftly decapitate the bovine beast.


    The cow''s head was blown off of its body. A spurt of blood shot out and provided the almost entirely black and white backdrop of the city with a single, solitary splash of color. The body provided the undead with food and entertainment for nearly an entire minute, before the thing was reduced to bones.


    I wasn''t going to allow the bones to remain idle. I wordlessly cast a single spell and reanimated the bones of the beast, creating the newest member of my legion of the undead. The skeletal cow ambled to life, reanimating as speedily as it came to life. This bored the other undead, who quickly went back to their homes or just mindlessly shuffled around the plaza.


    [Althos...] The system muttered, sounding annoyed.


    "What? The undead were hungry and I can do what I want with the cows I create from start to finish." I replied, annoyed at the system.


    [This is one of the first arguably evil acts you''ve done in days.] The system replied, causing me to be surprised.


    "What do you mean? I do evil acts all the time." I told the system, while trying to come up with examples. None came to mind.


    [No you don''t. You didn''t even kill slavers, which... wouldn''t really be evil, though it''d be closer to evil than most things you do.] The system responded.


    [You aren''t even really chaotic neutral. If you were a mortal your alignment would definitely be neutral good.] The system told me, saying something that surprised me.


    "Wait, really?" I asked, shock coloring my voice. I heard an almost robotic voice chuckle in response to my shock.


    [Yes! The evilest thing you''ve done, the first interaction you had with Okig, you did on accident. The next most evil thing you''ve done was you killing slavers, and you stopped killing them as soon as they surrendered. They were also practicing humanoid sacrifice. You were very clearly the good guy in that scenario.] The system said, speaking oddly snarkily as it did so.


    [Do you not want to be neutral-good in alignment? After a while, I just sort of... figured you wanted to be neutral good.] The system remarked. At first, I thought it was being sarcastic but I realized it wasn''t when the silence between us filled the air. It was at this point that I came up with a rebuttal to its claims that I didn''t act evilly.


    "I destroyed the town of Florida!" I told the system. It chuckled at me.


    [At the behest of the system. Your acts of good have always been unprovoked and only rarely bring you a real direct benefit. Your acts of evil have almost always required significant prodding from the system and the promise of greater power.] The system said while laughing robotically.


    [You don''t act evilly for the sake of advancing evil, you sometimes do things that are kind of dickish either by accident or for the sake of gaining greater power. Power which you proceed to use... To improve life, for the living. Even when the living are assholes.] The system added, chuckling.


    I sighed, annoyed at its remarks. I was mostly annoyed that I felt like the system was right and I couldn''t rebut it.


    ________________________________________________


    I didn''t want to be a good-aligned god. I felt that that was... restrictive. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be able to influence everything, good and bad alike, and for people to know to expect that. Being a good-aligned god felt like it would lead to me being stuck in a role I didn''t want to be stuck in.


    I hated slavery because it infringed on the freedom of others. I didn''t want my freedom to be infringed upon. I didn''t want to be restricted. Being neutral felt like a way for me to acquire the freedom for myself that I knew I wanted. It felt like... a way for me to be true to myself.


    It was that sort of thinking that led me to say what I said next.


    "I don''t want to be neutral good. Whether it''s by standards that are mortal in nature, or divine. I want to be neutral. That is how I feel that I can most acquire the sort of... spiritual freedom I want." I told the system, plainly stating my desires for one of the first times in my life.


    [Then why don''t you act like it?] The system replied, speaking to me in a way that was somewhat refreshingly frank.


    [You are not balanced. You are not neutral. Or at least you don''t act like it. You are... good, fundamentally. Maybe neutral good, maybe chaotic good, but basing things on your actions alone you are definitely some form of good.] The system told me, stressing it. Stressing me.


    "I don''t want to be. And shouldn''t that count for something?" I asked, feeling... anger well up within me.


    [It does, but if anything it highlights the reality that you are not neutral. At least... by mortal standards. The fact that you resist your nature accentuates your goodness, it doesn''t undo it.] The system proclaimed, speaking arrogantly. This deeply angered me.


    "What are you talking about?" I asked, anger seeping into my voice.


    [It is more challenging to resist evil urges and behave kindly, or justly, than it is to behave kindly, justly, when it is one''s nature to do so. As a god, you''ve consistently resisted your innate desires because your innate desires are not always conducive to the needs and desires of those who possess less power than you do. Your acts of kindness, even if they have sometimes been in your self-interest, are meaningful. They color your soul.] The system explained, speaking a bit more gently now.


    I considered the system''s words for a moment. And then made me reminisce. I reflected on my life, and on the things I had done to date. I recalled the times I had felt dark urges well up within me, and the ways I had resisted those urges. It felt... odd to reflect on my life to date.


    "I don''t want to be good. And I suppose it''s time that I act on my desires." I said, a few moments after I began to think back on all of the events that led me to this point.


    "I want to be free. And tying myself to goodness is not freeing. It doesn''t give me the freedom I want to have." I muttered, feeling a few of the domains within me growing a bit excited at what I was saying. I could feel their dark impulses surging within me. I sighed and pushed them back down.


    "That doesn''t mean being an unrepentant monster. I must... find my own way." I said, not wanting to be a scourge who decimates and destroys without feeling. That said, their excitement still lurked within me, just dulled to an extent.


    "But what do I want?" I asked, not speaking to the system, but to myself.

 112 Desires, And An Elemental Overlord

    "What do I want?" I asked myself. It was an important question, one that merited legitimate consideration.


    "I like the freedom my current lifestyle affords me. That said, I also want others to be free." I muttered, keenly aware that I possessed the power to effect grand change and to forever change the world.


    "I am staunchly opposed to slavery. If I want to oppose slavery effectively... I need to come out of hiding and declare that I am outlawing it. And that I have the authority to do so. Authority I can wield by virtue of my power as a god." I realized, firmly aware that the longer I hid my existence the longer practices that I hated and firmly opposed would continue to be practiced.


    "The longer I am wishy-washy the longer slavery and other equally abhorrent acts continue to occur." I muttered, clenching my fists in irritation. I knew that I was at the point where I needed to make a decision and stick with it.


    "I possess the power to change this world in ways I see fit." I whispered, beginning to feel something come up within me.


    "I need to use it. And not run from it. I am a god. I still don''t know much about what that means, but I need to accept the power within me and embrace it as a means to achieve my goals." I said, speaking loudly now. Undead around me were looking in my direction, aware of my proximity but not who I was. I didn''t want them to know. Not yet anyway.


    I was in the middle of planning something, something that I knew may well require their aid. But first I needed to be truly introspective. To look within myself. To examine myself and see who I was, versus who I wanted to be.


    ________________________________________________


    I was afraid. I wasn''t sure of what entirely, but I theorized that I was afraid of my own power. And a part of me felt that that was comparable to being afraid of myself. Gods were the closest thing possible to power incarnate.


    The power I possessed gave me the ability to ravage solar systems and that sent shivers up my spine. If I was being honest that was likely why I had yet to use my more destructive powers. But those powers were necessary, important ones.


    The fear I felt was a powerful one. One that had probably lurked in my heart ever since I first interacted with Okig and my lack of control over my own powers caused her mind to be altered. But I knew that I wasn''t the same god I had been when I did that. In the days since then, I had changed, and in turn I had changed entire societies.


    I had met creatures all over the world and gone to space. I had fought in major battles and converted entire settlements to my worship. I had gained the power to reanimate the dead. If I let my fear control me it would take me forever to gain the powers I wanted and to abolish slavery.


    "How long will I let my fear control me?" I asked myself.


    "How long will I restrain myself? And am I truly free if I continue to hold myself back?" I wondered. It didn''t take me long to come up with an answer.


    "No... If I continue to let my fears go unnamed, unaddressed, and unresolved, then I am not free. And if I want to free others surely I must free myself first." I realized.


    "But how? How can I confront this fear I feel within me?" I wondered, pushing myself to arrive at a breakthrough somehow.


    ________________________________________________


    I spent a few minutes stuck in an introspective loop. I was pushing myself to find a way to free myself from a self-imposed cage of fear, limitations, and caution that kept me from acting on my desires. And a part of me, the part shackled by fear, was pushing back against my desire to free myself.


    "But if I misuse my powers the consequences might be irreversible!" A part of me argued, advocating for my caution and for my continued slowness with regards to the usage of my powers.


    "The longer I refuse to use my powers, no matter what justification I come up with to avoid using them, the longer slavery continues to be practiced. The longer people continue to be shackled. The longer I continue to deny something that is fundamental to a god: my own power." Another part of me retorted.


    "I am not free so long as I allow fear to control me. To define me." That same part of myself argued.


    "But what if I make mistakes?" That cautious part of me argued again.


    "Then I learn from them. And if necessary I fix them. I am not a child. I can take responsibility for my mistakes and I can fix what I break." The firmer, bolder part of me retorted.


    "How can I be a god of anything important if I refuse to use my powers? What is the point of my existence, if I let fear define me and keep me small? What can I create if I allow myself to be afraid?" The brave part of me, the free part of me asked.


    For the first time, the voice in my head, the part of me that was afraid, was quiet. The brave part of me was winning. I sensed it. And it made me feel excited.


    "I practice my powers. I hone them. I train with them. It makes me strong. And now I must let it make me brave. I must let it make me grow." That part of me whispered. And it wasn''t wrong. I did train with my powers. I did practice with them. I took them seriously and used them intelligently.


    "I am a god. I am not a mortal. And I am not confined to the old ways of the gods of the past. I am my own person. And at the end of the day, if I am to grow I must not let fear hold me back." That part of me whispered, triumphantly.


    "That doesn''t mean not listening to my fears. I can be intelligent and careful with my powers without being afraid of them." I told myself.


    "And to prove that... I should use them." That bold part of me asserted. I smiled as I realized what the courageous part of me meant. A way to use my powers that would be both ambitious and would be something I could do without harming people.


    "I must accept who I am. What I am. It is time for me to become myself. To embrace the godly pride that dwells within me. The godly pride that dwells within me is a gift from my ancestors. And if I am to become who I am meant to be, I must accept it. I must accept my own power." The bold part of me whispered, coaxing me to accept who I am and to be myself. Power, pride, and all.


    Feeling a surprising certainty and boldness I closed my eyes and teleported out of the undead city. I was going somewhere far away from it. A place that wasn''t dark, or crawling with the undead.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself in a new place an instant after I realized that there was a safe way for me to use my powers and begin to fully and truly confront my fears. I was floating freely over the ocean.


    As far as even my gaze could see all I could see was an ocean. The ocean that stretched around me in every direction was a stunningly beautiful crystal clear blue color, and it teemed with oceanic life. I wasn''t here for the ocean though. Instead I looked to the sky.


    The sky stretched endlessly above me. It was cloudless and breathtakingly beautiful. And it was also the perfect place for me to begin to use my powers fully and artistically. I rose a hand and pointed it into directly above me.


    I saw the empty air that endlessly stretched out above and around me and willed it to no longer be empty. And I watched as reality itself changed at my behest.


    Stones and soil began to appear above me. Slowly. I chuckled as I watched them gradually come together and struggle to form a cohesive surface on which something could form. I rose another hand and aimed it squarely at the scattered collection of stone and soil.


    "I must be brave." I told myself, as I activated an ability of mine for the first time: my mastery over gravity. I shivered slightly, feeling a bit of anxiety, as I began to utilize this potent power. I was worried that I was going to mess it up, and create a gravitational core that would be too big and attract too many things.


    [Oh wow, you really are experimenting aren''t you?] Asked the system, an interested tone coloring its question. I gritted my teeth and ignored the question.


    I carefully and determinedly focused on a distinct mental image. I envisioned an invisible "center" of gravity for the stones and soil to circle around and come together to surround. And I watched, as they began to do just that. It took a few moments, moments which eventually turned into minutes, but the rocky base of my future island did begin to come together before my very eyes.


    I quietly fiddled with the power I had just begun to use. I took a second to make sure that the gravitational core I was creating would not be bothered by other sources of gravity. I had magical powers after all, I might as well use them to advance my own ends shouldn''t I? Especially since I was neutral. I''d be neutral towards things like gravity when it advanced my own ends. And ignoring gravity was definitely advantageous right now.


    After enough of a solid base for my floating island was built for me to walk on, I willed myself further into the air and above the lovely ocean I was floating over. I ascended, ignoring wind, gravity, and any other things that might otherwise try to keep me down, easily.


    It took me just a few moments to reach the top of the rocky island. I set foot on it as I recalled the details of the quest to become an elemental overlord.


    I had chosen this quest, because it required me to flex my powers. It demanded that I make use of some of my more potent abilities, and that I do so without fear. Or at least the way that I envisioned the quest being fulfilled would require me to do that. And I was going to be creating a whole new place, instead of just taking over an existing place, with existing people. Which meant that I could begin to tackle my fears of my bigger powers.


    ________________________________________________


    [Quest information: To become an elemental overlord, you must create a sustainable, flying island. Once you do you''ll gain access to the abilities granted to the weakest elemental overlords. This flying island must have spaces dedicated to all four of the elements.]


    ________________________________________________


    "''Spaces dedicated to all four of the elements'' huh? Well that''ll be fun." I told myself, chuckling as I stretched an arm out towards the ocean. Without even really paying much attention to it, I called out to the ocean and mentally whispered to the body of water.


    "Come to me. Obey me." I told it, coaxing it to serve me. I felt it obey me without any hesitation, as all other elements had, and a moment later I watched a long tendril of saltwater appear off the edge of my floating island. The water snaked its way towards me and then proceeded to wrap itself around the hand that I outstretched towards the ocean.


    I looked at the stone floor under my feet and tapped it with my right foot. While doing so I willed the earth in front of it to stop being perfectly smooth and instead made it a bit bumpy. I made the surface of my island bumpy enough for me to have some space in which I could pour out some of the water coiled around my arm into it. It created a bumpy portion of the floating island that was a few meters deep and a few meters across.


    I moved my hand over the bump and then willed the water into it. The water, moving as if it were a strange, elemental serpent, slithered from its position coiled around my hand to the imperfection I had just created quite easily. I watched as the long tendril of water moved as if it were alive until the strange part of the island was completely filled with clear saltwater.


    "That should be enough." I muttered, chuckling as I admired the tiny pond-like area I had just created. I had basically created a decorative saltwater pond.


    The island I had created was dozens of meters wide, and it easily ignored gravity. It was a free-floating structure that was situated above an ocean that was undisturbed by islands or even seafaring vessels.


    I walked a few meters away from the pond I had just created and proceeded to create another imperfection, a depression, on the island''s surface. Making this one was even easier than making the first. But it was also more uneven, so I spent a few moments correcting it and making it conform to a specific set of dimensions rather than allowing it to be organic. I could decorate my island how I wanted too after all.


    As soon as it was constructed, I outstretched my other hand over it. I grinned as I activated my powers over fire, and I reflexively willed a bright red flame into being just underneath my hand. The fire came into being in the form of a solid, dark scarlet orb. It was a perfect circle in shape.


    I admired the orb for a moment, distracted by both its shape and its color. "How pretty..." I muttered, looking right into it. And then I shook myself out of my daze and proceeded to gently drop the orb into the depression I had created for it. A sort of fire-pit.


    When the orb hit the bottom of the pit, it energetically spread out across the space that I had designated for it. As soon as the lively fire tried to spread out further than the area I had intended for it to occupy it, the actual pit, I chuckled and stopped the blaze with a slight flex of my mind.


    The flame immediately retreated, slinking back into the artificial confines of the fire-pit. I watched, lazily, as the fire was pushed back by the invisible force exerted by my mind over it. It only took a few seconds. As soon as it was done I grinned and turned back to study the rest of the island.


    ________________________________________________


    The island stretched out before me, perfectly smooth and unshaped by anything other than my handy elemental powers. It was beautiful, in an unapologetically rocky sort of way.


    I still had two more sets of elemental subdomains that needed their own little areas before I''d be awarded access to my next set of powers. Air and earth.


    I walked away from the fire-pit, and when I felt that I was a reasonable distance from it I took the same hand that I had conjured the fireball underneath and outstretched it once more. And then I pointed my index finger straight down, pointing it at the ground underneath me.


    I closed my eyes and envisioned a tiny tornado begin to swirl out from my fingertip. I pictured a tiny funnel that came out of my fingertip and nearly touched the island''s surface but managed to stay just above it at all times. I shivered as I felt the air reply to me with vigor and begin to dance to my whims.


    When I opened my eyes I was delighted to see a thin funnel cloud that spun just underneath my fingertip. The thing was pretty tiny, less than a meter tall, but it quickly gathered dust from the stones around us and became visible to the naked eye since it had a swirling cloud of debris that effectively outlined it.


    The tiny almost-tornado spun harmlessly. I watched it for a few moments and laughed happily when it began to freely roam the island. That said, I wasn''t careless and reached out to the wind with my mind. I ordered it not to approach the other spots wherein tiny displays had been or would be created. I didn''t want the tiny twister to mess with my other efforts.


    I had a single element left. The element of earth. And this one, my first element, was easy.


    ________________________________________________


    "The element of earth." I muttered, as I knelt down. I reached out and touched the stone at my feet.


    The stone was solid and unyielding to my touch. I felt its strength, its sturdiness, against my fingertips. And I also knew that for all of the strength and sturdiness of the stone it would not resist me. I was the creator of this place, and its master. I dug my fingers into the stone that the island was made of, and then proceeded to activate my powers.


    "Grow. Up!" I muttered, as I yanked some of the stone straight upwards, creating fragments. I was able to easily rip stone out of the island, and as the stones and fragments I set free were separated from the island and regained their own, lost, independence they began to stretch.


    I watched, amused, as I created another sort of monument on the island. This one was of enlarged stones. The stones I had pulled free from the insidious and tyrannical grip of my gravitational powers began to eagerly grow as soon as they were exposed to the air.


    Dozens of tiny stone fragments grew in the blink of an eye. They sailed through the air for a moment, growing as they did. They only stopped growing when they collided with the ground from which they had been liberated. By the time they did though, they were each around half a meter wide and half a meter tall. They had been centimeters wide and tall earlier when they were torn free from the ground.


    The portions of stone that were bigger than fragments that were freed grew as well. Heavy chunks of stone were almost a meter wide and tall by the time their weighty masses collided with the floor underneath my feet. As soon as the last stone was pulled back to the island by the gravity of Torus as well as the gravity of the island itself, I felt something new.


    ________________________________________________


    The instant the final stone collided with the island''s surface the young god completed the quest. And as he did, he began to undergo something new: an apotheosis.


    The deity fell to his knees, breathlessly. This frightened a part of him, but the sensation wasn''t uncomfortable, it was just distracting. Its suddenness had caught him off-guard. That was when the god''s skin began to glow a lovely shade of bright blue and emit a radiant light that matched his skin tone.


    The young man was undergoing an apotheosis. A transformation into something new, and possibly mysterious. Or even something truly special: something divine.

 113 Apotheosis

    Deep within the last god an impossible transformation was occurring. One that was permanently changing the god. Elevating him.


    He began to radiate an unusual aura. One of all four elements. Fire, water, air, and the very stones that made up his island, began to surround him and wrap him in a protective cocoon.


    "This feels... Strange." The god himself muttered. The god felt new powers come into being deep within him. He felt them mix and mingle with his existing powers. And then his physical transformation began to intensify.


    Within the unusual and unnecessary cocoon, the god''s form changed further. One of his eyes transformed from a regular eye, as "regular" as any god''s eye could be anyway, into an orb of flames. His other eye transformed into a sphere of water.


    A transparent wing grew out of his left shoulder. The wing was formed from the wind and air that surrounded him and attached itself to him. Some of the very stones at his feet, stones he had created using his own power, freed themselves from his gravitational control and affixed themselves to his arm, creating an artificial hand made of rocks.


    "What is this..." He muttered, shocked at the depth of the new powers he felt surging up within. And at the power he was radiating outward, immense energy that flaked off of his skin and was sent in every direction.


    ________________________________________________


    Althos lived in a world on the edge. When he had first come to life, the tutorial and his caution kept the world ignorant of his existence. But certain actions of his had hinted of his existence to a handful of organizations.


    His first wide-scale miracle had informed a handful of governments and other, smaller factions of his existence. The emperor and empress of the Ansari empire knew of him. The king of the dwarven kingdom of Atlantis and his daughter knew of him. But aside from them, only a few governments were capable of even speculating about the source of the radiant energy that exploded out from the Rodan forest.


    Other factions were also speculating about the source of the explosion of healing energy that transformed the Rodan forest for days. But of them, none dared to send agents to scout the scene for fear that something might happen to their agents. After all, the Rodan forest was a remote section of the wilderness of a harsh island, known to be the last known location of an ancient black dragon. Only specially trained agents dared to visit that part of the world.


    But the middle of an ocean did not inspire that same fear. The energy that Althos radiated as he began an impossible apotheosis served as a tempting beacon to the factions of the world. Greedy kings, an emperor, and even the entirety of a band of dragons sensed the power coming from seemingly the middle of nowhere.


    ________________________________________________


    "This power... feels good." I muttered as I began to slowly get used to the new powers welling up within me. I could feel them stirring near where my heart would be if I were a human. And they made me strong. Or at least they made me feel strong. I hadn''t received a notification alerting me to the powers I possessed just yet.


    "I feel... invincible." I whispered as I moved for the first time since I began to feel the new powers well up within me. I moved my stone-covered arm. I moved it into view so I could study it.


    The stones that were attached to my arm were chunky ones. They clung to me like they were grafted to my skin, which was strange. They felt weightless and moved with my arm, both of which were stranger than if they had just been heavyweights stuck to my arm that made it harder to move.


    After studying them for a moment, I came to a profound realization. The powers I possessed and would come to possess, were truly amazing. I had spent enough time among mortals to know how weak they were. To see their fragility and their dependence on things. But I wasn''t like that.


    Even now, in my relative infancy, I was powerful. I was powerful beyond anything they could compare me to. And that was a heavy realization. But it was also one that felt... freeing. With power like mine, I could handle any concerns of theirs easily. I could blow most obstacles without batting an eyelash.


    The powers that were stirring within me did away with the fear that I felt before. Being an elemental overlord, and a god, made me feel... powerful beyond measure. And being freed from that fear made it easier for me to rationalize being bold for one of the first times in my life.


    Mortality? I could make them immortal. Hunger? I could feed them. Thirst? I could create water as easily as they could breathe. Homelessness? I could construct houses out of stones or metals.


    "All it takes is for them to believe in me." I told myself, a smile on my face as I decided to do something truly and undeniably divine. I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-minimap to spring into view. When it did I greeted it like an old friend. And proceeded to target every living creature in the world.


    I knew what I was doing. I knew who all I was targeting. And I knew how to announce to the world that I was a god, and that I was a creature with powers beyond what their wildest dreams. I would do it in a way that was consistent with my character. By healing.


    ________________________________________________


    In the moments before Althos activated his "Healing burst" power, only the most sensitive beings felt the strangeness of being targeted by the god.


    A handful of creatures, less than ten in total, felt a gentle hand on their shoulders. Unbeknownst to them they were feeling the power of the odd god who was in the process of becoming something more than any other god had been. They were feeling his protective touch, and the warm desire he had for all beings to live free.


    The youngest of them was less than three years old. The oldest of them was well over ten thousand years old. Both were mortals, just very different mortals. Incidentally, both the youngest and the oldest of the creatures were asleep. Black dragons tended to sleep for long periods of time.


    The god was well aware of the fact that in targeting every creature in the world he''d be targeting the sleeping dragon. He hadn''t anticipated that it''d be so sensitive that it detected his divine touch, but even if he had known that he wouldn''t have altered his actions. He was accepting his powers, and the strength they conferred, and that meant behaving with pride. Behaving with belief in oneself.


    ________________________________________________


    I chuckled as I activated my power, the legendary "Healing burst" ability I had used in the past. I felt an incredible amount of divine energy, an amount I never imagined I possessed, leave me all at once. But it didn''t make me feel drained. Instead, I felt... exhilarated by it. And the world around me lit up.


    I was gazing at things through a hazy aura of dust, fire, water, and flying stones, but the transformation of the world was clear nonetheless. The second I activated my power all I could see began to glow a beautiful silvery glow.


    ________________________________________________


    Althos was standing on a floating island in the middle of the ocean. But he was actually in a part of the world compared to where Puerto Rico was that was hours into the day rather than someplace where the morning was just beginning. Where he was it was roughly 1 P.M.


    In Puerto Rico, it was about 9 o''clock in the morning. And in Reconquista was it was 4 in the afternoon. In some parts of the world it was the middle of the night. But no matter where in the world one was, Althos'' powers detected and healed them. And also made them emit a faint, or in some cases a not-so-faint silvery glow.


    A world-wide miracle had never occurred in the history of this universe. The old gods had followed too many divine rules for it to ever be possible for any group of gods to target an entire world at once. Althos was a god of change and chaos, and the last god in the multiverse. He followed no such rules. And that was what made that moment possible.


    All at once, every single disease that plagued every single creature living in Torus was cured. Every wound that caused lingering aches and pains was healed. Every amputated or severed limb was regrown.


    In most cases this took less than a single second to occur. In other cases, such as when a limb was being regrown it took slightly longer, but even the worst conditions were healed in less than five seconds.


    People all over the world stopped and gasped in awe as they felt the effects of the god''s actions impact their bodies. The blind were given vision. The deaf could hear. Limbs were regrown, and incurable diseases were healed.


    Entire cities fell silent for a moment as shock and awe were felt by their residents. And then came the tears, the shouts, the gasps, of a world freed from the scourge of disease, a world momentarily freed from pain and from the helplessness of a single terminal diagnosis.


    Mothers and fathers with sick children were overcome with emotion as they laid their eyes on their healthy, silvery children. Soldiers in medical tents who had given up hope saw their wounds healing before their very eyes.


    Friends of the blind broke down when their blind friends spontaneously regained the ability to see. Those who had been left paralyzed cheered when they took their first steps, thanks to the healing they had received.


    Every single person who had been healed had a few minutes of amazed delight where they just reacted to the healing they had been given. But eventually, every single person in the world began to wonder how they could be healed. They wondered who or what possessed the power to heal them.


    They didn''t have to wonder long. Minutes after the god healed them, he transmitted a notification to them that answered their question.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Praise be to He Who Heals!


    The entire world, every single living being, has been healed of every condition that plagues them. This act of mercy and kindness was performed by a god unlike any other: Althos. Althos came to life on this planet and now he seeks to become its god. This is just the first of many miracles he will perform.


    Althos is the last god in all of existence. And he is using his divine power to change the world. He wields power over healing, life, death, and disease, among many other things and he sought to create a level playing field from which no one could deny his divinity.


    He is calling for a momentary ceasefire to all of the inter-empire and inter-kingdom conflicts, and for the immediate and global abolishment of slavery. He understands the significance of these demands, but they in no way are requests or suggestions. They are demands.


    He is willing to aid those who are open to freeing their slaves but would need some sort of aid to continue to live their lives as is, provided they do not harm any of their slaves. And if someone attempts to hurt their slaves that person or those people will be punished for their actions.


    More information will come, via global alerts, in the hours and days to come.]


    ________________________________________________


    "No more hiding." I told myself, smiling as the silvery glow that illuminated the world began to slowly fade. It was a slight dimming, not nearly enough for it to fade away entirely.


    "I will become who I am meant to be. I will master my pride, and my powers, and free this world, and all others, from the scourge of slavery." I muttered, a grin on my face as I spoke.


    I knew that I was being bold, something unusual for me, but I also knew that if I wanted to change the world I needed to take decisive action. I felt a number of things at this moment. Interestingly I felt no fear. I felt no uncertainty. I did feel curiosity. And I also felt powerful pride well up within me.


    I, personally, felt incredible joy. And moments after the notification went out, I began to feel the faint echoes of the emotions of the world''s living inhabitants.


    I felt their hopes. I felt their joy. Their triumph. I felt their hearts turn towards me, and I heard the shouts of elation of those who I was freeing from slavery. I felt the sorrows of those who were angry that their world was changing.


    Not all of the world was overjoyed. Some people were angry. They were angry at me for swooping in out of nowhere and in their eyes "taking from them what was theirs". "What was theirs" in their eyes were the people they enslaved. I chuckled at the slavers who I predicted would resist me and ignore my demand.


    Others felt that I came too late. Even as they themselves were healed, they felt that I came too late for their loved ones. They remembered those who weren''t alive to receive my healing. Their children, their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, husbands, and wives. Their neighbors. I understood the powerful sorrow and frustration they felt.


    Others were angry at me for another reason. They hated that my healing was indiscriminate. They wanted me to heal them, and not their enemies. Their fury was powerful. I chuckled as I felt it. Their hatred for their foes wasn''t unpleasant to experience echoes of. It was... different, darker, than the other emotions I had felt.


    I sat back and allowed these emotions to wash over me. A few minutes passed, and the first prayers to me began to reach me. I was about to begin to explore those prayers when a mauve-colored portal appeared not far in front of me.


    The portal was a gigantic circle of alteration energy that stood tens of meters tall. It was diluted and weaker looking than my portals were, as well as not providing me with a clear view of whatever was on the other side, but I watched and waited for whoever had opened it to step through. When no one did after a full minute had passed, I chuckled and spoke.


    "Do you think that I''ll just go into random portals that open in front of me?" I asked, shocked at how foolish whoever opened the portal seemed to think I must have been. I heard a low chuckle emanate from the other side of the portal.


    "Do we have permission to step through the portal? Onto... Your island?" A low, animalistic voice asked. It spoke to me in a language I never heard, a serpentine one that hissed each "s" sound.


    "Identify yourselves first." I replied, even as I focused my gaze on the portal and began to try and see all the way through it.


    "We are the order of the Golden Dawn. Does that name mean anything to you?" Asked the same voice. I began to see... something through the portal.


    "It doesn''t, but to be fair I''ve been living in a remote community on an island colony so my knowledge of the world isn''t... significant." I told the voice.


    "I see... In that case, would you allow us to show ourselves? You''ll find that that will provide you with more immediate information than if we talk your ears off." The voice replied. I sighed and appraised the creature. And then smiled when I realized what it was.


    "Sure Alucard, why don''t you come and say hello?" I asked, smiling. The speaker, Alucard, took a single step through the portal. He stepped through foot first.


    All that was initially revealed was a single, sinuous, scaled leg. The scales that covered it were every bit as opulent as should be expected from someone who was a member of an organization that had "Golden Dawn" in its name.


    [Name: Alucard Radiant Burst (Level 10 Warrior)


    Species: Golden Dragon


    Alignment: Chaotic Good


    Personal Virtue: Patience


    Personal Vice: Greed


    Sexuality: Heterosexual


    Magic sensing: Dragons are incredibly skilled spell-casters. Alucard, as an adult golden dragon, is no exception to this rule. He became a warrior to augment the incredible mastery he has over alteration magic.


    Faith sense: Alucard believes in the cause of the order his ancestors established, the Golden Dawn. They are freedom fighters who worked to free the world from slavery by outlawing it a kingdom at a time.


    Authority detection: Alucard is the chief spellcaster of the Golden Dawn. He is trusted by all of his peers in the organization when it comes to all matters related to magic.


    Soul sense: Alucard has the perfect soul to become a cleric of any god of freedom.]


    Rather than take another step, the dragon pushed its head through the portal. For the first time in my life, I found myself standing face to face with a dragon.


    "Hello freedom fighter. Have you come to pledge yourselves to me?" I asked, curiously. I sensed a number of other dragons behind Alucard himself. I grinned at the dragon, and the dragon gave me a curious gaze.


    I was feeling positively godly for the first time in my life, and I bathed myself in a combination of "Religious fervor" and "Unfettered divinity". The dragon stepped all the way through the portal and was followed by three other dragons who possessed similarly colored scales and faces.


    The four dragons spread out across the area in front of me. Each of them was facing me and eying me carefully.

 114 Creation of a new home

    The scene atop the floating island was a strange and wonderful one. Every single person involved in it was doing something they had never done before.


    The four golden dragons that stared at the odd deity had never met a god before. And the god they stood in front of and studied had never met a dragon before. But despite the fact that the dragons were studying the god very closely, the god didn''t appear to be as interested in them.


    This wasn''t personal. The god was merely doing something else. He was reading something that was, in his defense, quite important: a notification he had received. One that alerted him to the incredible ramifications of his actions.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: You have done something that has never been done before. You have performed a worldwide miracle. And you have received a reward proportional to the labor you performed.


    You healed the population of an entire planet. Hundreds of trillions of lifeforms healed, in an instant. What you did was the sort of herculean task that is harder than what subdomain of healing normally tasks those who seek the second tier of influence over it with. The subdomain is contemplating how to properly reward you for your actions but for now, you are being gifted the second tier of influence over the subdomain of healing.


    Fey are converting to your worship en-masse. And because of this your powers over their kind will begin to grow within you in much the same way that your powers over elements gave you the ability to become an elemental overlord. To become an archfey you must build a court and populate it with one hundred fey.


    Your powers are undergoing a relative boost thanks to the trillions of worshipers you''ve gained. Even your ability to resurrect someone has become easier to use.


    You have also unlocked the first tiers of influence over numerous lifeform based subdomains, including the subdomains you had pending quests for. As a minor reward for your creativity, the first tier quests for lifeform subdomains were edited so that you just had to heal them to gain the lowest tier of influence over them.


    Your powers as a lesser elemental overlord have increased the powers of all of the elemental subdomains, and the nature domain, to their second tier of influence.


    You now have enough worshipers to step onto the next rung of relative divine-power. Once you do you''ll become an intermediate deity. But the journey to reach that stage of power is a dangerous one.


    In order to become an intermediate deity you must reach the third tier of influence over two domains or subdomains you were born able to influence, and the second tier of influence over all of the domains and subdomains you could influence at birth.]


    ________________________________________________


    The notification I received I received in the wake of the arrival of the dragons made me realize something. Something big. If I freely used my powers I could achieve incredible results, results that in turn gave me even greater power to use freely. And that made it easier for me to be proud.


    The dragons were watching me carefully. They hadn''t spoken a word aside from Alucard. We had stood in silence for nearly three minutes. Eventually, I turned and looked at them.


    "Tell me dragons... Did you come all this way to gawk at a god? If so, I commend your commitment to your objective. If not, tell me what you wish to say. Ask your questions. Act." I commanded. I spoke to them haughtily, as pride would dictate a god should speak to mortals.


    The dragons were surprised by this. They had no way of knowing that following the first notification I had received, I also received a second notification that alerted me that one of the domains I could now influence was the draconic domain. And that domain possessed powers over pride. Including powers that augmented my pride.


    The dragons tore their eyes from me for a moment and turned to each other. There was an unspoken question in their gazes.


    It was one I could have torn from their lips with a single uttered command if I so chose but ultimately I felt like allowing this the dignity of choosing whether or not to ask whatever questions they had for me. A matter of moments later, I finally heard the familiar voice of Alucard.


    "Althos... You are the liberator of our world. You are in the process of doing what we swore to do. But you''re doing it faster, and... You''re doing it more mercifully than we ever could." Alucard said, his voice a reverential whisper.


    "Dragons remember the gods. We were taught about your... kind. We were taught about the incredible power your kin possessed. Gods could do the impossible. You can do the impossible. Even as proud as we are, we could never hope to match your power and only our proudest and most delusional kin would dare to believe we could match the gods." Alucard muttered.


    I was a bit surprised by the dragon''s declaration but I did my best to hide my surprise. I wanted to put forth a proud front. And the truth was that I did feel more proud than I ever had before, but it was still a bit of a challenge for me to act the way I was acting. It felt unnatural.


    "We have felt your power. Your radiance. We have come to greet you and to freely offer to serve you." The dragon proclaimed. This surprised and delighted me. I knew the odd creature wasn''t lying because lying in my presence was still impossible for mortals, and angels.


    I looked at the dragon and at his allies and smiled. "I see." I replied a profound and gentle smile pursed on my lips.


    "I will welcome you into my service. Into my church. Though I must say... You''re joining me at a time that promises to be busy." I remarked, amused by the fortuitous timing of all of this. The dragons looked at me and smiled but remained silent.


    "In the days to come, I shall rid the world of slavery. I will unleash my wrath on those who practice this freedom-stealing practice and them alone." I told the dragons, speaking the truth.


    My plan was to use my powers to fully decimate the properties of anyone who owned slaves while protecting the slaves themselves. I gazed at the dragons. They were curious to hear more.


    "Why do you gaze at me that way? Do you care to learn more? If so... Then ask your questions." I asked, speaking somewhat rhetorically. The dragons sheepishly looked away, chastised somewhat by my remarks.


    "Vothori... How do you plan to punish slave owners?" Asked another of the dragons. Her voice was soft, and she referred to me as something odd. "Vothori". "Prince", in the language of the dragons.


    "I plan to destroy their property. I possess powers that allow me to do so while leaving their slaves unharmed, and even leaving them physically unharmed as well. If I want too." I explained. The dragons heard that and nodded, satisfied with my answer.


    When more than a minute had passed, I quietly opened a massive portal behind them. I had grown tired of their quietness. "If you have no other questions, then part from my presence. I find being around mortals... A bit taxing you see. It requires I take on physical form. I would like time to myself." I told the dragons.


    The creatures turned and walked into the portal. When they left me alone, I grinned. I now had time to ready myself. Others were coming. I wanted to make my floating island presentable. And so I set to work.


    ________________________________________________


    When he was alone, Althos quietly set to work. He reached out partway across the world with his mind and grabbed a hold of his tower. And then he teleported the entire thing to the island. The tower was taken from its subterranean birthplace and placed proudly at the center of the island.


    The god then proceeded to widen and deepen the island, even as he willed it higher into the air. The island ascended at the same time as it endured a massive increase in size, rapidly becoming almost half the size of Puerto Rico.


    He used magic and divine powers to hollow out the rocky interior of the island, creating a confusing maze of tunnels within the island that would be perfect for habitation. This took him a fraction of a second, thanks to his new talents with the elements, as well as his extensive memories of the world beneath Puerto Rico.


    He mentally explored this area, familiarizing himself with it. This act took him little more than half a minute, despite the area being kilometers deep. When he was done he created two settlements. One of them was a strange hive-like area for Torunian members of the swarm, and the other was a city built for the undead.


    "I need a place to house my forces. Aside from those who are already at home in Florida or along the coast of Iredale." He muttered. His mind was formulating plots and schemes and many of them involved him using his legions and his swarm. He wanted to keep them close and to keep them away from the world of the living, for now anyway.


    The god then spoke to his undead and insectoid followers, sending each distinct group a unique message.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The creation of a new hive


    Althos has created a new home for his worshipers on his sanctuary, a floating island over the Redoran Sea. He is calling to his insectoid followers and asking those of them who are not in remote colonies to come to the new hive he has created.


    He views the swarm as his children and seeks for them to be near their father. Come to him. Be near his radiant magnificence!]


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: A new home for the dead


    Althos has created a dark new city for his undead servants. Come bask in the dark glory of the god of the undead, and rest your coffins, graves, mausoleums, tombs, and crypts near his dark majesty.


    The grave-god was inspired by the creativity and glory of the city of the undead created underneath Puerto Rico. He has created one of his own and is opening it up to all undead who seek to worship him. Come and join your god in this eerie and magnificent cosmopolitan grave-city.]


    ________________________________________________


    The messages went out to billions of being. And then countless portals opened up near the recipients of the messages. Seconds later all manner of living and unliving beings stepped through the portals and into the new homes created by Althos for his more militaristic and single-minded followers.


    Althos was delighted that the island he had created so immediately gained inhabitants, and chuckled as he felt the hollow interior of the island become the home of billions of beings.


    The god then quietly considered whether or not people should come to his island. It didn''t take him long to come to the conclusion that he didn''t want them to come to visit the island. And he moved to ensure that they didn''t, by sending out a message to those his domain-sense alerted him were planning to come to him.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Cease your activities.


    Althos is keenly aware that you are planning to teleport to or otherwise visit his home. You are not to do so.


    Althos will not permit your magic to take you to his island. He will visit you, at his leisure. Attempts to reach his floating island home will not succeed and depending on the nature of the attempt may provoke hostility from Althonians who live on the island.


    Althos is currently restoring the magical energy that has been expended in efforts to reach him. That said he will not permit any magic that would allow people to interact with his home to succeed. Cease your efforts immediately and go about your day.]


    ________________________________________________


    When the tide of creatures entering my island slowed to a stop, nearly an hour after it began, I called out to a single creature. A loyal servant who I wanted to speak with face to face.


    I mentally grabbed the very first myrmekes queen I had ever met and teleported her to me. When she appeared in front of me I smiled at her.


    "Hello." I said, greeting the queen. She looked at me, surprised at first but then her face relaxed and she began to smile.


    "Hello creator. How may I be of service?" She asked, speaking softly. I chuckled as I heard her speak. I had almost forgotten how service-oriented she was.


    I studied her figure once more. It had been over a week since I had last seen her. After a few moments, I began to speak.


    "I would like to appoint you the representative of all Torus'' ants within the swarm. This would put you near the top of the swarm''s hierarchy and I would make you into a high priestess of mine. I want you to think about this for a day or two before letting me know what you think." I explained, revealing the reason for summoning her to me.


    She let out a shocked gasp, which was a cute gesture on her part. And then she began to excitedly talk to me.


    By the time an hour had passed wherein she had spoken at length about the various things, she''d done since evolving I suspected she''d eagerly accept my offer. It turns out that the first myrmekes queen I had ever met had become a chatterbox. I didn''t dislike that.


    I spent the rest of the day, modifying the island. By the time night had fallen the island was a vastly different place than it had been before. It was a home. My home. Tower, hives, cities of the dead, and all.

 115 Consequences

    The strange and hostile world that laid underneath Puerto Rico was a mysterious place. It was one infested with ancient and alien horrors. And one such horror was more ancient than alien.


    Deep beneath Puerto Rico, entire kilometers below the island''s surface, one could find a gigantic chamber. This chamber was filled with two things. The first thing was treasure, a truly unfathomable amount of treasure. The second thing was a single, enormous, living creature: Ygaynth.


    Ygaynth laid atop a pile of his treasures. The ancient black dragon, a beast whose age was measured in millennia, was beginning to awaken. The incredibly ancient, even by dragon standards, beast was in the process of slowly dragging himself back to consciousness, back to the waking world.


    He used a pile of his treasures, a mere fraction of his wealth yet more than enough to purchase entire kingdoms, as an unorthodox bed. The umbral-tinted dragon was laying, like a lazy cat, on top of a pile of treasures that could inspire the greediest misers in all of the world.


    Underneath Ygaynth''s body were countless coins, and other, rarer treasures. The coins that the dragon was waking up on top of were ancient ones, ones from forgotten kingdoms the dragon had personally destroyed. Underneath his enormous weight were also precious gems and other brilliant treasures that the awe-inspiringly miserly dragon had collected during his long life.


    The dragon slowly opened a single reptilian eye. It took nearly ten minutes before the gigantic eyelids that protected its scarlet eye moved fully out of the way and revealed the eerily catlike eye as the dragon began to force itself to awaken.


    Nearly an hour after slowly beginning to awaken, Ygaynth would fully awake from his years-long slumber. By the time the dragon was fully awake, its thoughts were focused on something new: checking on its most reliable servants.


    Ygaynth unleashed an eardrum-shattering roar once the ancient and mythic monster was ready to begin to move. One that bounced around the walls of its magically made lair for several minutes. The dragon spread its wings and examined its lair with lazy confidence, all while a part of it wondered about the strange creature who had healed it: the mysterious god, Althos.


    ________________________________________________


    The day that Althos revealed his existence to the world night fell upon the surface as it always did. But for the people of Comillas, the night which had once filled them with uncertainty and fear had never been less scary. After all, what could scare them when they had just learned that a friendly god lived amongst them?


    The majority of Comillians found themselves in the town''s square. The town''s square was a mini plaza that was located not far from the Silver Xana. It had a firepit, from which a roaring blaze beat back the darkness. And it was filled with the sounds of conversation, joyful weeping, and other social sounds.


    The town of Comillas was one of the only places in the world which had both Althonians and Cosechians. This was one of the odder consequences of Althos'' decision to create a pseudonym. Godly lies were always more consequential than non-godly ones.


    "Who in the Hells is Cosecha?" Asked one of the townspeople, a young woman not much older than Isadora. She was speaking to Sophia, Gustavo''s beloved daughter. Sophia looked at her in confusion.


    "Cosecha is the god who healed me. It did so days ago, and now it''s healed you too." The young woman told her friend. Anita, the woman with whom Sophia was speaking, looked at her while confusion visibly twisted her features into a skeptical scowl.


    "What are you talking about? We were healed by Althos." Anita replied, frightened by her friend''s remarks. Sophia''s own confusion visibly increased.


    Unbeknownst to either woman both were telling the truth as they understood it and neither were incorrect. Neither woman was aware of the truth concerning the greatest lie Althos had ever concocted; an entirely nonexistent spirit and identity that the god had used when he first came to life.


    Elsewhere in the town square, other conversations, and indeed other arguments, were beginning to increase in volume. They were also about the different notifications inhabitants of Comillas had received.


    ________________________________________________


    In a space that both existed and didn''t exist, a quiet voice sighed. There was a touch of annoyance audible in its quiet, inarticulate, utterances.


    [Why is he like this? Does he think I like autocorrecting him?] This voice uttered, expressing deep frustration.


    "You aren''t proud of him? He is no longer running from his powers!" Another voice, one belonging to a subdomain replied.


    This space was populated by these disembodied voices. It was where they were situated in the multiverse and its existence was tricky to explain and tricky still to prove.


    [Yes, but if he has to reveal himself this way, I wish he''d consider how much reality-warping needs to be done. How many people know him, how many people know of ''Cosecha'', and whose messages need to be altered. People tell people things.] The system replied, wishing the subject of the conversation it was having would hurry up and acquire influence over the reality domain.


    "It''s not his fault that that domain is... picky." The subdomain replied, having paused to consider its word choice before characterizing the reality domain. It proceeded to sigh itself, but in relief, when the reality domain didn''t cuss at it.


    [Well... You aren''t wrong. And I am glad that he did what he did. It surprised me. I never thought I''d be happy that he was a hybrid. If what he is can even be called that. As far as I can tell it was him evolving into an elemental overlord that has at least momentarily quashed his fears.] The system told the subdomain. The subdomain squirreled that knowledge away, ready to use it to its advantage.


    After all, the corruption subdomain also had wants and needs.


    ________________________________________________


    A trio of mermaids swam near the very top of the surface layer, the epipelagic zone, of the ocean. Their cautious gazes were leveled at the same, odd object. Above them, and outside of the ocean floated an island, seemingly unmoving and eerie in its majesty. This island was gigantic, entire kilometers in length.


    Waterfalls poured off over the edge of its dimensions and collided with the ocean. This gave the odd mermaids a clear path to the island, but they knew what lurked on the island and were afraid of unintentionally offending the deity who called the island home. Their mission hadn''t been to offend a god, it had just been to investigate the ocean underneath the island.


    "What do we do?" One of them, a woman who wore no armor and whose bare, wet flesh, would have induced lust in most human males, asked. She had broken the silence that fell over the trio of scouts when they had first reached the strange and shadowy area beneath the floating island.


    "We should head back." Replied one of her peers, a male scout whose body was nearly unarmored. He wore light armor made of seashells that covered his most sensitive areas.


    A waterfall was directly overhead and it was unmoving. They could climb it to the island like some sort of mountain if they wanted too.


    "A part of me wants to climb this waterfall. Take it all the way to the island. And see a god myself." Muttered the scout''s superior, a male druid who worn several pieces of jewelry. He held a spear in one hand and a staff in the other.


    "But you''re right. We should head back. We don''t know how this god, Althos, would react if we attempted to visit his island." The druid told his companions. He wasn''t about to risk his own life, or theirs, for the sake of satisfying curiosity. He gazed at the island that loomed darkly in the night''s sky above the team for a moment longer before turning back to face the direction he and his subordinates had come from.


    "Come. Let us return home. Our people will be happy to see us safe, and to learn about our observations." The mermaid remarked, his voice soft as he thought of home. Behind him his peers nodded and turned to face the distant mermaid community. It''d take them an unpleasant amount of time, a good few hours, to make it back. They enthusiastically began their journey


    ________________________________________________


    "Pride doesn''t exactly come easy to me" I muttered. I knew this already but it had definitely been reinforced by the events of the last few hours.


    "Yes but isn''t it so much fun to pretend it does?" Asked a quiet voice in the back of my mind. The corruption subdomain had replied to me.


    "When you pretend you''re a proud being, creatures believe that you are a god more readily. Because mortals are weak and want to believe. You just need to give them someone, or something, to believe in." The voice whispered.


    I sighed. I couldn''t really deny that it was correct.


    I had spent the day doing two things, decorating my island, and interacting with those who prayed to me, especially those who had just learned about me. And much to my annoyance, I quickly learned that when I was proud I gained more worshipers and the worshipers I gained were more fanatical about me.


    "I hate that you''re right." I told the subdomain. I heard a cough-like sound emanate from the thing and grinned. It was laughing.


    "Of course I''m right. I''m always right." The smug subdomain replied, a few moments after it had begun to laugh at my remarks.


    As I looked out at my island, and admired the new place I had created, I allowed myself to read. As I did so, I turned my attention to something that had been at the top of my vision for hours, and that I had ignored: a massive notification. The first one I had ever seen that was about a sort of higher being that wasn''t a god.


    ________________________________________________


    [Elemental overlord alert:


    Congratulations! You are now a lesser elemental overlord.


    Elemental overlords are the mightiest of the elementals. Elementals are spirits composed of sentient fire, water, air, and earth, as well as other, lesser, primordial building blocks.


    An elemental overlord is capable of bending the elements in ways that only a god could have hoped to match. As someone who is both a god and an elemental overlord you are capable of incredible acts of devastation and creation.


    Elemental overlords were the supreme masters of the elements, capable of being challenged only by the gods themselves. They were incredible spirits whose usage of the elements encouraged even gods to treat them with respect.


    The rest of this notification will give you a sample of the powers you now possess. Functionally you are at the second tier of influence over the elemental subdomains and the nature domain.


    Lesser elemental overlord powers:


    Dehydration: You can dehydrate a targeted person or area at will. This deadly power allows you to manipulate environments or inflict devastating wounds on enemies that sap their vitality and strength.


    Flame solidification: This is an enhanced form of the mastery over fire power you gained at the first tier of influence over the fire subdomain. It greatly increases one way you can manipulate fire by increasing the magnitude to which you can solidify flames. Now you can create solid objects made from fire. This is a reality-warping power.


    Gas manipulation: You gain control over gases other than oxygen and hydrogen. This power allows you to induce explosions, create massive area of effect poisons and debuffs, even master evaporation. You can also animate gases.


    Sand mastery: You gain the power to control sand at will. Sand can be animated, including being fully brought to life, soul and all, or you can manipulate it like you can control the elements.


    Hemoanimation: Gods and elemental overlords with power over liquid possess a nasty ability. The power to animate blood. This power allows those who possess to animate blood and to turn puddles of blood into either their direct servants, akin to oozes and slimes, or tools for them to use.


    Hemomanipulation: You can manipulate blood in a variety of ways. You cannot yet manipulate blood inside of someone, but you can manipulate blood oozing out of them, and turn it into an assortment of weapons or attacks.


    Cleanse: By combining an assortment of domains and subdomains you gain the power to cleanse an area. This means that you can take on pollutants and either do something with them or will them away altogether.


    Druidic mastery: Druids feel an innate connection to a mysterious new being: you. Druids all over the universe feel your existence in their hearts, though those of them that do not know of you explicitly do not possess the knowledge to worship you.


    This is tied to becoming a greater druid than you currently are. This power also greatly aids in the creation of nature cults.]


    After reading through a handful of his new powers, the god''s attention was turned to another notification. One that brought a big smile to his face.


    [Good domain details:


    By healing the entire world without judgment and without reservations you have performed a miracle of goodness and life. This epic action has been deemed worthy of granting you influence over the good domain, also known as the goodness domain and the domain of goodness.


    The domain of goodness is a potent alignment domain. It grants those who master it powers related to goodness. It is the final alignment you needed to gain influence over to be able to eventually earn influence over the neutrality domain.


    Goodness as a domain governs kindness, unselfishness, righteousness, incorruptibility, mercy, and virtue.


    Goodness is difficult to describe but in essence, that which is good is that which unselfishly helps others. It is that which protects people without expecting rewards, which aids others even at the expense of those who do it.


    True goodness, or neutral goodness, is the alignment that most closely matches your actions. It is not the alignment that most closely matches your mindset.


    To gain further influence over the domain of goodness you must create good-aligned cults and use good-based powers.


    Good domain passive powers:


    Kind-hearted: Those who are good-aligned see the part of you that reflects themselves. They are more likely to worship you, and are more friendly towards you when they don''t know who you are.


    Goodness detection: You can detect good-aligned creatures more easily and you can pinpoint spots of concentrated goodness. Areas that radiate concentrated goodness are areas wherein good extraplanars came into this dimension, areas where good-aligned miracles happened, and where good-aligned cults are more likely to congregate.


    Good empowerment: You can bestow a gift upon mortals that empower them if they perform acts of goodness. This gift makes them stronger, smarter, and more charismatic the more goodness they perform. It also allows them to more easily change their alignment.


    This power is a consequence of you gaining influence over the final non-neutrality alignment domain. You also now have variants of this power for the other alignments, and they are passive powers not active ones.


    Positive energy manipulation: You can manipulate positive energy, a form of energy that is the opposite of both unlife energy and unholy energy. This energy is a greater sort of energy that animates living things. This power is a synergistic one that takes from your power over the subdomain of healing, the life domain, and the domain of goodness.


    Positive energy infuses living, mortal targets, with an urge to perform acts of kindness and heals their wounds. It empowers good-aligned extraplanars and helps them conceive. It harms undead creatures, and inflicts even greater harm on evil-aligned extraplanar beings than it does to undead beings.


    Celestial captain: This power is a necessary one to eventually become the lord of good-aligned extraplanars and become the sort of higher being that commanded them in the past. It grants you greater power over celestials, good-aligned extraplanars and thanks to your influence over the conjuration subdomain allow you to know how to summon them.


    The term "celestial" refers to good-aligned extraplanars no matter what their other alignment might be, be it neutral, lawful, or chaotic.


    Kind healer: This is a triple synergistic power that takes from the domain of goodness and the subdomains of healing and pain. It makes it so that you can grant someone a condition in which they more quickly heal from wounds and gain temporary immunities to pain if they perform acts of goodness.


    Goodness aura: This is an aura of pure goodness that frightens neutral creatures, and terrifies evil creatures, and heals good creatures. It gives them greater strength, makes it hard for them not to follow your orders, and gives those who see it and are good more energy.


    Goodness domain active powers:


    Suggestion: This is a synergistic power that takes from the mind domain and the goodness domain. It allows you to implant suggestions for good-behavior and good-acts in the minds of good people. It can be used once a day, but on well over 150 targets at a time.


    Goodness animation: Only the most purely evil souls do not possess goodness. If a creature possesses some level of goodness, hidden somewhere inside of them, this power brings that goodness to life. It creates a projection of the targets goodness in a form similar to their own.


    Evil creatures invariably confront this part of themselves in combat and neutral creatures are confused by it. Good creatures talk to it and learn from it, possibly atoning for their mistakes.


    This power can be used once every two hours, on a single target. An equivalent power now exists for all of the other domains you can influence.


    Goodness domain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with the good domain empowers them if they behave kindly and goodly. This grants them greater health, charisma, and intelligence.


    Cursing someone with this domain weakens them if they are or behave evilly. It tempts them whenever they come across chances to be good, and saps their energy if they behave evilly.]

 116 Picking The Battlefield

    A darkened chamber deep underneath the familial estate of the Ardors smelled of a hedonistic mixture of bodily fluids. A number of dark elves were within this chamber. Some of them, the Ardors, had grins on their faces. Many of their companions did not.


    The Ardor family had had little over a full day to adjust to their new reality. Their dark lord had fulfilled his end of the promise almost as soon as they had struck their agreement, giving them control over a horde of tireless and surprisingly powerful undead warriors, laborers, and servants.


    He had also taken their slaves away almost as quickly, liberating them moments after their deal was struck. Gods operated on a speedier scale than mortals did, as the Ardors had forcibly learned. That said, the family didn''t mind. They now had new toys, new powers, and a dark master who had ideas in mind for them.


    The family was currently celebrating the success of the deal. They were doing so at the expense of their fellow dark elves. A number of dark-elven men and women who weren''t Ardors were in this chamber in various states of mind, unrest, and undress.


    More than a few of the dark elves that the family had felt like toying with were meant as meals for their newly revived ancestors and had been sliced and stabbed so that they''d bleed. The remaining dark elves were intended to be used by the living members of the family, and unfortunately for them, the Ardors had unusually sadistic lusts even among dark elves.


    In one dark corner of the massive chamber the family''s leaders were in, a single female dark elf cornered and approached a male. She smiled as she closed in on the small male. Duliha Ardor was massive even for dark elves and stood well over two and a half meters tall. She wore the ornate robes that befitted her status as a noble, despite the fact that she was a savage berserker.


    "Why are you running little one? Don''t you want to be... protected from the wrath of my relatives?" She asked, her voice deceptively gentle, before she began to cackle cruelly. She was having fun as she "hunted". Her prey stood no chance of escaping her selfish gaze unscathed.


    In another corner, silence reigned supreme as one of Althos'' vampires feasted on a now-deceased dark elf. His teeth were deep in his victim''s neck and he delightedly drank the precious, scarlet fluid that once gave the dark elf life.


    The vampire held onto the drained dark elf. He supported the fallen figure as he lazily feasted on the pathetic creatures'' life-force. The vampire was one of Althos'' first gifts to the Ardor family, and was a fervent worshiper of Althos who mentally muttering a prayer to his creator, even as his vampiric talons held his victim upright.


    The vampire clung to the dark-elf, drinking his life-giving fluid long enough that the pathetic, deceased creature was able to begin to reanimate in his arms. True vampires, like the Ardorian ancestor, possessed an innate ability that reanimated their victims as lesser vampires.


    The deceased dark elf began to shake and shudder in the sinister embrace of the creator of his unlife. The lesser vampire, whose eyes had been open as he died, began his unlife by closing his eyes and sighed in unholy pleasure.


    This hedonistic scene was only the first that the Ardorians would create. And in the days to come, they''d become both more lascivious, and more depraved. Their master had ordered them to be decedent and they intended to obey him.


    ________________________________________________


    I wasn''t with the Ardors, but I sensed them. I sensed their dark delight, and the cruel ways they celebrated their new powers. I wasn''t alone in what I sensed either.


    "The Ardors are growing on me." One of my mental companions muttered, before sighing gently. The corruption subdomain was apparently growing fond of them. I was annoyed by that declaration, but if I removed my history with them and my thoughts on their former practice of slavery from my judgement, I could understand where it was coming from.


    The Ardors were a family of physically attractive dark-elves with wealth, power, and influence. I had easily turned them into my allies, and in giving them power and being honest with them I had gained devoted new worshipers. New worshipers who selfishly fixated on their own pleasure.


    Their devotion to their own pleasures was considerable. It was the thing that had dominated their minds over the course of the last few hours. They treated members of their own species as nothing more than sources of pleasure and inflicted themselves upon their kin without remorse or kindness.


    Their devotion to their own sinful urges was so powerful it was almost contagious. A small part of me wanted to visit them and see their lusts firsthand. Even experience their lusts and let them stain me with their desires. Or stain them with my own.


    "Should I go to them one of these next few days? I know if I appeared, and ordered them to indulge in their lusts they would..." I mused, wondering how long it''d take before one of them, be it Milene or someone else, attempted to entice me into joining them.


    I questioned if I''d resist them if they did attempt to entice me, or if I''d join them willingly and slake the quiet desires I felt towards their sinisterly beautiful and handsome bodies. That said, other things were happening. Other things that required my attention as well. Like Ygaynth awakening.


    "I suppose I should intervene." I muttered as I teleported from my lair to a place not far outside of the dragon''s lair. I chose a place between the reptilefolk encampment and the dragon''s lair, solidly in the middle of the two places, even as the dragon began to fly right in my direction. A natural tunnel that connected the two places.


    ________________________________________________


    The shadow-scaled dragon was currently in mid-air. The gigantic beast lazily flapped its wings through its own utterly massive cavern lair. Its massive body slowly sailed towards one of the walls that separated its lair from the rest of the world below Puerto Rico.


    The monster was a gigantic and terrifying beast, a nightmare given physical form. It was only lazily flying, but it still moved with terrifying speed and horrifying ease, through the confusion architecture of its treasure-filled lair.


    The treasure that littered this cavern was piled dozens of meters high in some places and should have made flying in this place a challenge especially for the massive creature. It was not a challenge for the dragon who expertly maneuvered through his home.


    The beast was making his way towards one of the walls that defined his home. Had any untrained eyes been locked on him, they would have noticed that he looked to be going towards a dead end. The dragon was not bothered by this fact, as it was the one who had made its home.


    When the dragon had closed in on its targeted wall the monster opened its maw and unleashed a magically charged and guttural roar. The sound exploded out of the elephantine beast and collided with the wall. The wall stood firm for a moment, and then immediately began to collapse.


    By the time the dragon would have hit it, there was no wall to obstruct him. Instead there was an opening into a natural tunnel that the sapient beast had once widened to fit its gigantic frame. It took the dragon next to no effort to fit itself into the tunnel, wings open and all, and to begin to fly towards its destination.


    Stones and soil posed no risk to a black dragon. Such creatures were practically made from the stuff. Their magical blood and potent souls gave them eerie powers over even the greatest rocks and the most fertile or least fertile soil.


    The dragon believed it was now free to fly carefreely until it reached its target: the reptilefolk encampment where it foolishly believed an easy meal would be waiting for it. Unbeknownst to the beast, it was on a collision course with destiny.


    ________________________________________________


    When I entered the tunnel that connected the encampment and the dragon''s lair I realized something. I found myself inside of a massive tunnel, one both wide enough and tall enough to house an entire city, one big enough to dwarf even Aronms or San Gerardo.


    "So this is the dragon''s power..." I muttered as I waited for the beast to appear off in the distance. The tunnel around me was amazing in its dimensions and haunting in its disuse. It was as if anything sentient that might once have lived here had long been scared off.


    "This place... The dragon made this." I mused, as I studied the dimensions of the tunnel. It was almost lifeless, hauntingly unused by any sort of natural life aside from small plants and fungi.


    The cavern was tall enough that even my deific vision couldn''t quite see the natural ceiling that existed above us. It was amusing to try and strain my vision so that I could see it, but also a childish distraction I occupied myself with just once before refocusing.


    [Dragons are among the strongest mortal lifeforms in existence. And ancient dragons are the pinnacle of their kind. An ancient dragon could defeat armies on its own. Ancient dragons in this world are older than empires and many of them have singlehandedly brought entire kingdoms to their knees.] The system told me, excitement slyly sneaking into its not quite robotic voice.


    A smile found its way onto my face as I listened to the system. It was right when the system finished speaking that I first heard it: the incredibly distant sound of wings flapping against the still air of the cavernous tunnel I found myself in. And a moment later, the beast came into view. The gigantic dragon.


    For the first time in my life, I could see the black dragon that had once cowed the ancestors of the reptilefolk. It was the single largest living creature I had ever seen, and it was moving towards me at an impressive pace. But the dragon hadn''t yet noticed me. It would soon though.


    I lifted a single hand and chuckled as I began to manipulate the earth that surrounded me. Deep underground I was in my environment.

 117 Meeting A Dragon

    Ygaynth was under the impression that it was sailing through an empty, and safe tunnel. The dragon lazily flew, occasionally flapping its wings to maintain its height and speed. Its incredible senses detected no other non-plant or non-fungal life in the tunnel. It was wrong, but it had no way of knowing that just yet.


    This state of affairs allowed the beast to have unconscious confidence and security of mind. The gargantuan beast''s mind was not as lazy as its body.


    "A god has been discovered..." The beast thought, its mind not able to be as lazy as its body. The dragon was not a scholarly type. It was instead more of a lazy and apocalyptic destroyer that favored violence over deep thought. An archetypical black dragon.


    "What do gods do?" The beast wondered, trying to remember facts about gods. Sadly, for it at least, the dragon was not as intelligent as the dragons that Althos had met. And worse than that, the beast was notoriously foul-tempered.


    "Gods... create?" The creature eventually recalled. It wasn''t certain that it was remembering that correctly, but its intuition led it to believe that it was.


    The tunnel the serpentine dragon found itself in was a gigantic, artificially widened, and nearly lifeless cavern. It was dozens of meters tall and almost equally as wide. The dragon easily had the room to fly in the cavern and could even turn in the massive space without much difficulty.


    The dragon felt safe, foolishly so, in the tunnel. After all, it was responsible for the tunnel''s current state. This place was as much part of its lair as the enormous cavern where it stored its wealth. It never envisioned that an attack on its person might come from in here.


    ________________________________________________


    This enormous tunnel was basically the most perfect place in which I could meet a powerful creature. It was a straight tunnel that extended forward in one direction for dozens of kilometers, and the earth that made it up was something I could easily control.


    It took a minute or so after I first heard the dragon and began to be able to glimpse it in the distance before I could finally really see it. The dragon was a much larger lifeform than I imagined it being.


    From snout to tail the beast must have approached three dozen meters in length. And from the bottom of its feet to the tips of its wing the creature was roughly fifteen meters tall. Its scales were the color of a moonless night, an almost hungry void. The creature possessed wings that were meters tall and wide. They leisurely flapped and gave the creature bursts of speed and height it needed to move towards its destination.


    The creature sailed through the air at an incredible speed, and if I had been a mortal I probably would have been scared. Heck, if I had been my old self I probably would have been scared too. But now, as a powerful god and newborn elemental lord, I felt no fear. I felt only an eerie calmness.


    I wasn''t sure how I could tell, but the massive thing had what I suspected was a look of relaxation and curiosity on its reptilian face. I chuckled and wondered if it''d feel so relaxed in a few moments.


    For a moment I mulled over what I knew about this creature. It wasn''t all that much if I was being honest.


    The dragon was, in essence, a mythical being to at least two distinct civilizations: the dark elves and the reptilefolk. The reptilefolk revered and were terrified of the beast, a fear that was only surpassed by their newfound and bloodily earned fear of me. The dark-elves hated and also had a grudging respect for the serpentine destroyer.


    The dragon was effectively a force of nature in this region. It had created an entryway into the world below Puerto Rico, shortly after establishing itself as the lord of this place''s reptilefolks. It had clashed against the dark elves at least once in the ancient past, and based on Drow''s reaction to it, some dark elves appeared to have thought that the all too real monster was a myth.


    The creature was also a monster that demanded the sacrifice of living creatures whenever it awoke. Its reptilian servants, or at least those who had once served it, had willingly obeyed these brutal commands. In their defense, this was partially out of coercion as the reptilefolks had once failed to collect sacrifices and in turn been forced to watch their own kin be devoured by the dragon. They had learned the steep price that accompanied failure.


    It was this last bit of knowledge that led me to approach the dragon from a position of strength. If I were to put an end to the dragon''s millennia-long reign of terror I would need to be proud and to approach it with my powers on display. The dragon was a devouring destroyer, a terrifying and ancient source of despair. I needed to show my strength with every move I made.


    That was why I made an on the fly choice. The choice to subtly alter my initial strategy. After all, if I wanted to be strong why shouldn''t I start off by restricting my foe? Fortunately, I had a number of powers that were perfect for this moment.


    ________________________________________________


    The dragon had senses that were incomparable to those of other mortals. It could see flawlessly even as it flew and even in the absolute darkness of the tunnel. Its eyes relaxedly scanned the tunnel in front of it. It suspected that it wouldn''t see anything, and was an arrogant beast, but it scanned its surroundings nonetheless.


    The creature could see, hear, and smell everything for entire kilometers ahead of it. Its senses were alert and when Althos made his first move the thing noticed. Sadly for the dragon, the god''s first move wasn''t to manipulate the earth. Had the god gone after the earth first the dragon might have been able to do something about it. No, Althos targeted the dragon first.


    Althos was a god of a fair number of domains and subdomains. One of them was the subdomain of the air. And with that came a particularly devastating power: the power to allow creatures to fly, and in this case the more important power: he could take away another creature''s ability to fly.


    The way this power manifested wasn''t particularly violently. Althos hadn''t come here to fight after all, though he suspected that a fight might be inevitable. So when he took away the dragon''s power of flight he did so gently, and the dragon began to slowly descend to rather than violently crash into the surface of the tunnel.


    A few moments after the god had struck, striking with gentleness and subtlety, the black dragon found itself on the floor of the tunnel. It had quickly noticed that it was falling and had tried to stay aloft but found that its wings simply wouldn''t obey it.


    The beast reacted to this clearly unnatural attack with confusion, and curiosity, and descended to the ground nonviolently. That said, this uncharacteristic patience was also partially owed to the fact that the dragon didn''t know who or what was responsible for its loss of control over its wings. It knew, even in its sleepy state, that without a target to vent its frustrations on it wouldn''t be able to meaningfully address this anger. So it saved it up.


    ________________________________________________


    I had targeted Ygaynth with my first technique. The first blow I struck was to deny the creature the power to fly. It was easy and involved me utilizing a power I had used before but never to bind a creature to the ground. Once I had targeted the gargantuan dragon with that power I figuratively sat back and watched it descend to the ground, unable to fly anymore.


    Once the creature was on the ground for a few moments and had time to react I struck again. The earth at the beast''s feet almost instantly dissolved, becoming a quicksand-like substance that began to pull it down. I chuckled as the dragon reacted to this, twisting its long neck and staring down at its feet.


    Once more I watched the creature''s face slyly shift, this time contorting in annoyance and surprise. The dragon began to struggle against the quicksand-like substance that pulled it down, and I began to move. I teleported myself from where I stood, to right in front of the dragon.


    ________________________________________________


    Teleportation was a strange power for me. It granted me an almost unthinkable amount of freedom in movement. And whenever I used it my surroundings immediately changed. I was lucky that I had a far faster reaction speed than mortals did, as this allowed me to maximally utilize my abilities and come out of teleportation swinging.


    I went from a place nearly two-dozen kilometers away from the dragon, to standing right in front of it. The beast had incredibly speedy reactions as well, something I learned when the beast tried to lash out at me almost the instant I appeared.


    The beast reacted far faster than I had anticipated it being able too and did so by twisting its snake-like head and trying to bite me. I audibly laughed as I watched the thing''s head lash out at me and close in on me. That said, its gigantic fangs were unable to reach me. When the thing was done biting at me, its jaw was snapped shut just centimeters away from my nose.


    The monster''s breath washed over me as its nostrils exhaled earthy smelling vapor. After lashing out at me the dragon was still. Its gigantic head was more than twice the size of my entire body. I was calm and gently placed hand on one of the thing''s teeth.


    The tooth I placed my hand on was tall, almost the length of my entire body. It was also a sharp, jagged fang. I chuckled and activated a power I had never used before but had access to almost my entire life. "Status change". I was surprised when I heard the system, in its automated voice, speak to me after activating this power.


    [Alert: You are targeting a hostile creature with ''Status change''. Would you like to change the creature''s status towards you, to a neutral state?] The automated version of the system asked me. I did the mental version of a nod and watched as the dragon began to emit a faint, silvery light. I was surprised when I heard the beast suck in a deep breath, and then begin to speak.


    "This magic... Small one... Are you responsible for this?" The dragon asked, speaking a language that surprised me. It spoke the same language as the humans who lived in Comillas but with a strange and primal accent.


    "I can''t... bring myself to attack you. But I can still feel my hostility towards you. Deep, deep inside. That said, I can respect someone whose magic is strong enough to stop me from attacking. Even if it is just temporary." The dragon whispered, its voice ancient. I could have sworn I heard a bit of anger in its voice, but it was difficult for even me to be certain.


    "Who are you? What is your name, little one?" The dragon asked, curiosity audibly seeping into its voice. I smiled and ascended into the air. I floated upward until I was face to face with the reptilian, almost catlike, scarlet eyes of the dragon.


    "Ygaynth... This meeting has been a long-time coming. My name is Althos. And I am a god. You and I really should converse before we do anything else." I said to the gigantic beast, a confident smirk on my face. My remark surprised the dragon, and its eyes widened in bittersweet shock.


    "So you... are the god who healed the world?" The dragon asked me, speaking curiously. It was fair for the thing to be skeptical. Instead of replying audibly, I smiled and activated one of my personal favorite abilities. All around me and around Ygaynth''s head, a brilliant aura of silver light exploded into existence, bathing the two of us in iridescent light.

 118 Unparalled Power

    The tunnel that the god and the dragon met in had never seen any sort of light before. No natural light or magical light had ever illuminated it. Yet the god didn''t care about that. Unknowingly acting as a god of light, one of many things he had influence over, he illuminated the strange pathway freely with his "Unfettered Divinity" power.


    The silvery illumination that sprung into being around the god and the dragon''s head was beautiful. It was also incredibly powerful and forced the dragon to immediately accept the truth that Althos was a god. It was a simple, undeniable power that overwhelmed mortals with ease.


    The dragon silently and swiftly came to terms with the powerful knowledge that seeped into its brain courtesy of the god. It wasn''t a scholar but that didn''t mean it was dumb. And it sensed the profound power that radiated out of the mighty god who stood before it.


    ________________________________________________


    I looked at the dragon and stared silently for a few moments. I needed to get into the "proud" state of mind I had shown the other dragons if I wanted this exchanged to be as productive as possible. I took a deep breathe and then began to speak to the beast.


    "Ygaynth, I am power incarnate." I began, speaking as arrogantly as I could. I channeled the divine pride that infused me into my voice.


    "I am a god of life, death, time, and even dragons. Nothing can escape my influence." I told the beast in front, working to bolster the image it had of me in its mind. As I did that I thought of the significant powers afforded to me by the domain of dragons.


    The system chose this moment to hit me with another notification. A brand new, special alert, which among other things detailed a brand new domain that I hadn''t previously seen or heard of before. That said, I didn''t hate what I saw.


    ________________________________________________


    [Draconic domain details:


    Dragons are the greatest and most powerful types of mortal lifeforms. Their strength is so vast that they and their kin, creatures like half-dragons, devolved dragonkin, kobolds, and other draconic creatures, merit their own domain and not a subdomain like almost every other mortal lifeform possesses.


    Dragons are the embodiment of mortal emotions, virtues, and sins. They can personify greed, sloth, happiness, patience, and other emotions. They are incredibly long-lived, capable of living until they are several thousand years old before old age inevitably takes them, and their strength only grows as they age.


    In the ancient past, the gods of dragonkind were a varied bunch. Good gods of dragonkind embodied justice, benevolent leadership, peace, and cooperation. Evil gods of dragonkind embodied greed, lust, wrath, and conflagrations. The gods of dragonkind were immensely powerful dragons, creatures capable of singlehandedly combatting the populations of entire planets on their own.


    As a lesser god of dragonkind, you possess powers over lesser dragonkin, such as kobolds and devolved dragonkin. You also possess the power to influence dragons but to gain true power over them as a god of their kind you must gain greater influence over the domain.


    To gain more power over the draconic domain you must build up cults of draconic worshipers. These cults can be made up of dragons, or they can be made up of the lesser relatives of dragons.


    Draconic domain passive powers:


    Knowledge: This synergistic power takes from the domain of knowledge and gifts you with an understanding of dragons and their kin. This knowledge is simplistic, for now, but possessing knowledge about dragons is a valuable and rare gift in a world like Torus.


    This knowledge is both significant and generalized. It applies to dragons and their lesser relatives as a whole, and isn''t about specific members of any particular species. As an example of this, you now know that black dragons are earth dragons, powerful creatures with various powers over stone, soil, and the land itself.


    Aura of draconic superiority: You exude an aura of power that renders lesser dragonkin subservient to you.


    This aura turns lesser dragonkin, creatures that include beings as intelligent as kobolds, who are true humanoids and every bit as industrious as humans and dwarves, into your worshipers. It doesn''t snatch away their freewill but all but the smartest or most willful kobolds who learn about you begin to worship you as a god of dragons, greed, and something else you may decide later.


    Dragon breath: This is a redundant power. It grants you the elemental breath weapons that dragons possess, which your powers over elements already granted you.


    Dragon physiology: This is a synergistic power that takes from the domains of life and biology as well as the dragon domain. With it, you can give your worshippers parts of a dragon''s body if you wish through your transformational and mutagenic powers.


    At will, you can now grant your worshipers'' weak elemental breath weapons, dragon claws, dragon wings, and the incredibly hard scales of a dragon.


    Draconic domain active powers:


    Lesser dragonkind manipulation: You can induce emotions in any number of lesser dragonkin. These emotions are currently limited to simple ones, like desire, rage, happiness, or sorrow. This can be done up to five times per half an hour.


    Amplification: Once per day you can target a dragon and amplify whatever they are feeling. You cannot change what they are feeling, only amplify it.


    Draconic domain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing a non-dragon with this domain you amplify the effects of their attacks against dragons and their relatives, as well as how successful they are in regards to non-violently engaging with dragons. The curse has the opposite effect.]


    [Special dual alert:


    In your decision to indiscriminately heal the inhabitants of the world you did a number of things that no mundane god had ever done before. One of the things you did that no mundane god had ever done before was healing living abominations. One of the other things you did was convert a considerable number of said abominations into your worshipers.


    Abominations are horrifying, alien lifeforms that are or in some cases are descended from beings native to other realities. These creatures were warped by interuniversal travel, and transformed into hateful, misanthropic monsters who could usually only tolerate other members of their own kind.


    Abominations were hated by the majority of the ancient, and mundane gods. The ancient and mundane gods formed the majority of gods native to this particular universe. The mundane gods ordered their servants to wipe out the abominations, and the resulting conflict has gone on between the two groups for so long that it transcended even the death of the old gods.


    Abominations were only accepted by the great old ones or the outer gods, two particular families of gods who defied their kin and possessed distinct, horrifying, and reality-warping powers. Abominations served these strange, alien gods eagerly, grateful for both the power that such gods granted their servants and the acceptance of the churches of the great old ones and the outer gods.


    You already had a few abominations as your worshipers, but they were undead: the gugs you have reanimated. Now you are worshipped by living abominations, and that has an influence on you. Namely, it has granted you power over the eldritch domain.


    Eldritch domain details:


    The eldritch domain is the domain that governs abominations, madness, eldritch energies, and other reality-warping things. This domain is the eerie domain which empowered the great old ones and the outer gods to the extent that they, a relatively small fraction of gods, could stand against the combined forces of the other gods.


    The eldritch domain is primarily a power-giving and transformative domain, though it does offer influence over lifeforms. It currently seeks to leave the multiverse an illogical, sinister, and terrifying place.


    This domain is a mysterious one. It is a relatively young domain that doesn''t associate much with its fellow domains, and its goals are only known because it was highly influenced by the bizarre gods who once possessed power over it. Some extraplanars are susceptible to the powers of this domain, especially demons whose affiliations with both chaos and evil make them occasional allies of abominations.


    To gain greater influence over this domain use its eerie powers to create and organize cults of abominations. Please note that in doing so you''ll begin to become more like the great old ones and the outer gods.


    Eldritch domain passive powers:


    Abominable knowledge: This obviously synergistic power grants you knowledge concerning different types of abominations.


    Madness detection: Eldritch beings and gods can detect madness and insanity. They are also potent manipulators of madness.


    Madness manipulation: As an eldritch god you can manipulate madness. What you do with this eerie power is entirely up to you, but you can twist and distort the minds of mad people and bend them to your will.


    Additionally, you can create madness energy and infuse objects with it. This energy warps the objects you infect with it and causes them to exude auras of contagious madness.


    If used on weapons it makes them more effective, if used on armor it makes it more protective, if used on food it makes it more delicious but also addictive. This power increases an item''s effectiveness, but at the cost of slowly and steadily draining the sanity of any people brave enough to wield, wear, eat, or otherwise use them.


    Maddening dreams: This synergistic power is an eerie fusion of the dream domain and the eldritch domain. It causes people to have dreams that lessen their sanity and render them more vulnerable to powers like ''Madness Burst''.


    These dreams can be manipulated by you, and can still be restorative. That said if these dreams are twisted into restorative ones then the dreamers will awaken with manic energy and a frighteningly unstable, but thankfully temporary positive outlook. If this power is used on an entire community it can be part of a long-term assault on a community, driving people to chaos and madness.


    Contagious madness: This disturbing power twists and empowers madness into something terrifying: something that can spread from person to person. It also grants you a few other abilities.


    You can now physically attack someone and deal damage to their sanity instead of their body. If you wanted too, even an attack that ought to be fatal can be transformed into an attack that instead drives someone insane. People driven insane in this manner, by you or by an empowered abomination who serves you, begin to worship you as an eldritch deity of pain, pleasure, and terror.


    You can target people who are mad and empower their madness. This makes their madness nearly incurable and allows them to sap the sanity of those who are influenced by them or who are in close proximity to them. This also increases their charisma. If you wish they can begin to worship you, but that''s up to you.


    Maddening aura: At will you can project an aura that causes creatures in your presence to begin to lose sanity. Abominations who enter your aura immediately become empowered servants of yours and seek to enact your will. Eventually, even the sanest creature will lose the last bit of their sanity and become a maddened worshiper of yours.


    Eldritch conversion: If you wish you can transform someone who is insane into an abomination. You can either transform them into existing abominations, like deep-ones, mi-gos, gugs, night-gaunts, or countless other types of creatures, and even into handcrafted abominations. If you remake someone into an existing type of abomination then they worship you in ways that fit their species.


    Gugs worship you as an eldritch god of violence and dreams. Mi-gos worship you as an eldritch deity of transformations, and fungi. Deep-ones worship you as an eldritch deity of fertility and the ocean. And so on and so forth.


    Handcrafted abominations are usually influenced by the particular idiosyncrasies of their madness, as well as their personal vices and they worship you as an eldritch deity, their creator, and as a god of the truth. Creatures transformed by you are irreversibly transformed unless, of course, you decide to undo the transformation.


    Fanaticism inducement: This power is a synergistic one that takes from the faith domain and the eldritch domain. It allows you to target creatures who worship you and transform them into fanatics. Such a transformation is immediate, and potentially destroys their sanity, but if not it definitely strains it. Fanatics worship you zealously and seek to fulfill your will.


    Maddening touch: Your mere touch can sap sanity. This is an at-will effect. Your touch alone isn''t very potent, but if you do other things in addition to touch someone the effect is magnified.


    Empowerment: You can empower abominations. Empowering an abomination makes it bigger, smarter, and more dangerous, as well as more hateful towards humanoids. Empowered abominations automatically become fanatics of yours and seek to convert their neighbors to your worship. They often attempt to become leaders of other, nearby abominations and form cults, communities, or even entire regions devoted to you.


    Eldritch mind: You can project your thoughts into the mind of someone else and can forcibly alter their perceptions of reality. With this, you can trap someone in a prison of their own mind, or even assault someone using your thoughts. Additionally attempts to read your mind result in someone falling under your corruptive influence.


    This is a synergistic power that incorporates mind-domain abilities.


    Eldritch domain active power:


    Subjective perception: This power is trapped in a weaker state until you gain powers over the art subdomain and the domains of emotions and reality, but in its current state, you gain a once-per-day power that further enhances your shapeshifting talent.


    This power causes how you look to differ radically from person to person for two hours. You can take on a form that matches the most beautiful or handsome creature imaginable to those who see you, or the most terrifying thing imaginable to them. These forms can differ wildly and even be of different races or genders.


    Eldritch domain blessing and curse details:


    If you bless someone with this domain, abominations view them favorably and their sanity is constantly being drained. A mortal blessed by this domain will become an abomination upon their death.


    If you curse someone with this domain abominations will detect your curse and will single them out. A mortal cursed by this domain also becomes an abomination upon their death.]


    ________________________________________________


    "You will worship me. But I have a number of ways that I can induce this if you won''t worship me willingly. And your death is not an obstacle. Not to me, anyway." I told the dragon, my confidence empowered by the bizarre array of new abilities I possessed.


    I immediately activated my newest aura and chuckled as I felt insidious, maddening energy begin to seep out of me. The power that I now radiated was dark and cruel, it was a mutative and corruptive font of power that offered those who partook of it eldritch might, but at the cost of their sanity. And if it were me, I could make people partake of the power regardless of their willingness.


    "Ygaynth... Your actions have encouraged civilizations who live in this area to practice slavery. And that is an unforgivable offense." I calmly informed the dragon. This caused the beast to tense up. The dragon''s head reared back and then stretched upwards so that the beast could look down on me, as an emotional defense mechanism. I chuckled.


    I placed a hand on the dragon''s exposed, elongated, neck and activated my "Maddening Touch" power. I felt unstable energy begin to manifest in my fingertips and seep into the dragon. The dragon hissed, but the sound wasn''t an uncomfortable one, it was one of surprise.


    I calmly retreated into my mind. In the sanctuary that was my head, I was able to assess the situation I found myself in.


    ________________________________________________


    Ygaynth was a cruel, powerful dragon. He was at the zenith of his power as an ancient dragon.


    The gigantic beast was responsible for not only the destruction of countless human kingdoms, but he had also devoured countless sacrifices given to him. Not to mention that he was one of the forces responsible for ensuring the continuation of the practice of slavery in the world below Puerto Rico.


    Ygaynth was believed to be, by numerous factions throughout this area, an unstoppable force of nature. And he was now my prisoner, helpless to resist my strange powers. But how to proceed from here?


    I could kill the dragon. Doing so, regardless of whether or not I reanimated or even resurrected him, would truly cement my status as the lord of the world beneath Puerto Rico. Killing him wouldn''t even be hard. And that''s before considering the numerous voices in my head clamoring for the death of the dragon.


    I could also convert the dragon. If I turned the massive beast into a worshiper of mine, especially if I made it a fanatic, I didn''t doubt that my personal fame and the power of my worshipers as a distinct faction in the world beneath Puerto Rico would skyrocket.


    There were also a few other possibilities. I could convert the dragon into an abomination and thus secure its worship, as well as test my eldritch abilities. Heck I could even infect the dragon with demonic infection, and thus allow the beast to become possessed by a praereptor demon.


    So many choices, and one of the best parts of it all was that I had unlimited time to make a decision. I felt the beast''s sanity lessening by the second.

 119 Emotions

    "Ygaynth... What do I do with you?" I asked. I smiled at the massive creature shortly after speaking. I wondered if the beast could sense its sanity slipping. My hand was still on its neck, and every second that passed was a second in which I stole more of its sanity.


    The neck my hand was on was a thick thing. Sharp, serendibite-like scales covered and protected what I assumed was tough skin but the scales didn''t bother me.


    The dragon spent a moment trying to shake my hand off, but it didn''t work. And since I wasn''t grabbing its neck this wasn''t classified as an attack. This meant I could steal the thing''s sanity, all while it couldn''t attack me in return.


    "Althos... What are you doing?" The dragon asked, fear and anger mixing into its voice. I looked up at the dragon and chuckled.


    I could sense the creature''s emotions thanks to a new synergistic power I possessed. It was one from the mind domain, and I was grateful to it. It allowed me to sense the emotions of creatures affected by my powers.


    "Well Ygaynth... I am preparing." I informed the dragon. I could sense even more fear begin to radiate off of the beast.


    "What are you preparing for?" It asked me, moving from afraid and angry to just afraid. I was silent for a moment before I replied. I liked the silence. It built dramatic tension.


    "I am preparing you." I told the dragon. It didn''t reply to this. Instead, I felt a tremor of terror from within the beast, which made its neck shake.


    I legitimately wasn''t sure what I''d do with the dragon. That said, stealing away its draconic sanity and while doing so making the dragon a willing servant was a good idea no matter what path I chose.


    ________________________________________________


    I didn''t let the dragon see the turmoil in my mind but my mind was a chaotic mess at the moment. I could distinctly hear a number of voices, none of which were mine, arguing.


    "He should kill the dragon. After all, the dragon did commit unforgivable offenses. And the dragon can only die once." A domain, the death domain, muttered. It possessed a voice that was audibly ancient.


    "I agree! Imagine the power he''d gain from reanimating an ancient black dragon? Even if he made it a zombie, or a skeleton, the beast would be among his strongest undead. If he took the thing''s soul and created a lich from it..." The necromancy subdomain added, giggling as she finished the thought.


    "The dragon can be redeemed! It may not atone for its sins but he could use it as one of his champions in the fight against slavery. A living champion." Roared another voice. This was one I was unfamiliar with, but intuitively recognized as one of my newer domains: the domain of goodness.


    "Death... You said that the dragon can only die once. That''s not true." Another domain, the domain of life replied. This caused the death domain to grunt in response, but the sound was a poor attempt to hide interest. Moments later the death domain did something else to reveal its interest: it spoke.


    "The boy can already perform resurrections? Were you one of his initial domains?" Death asked, a moment later. The domain tried to hide its interest behind an annoyed tone, but wasn''t a good actor.


    "No. Healing on the other hand..." The life domain revealed, and I could have sworn I heard the smile on the domain''s lips if domains even possessed lips.


    "He was a natural-born healer? Now that is interesting. Has performed a resurrection yet?" The death domain asked, followed up by asking another question. This time it''s questions were answered by a subdomain.


    "No. Not yet anyway. But to be fair, he still doesn''t know he can now perform multiple resurrections. He doesn''t know what the second tier of influence over me awards him." The subdomain of healing informed the "gathering" of domains and subdomains. It wasn''t done talking either.


    "Resurrecting someone is... As you know, it''s hard. Initially, he could only do one every six months. The poor lad has only been alive for about twelve days. Not even half a month." The subdomain said, defending my hesitation. I grinned, appreciative of the words of the subdomain.


    "He could interact with the dragon using me. I am great for making friends!" Another voice, a new one, told the "crowd" of domains and subdomains. This voice belonged to another new subdomain, the subdomain of fungi. It was one of the subdomains I had gained access too through my worldwide miracle, even though to do so the subdomain had had to change its quest.


    The subdomain of fungi was another odd subdomain. It granted me considerable power, and its powers were all unsettling ones. Among other new abilities I had gained the power to generate infective and parasitic spores within myself and infect others with them. It was a powerful ability but also one that I recognized would snatch away a creature''s free will.


    There was a part of me that wanted to test this power out on Ygaynth and have the creature spend the rest of its life clashing against those who continued to practice slavery. But I also recognized how odd it was to use such a power in the name of ending slavery. And I wasn''t unaware of the optics of my other powers either.


    I recognized the strangeness of having an undead horde clash against those who practiced human sacrifice and slavery. That said, there was something humorous, to me at least, about using an army of the undead to liberate the living. And I liked the fact that slavers joined this army and thus spent their undeath working to atone for the sins they performed in life.


    I was also aware of the brutality of my passive decision to snatch away the sanity of Ygaynth. But I didn''t feel any guilt about this choice.


    Ygaynth had ended countless lives as a "sane" member of his species and had shown no remorse. So far I hadn''t made the choice to kill the dragon and I wasn''t really snatching away his freewill but even if I did, it could be argued that that would be a just punishment for the life-ending dragon.


    I intended to leave the dragon changed. I still hadn''t decided just how changed I wanted to leave the dragon, but I did know I wanted to leave it unrecognizable.


    ________________________________________________


    The beast in front of me was feeling an array of emotions. I sensed fear as the preeminent emotion in its heart, but there were a number of other things the monster was feeling as well.


    The creature felt a small but growing calmness deep in its heart. I could recognize that it felt that this emotion was unnatural in some way. And it was. The calmness in its heart was due to my theft of its sanity. As its sanity decreased, its calmness increased because a growing part of it began to revere me. The part of it that revered me wasn''t at all afraid of me.


    Another emotion it felt was anger. This anger had started off powerful and plentiful, but now it was beginning to fade away.


    "I can feel the change in your heart. Can you feel it too?" I asked the dragon, smiling at it. The beast silently ignored my question, trying to cling to the anger and pride that lingered stubbornly in its heart. That was amusing so I decided to play with Ygaynth a bit.


    I moved my head forward and gently kissed its neck. My lips met the cold and hard scales that protected the creature''s bare skin, but they offered no resistance to my powers. The dragon shivered and sighed breathily, surprising even me.


    "Oh? I didn''t think you''d be able to actually feel that." I said a grin on my face. I kissed the scales again, and the dragon shivered once more, slightly more this time. I also felt more of its sanity melt off of the beast, as a consequence of my kiss. I delivered another kiss to its scale and laughed as the dragon shook in a mixture of delight and frustration. Shortly after I finished laughing I spoke to the shadow-scaled beast.


    "You should know that I''m a thief. My kisses can steal away your sanity." I informed the dragon. The dragon growled, a vibration visibly shaking its neck. The vibration was visible, but there was almost no hostility in the cat-like gesture.


    "I bet that you don''t mind though, do you?" I asked. There was a coy smile on my lips. I watched as the throat of the beast moved, but no sound came out of its mouth. I immediately sensed its discomfort and annoyance. I was able to piece together what had just happened without much difficulty.


    "Did you try to lie to me just now? I am a god of truth. Unless I allow it mortals cannot lie in my presence." I informed Ygaynth.


    "It''s okay though. I am the king of succubi and incubi." I revealed, smiling as I considered ways to toy with this feared, semi-mythical being.


    "I can feel your lust." I said to the dragon, lying through my teeth as I did so. Even as I lied, I activated an entertaining power named "Believe me" that caused the dragon''s heart to twist in fear and confusion as it wondered if it felt lust towards me. As it struggled with my lie, and the overwhelming compulsion it felt to believe what I had said, I kissed its scale-covered neck again.


    The dragon let out a sloven sigh, and I laughed mirthfully. I was enjoying myself.


    "To think that you are feared this region by almost everyone. And yet here I am... Toying with you." I said, feeling the power that defined gods so keenly at this moment.


    "Is this the real difference in power between a god and a mortal?" I wondered, thinking aloud as I felt the dragon slide closer and closer to the edge of madness.


    ________________________________________________


    My life so far had led me to have a particular perception of mortals. I had presented as one of them to entire communities for pretty much my whole life until this point. I had walked among them and worked to protect them. A not so small part of me even viewed them as equals. But now...


    I had rendered a greater member of one of the greatest species of mortals helpless and was toying with it. I had no inclination to hurt Ygaynth or anything, but seeing how easily I had dealt with an ancient black dragon was definitely forcing me to contend with the realities of godhood.


    I was not a mortal. And I never would be. That was a reality that I had blinded myself too, until the moment I had decided to embrace my godhood to bring an end to slavery. And now I was once again being reminded of the differences between myself and even the most powerful mortal.


    I could do anything to this dragon and it would have no choice but to accept it. As a god I doubted that anything similar to that could ever happen to me, especially since the mythic age was over and I was in all likelihood the only god and the last higher being to come into existence.


    I felt a few distinct emotions radiating within me at this moment. I felt anger aimed at Ygaynth for the cruelty he had shown to his fellow mortals. I felt a keen sense of happiness towards myself and my own, undeniable power.


    I also felt anger at the mortals that I knew intended to disobey me. There was a part of me, a portion of myself that was driven by my pride, that wanted to torment slaveowners and nobles who intended to continue to wage war despite my commands.


    I also felt a growing coldness towards Ygaynth. I had envisioned us having a philosophical showdown, and instead I had easily overwhelmed the beast and it immediately began to fear for its life. I was still resistant to the idea of killing the beast, but that resistance was fading.


    Ygaynth''s negative feelings were fading away. I had successfully stolen enough of the beast''s sanity to render it harmless while I was introspectively mulling over my own emotions.


    ________________________________________________


    "I suppose I ought to make a decision concerning your fate." I muttered, staring at the beast. There was just a tiny bit of sanity left in the beast, but I pulled my hand off of the thing''s scales which slowed the rate at which I took away its sanity. This would give it another minute or so before it sunk into irreversible insanity.


    I took a step away from it and the beast''s head turned to face me. There was a look of sadness on its face as if it somehow missed the sensation of my hand on its neck. I gazed at it, anger, disappointment, and curiosity mixing together in my eyes.


    "Ygaynth... Why did you do what you did?" I asked the creature, wanting to understand it before I did anything. So far everything I had done was reversible. And with my current level of power even killing Ygaynth would be reversible. That said, I wanted to understand the beast now that I had ensured that the thing wouldn''t try to hurt me or anyone else, unless I commanded it.


    "Why did I do... What exactly?" The dragon asked, unsure of what I was asking.


    "Why did you destroy so much? Why did you kill other sapient creatures, destroy their homes, and order other creatures to capture sacrifices for you?" I asked, wanting to gain a glimpse into the thing''s mind.


    The creature fell silent for a moment. In its gaze, there were an array of new emotions, intense ones. One of them was an unsettling reverence for me, or at least its insane understanding of me. I had stolen just about every bit of sanity the thing possessed, and I was unsurprised to see that it adored me, in its own way.

 120 A Fitting Punishmen

    "Althos... I did what I did because I wanted too. Because it''s what members of my kind do." The dragon told me, speaking candidly. There was a sincerity to its words, a bizarre frankness that made its revelations about its simplistic motivations all the more maddening to me.


    "So you''re just... an unrepentant killer?" I asked, while stunned by the simplicity of the dragon''s motivation. The dragon thought about my words for a moment but then nodded.


    "Ygaynth..." I muttered, feeling anger well up within me. I was unsurprised that its motivation was simplistic, but that didn''t keep me from experiencing anger. If anything it made the anger I felt be purify and intensify.


    I felt righteous anger. The sort of anger that one felt towards a cruel king whose motivations were simple greed or pure lust. There was no method to the dragon''s chaos or cruelty, no greater design to it, no noble cause that offered even the most superficial justification. It was just violence for the sake of violence.


    "Your actions are truly unforgivable." I informed the dragon, now more sure than I had ever been that I needed to do something significant to the dragon.


    ________________________________________________


    "Kill him." The death domain told me, speaking directly to me as I wondered what to do about the beast. There was something appealing in so straightforward a solution to my dilemma.


    "If you kill him and take his skull throughout the world below Puerto Rico, no one will be brave enough to defy you. Not only will you do your duty as a god of life, but you''ll also ensure that the slaves you seek to free are actually freed." The death domain added.


    "Althos... You can kill the dragon and then reanimate him. He, like the slave-taking reptilefolks who died during the battle at the encampment, can atone for the lives he took in undeath." The necromancy subdomain told me, whispering into my mind.


    I chuckled, inwardly, at the knowledge that the necromancy subdomain had noticed that I generally only took lives if it was done to protect other lives. It was smart and was trying to manipulate me into reanimating the dragon. I didn''t hate that though, instead, I thought it was funny.


    For a moment I actually considered it. But only for a moment. After all, there were other dragon corpses out there. I didn''t need to make one of my own. When I consciously realized this, I mentally heard the subdomain huff in annoyance.


    ________________________________________________


    "How could I most suitably punish you?" I asked, thinking out loud. The dragon looked at me, but there was no fear in its gaze. Its scarlet eyes only held admiration for me and an acceptance of whatever pronouncement it knew I was on the verge of declaring.


    "I have an idea..." A surprising, silken voice said, within the confines of my mind. The voice belonged to a subdomain.


    "This dragon inflicted terror on this region for millennia. The pain it caused, both physically and emotionally is... beyond measurement. But if you want a fitting punishment, maybe the way you should punish the beast is to allow others to inflict pain on it." The subdomain of pain offered. I went silent for a moment and wondered what it meant.


    "The dragon is now among your worshipers. You don''t need to kill or even hurt it yourself. After all, the beast didn''t hurt you did it? Instead, you can allow the descendants of those it hurt to vent their rage on it." The subdomain suggested. My eyes widened as I began to understand its suggestion.


    "The beast worships you. If you order it to atone for its sin by going from community to community and spend hours each day just taking the attacks of the descendants of its victims it will obey you." The subdomain of pain told me.


    This was an interesting idea. And it was one that I genuinely liked. It punished the dragon in a way that mildly fit its crimes while demonstrating my power over the beast. It proved the reality that I had subjugated the dragon, all while giving the people of the world below Puerto Rico a fair target with which they could vent their rage.


    It didn''t take me long to come to a definitive conclusion: this was the best possible punishment that I could enact on the dragon. Inwardly, I sighed, thanked the pain subdomain, and then refocused on the scene in front of me.


    ________________________________________________


    The dragon was looking down on me, but only in a literal sense. Its head was situated high above me, and I craned my neck upward to make eye contact with the serpentine beast. I took a step towards the beast and placed one of my hands on the same scales I had touched before.


    In doing so I stole the last bit of its sanity and sighed in delight as I felt the madness that had invaded and taken control of much of the monster''s mind finally fully dominate it. The dragon stopped looking at me and instead looked straight ahead. As it did so, it opened its mouth and roared.


    The sound that exploded out of the dragon''s maw was an ear-shattering one. It was easily the loudest thing I had ever heard, and it echoed throughout the vast tunnel that the dragon had long ago modified. Though it didn''t bother me, I could detect dissonant, maddening tones in the sound and wondered what sort of an effect such a sound might have on mortals if they had heard it.


    It took perhaps a minute or two before the dragon finally stopped making the sound. As it did so, I looked at it and opted to activate my knowledge-based powers to learn more about the ancient beast.


    [Name: Ygaynth Earthslide (Level 18 Magician)


    Species: Black Dragon


    Alignment: Chaotic Evil


    Personal virtue: Chastity


    Personal vice: Wrath


    Sexuality: Heterosexual


    Magic sensing: Ygaynth is an incredibly powerful magician. It wouldn''t be an exaggeration to say that this beast is the most skilled magic user you''ve met to date.


    Ygaynth has been viewed as a terrifying force of nature thanks in no small part to the fact that it is so magically powerful. Even among the magically inclined dragons, Ygaynth is a colossally powerful living disaster. Ygaynth''s soul resonates with the school of ecomancy, magic that transforms the environment. It is through this magic that the dragon creates tunnels, caverns, and more.


    Faith sense: Ygaynth is now insane, even by the standards of black dragons. What''s more, is that Ygaynth''s insanity is entirely due to your corruptive influence. The dragon''s mind is currently scrambled and it is in a transitional state. It is adjusting to the new reality your vile madness presents it with.


    Ygaynth''s rewritten mind, its distorted perceptions, and even its very sense of reality will all be subject to your whims. The dragon will become more like an abomination than another dragon, and it will be obedient to your will.


    Authority detection: Black dragons are notoriously independent, even amongst dragons. Among its own kind, Ygaynth is grudgingly respected but has no particular authority. The dragon is the undisputed ruler of the reptilefolks who live in the world beneath Puerto Rico. It doesn''t have any nonreptilian followers.


    Soul-sense: Ygaynth isn''t naturally pious and so the beast wouldn''t make a particularly good member of any religious class.


    Draconic knowledge: Black dragons are wrathful embodiments of the earth''s fury. They are powerful creatures who are well-known for embodying the destructive fury of an earthquake. As a species they tend to resonate well with ecomancy, one of the most dramatic schools of magic.


    One of the powers that comes with a black dragon''s ties to the earth is that they possess the power to take a deep breath and then exhale a considerable number of small rocks as a surprisingly effective ranged attack.]


    I leisurely read through the entry, grateful for the tidbits I picked up that I hadn''t already known. Some of them, like the word "Ecomancy", informed me of bigger things to keep an eye out for, since before today I had never heard that word. Others, like the ability of black dragons to breathe rocks, were just handy bits of trivia I ought to keep in mind in the future.


    When I was done reading the profile I willed it away and focused on the dragon in front of me.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello, Ygaynth." I said to the massive and dangerous beast now that was done roaring. There was a confident smirk on my face as I spoke to the beast. The dragon looked down at me and there were new emotions in its gaze that hadn''t been there before.


    There was a joy I hadn''t seen visible in the scarlet iris of the dragon''s eyes. There was also an eagerness that the dragon radiated, now that it was done roaring.


    "Master..." The dragon replied, speaking to me with an odd respect and reverence audible in its tone.


    "I know what your punishment will be." I informed the creature, speaking calmly to the gargantuan monster.


    "Please, share it with me. Or inflict it, if that is your wish." The dragon told me, speaking in a way that made it clear that it was ready to accept whatever I wished for it to endure.


    A small part of me, a sadistic part, felt mildly annoyed the dragon was so ready to endure whatever punishment I deemed appropriate. I recognized that that small part of me wanted violence. And to be fair, a fight against a creature as powerful as Ygaynth would have been kind of fun.


    I sighed and mentally silenced that little voice. It only took me a second to refocus and did Ygaynth my full attention.


    "You only have one life to give." I told the dragon, lying to the beast and to myself at the same time.


    "Since you only have one life to give, your punishment shall not be to die. Instead, your punishment will be to suffer. It will be to feel pain since you can at least endure pain." I told the dragon. Its eyes widened, but as quickly as they widened they narrowed once more. It didn''t reply and waited for me to expand on my cryptic pronouncement.


    "I am going to send you from community to community throughout the world underneath Puerto Rico. I will tell the people of the world beneath Puerto Rico that you have been humbled and this is your way of atoning for your sins." I told the dragon, beginning to explain the scheme devised by the subdomain of pain.


    The dragon remained stoically silent. I almost admired its passivity to the punishment my subdomain devised.


    "The purpose of this is punishment is twofold. The first part of it is to cement that you are my humble servant by allowing creatures weaker than you to freely inflict pain on you. When they see the pain you are in and that you refuse to fight back they will recognize my power over you. The second part of it is to allow them to vent their anger, loss, and hate on you, the source of their anger, loss, and hate." I told the dragon, lecturing it quite easily. The dragon finally opened its mouth to speak after I said that.


    "Will this... Please you?" The dragon asked, looking at me as it spoke. There was a genuine curiosity in its gaze that I recognized and decided to indulge.


    "This punishment allows you to feel a bit of the suffering you inflicted on others. So yes, it does please me. Eventually, it will end. You are a powerful creature. I desire powerful servants. In time I will free you from this punishment, and I will make use of you in other ways." I informed the dragon, speaking to it frankly and honestly.


    The dragon considered my words, and then it felt satisfied with whatever inscrutable thoughts it had mulled over. I studied it for a few moments, curious as to what the beast was thinking. When I scanned its brain, all I learned was that the simple creature was satisfied that I had a punishment for it that I deemed somewhat fitting.


    None of this was satisfying to the crueler part of me that existed deep in my heart but that I often ignored or actively suppressed. And frankly, it was hard for me to say that that part of me was wrong. I did want the dragon to legitimately feel pain.


    Ygaynth was known, even to the system, as a natural disaster given form. And yet that titanically powerful creature was now my minion. It felt anti-climatic for the beast to submit to me, but I recognized the whole-hearted sincerity I felt emanating from deep within the beast. The conflict between us was over. But that didn''t mean I had to be done. I turned inward, curious to see if the system had an idea I could use to satisfy the dark urge I felt in my heart for pain.


    ________________________________________________


    "So... I think we can all agree that there is something unsatisfying here, right?" I asked internally. Within the confines of my mind, I spoke to the system primarily, but also to the domains and subdomains that lurked within me.


    I was initially met with silence. That silence didn''t last long though.


    "You could have just killed the dragon you know. It''s not our fault you insisted on keeping the thing alive." One of the domains, the domain of death complained. I chuckled at its remarks. Another domain proceeded to verbally berate the domain.


    "Shut up! Althos did the right thing. And obviously he did the hard thing too. He is keeping Ygaynth alive and will likely use the beast as one of the weapons in his arsenal to ensure that slavery is abolished. We should be proud of him." The domain, the goodness domain to be exact, replied. There was anger in the thing''s voice, but the anger dissipated after the domain''s response to the death domain. Another domain quickly chimed in as well.


    "My... somewhat rude, fellow domain is correct. Althos you did the right thing by not killing the dragon. Admittedly, I have concerns, about your decision to bend it to your will using the offputting powers of the eldritch domain, but that is less important than your objective success here." The life domain told me, acknowledging the success of my unorthodox methods of transforming the dragon into my worshiper even while politely complaining.


    "I am actually happy that he used the powers of the eldritch domain. It''s nice to see him take to a domain''s powers so swiftly." Another domain, one with a dark and unsettling voice, replied. I knew which domain was talking, the domain of evil.


    "You would like that he takes to the eldritch domain so readily!" Snapped the domain of goodness. I chuckled at its short temper.


    "Well, I also like the eldritch domain..." Muttered another, softer voice. The kindly voice belonged to the subdomain of fungi. As if to back this remark another domain interjected and shared its insights.


    "Well, sweetie... You would like it, since both the great old ones and the outer gods were fond of fungi and the worlds they controlled are still filled with the stuff." The domain, the domain of law, pointed out. The subdomain of fungi sighed in annoyance at this contextualization of its fondness for the eldritch domain.


    This interaction was amusing to me, but it was ultimately a distraction from the matter at hand. So I decided to interrupt it.


    "Listen, as amusing as this is to overhear, I came here to do something that would likely satisfy those of you with complaints. I came here for ideas. I want to do something to Ygaynth that would inflict some pain on it. I am thinking that this is the perfect time to design a new power." I told the domains and subdomains that lived in my mind.


    "Oh? Care to share what precisely you would like to do?" Asked the domain of law, now intrigued by this. If I could look at the domain, I would have. It was interesting to me that it was the first to speak up. I replied to the domain with a smile on my face.


    "Well, I''d like to create a power that forces a creature to obey me without snatching up its freewill. Ideally, one that causes those who choose to disobey me to experience considerable, persistent pain." I told the domain. This intrigued a number of the other domains and even a few subdomains who "closed in" in so far as they could, given the metaphysical space we were located in.


    "That sounds pretty... evil." Muttered the domain of evil, intrigued by my statement. It sounded excited.


    "I like powers that involve me." Whispered the subdomain of pain. It was pleasantly surprised by my declaration and closed in on me. I wasn''t a fan of the relative, metaphysical proximity of the strange subdomain. That said, I was still grateful for the subdomain''s assistance, so I didn''t tell the eerie subdomain to back off.


    "This power creates false pain? In that case I am involved. And I must say... This is an uncharacteristically nasty thing you want to create, Althos. I am impressed." Muttered a voice I hadn''t heard in a while, the voice of the trickery domain. I sighed at the domain.


    "I never said it was false..." I uttered, annoyed that the trickery domain insisted on inserting itself into this conversation.


    "This power would directly assault the senses of its victims. That means it involves me." The domain told me, rebutting my complaints in a way I couldn''t really refute. I chuckled, semi-sarcastically, and accepted the domain''s self-made invitation.


    "So, this is a power I can create?" I asked the assembled domains and subdomains, after a few moments of silence. They spent a minute, or at least what felt like a minute, discussing this amongst themselves, and then "turned" back to me.


    "Yes you can. Archfey had access to a power like this that their kind once called a ''Geas''. Their ancient version of what you would be making a godly power was a handy ability that they routinely inflicted on mortals which punished mortals who dared to try and disobey an archfey''s commands." The subdomain of pain, taking a leadership role at the moment, told me quite confidently.


    I smiled, pleasantly surprised at this news and then closed my eyes. Though the conversation felt like it had taken longer, only a few seconds had passed in the real world. As I closed my eyes, I requested that the system create the sort of power outlined by the domains and the subdomains. A few moments passed before I received a delightful notification.


    [Alert: You can now use a new, synergistic power entitled ''Geas''.


    Geas: This is an active power that takes from a number of domains and subdomains. With it, you can give commands to mortals and punish them if they refuse to obey you. If a mortal refuses to obey your commands they will experience significant pain for as long as they refuse to obey you.


    You can use this power five times per day. When you become an archfey you will be able to use this power freely.]


    Reading that notification brought an arrogant smirk to my face. And it infused me with arrogance as I opened my eyes and laid them upon the black dragon I had made into my servant.


    ________________________________________________


    "Ygaynth... Listen to me." I commanded, infusing my voice with pride. The dragon''s gaze had never left my form. It was silent as it waited for me to speak more.


    "You are to travel from community to community, and in each community, you visit you shall offer yourself as a punching bag for the people of the community to pummel, and you shall not fight back at all. You shall spend an entire day in each community before you leave." I explained, launching into an explanation of how I intended to punish the dragon.


    "If you willingly deviate from this, in anyway, unless I call you to my side, you shall be wracked by considerable pain and your dreams will be laborious nightmares that shall not grant you a good night''s rest." I told the massive beast, arrogance audible in my voice.


    I intended for the dragon''s dreams to be the sole solace the cataclysmic monster received, provided it obeyed my commands. I didn''t want Ygaynth to die, even though in the off chance that that happened it would be little more than a mild inconvenience and not a true failure or setback.


    "If you obey me, your dreams will be restorative and enjoyable reprieves from the sorrow and pain of your waking hours. You are to offer your body as a sacrifice to atone for your sins, for a period of time that only I know. Until the day that I decide you have suffered enough, you are to go out into the world and atone for your past actions." I told the dragon. I activated my power as I did so, transforming the words into a binding command.


    Before my very eyes, a soft golden glow encircled the dragon''s head, further illuminating it since the beast was already inside the silvery aura of my "Unfettered divinity" power. I watched as the glow began to intensify and then seeped into the dragon''s head, vanishing from view as it did so.


    I watched as the dragon''s eyes began to glow a soft, fel, shade of green. I wondered for a second what was the cause of that ocular change before I realized that the beast had received a notification. The dragon was silent, as it often was, for a few moments before speaking once more.


    "Master, thank you for your kindness and your mercy. I intend to go out and receive the punishment you have deemed I deserve." The dragon informed me, the fact that it could speak revealing that the beast was being sincere. I smiled, and gestured for the dragon to leave, while I mentally aimed at it and restored its ability to fly.


    I effortlessly released the dragon from the prison I had constructed for it. And then the dragon opened its wings and I got to watch the beast flap its mighty appendages so that it could lift itself off the ground.


    I felt a powerful gust of wind explode from the beast as the dragon hurled itself off of the floor beneath us with the mighty and rapid beatings of its wing. A moment later the serpentine monster was hovering in the air, and orienting itself in the right direction it needed to travel in so that it could reach the encampment of reptilefolks who once served it.


    As the dragon did this, I composed a notification alerting the people of the world beneath Puerto Rico that the dragon was now my servant and worshiper. I informed them that the dragon was atoning for its sins, and would be visiting communities so that it might be an object that descendants of its victims could slake their rage on.


    I finished composing the notification right as the dragon began to fly in the direction of the encampment. I grinned as I watched the creature speed off towards the very beings who once served it. Those same beings were the creatures I had once sworn would never have to fear the dragon again.


    Today I kept a promise I made to them. And that made me smile.


    I wordlessly sent out the notification I had composed in my head. I aimed it at every creature dwelling in the countless caverns and tunnels that were situated underneath Puerto Rico''s surface. I wanted everyone to know that I had made the dragon my servant.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Humbled Dragon


    The ferocious dragon named Ygaynth has long been feared and revered as a tyrannical force of nature by creatures throughout the world that exists underneath Puerto Rico. Earlier today that dragon encountered Althos and as a natural consequence of that had a ''Come-To-Althos'' moment.


    The dragon has been instructed by Althos to atone for its sins by visiting the communities in which it was feared and offering itself to the communities as a punching bag. The dragon will not harm those who come to it intending to do it harm, instead, it will meekly sit there and accept their judgment.


    Althos understands that this is hard to believe. Ygaynth was a mighty, cruel, and awe-inspiring symbol of terror once and now it is not. Instead, the dragon has become a servant of the god whose mere presence irrevocably altered its state of mind. So as a means to encourage people to muster the courage needed to give Ygaynth a good beating, Althos is ready to bless the first people who descend on the dragon, weapons in hand, and anger in their hearts.


    Be brave and the dark god of freedom and the earth itself will bless you. This is but one of the miracles he will show the world.]


    ________________________________________________


    [Fungi subdomain details:


    The subdomain of fungi governs all fungal life in the multiverse. It is a strangely powerful and eerily commonplace subdomain that was ignored by all but the strangest and least humanoid-like gods or goddesses in the past despite its friendly demeanor. It is obsessed with ''making friends'' and has a particularly skewed perception of friendship.


    The subdomain of fungi offers power over mold, spores, yeast, and other things associated with fungi, including, rather obviously, fungi itself. This subdomain offers power over and eventually total control over all manner of fungal life.


    The fungi subdomain is a bizarre subdomain and the lifeforms it governs are breathtakingly diverse. Fungi can survive underwater, deep underground, and in an array of other environments. Though lesser fungi are incredibly simple lifeforms, greater fungi, such as Mi-gos can be astoundingly intelligent.


    This subdomain has an interest in assimilation, and one of the things that mark it as bizarre is that to gain increased power over it you must infect living beings, fungal and non-fungal alike, with one of the powers of the subdomain: the parasitic spores you can now wield. Those infected by the spores become worshipers of yours who worship you as a god of fungi.


    Quests to gain further tiers of influence over this subdomain will involve the building of a fungoid empire. This empire could be a subtle, unnoticed one, or it could be one made up of fungoid beings who worship you as their god-fungus.


    Fungi subdomain passive powers:


    Fungal knowledge: You possess knowledge concerning various types of fungi, yeast, molds, spores, and other things related to fungi. This includes evolved fungi, spores, and other things that are beyond your ability to manipulate, just yet.


    Spore production: This power allows you to freely create spores. Spores are units of reproduction in fungi and other plants. The spores you create need not be used to create new fungi or other spore-borne lifeforms and can instead be used in a range of ways.


    Spores you create are created within yourself. You can unleash them in a number of ways, limited mostly by your creativity. You can infect other living creatures with the spores within you via a kiss, sexual activity, or through the usage of new potential limbs such as a proboscis. You can also now incorporate fungal mutations into the array of mutations currently at your disposal.


    Spore mastery: You gain the power to detect and control spores. This power allows you to manipulate spores however you wish and can be used synergistically with the other subdomains and domains under your influence.


    For example, you can poison creatures using your spores or you can transform them into restorative substances that help people. That''s not all you can do either: you can make spores addictive drugs that further corrupt the soul each time a mortal comes into contact with them, a simple consumable that wraps the minds of those who eat them into a dreamscape totally under your control, or you can transform them into insidious, parasitic spores that destroy an individual''s free will.


    Parasitic spores: The defining power of the lowest tier of influence over the fungi subdomain is this power right here. This power allows you to create parasitic spores within yourself that you can use to infect and dominate all manner of creatures, living, dead, or undead alike. Infected creatures are drawn into an elaborate, fungal supermind that unifies all victims of the parasitic spores.


    Creatures infected by your spores lose their free will and become permanently, hopelessly enthralled. Their minds are tied to those of other victims of the spores, your mind, and they also gain an eerie awareness of the subdomain of fungi, viewing it as the second most important thing in their lives. Unsurprisingly, the subdomain itself will forever be seen as less important than you.


    If left uncommanded than creatures infected by parasitic spores will seek to infect others with the spores as well. They will attempt to do this covertly if they can, including through sexual activity, but if not they will eventually resort to force. If there are no nearby creatures to infect with the spores than those infected by them will resume what passed as ''normal'' behavior for the infected individual prior to infection, all while muttering constant praises to you.


    You can also kick out creatures who are part of the fungal supermind. The process of being kicked out of the supermind rends the minds of those who endure it, and often drives them insane. Their form of madness is characterized by a desperate yearning to once more be tied to their god and the supermind.


    This is one of your few lower-tier, transformative powers that can affect extraplanar beings. That means that even demons, devils, and other sorts of extradimensional beings can be turned into parasite-infested servants and worshipers of yours.


    Parasitic fungi are normally relatively passive and subtle in how they affect the appearance of a creature but if you wish you could turn creatures infected by your parasitic fungi to transform into fungal masses or fungal monstrosities that do not even remotely resemble their uninfected counterparts.


    Fungal reanimation: Creatures infected by your parasitic fungi that are killed or die reanimate after they perish. These reanimations are actually soulless husks that are now even further devoted to you and devote their every waking moment to converting all other creatures to your worship.


    If a living creature that is infected with your spores were forcibly given treatment that killed the infection that tied them to you then they''d be able to return their old lives, though they''d always remember the powerful sensation of having a mental link to a god. Such a sensation would fill them with a longing to once again be tied to you.


    That is not the case for a creature that has died and is being reanimated by the spores after it has died once. Such a being would immediately perish if it were forcibly given treatment for parasites or fungus.


    Fungal growth: You can effortlessly speed, slow, or even reverse fungal growth and maturation.


    Lesser fungal manipulation: You can manipulate lesser fungal entities, including fungal folks and other, weaker fungi. Most unmoving fungi are lesser fungi. You can awaken such entities, and can also forcibly evolve them into the next tier of fungal lifeforms.


    Hive-mind mastery: Your powers over swarms, minds, eusocial creatures, and now fungi have granted you this power. You can now create and modify hive-minds however you wish to do so and can enter a hive-mind without subsuming the individual wills of the creatures inside of it.


    Fungal aura: At will you can generate an aura that perpetuates releases parasitic spores into the air around you.


    Fungal subdomain active power:


    Fungal transformation: You can target a non-fungal being and transform them into a fungal creature. Doing so makes them fall utterly under your influence, and gives them an aura of fungal abilities including a breath weapon that fires out parasitic spores. You can do this once a day.


    Fungal subdomain blessing or curse details:


    Blessing a creature with the fungal subdomain transforms them into fungal champions who are well received by fungi everywhere. Cursing a creature with this subdomain marks them as foes of fungi who fungi will do anything possible to stymie.]

 121 Destroying The Symbols Of The Pas

    As I actually sat down and read through the notification I received for the fungi subdomain I realized something important. With the power given to me by the fungi subdomain, I had received a potent weapon in the fight against slavery that doubled as a an appropriate method of punishing slaveowners.


    I was also keenly aware of the darkness of punishing someone with this power, but at the moment it was hard for me to care about that. Dark crimes would naturally merit dark punishments. If someone chose not to care about how their actions stole someone else''s freedom, one could say that I shouldn''t care about how my actions stole their freedom. And there was no guarantee I''d use this against them anyway.


    The "Parasitic spores" power opened up a whole new world to me, and it was also one of the few powers I possessed that could affect virtually any target. There was something incredible about that to me since plenty of my powers were currently restricted to working only on mortals.


    The more I thought about it, the more incredible that power seemed. All it took for me to win a battle against a creature vulnerable to this power was for me to get close and activate my aura. I didn''t doubt that powerful enough creatures could resist the spores for a few moments, but with my powers, I could stop an enemy in their tracks if I wanted too and then just wait.


    I could also create new limbs for myself and use them to directly infect enemies. I could create the proboscis that some animals used and inject my spores directly into creatures I wanted to infect. This one subdomain gave me a wonderful new list of toys to play with. As much fun as it was to consider how to play with toys I had just been given, I focused on my current situation and wondered what I should do next.


    To best do so, I turned inward. I felt the world around me slow to a crawl as I mentally went to the place where all of the domains and subdomains lived, deep within my mind.


    ________________________________________________


    "There are so many fun routes forward." I told myself, now fully inside my own head.


    The defeat of Ygaynth and the conversion of the gigantic dragon into an Althonian was a significant victory. It might not have been as cinematic as I was expecting to gain the dragon as a follower, but it was every bit as culturally and historically significant as I could have hoped.


    The world beneath Puerto Rico was already reacting to my declaration that the dragon had found religion. I was receiving dozens of prayers a second from creatures both skeptical and in awe of my powers. I wasn''t surprised by the skepticism if I was being honest.


    "Since some creatures still cling to their ideas that my powers aren''t as powerful as I say they are, and even appear to doubt the system, maybe it''s time for a more dramatic demonstration..." I muttered, an arrogant smirk on my face as I did so.


    Of the domains that had offered me quests to acquire influence over them, there were still a few I had yet to complete. One of the most interesting ones was the domain of destruction. All I had to do was destroy an object or building that was over 5,000 years old. And one such building immediately came to mind. A certain dark-elven mansion.


    The mansion in question was an object dating back to the mythic age. It had once been the seat of power of the clergy of an ancient demon-lord and now served as the hub of a bureaucratic network that helped the city of Aronms function. The mansion on my mind was the Morothonian mansion.


    When I had first learned of the quest I needed to complete to acquire the first tier of influence over the destruction domain, my mind had immediately turned to the mansion. It was easily the most recognizable building that fit the criteria that I had come across to date.


    The only thing that had kept me from destroying it then and there had been the busyness of the next day. Thankfully I now had some free time with which I could focus on gaining new powers and followers. And I intended to do precisely that.


    I refocused my attention to the world outside of my mind and swiftly teleported myself to the city of Aronms. I chuckled as the mansion, an immediately recognizable and imposing landmark, came into view.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself floating in the air above the city of Aronms. I considered making myself invisible, but then quickly realized that I didn''t really care if people saw me. I didn''t doubt that in a matter of minutes people would recognize my floating form as that of their god.


    Off in the distance, I could see the dark mansion of the demon lord whose words had been enough to bring people to the side of evil. There was something admirable about being that persuasive even though his mansion itself was a bit of an eyesore. Thankfully I intended to fix that, today.


    I studied the imposing building for a few moments. My sensory powers were strong enough that even in mid-air and over an entire kilometer away from the gigantic building I was keenly aware that it was inhabited. More importantly, I knew how many people inhabited the building. And I chuckled.


    "I know the building is always inhabited. It''s still annoying though." I complained, speaking aloud even though no one was close enough to me to hear me. That said, this did present me with a good opportunity.


    The purpose of the Mansion was to serve as the hub for all bureaucracy in Aronms. I didn''t doubt that within its depths important documents were safely stored away. The part of me that was influenced by the domains I held some power over recognized the importance of those documents as historical records and as critical legal documents. I didn''t want to destroy them.


    "How could I most swiftly see to it that the documents within the building are safely removed from it?" I asked myself, eager to get this boring part of the task ahead of me out of the way.


    I wasn''t oblivious to the potential this moment had for me to make use of one of the newest subdomains to fall under my limited control. This definitely felt like a moment in which an army of people controlled by spores would shine: doing simple, menial labor. That said, there were permanent consequences to me using my newfound powers on mortals and I didn''t intend to do that to them for so simple a reason.


    I was also cognizant of the reality that a horde of undead, led by a single, educated necromancer would shine here. And though this solution felt rather tempting as well, I wasn''t sure I wanted a horde of undead just inside of the Mansion, at the command of a necromancer who knew this place well enough to order them to successfully clean it out.


    I spent a few minutes ideally hanging out in midair before coming up with a solution I liked. It was also, unsurprisingly, one that involved an ability I was growing increasingly fond of: my power to send alerts and notifications to non-higher-beings.


    I spent a few moments thinking about the sort of message I wanted to compose. It didn''t take me long to come up with one that struck the right tone. Once I had the contents of the message just right, I targeted all of the people in the mansion and sent the message with a flex of a mental muscle.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Letting The Past Die


    Althos has come to the Morothonian Mansion. He intends to destroy it, but he isn''t seeking to kill any dark elves or to destroy anything of value.


    The Morothonian Mansion is a symbol of a bygone age, an ugly monument to the distant past. Althos desires to destroy it, and in doing so to smash any lingering fantasies about that period in history that people may cling too instead of turning to him.


    It is not Althos'' desire to see any dark-elven lives ended, or for anything that has actual value to be lost as he destroys the city''s biggest eyesore. He will give the people who work within the Mansion an hour and a half to empty it of valuables, legal documents, and historical artifacts.


    At the end of the hour and a half, the mansion will be destroyed. Do not be within it.]


    ________________________________________________


    The next hour and a half passed by in a blur. Moments after I transmitted the message the first dark elves who had been within the Mansion dashed out of it, documents in hand and a look of fear on their faces. They placed the documents not far from the mansion, in some cases even placing them on the floor.


    The dark elves had wisely chosen to believe me. They had immediately moved to act when they received the eerie message I sent them, warning them of the Mansion''s destruction. Their speedy decision-making had no doubt saved them valuable time and enabled them to be as successful as they''d end up being with regards to saving the assorted documents and other items within the Mansion.


    The next ninety minutes were filled with scenes like this. Dark elves worked in unison to empty the Mansion of valuables, opting to cooperate out of an understanding that the documents in the Mansion were worth saving. It was unusual behavior, but I didn''t hate it so I silently watched it happen.


    In the end, the dark elves stopped entering the mansion just under seventy minutes after I sent them the message. They all waited around the building though, evidently curious to see if I would destroy it, and if I did, how I intended to do so.


    During the time that the dark elves were hurriedly trying to empty the building of valuables, I had given this some thought myself. Ultimately I had come up with a solution I liked. It was one that involved a power I had never used before. When I came up with the idea to use that particular power I immediately knew it was the right way to do what I sought to do.


    When the ninetieth minute passed, I immediately focused my vision on the building. I quietly activated a potent destructive power I possessed and chuckled as my vision took on a bird''s eye view. It only took me a moment to center that bird''s eye view on the Morothonian Mansion.


    When my top-down perspective was centered on the building I was able to activate the chosen power in full. And in doing so something never been seen happened within the dark cavern that housed the city of Aronms: luminous, white light appeared within it, and that light was centered on Morthos'' most holy Torunian temple.


    The potent power I had activated was the mighty destructive ability known as "Disintegrating radiance". This incredible power was the first offensive ability I had been granted due to my influence over the light domain. And right as it began in full my vision went from being top-down, to my normal, impeccable vision.


    ________________________________________________


    I wasn''t near the Mansion when my attack struck it. I was actually quite far away, over an entire kilometer away in fact. That didn''t change the fact that I could see the destruction of the imposing building.


    Due to its imposing size and centralized nature, everyone could see the Mansion from virtually any point in the city. Thousands of dark elves were able to see a thick pillar of radiant light that appeared out of nowhere and illuminated the Mansion itself.


    For the first time in its history, the Mansion was bathed in light. Anyone with sight would have been able to study the fine craftsmanship that went into making the ugly building. For a few moments, they would have been able to see every edge, every sharp corner, of the building''s bizarre and unholy architecture.


    That only lasted a few moments though. After around five seconds, the light intensified so much so that it became blinding. As it did that, it also heated up and began to melt the building it was called upon to destroy.


    The people of Aronms who had been gazing at the illuminated building quickly turned away as the light began to glow brighter and brighter. I didn''t. I was immune to the light''s radiance and thus could safely watch it begin to destroy the building.


    The building''s destruction started off slow, but somewhat sped up after the first bits of it began to melt away. For nearly a minute, entire floors of the manor melted and vanished before my very eyes, reduced to mere particles. In a matter of moments, the entire top half of the manor was completely gone. And that brought a wide grin to my face. My smile faded a few moments later though.


    The destruction of the building slowed to a near crawl after my light had consumed its top half. What was left of the building began to leak energy dark enough that some of the light I had created was consumed by it. The building also began to radiate a dark aura, one that pushed back against my all-consuming light.


    I huffed in annoyance and quickly came up with a hypothesis. It wasn''t hard to piece together what was going on.


    ________________________________________________


    "So I have a theory, and I suspect you''ll be able to confirm whether it is right or not." I mentally muttered, turning inward faster than ever and approaching the domains and subdomains that dwelled within me. They all closed in and waited for me to talk.


    "The dark energy that the manor is radiating is demonic energy, isn''t it? I''ve never used that energy myself, but Morthos was a demon lord and this place was his most holy site in this world." I told the domains, confiding in them my suspicions. The domain of evil immediately began to chuckle.


    "You are correct. What you see before you, pushing back against your light, is indeed demonic energy." The domain told me, speaking arrogantly about the matter. I chuckled, a bit surprised by this development but at least confident that I was able to identify it. And that led me to my next statement.


    "So if it''s demonic energy then I can push back against it right? Because I can control all sorts of energies, including holy energy. If I infuse the light illuminating the manor with holy energy that should allow me to finish this, shouldn''t it?" I asked, fully intending to destroy the manor here and now. And this remark made another laugh. The voice of the subdomain of healing. It began to laugh wildly, before regaining its composure and speaking.


    "Sorry, I apologize. That was just such a great response, so quickly that I lost it for a moment. Yes, if you infuse the light with holy energy that will give it the push it needs to complete the destruction of the manor. Holy energy and demonic energy are opposed forces, and you possess more holy energy than the building possesses demonic energy." The subdomain revealed, speaking confidently.


    This brought a smile to my face, and I activated another of my rarely used powers: the ability to create and control holy energy.


    ________________________________________________


    The light that I was controlling took on a less white and more of a golden hue, and proceeded to be bolstered by my powers. My decision to infuse the light with holy energy took effect immediately and gave the light more weight and more power, and it proceeded to immediately vaporize several more floors of the manor, floors that had been stubbornly clinging to existence thanks to the demonic energy that infused them.


    The darkness the building was radiating didn''t cease, but it also didn''t grow. The building stubbornly clung to existence, trying to resist the advance of the holy light I intended to destroy it with. It didn''t succeed, and even though the lower buildings seemed to be better protected by the dark powers of the lingering demonic presence, it wasn''t enough to stop the inevitable advance of holy light.


    It took perhaps ten minutes, but by the time those ten minutes had passed the last bits of the building were wiped from existence. Over the course of ten minutes, I had destroyed what was both a symbol to an ancient religion that worshiped an insidious demon-lord and its greatest global holy site. And by the time another five minutes had passed, the light I used to destroy said symbol and site was gone, and darkness reinvaded the cavernous city.


    The area where the manor was once located was now just an empty depression like it had been at some point in the ancient past. I chuckled as I considered what might happen to it now since another god lived in the city. A part of me was tempted to order some dark elves to build a grand temple to me and place it in the same spot the manor had once occupied. But I knew that I had all the time in the world to do that. And for now, I had other things to focus on.


    When the last of the light faded and the darkness native to the gigantic cavern had retaken the city I received a special notification. Its contents were surprising enough to bring a smile to my face.


    ________________________________________________


    [Special alert:


    A naturally occurring, extradimensional portal to the Heart of Darkness has been detected deep in the earth beneath where the Mansion had once been located. This portal radiated and still radiates demonic energy, but your light, combined with your holy energy was enough to overcome the energy it radiated to the extent that you could destroy the manor.


    Naturally occurring extradimensional portals are quite rare. Without investigating the portal it''s impossible to know what layer of the Heart of Darkness it leads too, but if I had to guess... I''d say there''s a really good possibility it leads to the layer once ruled over by Morthos.


    Morthos'' layer was known as the "Spoken Scourge" and in the ancient past, it was a place of incredible, patient, and nonviolent evil. Thoughtful demonic scholars and wicked philosophers obsessed with the evils that didn''t require a blade or bloodlust lived there in the tens of thousands and ruminated on the nature of deliberate, seemingly pacifistic evil.


    That said, the Heart of Darkness as a dimension was left radically changed by the deaths of the demon lords. There is no telling what sort of chaotic nightmare you''ll find if you decide to cross through that portal and enter another dimension for the first time in your life.


    Destruction domain details:


    The domain of destruction is a greater domain that governs, rather unsurprisingly, any and all destruction, negation, the void, and concepts like nothingness. It is a domain that seeks to decimate, erase, annihilate, and undo all of existence.


    The destruction domain offers a wide assortment of powers, including over behaviors, thoughts, and grants you new abilities. In the past this domain rewarded gods and higher beings who gave into urges to destroy things. It seeks to unmake that which has been made and is very loosely aligned with domains like chaos and evil.


    To gain power over the domain of destruction build cults that celebrate destruction and use your powers to unmake things, concepts, lives, and even entire civilizations.


    Destruction domain passive powers:


    Annihilation aura: You can radiate an aura that destroys artificial objects around you. You can choose to exempt objects from this effect, and it doesn''t destroy that which you are holding or have on your person. With this aura, an enemy that chooses to attack you might well have to do so unarmed and unarmored.


    Anti-magic: You can nullify magic from the basic schools of magic at will. This includes undoing magical healing, ending magical effects on targets, canceling out spells as they are being cast, and immediately ending the more dramatic effects of magic like necromancy or ecomancy.


    At the upper end of the capabilities of this power is the fact that you can deanimate reanimated corpses at will. That includes liches, vampires, and other potent undead that are reanimated corpses.


    Broken: At will you can break an assortment of created objects by touching them. This includes things like potions, artwork, simple buildings, technology, and more. Objects can resist this power, but simple objects, including lesser golems, are automatically destroyed if you activate this power and choose to use it on them. Broken objects fall to pieces.


    Disintegration: This power wipes away a targeted object''s cohesion and causes it to fall apart. This can be used with a touch, with a glare, or even with a breath. It cannot be used on a living target, at this level of influence over the destruction domain anyway, but it can destroy their clothing and armor.


    Negation: This is a growing power that increases in might as you gain further influence over this domain. With this power, you gain the ability to negate things, including concepts.


    For now, you can negate simple things, like damage. In time you''ll be able to negate more abstract concepts and can use this power to alter the world, universe, and multiverse in a variety of ways.


    Nothingness manipulation/Null energy manipulation: You can manipulate nothingness itself.


    With this power you can remove things from existence by wiping them away with null-energy, a form of energy that exists and was used by destructive gods to wipe away people, things, and even concepts. This destructive power allows you to assail reality in a way only a god of destruction could.


    This power grants you new attacks and if you wish allows you to make attacks of yours potentially automatically fatal. With it, you can also create weapons out of nothingness that doom those they strike and automatically cut through things like armor. You can also create nearly impenetrable armor that absorbs and nullifies countless blows.


    Permanency: That which you destroy is utterly destroyed. If you will it, an object destroyed by you cannot be remade or reforged. If a creature has a way of coming back from the dead this power can also prevent that unless you allow them to come back, and it automatically prevents creatures you killed from coming back unless you allow it.


    Shatter: You can break apart simple objects at will, even from a distance. This power makes objects break apart violently into many, small pieces. Even large objects like statues or buildings can be targeted by this power. When used at range you fire an invisible beam of focused energy that shatters whatever it collides with, unless the targeted object successfully resists the power. This power cannot yet be used on living creatures.


    Destruction domain active power:


    Sphere of annihilation: You can create an orb and control an orb which destroys anything and anyone it touches, other than you. You can use this power once per day, and the sphere exists for up to a minute.


    Destruction domain blessing and curse details:


    Blessing someone with this domain makes them more prone to destructive temper tantrums and also increases their effectiveness at destroying things. Cursing someone with this domain also makes them more prone to destructive temper tantrums but also reduces their ability to destroy things and do harm to other people.]

 122 Visiting The City Of The Dead

    I stayed in the air above the city of Aronms for a few more moments. I surveilled the city, quietly composed another mass-alert, and then transmitted it. All it was, was an explanation for why I had done what I did to the manor. As soon as I transmitted it to the inhabitants of Aronms I felt that my business here was complete.


    I didn''t hesitate to teleport out of the city. I went from one darkened place to another. The instant I was done with my self-assigned task in Aronms, I teleported from the dark-elven city to the unholy undead city my reanimated horde had built which was now located within my floating island.


    I went from floating freely in the air to standing in the heart of the undead metropolis my undead worshipers had created deep underground, only for me to move to my floating island sanctuary. I teleported to the heart of the metropolis, and quickly found myself surrounded by the same horde that had attacked and successfully defeated the reptilefolk encampment, a week ago.


    ________________________________________________


    The settlement I was now within was populated entirely by Althonians. And more than that it was made up of a distinct sect of Althonians: undead beings who worshiped me as a god of death, and the undead.


    I was standing in the middle of a bizarre, macabre marketplace. All around me milled thousands of undead creatures, from simple and uncommanded zombies who idly roamed the marketplace, to fully sapient vampires who in life had been members of dozens of species but were now united in undeath and who carried themselves with pride and purpose.


    The marketplace was pitch-black but that didn''t bother me or my undead servants. All of us could see in the dark, unaided by any additional magic. I could see the assorted sorts of intelligent undead I controlled milling about in a fascinating imitation of life.


    Skeletons, ghouls, vampires, and other corporeal undead performed the various roles needed for a marketplace to function successfully. I could see skeletons in one part of the marketplace bartering for spare bones, and skeletons in another selling spare limbs.


    The shopkeepers here were curious to me. I listened to the thousands of deals being struck in the marketplace and noticed that the majority of the deals involved a special kind of currency. I had half-expected the undead to create a sort of pseudo-currency, but they hadn''t. This boney marketplace, merely one of several in the city, seemed to accept a peculiar currency: the promise of favors to be repaid later.


    Incorporeal undead floated in the open air above us. They moaned, their loud wails providing a creepy, ambient auditory backdrop as other, more physically present undead pursued a number of businesses.


    The marketplace had a distinct, deathly, odor to it. It smelled of death, of rotting corpses, and of bones buried shallowly in the dirt. The smell would undoubtedly have grossed out a mortal, or even a more kindly god than I. Even I didn''t revel it, but it didn''t bother me either.


    No undead noticed me, because I didn''t feel like being noticed. My powers over them, just like all of my other powers, had grown recently and I could now control their perceptions. If I had wanted too, I could blind them to me or even to each other. Even when I touched an undead creature that alone didn''t cause it to notice me.


    I proceeded to walk forward, silently observing the ghoulish undead, many of whom were themselves actual ghouls. As I studied them I took in the haunting atmosphere of the strange city and allowed my mind to wander a bit.


    ________________________________________________


    The atmosphere of the city of death and undeath was an unsettling and gory one. As I explored the city''s central marketplace and took in the sights and sounds of the city, a part of me wondered about the nature of undeath. It was a fascinating state of existence, and I wanted to discover more about it.


    It was precisely when I was mulling over what little I knew about undeath that a voice I had never heard before whispered into my mind.


    "You could use me to find out you know. Use my powers I mean. It''s been so long since you indulged in me, even though I was and am your personal vice." The voice whispered.


    This voice was strange, androgynous, and spoke breathily. There was a luxuriousness and laziness to it that I hadn''t expected. There was also a bit of feigned pain in its whispers as if the thing was putting on a show and didn''t mind that I knew. The voice belonged to the vice of lust. I was silent for a moment, as I hadn''t even known that the personal vices and virtues themselves were also conscious enough to have voices. But after a moment of silent contemplation, I replied to it.


    "What do you mean I could ''use you''?" I asked the voice, curious to hear lust expand on its thoughts.


    "Althos... I am hurt!" The voice replied, feigning distress once more.


    "Isn''t what I mean obvious? I mean that the assortment of powers and upgrades you''ve idly earned pertaining to me allows you to learn all about a creature''s desires. Even an undead being cannot hide its desires from you. Just use me." The voice whispered, asking me to make use of the strange powers I possessed over desires, in the form of my influence over the corruption subdomain.


    The corruption subdomain had so far provided me with powers I was often on the fence about using. I quickly rechecked the subdomain''s listed powers and mentally poured over the upgrades to the corruption subdomain that I had received for perhaps the second time in my life.


    For the sake of simplicity, I mentally filtered the list that I perused and was able to slim it down so that it was only the powers I had gotten as a result of the upgrades I had earned to date and the synergistic powers I had access too.


    Some of the powers now classified as within the subdomain of corruption were powers that had belonged to the subdomain of sexuality and gender but were now upgraded and stronger. If I had to share my thoughts on why I suspected they were situated here now because lust refers not just to desires for sexual activity but intense desires for a range of things.


    ________________________________________________


    [Corruption subdomain passive powers:


    Desire absorption: This vampiric power allows you to absorb the desire someone feels. With it you can feed on desire, which is little more than a neutral word for lust. The desire you absorb is nullified and completely disappears.


    Desire amplification or dampening: This power allows you to heighten or lessen the desire someone feels. This desire need not be directed at another person, it could instead be a desire for an object or desire for a sensation.


    Desire aura: You can project an aura that amplifies the level of desire anyone caught in it feels. This increase can be to the point that it drives mortals temporarily insane.


    Desire detection: You can detect the desires of any creature. At will, you can also release a wave of corrupt energy that copies the desires of any it hits and relays those desires back to you. If applicable this power also informs you of how you fit into their desires.


    Desire release: You can overwhelm a mortal, extraplanar, abomination, or undead, mind with desire and cause them to pursue their desires to almost any end. So long as what someone wants isn''t actively outlawed in the land they live in they will pursue it to the greatest of their abilities.


    This power upgrades as you gain greater influence over the subdomain of corruption, and as you gain greater influence over the domains of law and chaos.


    Enhanced pleasure manipulation: This upgraded power allows you to cause abominations, undead and extraplanar beings to experience pleasure. With it, you can make creatures who may not otherwise be able to experience pleasure feel it, you can also manipulate the pleasure they feel.


    Kiss mastery: This power empowers your kiss-based abilities. Among other things, you can now fire kiss-shaped projectiles and strike distant enemies or targets with them. Any effect you can apply to your kiss you can apply to a projected kiss.


    People you kiss or who are struck by one of your kiss-shaped projectiles find their minds opened to your influence. If you kiss someone enough that they begin to worship you then they worship you as a god of lust, sexuality, and dominance who rewards his faithful with perpetual pleasure.


    How much influence you gain over a target depends on a number of factors such as the pleasure they felt from the kiss, their perception of you, and where you kissed them, among other things.


    Speak no evil, think no evil: Only lesser beings need to rely on their bodies to arose and stimulate. You can use words or even thoughts to arouse and titillate lesser beings.


    Corruption subdomain active power:


    Desire illusion: This once a day power allows you to create up to five distinct, personalized illusions whose forms are dependent on the desires of the creatures you target when you activate this power.


    These illusions are your servants and aim to seduce whoever is responsible for their forms. They dissipate a day after they''ve been created, and anything they overhear is automatically transmitted to you. These illusions are real to the people whose desires shaped them and no one else, but the targets of your power can feel them and be touched by them.]


    ________________________________________________


    These new powers were intriguing to me. They were all fairly powerful too, the product of several upgrades and my speedy acquisition of worshipers. I closed my eyes and proceeded to activate one of them: "Desire detection".


    I willed its secondary function to go off and felt the wave of corrupt energy seep out of me. The wave radiated out of me and an instant later I felt an immense wave of potent, palpable desire enter me.


    This desire hit me like a tidal wave and was infinitely darker than tidal wave could ever hope to be. I felt an incredibly misanthropic and vast hatred towards all living entities, with the sole exception of myself radiating out of my servants. My undead servants hated life, and they felt two immense desires.


    The first desire they felt, the one that was the simplest and purest was a desire to kill all life. What they were after was simple: omnicide. The undead sought to kill every single lifeform in existence. The other desire they felt was one that was equally powerful.


    The second desire they felt was a desire to serve me. This desire was equally as powerful as their other desire and held their desire to attempt omnicide in check. Curiously, they also felt that I wasn''t a lifeform, and thus didn''t need to be exempted from their omnicidal desires since to them, I wasn''t alive in the first place.


    This secondary desire also gave them a nonviolent purpose and I was grateful for it. It was perhaps because of that that these hate-filled monsters hadn''t tried to rid the world of life. That said, their collective desire to commit omnicide was immensely powerful. It was so strong that even I couldn''t expose myself to it without some of it seeping into me.


    ________________________________________________


    Each undead member of my horde felt exactly the same towards the living. They felt a simplistic emotion that was fairly easy for me to identify and understand. Violent hatred. There was no nuance, no hope for change, no possibility of the emotion ever changing barring anything less than eventual divine intervention.


    The hatred that every member of my horde felt was a sinister, surprisingly passionate sensation. It infected their hearts and made them sincerely view the living, not as a complex set of enemies of different powers, beliefs, or goals but as something else.


    My undead horde saw the living as a single, monolithic, and innumerable enemy to kill and eventually reanimate. They hoped to assimilated the living, making them undead and thus placing them on "our" side.


    There was something enviable about that view. I suspected it was its simplicity. It was a binary worldview, one that gave the undead a mighty and possibly even inevitable purpose: omnicide.


    What I had learned about their views of me were intriguing. They hadn''t exempted me from the forces of the living, rather than doing that those of them with the intelligence to think deeply about me saw me as one of them.


    Their perceptions of me were skewed and gave me a unique position I had never asked for. As far as I could tell they viewed me as the supreme leader of all undead beings, and that I was myself an undead god.


    The horde didn''t see me as a god of undeath, but a deity who was itself undead. This perception wasn''t reflective of reality, but it did reveal why the undead held me in such high regard.


    As I thought about that and mulled it over, a voice interrupted my introspective monologuing. The voice of the necromancy subdomain.


    "Are you having fun?" It asked, curiously. I chuckled and responded to it in the affirmative. It giggled, the sound oddly innocent given what I knew about the subdomain.


    "That''s good. I''m surprised it took you so long to try and discover more about the undead." It remarked, sounding almost disappointed in me.


    "Well the way undead beings were described to me was... I was given a specific perception of them. And frankly, that perception was largely correct." I told the subdomain.


    "Oh? Tell me more about that perception." The subdomain remarked, curious to hear me expand on my initial perceptions of the undead.


    "I was led to believe that undead were powerful but simple beings. Creatures that hated life and sought to end it. And those things have thus far proven to be true." I told the subdomain.


    "I''ve seen the undead in battle. They are fierce opponents. And that was them as a roving horde, an unorganized and ill-equipped mob. There is a not-so-small part of me that wants to equip and train them. I would love to see my multitudes of servants transformed into a proper fighting force." I told the subdomain, the thought growing more and more intriguing to me the more I considered it.


    After I shared my insights with the subdomain it fell silent, equally interested in the thought of the undead as an organized, well-led, and well-armed force. I was mildly amused by the fact that the subdomain was so easily distracted.


    I would spend the next two hours in the undead metropolis. While I was there I would silently observe the city''s strange inhabitants and watch them go about their business. The undead and their fascinating facsimile of business and life could have entertained me for days. But soon enough I sensed other things that merited my attention and were of interest to me.


    The Ardors were engaging in another sinful celebration. And honestly, I couldn''t blame them. They had much to celebrate. And so did I. The sin of lust audibly cheered as I readied myself to teleport from the strange city of the undead to the sinful, secretive chamber in which the family was preparing another of their dark and twisted revelries.


    I was externally silent as I phased out of my underground city and took myself to the strange chamber in which one of the first families to worship me was gathering its senior leadership. As I teleported from one place to another I smiled. And as I was crossing from one place to another I heard an intriguing suggestion. It came in the form of a bit of unsolicited advice from my personal vice.


    "If you''re gonna go and witness the fun the Ardors are having, why not partake? You know some of the dark elves are beautiful. If they see you there, and you invite yourself to their celebration as the lord of sin, they''d surely invite you to join in the bacchanals. Perhaps you should accept their offer. Rid yourself of your inhibitions as readily as they do theirs." The sin whispered.


    I didn''t pretend to be immune to the suggestion. I did opt not to audibly or even mentally reply though. An instant later I found myself within the chamber that the dark elves had used earlier that day to celebrate their new lifestyle. It assailed my senses, but I welcomed the array of sensations, opting to try and become a "Lord of sin" in body and mind as Lust had suggested I do.

 123 Sin NSFW

    The chamber I had teleported into was a wide one. It was a large, circular space that existed beneath the Ardor family''s property, beside the burial chambers which had once housed the dark elven corpses I had reanimated and transformed into vampires.


    The place smelled of a hedonistic mixture of blood, dried semen, sweat, and other bodily fluids. I could see a number of dark elves in various states of undress and ecstasy.


    Some dark elves, men and women alike, were fully naked and had blissful expressions on their faces as they fucked or were fucked by each other. I saw men inside women, women inside women, and men inside men. Perhaps the most accepting I had ever seen dark elves be, was right now, in the heat of lust. The gender of their sexual partners seemed to be the least important thing in the world to them, at least at this moment.


    The noises that filled the chamber were the sounds of lustful hedonism. I could hear hearts pounding and body parts penetrating various orifices, be they penises, tongues, fingers, or even entire fists.


    I could also hear gasps of delight, and muffled or in many cases not so muffled moans. A series of sounds I really liked was the odd noises muscles made when they contracted during a dark elven orgasm.


    I spent a few minutes silently observing the dark elves. They were so engrossed in their pleasure that they barely remembered people they weren''t fucking, and they definitely didn''t notice me. There was something sinisterly beautiful and remarkably tempting about them, even as they wallowed in sin and rutted like wild animals.


    I noticed a few things while observing the dark elves. The first thing I noticed was the indelicate violence of the men. The male dark elves before me, be they members of the Ardor family or not, were violent in their lust. They forcefully pounded whoever was on the other end of their penises, thrusting hard into the targets of their lust and selfishly fixating on speeding towards a climax. There was no restraint or thought to their actions, but it was fun to watch.


    On the other hand the female dark elves were careful. They were dexterous and acrobatic in their sexual affairs. The women who were on top of women were performing a show that inevitably ended in their partners experiencing several orgasms, not fucking. It gave off a whole other air and was mesmerizing to watch.


    Each person in the chamber was either dazzlingly beautiful or incredibly handsome. They all had muscular and fit bodies, and attractive, well-groomed sexual organs. Those of them that wore clothes, usually the prouder members of the Ardor family, were dressed in dark fabrics that still exposed their genitalia while flaunting their status as powerful nobles backed by a literal god.


    After I observed their senseless and selfish indulgences in sexual sin I noticed that some of the people in the chamber, mostly men but also a few women, were beginning to slow down. Sweat and other bodily fluids covered their exposed skin or stained their fancy outfits and they had unfocused expressions on their faces. They were wearing themselves out. Luckily for them, I was here and I could do something about that. At last, I began to move.


    ________________________________________________


    I took silent steps forward and activated one of my newest abilities. I didn''t directly feel any physical changes from the power I activated, but I knew that it was a dramatic ability that would radically skew how I was perceived. Shortly after activating it I was asked a question by the system.


    [Alert: You have activated your ''Subjective perception'' power. In doing so you are wrapping yourself in a tight blanket of eldritch miasma that causes how you appear in people''s eyes to change from person to person. Would you like to make yourself terrifying, beautiful, or handsome?]


    I read through the alert and silently selected that I would like to make myself handsome. When I selected that I did feel a slight change, but I knew it wasn''t to me. It was to the world around me.


    I quietly activated another of my powers, one I hadn''t used in a while: the "Velvet voice" ability I possessed thanks to my powers over lust. And at last I looked to the dark elves, to my worshipers, and spoke.


    "Dark elves! I am disappointed." I loudly proclaimed, my voice exploding throughout the chamber. It was a sensual explosion, as my voice was low and rugged and I spoke the words in a sexual way, sounding more like a frustrated lover than an annoyed god.


    The explosion of sound washing over the dark elves drew them out of their lusty hazes long enough for them to look and me. As they turned to me and stared in confusion I chuckled and activated my "Religious fervor" ability. I intended for this to be a literal religious experience for them. To take this chance to make them mine in heart, body, and soul.


    "Is this all you can do?" I asked, speaking to the dark elves curiously. I sensed their growing confusion, and chuckled.


    "I am your god. And the one to whom all of this pleasure is supposed to be dedicated. Yet I must confess... I am saddened that for all of the gifts I have given you, this is the quality of the gift you have given me in return." I told the dark elves, revealing my identity casually. Their eyes widened as they heard my revelation. They were about to protest when I began to speak again.


    "Enough. I am mostly teasing you. Mostly. I understand that mortal bodies have limits. Fortunately, as I have opted to come here and be entertained I shall start off by doing this." I told the dark elves, mysteriously.


    As I was speaking I targeted each of the living dark elves. I then proceeded to pour restorative energy into them, specifically energy that restored their stamina. They uniformly sighed in delight as my mystical, curative energy seeped into them and gave them more and more stamina. A few of them, the more exhausted ones, quaked as they felt their exhaustion disappear.


    To them it was probably like receiving the full pleasure and delight of a masterful massage all at once and spread equally across every centimeter of their body. I allowed them to silently enjoy the sensation for a second before I spoke once more.


    "Now then... I am the lord of sin and I have come here to be entertained. I have enjoyed the ways you have treated each other and the pleasure you''ve each selfishly pursued. Entertain me more. Show me more lust." I told the dark elves, grinning at them as I spoke.


    They shivered as they listened to me, my words stirring primal urges in them. I found this amusing and opted to speak more.


    "Wallow before me. Lose yourself before your god. Debase yourself to entertain me." I told the dark elves, allowing the dark pride I felt as a god to seep into my words. And I watched as the intelligence that was clearly visible in each living dark elf''s eyes dimmed. The intelligence was replaced by something else, something older. Something more basic and often more quickly rewarding than intelligence filled their gazes: lust.


    The three dark elves closest to me began to move a second after I spoke. Their eyes were almost entirely empty and they were approaching me. Some other dark elves tried to approach me, but they were immediately set upon by the other dark elves in the chamber. That part of the chamber quickly devolved into an orgiastic display of primal, base lust.


    I chuckled at the dark elves who approached me. Their eyes were largely devoid of the intelligent pride that filled the eyes of most members of their species. I could tell my words deeply affected them. Milene was among them.


    ________________________________________________


    Two of the three dark elves that approached me were members of the Ardor family. Milene and one of her brothers were making their way towards me. As was one of the strangers the family had invited to their bacchanals. Two females, one male.


    As they approached me I made use of one of my new abilities. I cupped one of my hands against my lips, lightly kissed it, and then released the kiss in the form of three dark-colored, lip-shaped projectiles. I aimed each of the projectiles at an approaching dark elf and chuckled as they made no attempt to dodge the strange ability. The ability hit each of them, colliding with their lips and producing noises in the form of loud smacks similar to when lovers passionately kissed.


    When the power connected with them I received a single notification alerting me to the fact that I had opened their minds to my influence. I already had considerable sway over each of them, with my influence over Milene already being at 100%, my influence over her sibling being at 65%, and my influence over the dark elf they had invited being at 55%. That news brought a confident smile to my face. They closed the distance between us while I was reading the notification.


    Milene began to shed her fancy robes as she neared me. By the time she was close enough to me that I could pull her close she was already entirely nude. Her proportions were quite slim, but I didn''t mind this at all.


    Milene had onyx-like skin, and her nipples were as hard as diamonds. As the dark elf neared me I felt my desire growing, as I found my eyes drawn to them, my mouth almost watering as I stared at them. And as I felt my desire grow, I felt something else change within me. I was a bit surprised to feel myself grow erect and for the erection to push uncomfortably against my pants.


    Milene reached me and immediately sank to her knees. There was no hesitation or confusion in her gaze and she greedily reached towards my pants, her fingers scrambling in an effort to undo the buttons that held up my clothes. Even in her current state they posed no challenge to her and she quickly gazed upon my cock.


    She studied it for a moment, and I watched her nostrils flare as she breathed in the scent of my masculine body. In my eyes my cock was a long thing, easily around 28 centimeters in length, but I didn''t know how it looked to her. She began to slowly approach it, her lips lazily parting and her black tongue snaking out of the new opening. As she did so, I looked to the other two dark elves.


    They had given up on approaching me and were vigorously fucking each other. Their moans were thankfully quiet, but the sounds of their bodies colliding with each other were quite loud. I sighed and turned my attention back to Milene just as her tongue reached the tip of my cock for the first time.


    I sighed in delight as my worshiper carefully tasted my second, smaller head. Her face slackened in warm, aroused delight for a moment, before she tasted it again. I was rather unsurprised to find that this mortal, who was already a worshiper of mine, was enjoying sex with me.


    On her second time, the dark elf explored more of my cock, but did so in a rather impish way, by leisurely taking her time and slyly teasing my glans using her tongue as well. I shivered in delight, enjoying the attention, as the dark elf began to pull her tongue back into her mouth.


    As all of this was happening my lazy, lustful fun was interrupted by a notification. It was a useful one, but I wasn''t a fan of the interruption.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Sex as a deity


    As a deity, you possess total control over your body. There are a number of facts you need to know that are directly tied to the fact that you have total control over your body. One of those facts is that involuntary orgasms do not happen to you. You will not be caught off guard by an orgasm or orgasm solely from sex.


    As a god you are capable of experiencing incredible orgasms, if you decide that you want too. That said until the moment you consciously decide to orgasm you will not. You will not even release any pre-ejaculate unless you consciously want too. And it''s not just divine physiology that affects sex with gods either. Their abilities, your abilities, also affect sex.


    You can make someone addicted to sex with you, you can infect people with parasitic spores through sex, and having sex with you causes people to fall under your influence. You also possess control over fertility and thus can experience as many orgasms as you want without ever worrying about accidents. Your succubi and incubi powers are extremely dangerous with regard to sex.


    Your control over the elements grants you powers that can be used sexually in a number of ways. Abilities like control over bodily fluids, an ability you possess, can be used in a range of fun, creative ways. As can your powers over temperature.


    You possess powers over pheromones and even over honey. I''m sure you can imagine fun ways to use those abilities.]


    ________________________________________________


    As I speedily read through the notification I had received, Milene was fast at work. She skillfully used her tongue as adroitly as a human might have used their fingers and explored the rest of my penis. Her tongue was long and feeling it explore my genitals was amazing.


    When I was done reading the notification I gently placed a hand on Milene''s face and pulled her head close to my groin. As I did so the dark elf giggled lightly and the sound of her voice was even more tempting. Her warm breath brushed against my erection and I bit my lip.


    I closed my eyes right as Milene pulled my second head into her mouth, her warm breath and soft lips drawing another sinful sigh from me. She closed her mouth around my cock and I shivered as I felt her mouthy walls close in. Her tongue coiled around my member, and I smiled as I felt the wet walls of her mouth begin to draw me deeper into her mouth and her throat.


    I opened my eyes and looked down at the top of Milene''s head. Her eyes were closed, and she was smiling, at least as much as she was able to anyway. There was a sincerity to her sinful smirk, a genuine joy.


    I felt myself blush slightly as I looked at her, and as I felt her warm breath, tongue, and the interior of her mouth work me over. There was an energy to her and a passion she was exhibiting at this moment that made me want to reward her.


    I studied the bobbing motions of Milene''s head and chuckled. I was gradually growing more and more used to the pleasures she was assailing me with but I recognized her devotion. I chuckled and began to slowly withdraw from her mouth. I sighed in disappointment, a sentiment she echoed when I was finally detached from her. But I wasn''t done.


    I used my powers over the earth to manipulate the position of the dark elf. In a second she went from kneeling in front of me to reclining atop an earthen rack. This was pretty sudden, but I did so that so I could take control of the situation. Milene looked at me in confusion, as I studied her nude body now fully on display in front of me.


    Milene was lazily drooling, her own saliva dripping unrestrainedly down her chin, onto her neck, and even onto the top of her chest. The clear saliva wasn''t just visible on her though. It dripped lazily from me as well, from the part of me that she had seductively worked over earlier. I admired the lithe beauty''s body from a distance before I reached out with a finger and began to lightly touch her body.


    I began to touch Milene by running a single finger down the length of her neck. As I did so I teased her by manipulating electricity and causing a single low-grade spark to fly from my finger onto the outside of her skin, warming and surprising her. She writhed against the sparks, mewling in delight as she was kissed by the energy. It only took me a second to trace her neck with my fingertips, and I quickly found myself touching the skin that covered her clavicle.


    I kept manipulating electricity, generating soft sparks as I ran my fingers down the dark elf''s sweat covered body. The dark elf had already been sweating before I interrupted her family''s fun, but now she was sweating again, due to her temperature rising and the way my powers made her feel.


    The first time I stopped actively tracing my finger down Milene''s body was when I reached her breasts. I admired her onyx complexion for a moment, including her pert, surprisingly pale nipples. They were as erect as I was, and I gently cupped her breast.


    I squeezed, lightly, and watched as the dark elf sighed in pleasure. Her breast was soft and warm, and I enjoyed the sensation of my fingers sinking into it, even though a part of me would have preferred if she had been a bit bustier.


    Milene''s eyes were closed as she relaxed and enjoyed the corruptive pleasure surging through her. I chuckled and began to relax as I took my other hand and began to use it to explore Milene''s legs. She almost purred in ecstasy as I took my time and touched her body.


    We spend the next forty five minutes like this. And in time I''d even kiss her, and manipulate her senses using my powers until I had discovered ways to make her orgasm using just my sensory abilities. It was a delightful way to waste time, and I could see why mortals enjoyed sex and touch as much as they did for the first time in my entire life.


    Aside from just playing with my dark elven worshipers one thing of note would happen during this time. I''d receive an important notification.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: You can now take the quest to acquire the second tier of influence over the subdomain of corruption. Since this is the first time you''d be completing a quest for a subdomain or domain like this, it''s worth noting that upon completing the aforementioned quest you will get to pick a second vice, also known as a deadly sin, to gain control over.


    The subdomains of corruption, purity, and a few other subdomains and domains ask you to make choices when you gain influence over them as to the order of powers they will give you. Each tier of influence gives you greater powers and new sets of powers to play with. With the corruption subdomain you get to pick one of each of the seven deadly sins whenever you increase your influence over the domain until you have influence over all seven.


    In order to acquire the second tier of influence over the sinister corruption subdomain you must start an inter-community conflict between two or more communities that hinges on one of the seven deadly sins. This could be as simple as leading a community to battle another community by making one or more leaders think they had been insulted by another leader, riling up their pride or stoking their wrath, or it could be a more complex affair.


    The resulting conflict doesn''t need to result in deaths, but it must be an open conflict that shows mortals the consequences of sinful behavior.]


    ________________________________________________


    Hours later, when I was atop my island sanctuary once more I reviewed that notification. My initial impression was that this quest would be easy to complete, and I immediately devised a scheme that I felt confident I''d be able to pull off.


    I arrogantly thought all it would take was a simple manipulation of a few dreams. So the next thing I did was begin to mentally explore the world, while I waited for night to fall on Puerto Rico.

 124 Machinations

    The place in the world I felt safest was my strange island sanctuary. While I was here I was in a place where all of the local flora, fauna, and even the gigantic horde of the undead, owed their existence to me. It was a good place for me to be alone with my thoughts.


    A god who was alone with their thoughts was a god in their ideal circumstances. I stood in an empty room in my tower and I allowed my mind to wander. And that was still a productive usage of my time, because my wandering mind was capable of doing most of the things I was physically capable of doing.


    In the safety of my tower, at the heart of my island sanctuary, I let loose my mind. And in doing so I was able to explore the world and more.


    ________________________________________________


    Roughly a day and a half ago at this point I had thrown the world into disarray. I had revealed myself to the world and made demands that were almost as dramatic as the way I proved to the world I had existed.


    I had shown myself to the world by healing it. I had targeted every living creature, and healed them. This act was a simple one for me to do, and the truth was it was the sort of simplistic display of power I had done before.


    The demands I had made following my announcement of my existence were also dramatic. I had demanded an ending of the practice of slavery, and a temporary end to all major conflicts. These two demands had, rather unsurprisingly, met with resistance. I knew this before now, but was only just now truly taking in the scope of how immediately I was changing the world.


    Now that I was alone with my thoughts I was able to focus on the change I sought to bring about throughout the world and how the world had reacted to it. And to my surprise, there were a number of reactions to my actions that I hadn''t anticipated.


    The ability that most immediately shed the most light on the global situation was my domain-sense power. This power of mine allowed me to sense any and all things and events pertaining to the domains I possessed influence over. Among other things I possessed influence over things like rebellions, murder, order, and death, and that allowed me to sense the chaos the world was in.


    The world of today was different from the world of yesterday. In the time since I had announced to the world that I existed entire villages had fallen, new ones had risen up, and conflicts had both begun and come to an end.


    I took a minute or so to familiarize myself with the changing global situation and the collapse of the old world order. I had more miracles to perform and if I wanted them to be performed as smoothly as possible I needed to understand the current shape the world''s powers found themselves in.


    ________________________________________________


    As one part of my mind took a few moments to familiarize me with the current global realities, another part of my mind did something equally important and more immediately beneficial. It scanned the world using my sensory abilities and targeted each undead creature it found.


    I took a few minutes to mentally explore the entire world using my sensory abilities and to track down each undead creature in the world. The undead were the one sort of being I hadn''t healed during my earlier miracle.


    As an entity in command of a horde of the undead, who was also a potent and indiscriminate god of healing that simply wouldn''t do. I was ready to correct my mistake. I was even happy to do it.


    I passively scoured the darkest corners of the world, aided by my potent sensory abilities, even the most remote trenches of the deepest oceans, and secretive caverns deep beneath the surface of the world. I found all sorts of undead horrors. I found zombies, skeletons, liches, vampires, ghosts, and other, stranger things. I targeted them indiscriminately, eager as always to heal.


    Healing things was something that never failed to bring a smile to my face. And it wasn''t just the living I wanted to heal either. I wanted to heal every creature. My desire to heal wasn''t so exclusive as to exclude the creatures who weren''t among the living. And that was reflected in my powers.


    Right as I completed my global search for the undead I received a handy notification. One that really hammered home my healing powers and skills at the most opportune time.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    As a deity of healing, among other things, your decision to target every living creature on the planet was... well frankly it was annoyingly in-character for you. Admittedly though you did it a bit earlier than any of the domains, subdomains, or even I predicted, but it was definitely a thing we should have seen you jumping right into when you gained your ''Stellar awareness'' ability.


    The subdomain of healing and I have spent the time since you did that locked in a furious, private conversation. We were trying to decide how to reward you. And we finally have it. You are gaining immediate access to the second tier of healing subdomain powers, and we are giving you one other special prize.


    Your power to resurrect someone is being enhanced in a way that makes it far more approachable. You can now perform true resurrections up to five times per week.


    I know that that might seem... either a bit too powerful, or not powerful enough given what you did, but I feel like it''d be a good idea to let you know that true resurrections are beyond the capabilities of any being who isn''t a god.


    There are no beings aside from gods with the capabilities to wholly restore a deceased being, who isn''t themselves, to life. Some creatures have or had methods from which they could raise themselves from the dead, or survive death, but no non-deity has ever successfully, wholly resurrected a creature who wasn''t themselves. True resurrections are undeniably the work of the gods.


    This is a serious power you''ve earned. You shouldn''t be worried about using it at the wrong time. And now you don''t have to be. And now what you were probably really waiting for: the new and modified abilities you''ve gained, or had upgraded.


    Healing subdomain passive powers:


    Healing burst: Initially this was an active power with a cooldown. It isn''t anymore. As of the moment you earned the second tier of influence over the healing subdomain you could use this ability freely.


    Healing strikes: You can strike a creature and heal it. If your attacks would heal a creature past their maximum hitpoints you can instead choose to cure negative conditions on them, or you could allow them to temporarily gain hitpoints beyond their maximum, up to a quarter of their max.


    As an example, if you struck a creature whose maximum hitpoints were sixteen and they had all sixteen of their hitpoints when you hit them, you could give them four additional hitpoints. This power also allows you to attack non-lethally all while appearing to attack lethally.


    Magic control: You can target and alter damaging magical-spells in mid-air. If you wish, and you spot projectile-type evocative or necromantic magic you can take control of the magic and make it heal targets instead of hurt them.


    This synergistic power takes from the domains of magic and chaos, and the subdomain of alteration, as well as healing.


    Energy conversion: This power synergizes the subdomain of alteration and the subdomain of healing and allows you to convert energy from one type to another and heal using any energy on any type of creature. This is an automated power that takes your intention into account whenever you perform heals that aren''t just using healing energy to heal living targets


    Rejuvenative aura: This is an upgraded aura that heals anyone near you, aside from those you consciously exclude from the power. If a creature stands near you and you permit them too, they naturally heal a hitpoint every thirty seconds.


    This power''s real potential comes from the other powers you can mix with it. Get creative with it!


    Healing water creation: This synergistic power allows you to convert regular water into panacea-like water that restores the health of anyone who drinks it. This water could even cure magical diseases.


    Font of healing: Your bodily fluids are now panaceas. This power is on by default though you can turn it off by default. With it you can use any of your bodily fluids to heal targets, and this power works on both undead and non-undead targets. If you wish, you can also make spores you generate serve as panaceas as well if they are ingested or otherwise absorbed by targets.


    Sonic healing: You can generate a sound that heals those who hear it.


    Praise the sun: This power exclusively affects living targets, but you can make sunlight a source of considerable natural healing. Unsurprisingly this is a synergistic power that takes from the domains of life and light. If you target a living creature that normally can''t stand the sun, they gain the ability to soak up its light without suffering from the conditions that would normally affect them.


    Healing subdomain active powers:


    Conditional recovery: This power synergizes the domain of law and the subdomain of healing. With it you can alter someone''s natural rate of recovery and impose conditions which they must fulfill to speed their recovery or to slow the rate at which it is decreasing up to fifty percent in either direction. This power can be used up to one hundred times a day.


    Spiritual energy investiture: You can target a non-magical creature and make them magical through bluntly infusing their souls with spiritual energy. This is a once-per-twelve-hour power at the moment and works on the living and the undead alike.


    Spiritual energy is the force people manipulate when they perform magic. In this universe most creatures are born with enough spiritual energy that they can manipulate it in minor ways, but there are entire planets and whole other universes where even the most advanced races don''t possess enough spiritual energy to perform magic. With this power you can change that.


    True resurrection: This power is the same as when you earned it before, but now you can use it five times a week.]


    ________________________________________________


    The whole time I was reading through the potent powers I had gained thanks to my acquisition over the second tier of the healing subdomain I had a grin on my face. These powers all creatively and effectively boosted the ways I could heal creatures. And that was what I needed to see to increase my motivation to do what I was about to do.


    I took a deep breath and activated my now passive "Healing burst" power. I had many targets selected already. I was, after all, intent on healing all of the undead I had initially missed with my first worldwide "Healing burst".


    I exhaled, feeling odd, as my power activated. The activation of the power left me physically unchanged, but internally I felt the effects. I had just generated a massive miasmic burst of unlife energy and expelled it to distant corners of the globe, all to heal distant undead nightmares.


    Generating such a tremendous amount of unlife energy affected even me. I felt cold, and for a few moments after the energy I felt its stain. I felt the faintest echoes of the inhuman hatred that the undead felt towards the living. I stopped moving and waited for the feeling to fade. As I stood still I composed the notification I would send to the undead that was the equivalent of the one I had sent to the living.


    It didn''t take me long to make. I did spend a few moments editing it and making it appropriately dramatic. I wanted it to touch on the themes common to the undeath that I knew of so far. And that wasn''t the last thing I did either.


    I was in a jubilant mood after discovering my new healing abilities. So I decided this was an opportune time to make use of some of my other powers, especially a few I hadn''t really made use of just yet.


    I targeted every single zombie in the world and decided that they would be the first to receive a special surprise. With the same casualness as a human might check their hair in a mirror, I awoke every single zombie in the world. And they were far from the only undead I bestowed special gifts upon.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The God of the Grave Calls to You


    From the deepest, darkest pit of the multiverse, a ghoulish god has arisen. This god of the grave calls to you, and demands your service.


    Every undead being in the world, no matter their strength, or the origin of their unlife, has been healed by this god of ghastly glory. This deity of death and of darkness whispers to your soul even now. If you listen, in submission and silence, you can hear him.


    The monarch of the macabre is an eerie, inhuman deity who is the natural master of the undead. He is the source of your power and of your unlife. Give him what he is owed: your service, your love, and your faith. Join him as he begins the next phase in the war against life.]


    ________________________________________________


    The god''s power reached across the entire planet in an instant. No corner of the globe was able to hide its undead, or keep secret its ghosts. The god''s assortment of powers allowed him to empower even undead on the other side of the planet without any difficulty. And those who felt the grace of the self-proclaimed "Monarch of the macabre" were instantly and permanently changed by it.


    The moon was high in the sky above the ruined town. Moments ago only the sounds of broken teeth tearing into rotten flesh challenged the otherwise absolute silence that had long fallen over the town. Now even that sound had faded away into nothingness.


    A trio of disheveled and pale people were on their knees, surrounding an unmoving corpse. All three of the disheveled people had just frozen stiff, even stiffer than the days they had been killed and shortly thereafter reanimated.


    The three figures were frozen because they were being healed. And improved. Their bodies were abruptly covered in thin cocoons of darkness while miasmic unlife energy seeped into them and performed eerie, unholy miracles.


    The three zombies were among the countless hordes of Torunian undead that were being healed by Althos. And as zombies they were receiving another gift as well. The gift of sapience.


    For the first time in the weeks since they had been among the first people of their long-destroyed town to reanimate as undead, they were beginning to think. And their first, weakest, and most animalistic thoughts were not of the hunger they now keenly felt gnawing at their unholy mockery of sanity, but of praise.


    Their first thoughts were to praise their king. Their god. Even trapped in the cocoon of miasma that had surrounded them while Althos'' eerie powers over the grave took hold, they wanted to whisper praise to the god of the grave. Even awakened, zombies were simple-minded and they wanted little more than to mutter words of devotion and of the undead equivalent of love to their master.


    One of them, a creature who in life had been a male human, began to try and speak. The words were ineffectual groans and moans, a product of atrophied and decayed vocal cords that had yet to be healed. But their intention was to praise the mysterious god who had given him and his zombified companions the gift of a second life. Well... Not a true second life. A true unlife.


    The zombie didn''t know it, but on the other side of the world, Althos heard him. And understood him. And the god of the grave smiled. The zombie''s heartfelt praise and devotion warmed the heart of the fierce god he had given himself over too.


    ________________________________________________


    [New title received: The God of the Grave


    Title explanation: This is a self-given title. Self-given titles are only rarely given system-wide recognition. That said, the system has decided to recognize the power you demonstrated just now and the... theatrics of what you''ve done.


    The God of the Grave passive powers:


    Death is Not the End: Once you gain influence over a creature you affect its body with an incurable condition, unless of course you want to exempt them from this condition or you choose to undo it on someone, that guarantees that hours after death their bodies will rise up as undead.


    The undead the bodies rise up as will be naturally awakened and will worship you. This power does not affect their souls. If you granted them religious class levels in life, their bodies will retain those class levels and the skills and abilities that came with those levels. This power upgrades as you gain greater influence over the subdomain of necromancy. Eventually it will grow so strong that even long-dead beings who once walked where you walk will rise up as undead in your service.


    You can still deanimate an undead and resurrect it as you could any other, non-animated corpse.


    Intoxicating presence: As a reward for accepting and stepping fully into the role of the god of the undead the system has awarded you a power that affects undead themselves as well as and necromancers, be they living or dead.


    This power grants you a considerable charisma boost whenever you use your necromantic powers as well as an aura that increases the abilities of any necromancers who swear to serve you or are already sworn to your service. Necromancers and undead who are near you find your presence intoxicating and seek to win your praise unless they have the presence of mind to stay themselves, which would be a commendable feat.


    The God of the Grave active power:


    Call of the grave: This power has different effects on living targets than it does on undead targets. On living targets this is a brutal attack that deals damage that cannot be healed and continues to deal damage over the course of an entire day. Targets who die from this attack rise up as either ghouls or vampires who worship you as a god of gluttony and undeath.


    If you hit an undead target with this attack then they lose their free will. This power corrupts and overrides their source of unlife energy and ties it to you, which for all intents and purposes transforms them into undead created by you.]


    ________________________________________________


    "Influence huh? What a fun trigger condition..." I muttered to myself, as I was inundated with new notifications and received prayers, praise, and more from the immense horde of the undead I had just added to my forces.


    Not every undead creature had converted to my worship, but I had just gained a considerable amount of power and followers. I felt their twisted hearts transmit their bloodthirst, awe, and hatred to me and I reveled in the sensations I felt. It was that revelling that made me want more.


    I felt my mind twist as my desire for more made itself known. I felt... greediness, a greediness that had always existed in me and only rarely truly manifested roar into my mind. And after debating how to handle it, I came to an easy conclusion: sometimes you got to give yourself what you want.


    I didn''t even need to think hard about how to most efficiently achieve my goal here. My goal was quite simple: I wanted to gain as much influence as possible over as many people as possible. I had a spell that was perfect for this: "Create Food".


    The spell was quite handy and it had no range limit. More than that though, I could now create meats and a range of other types of food as well. I wasn''t limited to fruits or veggies anymore. And that inadvertently gave me more diversity to play with.


    The scheme I devised was quite simple. All it took was for me to spend the next few minutes doing two things: targeting every place where living people or animals congregated, and composing another notification. It was about time for my second worldwide miracle anyway, so this was just fortunate timing.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Praise be to He Who Feeds!


    All over the world gigantic mounds of fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meats, and fresh fish, are appearing. These mounds of food are a gift from Althos.


    He is a kind god who knows that starvation is one of the greatest enemies of civilization. The fear of starvation was once one of the great foes that drove our ancestors to come together and create civilizations.


    Starvation is unnecessary as the world is productive and Althos knows better than any the bounty of the earth. Take this gift and be reminded of Althos'' power and his benevolence.


    Kind people of Torus: Althos is as great in his benevolence and mercy, as he is in his power, as you have witnessed firsthand. And yet, as is to be expected, there are people in this who insist on benefitting from Althos'' kindness, without following his few commands.


    Althos only wishes for everyone to have the freedom to live as they wish. And for that to happen, slavery must be abolished.


    Althos is not without understanding, he knows that the abolishment of slavery will not be instantaneous and he will wait, where appropriate, for that to happen. But in places where no attempts are made, there will be consequences for inaction.


    This is an opportune time to restate the other demand that Althos made: an immediate, and temporary ceasefire to all inter-empire and inter-kingdom conflicts. This is a more pressing demand. Any ongoing inter-empire or inter-kingdom that are not in a ceasefire in two days will provoke a divine intervention.


    The system and Althos speak as one when we say this: kind people of Torus beseech your leaders and urge them to act in their best interests. To act in their best interests, nobles would demand a temporary ceasefire of any conflicts their kingdoms and empires are in. The time to cease fighting, even for a few days, is now. To wait would only court disaster.]


    ________________________________________________


    Althos'' powers were varied and vast. As easily as he had healed the planet''s undead population, he conjured an incredibly vast amount of real food. Entire tons of the stuff, appeared out of nowhere all over the planet.


    Food appeared in the oceans, in city streets, atop mountain peaks, in village squares, within boggy swamps, atop glaciers, and in other places where life could be found in shocking numbers. And all over the world people once more observed the amazing abilities at Althos'' fingertips, unaware of the longer-term consequences of their actions.


    All manner of creatures, from eldritch abominations, to deep-sea leviathans, to dragons of all ages, extraplanar beings of all alignments, and countless humanoids naively or even eagerly went to the closest mountain of food, food which was never more than a few kilometers apart.


    Whether someone ate the food cautiously or tore into it ravenously, the end result was the same. Trillions of lifeforms had just unknowingly opened themselves up to the strange power and stranger mind of Althos. In his distant and remote sanctuary, the god smiled as he received an incredible number of notifications, even more than when he had healed the planet''s undead.


    Part of the reason why the god was smiling as he read through the notification was that the increased potency of his powers was paying dividends. Those who ate his food weren''t falling 1% under his influence, they were falling 5%, 10%, or in a few cases, even higher percentages under his influence.


    This made it so that the mere act of feeding the people of the world, coupled with his earlier action of healing them, left an incredibly significant impact on their hearts. The greedy god''s decision to give into his greed had actually worked in his favor, and thanks to his actions over the last two days there were entire kingdoms that were sincerely singing his praises.

 125 Abominations

    Perhaps the oddest, though definitely the most memorable, part of gaining worshipers as a god was the fact that the moment someone began to worship me their most heartfelt emotions seeped into me. And in my tower, in the wake of my worldwide healing of the undead and my move to feed the entire planet, I was gaining countless worshipers.


    I felt an array of emotions seeping into me. Awe, reverence, and love, were coming into me from an unlikely source: the undead I had empowered. I felt a far more diverse array of emotions from the living. The living were inadvertently transmitting fear, joy, hate, sorrow, anger, and other, harder to precisely identify emotions into me.


    The emotions were incredibly intense. Each emotion that wracked my divine form gave me a greater appreciation for the wide array of emotions non-deities, but especially living mortals, routinely endured.


    Throughout most of my life I had felt general contentment. I am a god afterall. And more than that, I am as far as I can tell a sort of supreme being. I could resurrect the dead and grant immortality to any creature I wanted too. I hadn''t faced much in the form of real challenges, and even at the weakest I had ever been I probably could have used my infinite magical energy to escape from most circumstances. That was not the case for mortals.


    Mortals routinely faced major problems. In this world, and many others, they had to endure wars being waged on them by other mortals, slavery, famine, and all sorts of other complex and often life-threatening situations. It was a lot for creatures as weak as they were. It was almost endearing to try and picture them surviving such scenarios without feeling immense and moving emotions.


    It wasn''t always easy for me to remember their struggles, but in moments like this I was fully cognizant of the world mortals lived in. It was a dangerous, unpredictable, and often indifferent one.


    I almost felt bad that my presence was definitely going to throw it further into chaos because I had only just begun to move and the chaos the world was engulfed in was increasing. I still had so many things I needed to do. Things I was just beginning to do.


    ________________________________________________


    Torus'' distribution of land was split nearly perfectly between its eastern and western hemispheres. The continent of Iredale and the continent of Mysteria were located within the western hemisphere. The continent of Humana and the continent of Anterior were located within the eastern hemisphere.


    Iredale was the strange continent that lacked a large empire and was governed by separate, occasionally conflicting kingdoms. Mysteria, the furthest west continent in the world, was the home of the Ansari empire.


    Unsurprisingly the continent of Humana housed the human race and the Reconquista empire. It was also the continent closest to Iredale, though still separated by an incredibly vast ocean. The landmass at the eastern edge of the world, Anterior, housed the coalition of monstrous races.


    The northernmost and southernmost sections of the world were polar icecaps. These strange regions were inhabited, but my mental exploration of that area quickly led me to learn that these areas were not settled by creatures like humans and elves, but violent and powerful races like frost giants, white dragons, and other creatures such as evolved animals and even a few types of abominations.


    Armed with the knowledge I gained after quickly retreating into myself. I closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to become the thing I focused on. I began to look at the world through the usage of a few filters.


    A consequence of gaining the first tier of influence over the star domain was a power that caused the range of my detection-based-powers to grown in size explosively. It was such a large growth that when I closed my eyes the not-so-mini-map that appeared before me covered the entire planet and gave me accurate information in real-time.


    The first filter I applied to the real-time display of the world in front of me was one that singled out people who believed I was an actual deity. I was positively delighted to watch the majority of the world''s population to suddenly be vibrantly highlighted and for their rough outlines to turn a bright red.


    It didn''t matter if one was an animal, abomination, humanoid, extraplanar, undead, or other kinds of beings, more than half of the global population was highlighted. My rampant displays of power, coupled with the system, and my own handcrafted messages was evidently sufficiently persuasive to convince the people of Torus that I was what I said I was.


    The next filter I applied was one that targeted slave-owners specifically. I was disappointed when I saw that there were several million such people who were still highlighted. I deselected the first filter so I could be sure that I saw everyone who was targeted, and the number exploded upwards which further increased my frustration and threatened to foul up my mood.


    I studied the parts of the map with the most dots. I was annoyed and a bit surprised to see that there were different concentrations of colored outlines. The single biggest mass of them was located on Humana, the uncreatively named continent home to the majority of Torus''s humans.


    "Should I... punish Reconquista?" I wondered. There was a part of me that wanted too, and that wanted to use my powers to shatter the empire. I had enough power that I could easily leave Espana, the capital city, in ruins without any assistance but I knew that such a move would result in chaos and shift the balance of power and I wasn''t sure what the consequences of that would be if I acted impulsively. I decided to show caution after a few seconds and not attack, yet.


    Though I wasn''t sure of the specifics, I could tell from studying the map that the human empire had a legal system that was accepting of slavery. And I did not intend to allow that to continue. I huffed in irritation and opted to turn my attention elsewhere for now, else I ran the risk of moving preemptively and I wasn''t about to do that. Not yet.


    I studied the other empires for a few moments and quickly came to a heartening conclusion. It seemed that only Reconquista had a legal system that enabled slavery.


    The other empires had slave-owners as well, but it was nowhere near the number of slaveowners that Reconquista had. What was more telling though was that Reconquista''s slaveowners varied in alignment and class, but in other empires slave-owners were uniformly wealthy and invariably had evil alignments. I personally felt that slave-owning should have stained one''s soul enough for them to be marked as evil no matter what, but it seems that the laws that govern alignment disagreed with me and I didn''t yet have the power to change or challenge them.


    I could tell at a glance that some individual kingdoms, including a few in Iredale, were likely to practice slavery but also that none of them had singularly enormous populations of slaves. Seeing the ones in Iredale was intriguing to me because it gave me targets on which to unleash the legions at my command.


    Iredalian kingdoms were not united into a single cohesive force. That lack of unity was something that I could exploit and use to turn the continent into my playground. And I fully intended to do so. Iredale''s lack of unity would make it an easy target for me.


    It was at this point that I deactivated the filter I had used to see the world''s slaveowners. I immediately activated another filter, one that identified my worshipers. I was delighted to see creatures in every part of the world light up, not to mention that members of every species were included among those who lit up. This was positively delightful news.


    It was genuinely exciting for me to see that I now had a good number of humanoid worshipers. Dwarves, elves, humans, orcs, minotaurs, and other, wilder types of humanoids were worshipping me. As were fey, who all over the world were marked by the filter I had chosen. Knowing that made me want to go ahead and create a fey court so that I could gain greater powers, but I knew I had other things I needed to do so for now I focused.


    ________________________________________________


    I spent the next four hours making connections. I did this without leaving my tower, as I didn''t feel like leaving my home.


    The primary people I fixated on were abominations. All over the world, there were abominations. They were present in and around each continent, in almost every kingdom, and were all too ready to serve me.


    With but a single mental tendril I could reach out and corrupt countless abominations. In doing so I snuck into their minds and whispered to them, and they accepted me as their master. I never failed to reward them, and after the first few groups of abominations I encountered I learned that most of them really did enjoy violence.


    I was fond of reaching out to gugs, because I knew what they were. Gugs were giants who were fixated on the dreamlands and enjoyed simple violence. They could be found throughout the world and numbered in the tens of thousands. They and the deep ones were the most populous types of abominations that I could find in Torus.


    They were not difficult to make worshipers out of. All I had to do was create cows and other simple, large creatures in their camps and tell them that worshipping me will give them dreams of their homeland, the dreamlands and they entered my service en-masse.


    I reached out to deep ones, eerie hybrids of fish and humanoids who dwelled either in alien cities built in the shallow parts of the ocean''s of the world or in small coastal settlements. They were simple creatures and filling their oceans with fish and the land near their oceanic homes with gold was enough to secure their worship and their worship.


    Night-gaunts were the rarest kind of abominations on Torus. Less than a hundred of them existed in this world, but the second I reached out to them I''d experience the strange rush of their hearts becoming mine. They exuded only obedience and happiness as if they were happy to have a master to serve.


    The only one of them to transmit a prayer to me would send me one that was simple, polite and asked for food. I obliged the thing and felt its delight as it moved to where I conjured the food and began to greedily eat.


    Other abominations existed as well. Some of them had bizarrely descriptive names like "Flying polyps". A few of the varied abominations had real names, but even those names were largely nonsensical, like "Shoggoths".


    Curiously, some species-names contained direct references to other beings. I had to assume that these were the names of great old ones, or outer gods. "Fire vampires of Fthaggua" and "Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath" were two examples of those types of abominations.


    I had to operate under the assumption that those creatures, and a few others with weirder names were once servitors of their partial namesakes. That would explain the ease with which they began to worship me.


    Of all of the assorted types of abominations in the world there were two that were especially interesting to me by the time I had reached out to all of the eerie monstrosities in the world. The Mi-gos and the wendigos.


    The Mi-gos were fungal monstrosities that were especially intelligent but not especially common on Torus. They were creatures that superficially resembled gigantic wasps with bulbous and faintly glowing heads even though the fungi domain informed me that they were among its "friends". They considered themselves scientists and offered their services to me freely, seemingly excited to have a place in what they called an "Outer God''s retinue".


    They had a number of colonies throughout the world, and whenever I mentally spoke to one of their colonial leaders they excitedly chattered with me in youthful sounding mental voices about the technology at their command. They spoke about things like weapons that could fire lightning, something called "brain cylinders", and even technology that allowed them to terraform their colonies.


    Wendigos were rare because they were undead abominations. They were vaguely humanlike undead creatures with a few features from stags, like horns and stag-skulls for heads, as well as fur. They had become my worshipers before I reached out to abominations, and their prayers were pleas for me to give them permission to consume humans.


    ________________________________________________


    By the time I was done interacting with Torus'' abominations I was curious to learn the state of my worshipers throughout the world. I checked the section of religion menu entitled "Families, sects, cults, and churches" with a curious and thoughtful gaze. I learned a lot from appraising this menu again.

 126 Extraplanars And Fey

    "There''s so much here..." I muttered as a goofy grin emerged onto my face. I was reading over countless entries that detailed how various mortals, fey, abominations, and more than a few extraplanars of all alignments had begun to worship me. I took a few minutes to read through the enormous trove of data the menu was giving me, and I learned a lot from that.


    Many sapient creatures, particularly humanoids and good-aligned dragons, leaped to the conclusion that I had wanted them to leap too. They viewed me as a god of love, mercy, and freedom, and some even worshiped me as an altogether good god. Handfuls of them were even wondering how to get into contact with me rather than waiting around for me to perform another miracle.


    Extraplanars and fey were wiser, at least on the society-wide scale, and their response to me was colder and more neutral than that of humanoids and dragons. Unsurprisingly, they tended to react to me in ways that fit their alignment, which in turn made me feel a range of emotions.


    Seelie fey were excited by me so far, but even they were cautious. Plenty of them began to worship me as a god of healing and as a potential focus for their powers, a provider of magic. I intended to be that for them, so this excited me. The system also informed me as to what Seelie fey were in the first place.


    Seelie fey were, generally speaking, the members of the fey that were warmer to humanity and other humanoids. They included most of the world''s dryads, pixies, sprites, satyrs, nymphs, and other, often humanlike fey.


    Unseelie fey was the other type of fey. They were a faction of fey spirit that was far more aggressive and hostile to humanoids than their Seelie counterparts. This faction included hags, nuckelavees, redcaps, primal goblins, boogeymen, and a range of other fey. They were far diverse, in appearance at least, than their Seelie relatives.


    Extraplanars who were located on Torus had a far more complex set of reactions to me. Celestials, the universal term for good-aligned extraplanars were some of my biggest supporters among the extraplanars. Fiends, the universal term for evil-aligned extraplanars, were not excited by me so far.


    The few angels on Torus, including a once hidden angel of lies, were no longer hiding. The angels were the neutral-aligned extraplanars who most liked me which was unsurprising since angels had been created to serve gods.


    There were under three hundred of them in the world, scattered throughout the continents, and of the extraplanars they were the least populous group on Torus. Among them there were angels of nature, love, faith, law, nobility, lies, truth, war, life, dreams, creation, and other domains and subdomains.


    They were the only group of extraplanar beings I immediately reached out too in the wake of studying the menu. I could barely contain myself after actually sitting down and learning about them.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: A Choice Lies Before You


    Althos has noticed your existence and is aware of the history that ties together the gods and the angels. He wishes for you to come home, to the home he built for himself but will happily welcome you into. And to that end he will tell you of his true nature.


    Althos is a neutral god who aspires to gain omnipotence and omniscience. One of his minor goals is to rid the multiverse of slavery. He is worshiped by a nameless legion of the undead and by an enormous swarm of evolved, eusocial insects known as ''The Swarm'', as well as by various families and individuals throughout the solar system.


    Althos will not force you to serve him or to worship him, but he would be pleased if you did. If you tire of the mortal world, if you seek a place to call home, and to serve a higher purpose, Althos would gladly welcome you into the solitary, floating island sanctuary he calls home.


    If you choose to stay among the mortals, Althos will respect that. He wants you to come to him willingly. If you do decide to come to him, know that Althos will respect you and will seek to use your talents intelligently. He will give you purpose and power.


    He believes that many of you will come. That many of you tire of the land of mortals. That you seek, in your heart of hearts, a purpose. Come. Find your purpose. Join your god.


    Ask to come home. Pray to Althos. Inform him of your desire to join him. To work to achieve his goals. To be the first angels in all of existence to gain purpose anew.]


    ________________________________________________


    When Althos reached out to the angels with his customized alert, he also touched their minds. In doing so he inadvertently empowered them, by giving them a taste of something they had forgotten: the touch of true divinity. The undivided attention of a god did something to angels, on a genetic and biological level and even the slightest bit of attention from Althos was a religious experience to the angels he sought to bring to his side.


    Althos had no way of knowing this. He had only encountered two angels in his life, and they were broken but then healed by him. They had had the needed time to adjust to his power, to feel it caress their skin and touch their souls before directly encountering the god. The other angels weren''t that lucky.


    Angelic anatomy was not like mortal anatomy and angelic minds were both stronger and weaker than those of mortals. They were wired differently than mortals were, and even among extraplanars their nature was odd and sometimes frightening to behold.


    Angels were not created to be independent beings. They were an artificially constructed servitor race, made of soul-stuff and powered by the will of the gods and the angels of Torus had been running on fumes for over half a million years. With the exception of the volcanic angels, they had no way of resisting the drug-like divine touch of Althos.


    It was by the will of the old gods that the angels were created with the power to handle domains and subdomains. Angels could faintly mimic the powers of the gods and the domains they influenced and they used those powers to serve their masters and enact their wills. Such powers were not free: for angels to use their powers they must receive power and life from a god they served. Otherwise they would die, eventually. Even if it took them millions of years.


    Althos did not know this, at least not a lot of. He knew bits and pieces of it, subconsciously, but he did not know the dirty details. He did not know of aetherium, the name that was given to soul-stuff by ancient, long-dead scholars of the domains. He did not know of the sacred processes that were involved in creating angels. He didn''t even know that angels themselves were physically dependent on gods. If he had, he probably would have approached them earlier.


    Althos'' touch wasn''t a maddening one to the angels he reached out too. If anything it was the opposite, just too much so. It repaired them, strengthening their senses, and their ties to the domains they were created to embody. They were reminded of their old masters, and


    Every angel on Torus felt what they hadn''t felt in hundreds of thousands of years. They felt the faintest touch of a god and the restorative powers of such a subtle action.


    Their bodies, auras, powers, and even their souls were turned and tuned to the inaudible frequencies of Althos'' peerless, godly soul and the inscrutable nature of his whims. They felt his power. And they submitted to it. To him.


    At once, every angel who lived on Torus prayed. They asked to be given a new home. A new destiny. To serve the whims of their new god. Althos replied to them without words, and merely by opening portals in front of them to his home. None of the angels hesitated and they walked through the portal. At once the angels stood up, and walked into the portals in front of them.


    ________________________________________________


    My mind was fast. Far faster than the physical bodies of the angels. And in the time after the angels prayed to me, but before they stepped through the portals, I learned of the other types of extraplanars that existed on Torus.


    None of the truly rare extraplanars that lurked in the multiverse were hidden within the secret swamps and cryptic caves of Torus. But there were still thousands of fiends, celestials, and other, neutral types of extraplanars in the world.


    Devils and leyes lived within the Reconquista empire. The respectively lawful-evil and lawful beings didn''t even try to hide their presence. They were openly accepted within the cities they made their homes as a quick inspection of a few members of either species revealed that they were authorities within both the centralized government of Reconquista and the individual communities they were part of.


    A part of me wanted to reach out to both sorts of lawful extraplanar beings. If I wanted to build a real empire I''d need their aid. I''d also need the help of the pedidos, the lawful good extraplanars. Pedidos lived in Ansari, but not in Reconquista.


    Salvajes and demons lived in the Ansari empire, but neither were accepted by the elves. My stellar awareness made it clear to me that both types of creatures lived far away from elven settlements, but for some reason both were common on the continent of Mysteria which wasn''t fully settled by the elves even though all of the civilized parts of it were within the borders of the Ansari empire.


    The continent of Iredale housed the world''s largest population of pain-bringers. Anterior housed a fair amount of extraplanar beings, but no group had its population center within the mysterious, monster-led continent.


    A part of me wanted to reach out to all of the assorted extraplanar beings who lived on Torus. I knew that if I reached out to them I''d gain even greater power. And that it would be safer for me to reach out to them than for me to summon extraplanar beings on my own.


    That was what I was thinking about when angels began to appear in front of me. I turned my mind away from such distractions just to properly greet my angelic servants, a wide smile on my face as the creatures began to walk out of portals that had just appeared in and around my divine tower.

 127 Angels And Ambitions

    The chamber in which dozens of silver, alteration-energy powered portals began to appear was a large one. It was a mostly empty, dozens of meters long space. The floor was made from polished stone, and massive white pillars jutted from the floor to the ceiling in specific areas chosen, by the power that constructed the tower, to most easily support the upper floors.


    This particular chamber was a chamber that existed to give those who were in it a scenic view. If one walked to the northernmost or southernmost sections of it they could see beyond the tower and visually explore parts of the island. Right now seeing outside would give someone a view of the other, surface-level, sections of the island.


    The portals were only open for a few seconds before angels began to step through them and enter the strange tower. As they stepped fully through the portals, the god laid eyes on them for the first time and conversely they laid eyes on the god for the first time. The two parties curiously examined each other, smiles on their faces as they did so.


    ________________________________________________


    Hundreds of angels began to step through my portals all at once. I was delighted to see every angel on Torus accept my offer and I was quite happy to be able to lay my eyes on them for the first time.


    Each of the angels before me possessed a uniformly beautiful or handsome form. They all appeared to resemble idealized humanoids. They lacked wrinkles, scars, blemishes, or even the loose skin that was normal on Torunian humans. They had eyes that were the colors of precious gems, muscles across their bodies, and they were clothed in the finest, softest, silks, and robes.


    As they stepped through the portals that surrounded me, they walked until they were in front of me and then prostrated themselves. Each of them radiated an intense joy as if they could imagine that nothing would bring them more joy than to be here, now. I was studying them when I received a message from the system that gave me needed knowledge that helped me understand their current circumstances.


    [Althos, I sense your observations about your newest servants. It makes sense for you to be confused. Angels are unlike any other extraplanar beings in existence. Angels are constructed differently than other outsiders are and literally require gods to be able to survive. Between the end of the mythic age and yesterday these angels were dying because they didn''t have a god who could renew their energy.] The system explained, causing my eyes to widen in shock.


    "If that''s the case why didn''t they come yesterday?" I asked the system, even as I processed the fact that I was literally necessary for angels as a species to be able to survive.


    [They searched for you yesterday, Althos. But they couldn''t find you. Even I didn''t have the necessary permissions to let them know where you were located.] The system told me, causing me to mentally gasp in shock and confusion.


    The angels didn''t hear me, or notice that I was reacting to shocking news. My mind immediately processed the implications of all of this, and did a few things at once.


    "From now on you have permission to tell any non-hostile angel of my existence and my location. In fact... I''ll go ahead and help." I replied to the system while preparing a new handwritten notification.


    My "stellar awareness" power was a handy one that allowed me to detect all life on every planet in the solar system. That knowledge revealed a lot to me, including that angels lived on every planet throughout the solar system.


    Until now the limited information I possessed on angels hadn''t spurred me to action. Knowing that angels would die without my intervention and that I could lose out on valuable servants and worshipers changed that. The system still had things to say though.


    [I... should tell you that angels have a long lifespan. Even though they lose their immortality and begin to age slowly without a god''s aid, they would still live for millions of years. There''s no rush here.] The system told me, causing me to mentally huff in annoyance.


    "That doesn''t matter! And besides... It''s not like you to not give me reasons to pursue power." I told the system, giving it an argument that made it chuckle.


    [Fair enough. We, as in the domains and I, are unsure if every planet has angels but we suspect that not all of them do. That said... The ability of an angel of lies to deceive us has left unsure, so you should rely on your own sensory abilities to sense angels and mix that with something like ''Stellar awareness'' to track down angels.] The system told me, reminding itself of the odd ability possessed by angels of lies to hide even from the domains and the system.


    Though I appreciated the wise advice, it was unnecessary. I momentarily closed my eyes and allowed my not-so-mini-map to flare to life for a moment.


    In the second that it was on display in front of me, I zoomed the map out as far as I could and activated a filter that let me detect and target angels. I was able to target around one thousand and five hundred angels throughout the solar system, including angels of lies, spores, and divination. I reopened my eyes and smiled at the angels in front of me. The last of them had finished walking in front of me and began to prostrate themselves before me.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello! I am Althos. I appear to be the last god in all of existence. I am... more than that, but the part that is relevant to you as angels is what I came to life as. Which is a god." I told the angels, speaking to them mere moments after they finished prostrating themselves in front of me. My cryptic words confused them, which made me chuckle.


    "I am more than what an old god could ever have been. Within me I can call upon the powers of the other types of higher-beings." I explained, causing the angels to audibly gasp in shock. I sensed the sincerity of their surprise, and grinned.


    "Angels... Allow me to tell you the truth. When I tell you I seek omnipotence, I mean it." I told them, speaking candidly about the extent of my ambitions.


    "I am working to acquire infinite power. To master every single domain and subdomain and to acquire every power the old gods possessed, and more." I told them, speaking with pride about my ambitions. I was quiet for a moment while selecting and activating a power of mine.


    My pride began to radiate out of me in the form of an aura-like silvery mist. The power I had just activated was one of my funnier ones, my "Autocratic authoritarian" power. It gave me a lawful aura that forced lesser creatures to obey me.


    I was using it to express my inherent superiority over them, allowing my powers to wash over and seep into them. I spoke more after activating my power.


    "I will become the god that is acknowledged by all of existence. And you, and other angels, will help me. I can sense the joy you feel. It is radiating off of you. With your help... Who knows what we can do?" I asked, grinning as I spoke.


    ________________________________________________


    As I spoke to the angels my mind was elsewhere. The truth was that the potency of the evocative emotions the angels felt made me want more. The emotions of my angelic worshipers, creatures who in most if not all cases remembered the old gods, were powerful and I wanted more.


    There was a part of me that wanted to take this momentum and build on it. I could envision numerous ways to do so, thanks to the staggeringly diverse array of powers I possessed. As I was mulling this over internally, a soft voice interrupted my musings.


    "Althos, I''m very excited to see that you''ve used one of my powers for the first time." A soft, neutral-sounding, even-keeled voice told me. It was the voice of the domain of law, a voice I had occasionally heard in the discussions and debates the domains and subdomains had had in my mind.


    "If you''re seeking to expand your influence, I recommend you use my people, the leyes. Those of us who are alignment domains possess incredible influence over the extraplanars who align with us. And leyes would happily serve and worship you in your capacity as a god of law and order." The law domain told me. I began to consider its words, intrigued by the idea of stepping into the powers of a god of order, law, and hierarchies.


    "Hmm... I do want to build an empire. And to do so I''ll definitely need the help of the leyes." I muttered, mentally. I was aware of the things with which I struggled, and I knew where I''d need help. Without at least some creatures who were devoted to laws, order, and governance, I''d only ever possess an empire made up of thoroughly enthralled or undead beings and I wanted more than that.


    The sensations of countless creatures beginning to worship me didn''t leave me unchanged. Within me, my powers were growing and synergizing with each other, and I was beginning to feel my ambitions expanding more and more rapidly. And this awareness of the growth of my powers was warping my mind.


    "What to do... What to do..." I wondered, thinking "aloud" within my mind. I began to feel the faintest bits and pieces of plots come into being within the back of my mind. And that made me smile, inwardly.


    I knew at least some of what I want do. I knew I wanted to go ahead and extend my influence. And as the angels introduced themselves to me, I began to move as only gods could, and extend my empire across the solar system.


    As I did so, I kept my mind''s eye locked on my domain-sense. All over the world and across the universe my domain-sense was alerting me to the going-ons of distant empires, foreign lives, and alien races I had never heard of. I was thankful for the constant stream of knowledge and I chuckled knowing that there would come a day when my influence would reach across the cosmos.

 128 Distant Dreams

    One of the reasons why gods as a species were so powerful was that they weren''t burdened by range limits on their abilities. This was something that the young god named Althos was taking advantage of in the wake of his decision to expand the size of his religion.


    Even a god as young as Althos, one less than a month old, could easily create an intergalactic faith. And that was what he was in the process of doing.


    The god may have physically been in the presence of his angelic host, but that wasn''t where he really was. The truth was that at that moment it would have been easier to say where the god wasn''t, than where he was.


    Althos had momentarily hidden in the hearts of every living or undead creature in each of the seven planets that orbited the sun he had visited earlier this week. And he intended to seize those hearts. Now that he had an objective in mind, he was capable of incredibly fast and life-changing movement. Which he demonstrated in a single flex of his newly upgraded healing powers.


    ________________________________________________


    The entire solar system felt the eerie and wonderful healing powers Althos possessed at the same moment. Each target felt a lifechanging amount of life or unlife energy seep into their bones, into their very cells. Their wounds were healed up and closed, their sicknesses were defeated and even amputated limbs regenerated.


    It mattered not if they were living or undead they felt the terrifying and equally wonderful power Althos could easily use, it mysteriously healed them. It touched and altered their souls, burning away pain and discomfort with positively divine ease.


    They weren''t done receiving proof of Althos'' touch. Seconds after the healing power changed their lives or unlives they saw physical proof of the god''s merciful intervention: every organism that was targeted by his power, living and undead alike, was abruptly illuminated in a radiant silver glow. The silvery glow clung to their bodies and gave them a strange, harmless, aura that would persist for hours, though they didn''t know that it would eventually fade away.


    For a single moment, the first moment in which Althos'' power blossomed across the solar system, entire worlds held their breath in confusion. Battles came to a halt. Hope crept into people''s hearts. Lives that had been torn apart by tragic news hours ago were suddenly and impossibly mended.


    Creatures, be they extraplanars, abominations, undead, or mortals, or fey, were confused as to the source of the healing. They didn''t just experience the pleasant obliteration of the pain and aches of life, or unlife, they also received various notifications. They were all simple but annoyingly long things that all contained the same basic structure.


    "Althos has healed you," The notifications would begin, and then they''d proceed to list all of the things that Althos'' powers had cured, fixed, or healed.


    Many creatures who read the notification were surprised at what all Althos had healed. They weren''t sure, but they suspected that whoever this "Althos" was had just healed them of every single condition they were suffering from, and in many cases that included conditions they hadn''t even known were affecting them.


    Creatures across the solar system began to weep and silently thank their mysterious savior. This included people suffering from what had once been thought to be terminal conditions and illnesses, and people who had been left to die from wounds in battle or assassinations. And they weren''t the only people who had been eager to praise the saintly figure who quietly healed the solar system.


    A consequence of healing the entire planet of Torus was that Althos had gained influence over the majority of lifeform-based subdomains. And with those subdomains came powers that instantly awoke animals and plants that received his miraculous healing. That caused the number of sapient beings found throughout the solar system to multiply exponentially as all sorts of lifeforms felt the power of a god who was fast becoming a god of life.


    All manner of lifeforms spontaneously became sapient in the wake of Althos'' merciful touch. And those creatures who received sapience as a result of the gentle hand of their healer immediately became the newest althonians in the solar system. They numbered in the quintillions.


    Undead creatures existed in five of the six planets that had just felt Althos'' touch. And they were not excluded from the god''s potent powers. The ghoulish god of the grave touched and restored them as easily as he touched and restored the living. His power indiscriminately repaired their bodies and their minds, as well as boosted their terrifying powers.


    The undead who had been touched by his powers almost immediately knew they were healed by a god. This was because Althos introduced himself to them as a god, moments after healing them. He sent them the same notification he sent Torunian undead, unedited and unchanged because he quite liked it.


    This caused the second set of new creatures to worship him in the wake of his extraplanetary mischief to be an unimaginably vast horde of the undead, including undead who had been reanimated by necromancers. The hearts and minds of the undead legions of the solar system now belonged to a single entity: the phantasmal god of the grave.


    Their hate infused and strengthened their new god. They didn''t know it, but in his palatial tower Althos shivered as he felt the incredible hatred and loathing the undead felt towards all of the entities they defined as "alive". Their passionate urges to inflict violence on the living seeped into their master, and he had to struggle to resist it, for now.


    ________________________________________________


    The violent misanthropy that plagued the undead wasn''t exclusive to them. Demons, devils, and pain-bringers were some of the creatures that had generally misanthropic hearts, as well as serial killers, and tyrants. And the powerful extraplanars that stealthy hid and worked to cause evil in each of the planets in the solar system were the next group to be contacted by Althos.


    It mattered not how well-hidden the extraplanar in question was. Their type didn''t matter, nor did their goals. Althos reached out across the cosmos, across hundreds of billions of kilometers, and spoke directly to them.


    When they received the notification, they heard it in his voice, a first for the strange god who was undergoing the single biggest explosion of power that he had ever undergone. His powers would only continue to grow over the next few minutes.


    More than that though, the dark god used the newest set of upgrades to his powers that he had received to cause the creatures to experience the pain that would come if they clung to their pride.


    He made them experience a single instant of searing pain brought on by slamming them with invisible holy energy. This infuriated and terrified the demons and devils, but was seen by the pain-bringers as a sign of the divine variety of power Althos could wield, even as it inflicted pain on them. That he could do that at all was a sign of his terrifying power, something they recognized immediately.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Emperor Of Evil


    The time has come to rededicate yourself to evil. And to give yourself to evil''s last emperor: the god of darkness, Althos.


    Althos is a god who was born on the world of Torus. Until today he has kept his influence contained there, but now he seeks to build an interplanetary cult. And he has already succeeded. Undead creatures as well as animals, plants, and other, lesser-lifeforms, have already converted to his worship. Now it is your turn.


    Althos is destined to become the tyrant''s tyrant, a god who rules over an interuniversal empire and he is offering you a chance to serve him. The wisest action would be to serve him. If not, he will punish you and his punishment will be swift and severe.


    He cares not for the finer details of your old mission, or even your old life. He cares only that you submit to him and join him. If you do, he will empower you, give you chances to inflict pain and suffering on the living, and give you a renewed purpose.


    Right now mortals foolishly believe that Althos is a god of their kind, one with their best intentions at heart. He is not. He is a god of deception, darkness, evil, plagues, and pain. Serve him, or be the first of his victims. Worship and praise him. Submit.]


    ________________________________________________


    In my tower I felt an incredible surge of power infuse me. It came in waves and was breathtaking, even for a god.


    The first wave was the one I received from all sorts of animals and plants awakening at once and their first actions being to give their hearts over to me. That brought a simple smile to my face, even if it was the single biggest burst of power I''d receive.


    The second wave I felt infuse my soul was the tidal-wave like amount of simple emotions of the undead inhabitants of nearby planets. Their hatred of the living and their love for me seeped into my soul like a life-altering drug. It made me feel a variety of emotions, emotions I was had to take a deep breath to combat and calm down.


    The third wave was the one that felt the most satisfying. That was the one that was infused with concentrated evil, as opposed to the generalized nihilism and misanthropy of the second, undead-filled, wave. Demons, devils, and pain-bringers all across the solar system pledged their hearts and souls to me, largely out of fear for the power I possessed and my ability to devastate them even if they were worlds away from me. Their decision was an understandable and intelligent one.


    Millions of demons, devils, and pain-bringers abandoned their old masters and quietly began to fearfully "praise" me. I sensed their mental words of fear-tinged "admiration" and "fealty" and I chuckled.


    It felt nice to be feared and to know that some of my newest followers were afraid of my powers, rather than in awe of them. As I thought that, a voice I had only heard a few times spoke into my mind, and judging from its tone it was having fun.


    "A god should inspire a number of emotions in their followers. Not just awe and love, but also fear. It amuses me to no end to know that your first real followers who are afraid of you are devils and demons." Whispered the domain of evil, amused by my newest followers.


    I mulled over its words while I examined the evil powers I had earned as a result of a number of upgrades I had recently received due to the overall amount of worshippers I possessed.


    ________________________________________________


    [Evil domain passive powers:


    Curse: You can now curse someone in ways that affect things other than their stats or are domain or subdomain specific. You can now craft generalized curses and use them against your enemies.


    Corruptive pain: Your power over pain and evil allows you to inflict pain on mortals that can persist perpetually and is only lessened when they behave evilly. This power exists to twist and warp mortals towards evil alignments.


    Demonic evolution: As a synergistic crossover of the domains of evil, life, and chaos, you''ve gained the power to cause lesser-tiered demons to evolve into medium-tiered demons. As an example of this, praereptor demons are lesser-tiered demons and succubi and incubi are medium-tiered demons. You can also cause medium-tiered demons to devolve into lesser demons.


    Demonic rampage: You can cause demons to rampage and inflict harm on anyone or anything close to them, aside from other evil servants of yours by manipulating the domains of war, chaos, and evil.


    This power affects all lesser demons regardless of who they serve and can be used on medium-ranked demons who serve you. As you gain greater influence over evil, corruption, and emotion, chaos, and war, this power increases in potency.


    Devilish infusion: This power is the devilish version of a demonic power you possess with a very similar name. One difference between the two is that devils don''t possess mortals, so instead of opening up victims of this power to possession, you render them more susceptible to being permanently dominated by you, or by a greater devil, such as a blitzkrieg or vizier devil who serves you.


    This power allows you to infuse non-devils with devilish qualities and mutations.


    Devilish menu: As a consequence of gaining a number of devilish servants you now have access to a menu that tracks your order-oriented devilish minions. It lets you keep track of devils who worship you, who serve you, and who are on missions you or another of your servants have assigned them.


    Hate inducement: You can induce feelings of hatred in mortals. This hatred can easily be stoked into violence and discrimination, which ambiently increases the amount of evil in an area over time. This makes an area more appealing to all types of evil outsiders.


    Malignant mutations: You can mutate someone and cause them to experience potent urges to act maliciously. This power doesn''t cause someone to experience urges to behave in any specific malicious way, just more generally cruel and wickedly.


    Nightmare master: This power takes from the domain of dreams and fuses it with the domain of evil. With it you can freely cause mortals to experience nightmares.


    Violent inducement: This power is a synergistic one that utilizes parts of the war domain and the domain of evil. It allows you to manipulate people who feel anger and hate and force them to commit acts of violence. This can lead to war, or murder if done intelligently.]


    And those were only some of the new powers I possessed. The list was an impressive one that brought a smile to my face.

 128 Worlds Away

    One of the reasons why gods as a species were so powerful was that they weren''t burdened by range limits on their abilities. This was something that the young god named Althos was taking advantage of in the wake of his decision to expand the size of his religion.


    Even a god as young as Althos, one less than a month old, could easily create an intergalactic faith. And that was what he was in the process of doing.


    The god may have physically been in the presence of his angelic host, but that wasn''t where he really was. The truth was that at that moment it would have been easier to say where the god wasn''t, than where he was.


    Althos had momentarily hidden in the hearts of every living or undead creature in each of the seven planets that orbited the sun he had visited earlier this week. And he intended to seize those hearts. Now that he had an objective in mind, he was capable of incredibly fast and life-changing movement. Which he demonstrated in a single flex of his newly upgraded healing powers.


    ________________________________________________


    The entire solar system felt the eerie and wonderful healing powers Althos possessed at the same moment. Each target felt a lifechanging amount of life or unlife energy seep into their bones, into their very cells. Their wounds were healed up and closed, their sicknesses were defeated and even amputated limbs regenerated.


    It mattered not if they were living or undead they felt the terrifying and equally wonderful power Althos could easily use, it mysteriously healed them. It touched and altered their souls, burning away pain and discomfort with positively divine ease.


    They weren''t done receiving proof of Althos'' touch. Seconds after the healing power changed their lives or unlives they saw physical proof of the god''s merciful intervention: every organism that was targeted by his power, living and undead alike, was abruptly illuminated in a radiant silver glow. The silvery glow clung to their bodies and gave them a strange, harmless, aura that would persist for hours, though they didn''t know that it would eventually fade away.


    For a single moment, the first moment in which Althos'' power blossomed across the solar system, entire worlds held their breath in confusion. Battles came to a halt. Hope crept into people''s hearts. Lives that had been torn apart by tragic news hours ago were suddenly and impossibly mended.


    Creatures, be they extraplanars, abominations, undead, or mortals, or fey, were confused as to the source of the healing. They didn''t just experience the pleasant obliteration of the pain and aches of life, or unlife, they also received various notifications. They were all simple but annoyingly long things that all contained the same basic structure.


    "Althos has healed you," The notifications would begin, and then they''d proceed to list all of the things that Althos'' powers had cured, fixed, or healed.


    Many creatures who read the notification were surprised at what all Althos had healed. They weren''t sure, but they suspected that whoever this "Althos" was had just healed them of every single condition they were suffering from, and in many cases that included conditions they hadn''t even known were affecting them.


    Creatures across the solar system began to weep and silently thank their mysterious savior. This included people suffering from what had once been thought to be terminal conditions and illnesses, and people who had been left to die from wounds in battle or assassinations. And they weren''t the only people who had been eager to praise the saintly figure who quietly healed the solar system.


    A consequence of healing the entire planet of Torus was that Althos had gained influence over the majority of lifeform-based subdomains. And with those subdomains came powers that instantly awoke animals and plants that received his miraculous healing. That caused the number of sapient beings found throughout the solar system to multiply exponentially as all sorts of lifeforms felt the power of a god who was fast becoming a god of life.


    All manner of lifeforms spontaneously became sapient in the wake of Althos'' merciful touch. And those creatures who received sapience as a result of the gentle hand of their healer immediately became the newest althonians in the solar system. They numbered in the quintillions.


    Undead creatures existed in five of the six planets that had just felt Althos'' touch. And they were not excluded from the god''s potent powers. The ghoulish god of the grave touched and restored them as easily as he touched and restored the living. His power indiscriminately repaired their bodies and their minds, as well as boosted their terrifying powers.


    The undead who had been touched by his powers almost immediately knew they were healed by a god. This was because Althos introduced himself to them as a god, moments after healing them. He sent them the same notification he sent Torunian undead, unedited and unchanged because he quite liked it.


    This caused the second set of new creatures to worship him in the wake of his extraplanetary mischief to be an unimaginably vast horde of the undead, including undead who had been reanimated by necromancers. The hearts and minds of the undead legions of the solar system now belonged to a single entity: the phantasmal god of the grave.


    Their hate infused and strengthened their new god. They didn''t know it, but in his palatial tower Althos shivered as he felt the incredible hatred and loathing the undead felt towards all of the entities they defined as "alive". Their passionate urges to inflict violence on the living seeped into their master, and he had to struggle to resist it, for now.


    ________________________________________________


    The violent misanthropy that plagued the undead wasn''t exclusive to them. Demons, devils, and pain-bringers were some of the creatures that had generally misanthropic hearts, as well as serial killers, and tyrants. And the powerful extraplanars that stealthy hid and worked to cause evil in each of the planets in the solar system were the next group to be contacted by Althos.


    It mattered not how well-hidden the extraplanar in question was. Their type didn''t matter, nor did their goals. Althos reached out across the cosmos, across hundreds of billions of kilometers, and spoke directly to them.


    When they received the notification, they heard it in his voice, a first for the strange god who was undergoing the single biggest explosion of power that he had ever undergone. His powers would only continue to grow over the next few minutes.


    More than that though, the dark god used the newest set of upgrades to his powers that he had received to cause the creatures to experience the pain that would come if they clung to their pride.


    He made them experience a single instant of searing pain brought on by slamming them with invisible holy energy. This infuriated and terrified the demons and devils, but was seen by the pain-bringers as a sign of the divine variety of power Althos could wield, even as it inflicted pain on them. That he could do that at all was a sign of his terrifying power, something they recognized immediately.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Emperor Of Evil


    The time has come to rededicate yourself to evil. And to give yourself to evil''s last emperor: the god of darkness, Althos.


    Althos is a god who was born on the world of Torus. Until today he has kept his influence contained there, but now he seeks to build an interplanetary cult. And he has already succeeded. Undead creatures as well as animals, plants, and other, lesser-lifeforms, have already converted to his worship. Now it is your turn.


    Althos is destined to become the tyrant''s tyrant, a god who rules over an interuniversal empire and he is offering you a chance to serve him. The wisest action would be to serve him. If not, he will punish you and his punishment will be swift and severe.


    He cares not for the finer details of your old mission, or even your old life. He cares only that you submit to him and join him. If you do, he will empower you, give you chances to inflict pain and suffering on the living, and give you a renewed purpose.


    Right now mortals foolishly believe that Althos is a god of their kind, one with their best intentions at heart. He is not. He is a god of deception, darkness, evil, plagues, and pain. Serve him, or be the first of his victims. Worship and praise him. Submit.]


    ________________________________________________


    In my tower I felt an incredible surge of power infuse me. It came in waves and was breathtaking, even for a god.


    The first wave was the one I received from all sorts of animals and plants awakening at once and their first actions being to give their hearts over to me. That brought a simple smile to my face, even if it was the single biggest burst of power I''d receive.


    The second wave I felt infuse my soul was the tidal-wave like amount of simple emotions of the undead inhabitants of nearby planets. Their hatred of the living and their love for me seeped into my soul like a life-altering drug. It made me feel a variety of emotions, emotions I was had to take a deep breath to combat and calm down.


    The third wave was the one that felt the most satisfying. That was the one that was infused with concentrated evil, as opposed to the generalized nihilism and misanthropy of the second, undead-filled, wave. Demons, devils, and pain-bringers all across the solar system pledged their hearts and souls to me, largely out of fear for the power I possessed and my ability to devastate them even if they were worlds away from me. Their decision was an understandable and intelligent one.


    Millions of demons, devils, and pain-bringers abandoned their old masters and quietly began to fearfully "praise" me. I sensed their mental words of fear-tinged "admiration" and "fealty" and I chuckled.


    It felt nice to be feared and to know that some of my newest followers were afraid of my powers, rather than in awe of them. As I thought that, a voice I had only heard a few times spoke into my mind, and judging from its tone it was having fun.


    "A god should inspire a number of emotions in their followers. Not just awe and love, but also fear. It amuses me to no end to know that your first real followers who are afraid of you are devils and demons." Whispered the domain of evil, amused by my newest followers.


    I mulled over its words while I examined the evil powers I had earned as a result of a number of upgrades I had recently received due to the overall amount of worshippers I possessed.


    ________________________________________________


    [Evil domain passive powers:


    Curse: You can now curse someone in ways that affect things other than their stats or are domain or subdomain specific. You can now craft generalized curses and use them against your enemies.


    Corruptive pain: Your power over pain and evil allows you to inflict pain on mortals that can persist perpetually and is only lessened when they behave evilly. This power exists to twist and warp mortals towards evil alignments.


    Demonic evolution: As a synergistic crossover of the domains of evil, life, and chaos, you''ve gained the power to cause lesser-tiered demons to evolve into medium-tiered demons. As an example of this, praereptor demons are lesser-tiered demons and succubi and incubi are medium-tiered demons. You can also cause medium-tiered demons to devolve into lesser demons.


    Demonic rampage: You can cause demons to rampage and inflict harm on anyone or anything close to them, aside from other evil servants of yours by manipulating the domains of war, chaos, and evil.


    This power affects all lesser demons regardless of who they serve and can be used on medium-ranked demons who serve you. As you gain greater influence over evil, corruption, and emotion, chaos, and war, this power increases in potency.


    Devilish infusion: This power is the devilish version of a demonic power you possess with a very similar name. One difference between the two is that devils don''t possess mortals, so instead of opening up victims of this power to possession, you render them more susceptible to being permanently dominated by you, or by a greater devil, such as a blitzkrieg or vizier devil who serves you.


    This power allows you to infuse non-devils with devilish qualities and mutations.


    Devilish menu: As a consequence of gaining a number of devilish servants you now have access to a menu that tracks your order-oriented devilish minions. It lets you keep track of devils who worship you, who serve you, and who are on missions you or another of your servants have assigned them.


    Hate inducement: You can induce feelings of hatred in mortals. This hatred can easily be stoked into violence and discrimination, which ambiently increases the amount of evil in an area over time. This makes an area more appealing to all types of evil outsiders.


    Malignant mutations: You can mutate someone and cause them to experience potent urges to act maliciously. This power doesn''t cause someone to experience urges to behave in any specific malicious way, just more generally cruel and wickedly.


    Nightmare master: This power takes from the domain of dreams and fuses it with the domain of evil. With it you can freely cause mortals to experience nightmares.


    Violent inducement: This power is a synergistic one that utilizes parts of the war domain and the domain of evil. It allows you to manipulate people who feel anger and hate and force them to commit acts of violence. This can lead to war, or murder if done intelligently.]


    And those were only some of the new powers I possessed. The list was an impressive one that brought a smile to my face.

 129 Miraculous Aftermath & Distant Prayers

    The private medical chamber was a small part of a much larger house. It was a perfectly sterilized space, filled with advanced medical technology that left just barely enough room for a small, well-paid medical staff and their lone, extremely rich, patient to get around in.


    The air smelled of sprayable disinfectant and more powerful chemicals used to ensure that the wicked, highly infectious, disease the former president of the advanced nation had contracted did not spread to his staff. The former president himself wasn''t a fan of the smell, but he put up with it, as well as the exorbitant costs of the medical staff. So far they had kept his disease from progressing so, to date at least, it was worth it.


    Currently one of the doctors who a member of the former president''s medical staff was in front of the man who once led the most powerful nation in the world of Mercy. The doctor was an elf, and even among his race, his command of healing magic was first-class. There was a grim look on the elf''s face. He opened a pencil-thin mouth and began to speak.


    "Mr. President... We''ll have no way of knowing if it''s true for about a week. We need to perform a biopsy to know for sure." The elf informed the man. The former president, a half-orc with vivid green skin, sighed and made eye contact with the doctor.


    "Ansel... Can you tell me what you think? Do you think I might actually be cured?" The half-orc asked. There was a tone of something indistinct in the man''s voice. A mixture of emotions, fear, hope, and other slyer emotions. Ansel looked him in the eyes and spoke, speaking as both a doctor and a friend.


    "Mr. President... I am not here to look to witchcraft for answers. Even the witchcraft of a self-proclaimed god. I will not defer to rumors and assertions. I must have answers. I can tell you want to believe, and sir, I don''t blame you, but you employ my clinic because we''re the best. And part of being the best means relying on testing and evidence." The elf said. His words were harsh, but there was a tone of softness in his voice.


    A part of the elf also wanted to believe that the former president was indeed healed. The elf didn''t care for believing in gods or goddesses, but he did indeed care for the former president as both a patient and as a friend. If this god could heal the former president and his advanced illness then the elf hoped that he, that "Althos" had done so. But mere minutes had passed since the announcement flared into the minds of the entire world, and no one in the city of Oakvale knew for sure if it was true this early.


    ________________________________________________


    I was born in a solar system that extended billions of kilometers in every direction. In total there were seven planets in the solar system I lived in. Torus was the fifth furthest planet from the sun, and each planet had an abundance of life.


    In ascending order of distance from the sun the planets in the solar system were Anthem, Salifinos, Mercy, Retribution, Torus, Rhylth, and Haxor. Each of these planets had a peculiar quirk to them.


    Anthem was the first planet in all of existence wherein every single inhabitant became a worshiper of mine. It was made up mostly of elementals, a type of spirit that was composed entirely of one of the four basic elements, and they recognized me as an elemental overlord which caused them to immediately begin to worship me. Elementals were not very intelligent or very independent.


    The few mortals on the planet also began to worship me as a god of mercy and kindness. The undead on the planet also immediately fell under my sway, and they uniformly consisted of basic types of undead such as skeletons, zombies, and ghouls.


    Salifinos was the second planet from the sun. This planet''s quirk was that the ancient war between abominations and mortals never ended here. The planet was divided almost evenly between eldritch abominations and mortals and the two factions were in an open state of warfare. This planet''s abominations had eagerly and subserviently turned to me as a figure of worship, intrigued by my indiscriminate nature. I intended to turn my full attention here soon and aid one side or the other.


    Mercy was a planet with an odd name. FIttingly this planet had no undead lifeforms on it. It was a planet that lacked significant magic. There was magic on Mercy, but it was limited to the world''s elves. This planet possessed a healthy amount of technology, including objects like cars, planes, and things called robots, and this planet was also one of the ones that intrigued me.


    Retribution was a planet that was perpetually close to Mercy. It was a small planet, the smallest planet in the entire solar system. This planet also had the most magic in the entirety of the solar system, and my ability to detect conflicts informed me that the people of Retribution did not like the people of Mercy or their inventions. I stored that bit of trivia away, knowing that I''d have use for it at some point in the future.


    Torus was my home planet. I have spent virtually my entire life here.


    Rhylth was a quiet, desert planet. It was the only planet in the solar system that had less than five ecosystems. It had deserts and oceans and nothing else. This planet was inhabited entirely by giants and by animals.


    Haxor was the largest planet in the solar system. It consisted of two gigantic continents and both were inhabited by evolved animals, creatures like centaurs, driders, and manbats.


    I was receiving billions of prayers and reading them inflated my sense of self-worth. It brought a big grin to my face to hear members of both sides of a war pray to me and beg for my aid or to hear enemies beg for my intervention, to aid them and stop someone else who was praying to me for the exact same thing.


    Hours after I had healed the peoples of the solar system I had received a number of interesting prayers. They were also very different from the prayers of Torunians.


    ________________________________________________


    [Oh alien god of healing, I, Luthor of the Gugs, beg you to turn your otherworldly gaze upon my world, Salifinos, and my people! We are locked in a conflict with this world''s vile mortals, and for decades we''ve been stuck in a stalemate. But your aid... We could win if a god chose and empowered us!


    Your indiscriminate nature has healed us and allowed our soldiers who had been prevented from fighting to rush to the front lines. We have been touched by your kindness and seek to turn your gaze upon us once more. We know not your desires, but if you would tell us them then we would seek to fulfill them and worship you if in exchange you would continue to heal us and tell us of your ways.


    In the days to come we will acquire sacrifices we could use, if such things would please you. We would happily sacrifice our prisoners or even ourselves if doing so would please you or allow you to reach out and touch our world more actively.


    I, Luthor, offer myself as a humble servant and as a meek supplicant. I beg of thee, turn thine eyes upon my unworthy form, and tell me what must be done to be worthy of your aid and your attention.]


    [Great and mighty Althos, the people of Ascendance have felt your touch! I, Moctezuma, have the glorious honor of being the first of my kind to perform the ancient ritual of ''prayer'' to make contact with you. I am an aide to the great emperor Midas, who leads our civilization.


    We are a magically advanced civilization dwelling on the remote world of Retribution. Our historians know a fair deal about the gods of old, but we know that a modern god in this age of godlessness must be... Very different from the gods of old.


    Your act of kindness has led to much curiosity about you from our people. Of all of the planets and peoples who live in this solar system, we suspect that we may know the most about the gods, and according to our records no gods ever performed planet-wide miracles. Yet our thaumaturge-technology has revealed to us that that''s precisely what you did. We actually suspect that the miracle you performed was... wider than that.


    Our people have been awed by your act of goodwill and I suspect that in the days to come many of us will turn to you as our ancestors turned to the ancient gods and give ourselves to you. It is possible that many of us already have.


    Our tiny planet has a magically enriched atmosphere which greatly amplifies the effects of our magic. This is what has allowed us to stay free and independent from other planets, though... It has been a long time since a world attempted to colonize another world, in this solar system at least.


    We have an abundance of resources and would like to welcome you to our world. You would be most welcome in our world if you sought to build a residence or a true faith here. We would eagerly welcome you. There can be fewer honors greater for a mortal, than housing a god, after all.


    If you seek to visit our world and wish to be welcomed in a way that is fitting for your greatness, please let us know ahead of time so that we may prepare. Such an occasion would merit us putting our best foot forward and we would be honored to be able to lay our eyes upon you.]

 130 Salifinos And Adaptions

    I took a second to mull over the contents of the billions of prayers I had received. My mind felt... faster than before, something which made it easier for me to take a second and read over the prayers I had received.


    Physically I hadn''t left my tower and I was currently in it, alone. The angels I had recruited earlier had introduced themselves to me, and I ordered them to settle into homes I had constructed using civilization-domain abilities over an hour ago.


    The chamber I was in was silent and I liked that. I appreciated my island home gaining more settlers, especially living settlers, but I also liked parts of it being mine and thus being empty. This gave me a space to sit in solitude, which I figured was a dramatic sight, but also something that was necessary for gods.


    In the process of spreading my religion across the solar system, I had gained sextillions of worshipers. I didn''t doubt that I had enough followers that I could now focus on gaining the second tier of influence over an assortment of domains and subdomains.


    The problem, and what I was thinking about, was that many of my new worshipers worshiped me as a god of healing and little, if anything, else. This was of course my fault and something I accepted as ultimately logical on the part of my worshipers, but I was more than that.


    What I hoped to gain from pondering how to advance forward were some ideas on how to gain more power. "I suppose what I could do is become a darker god on other worlds... I could easily use the world of Salifinos as a way to gain power over the apocalypse domains, and the other, less friendly domains and subdomains." I told myself, feeling the temptation of using these distant worlds as ways to gain power over the darker domains I had influence over.


    As I thought about that I heard distant cheers in the back of my mind. I could tell some domains were applauding what I was considering doing. I ignored them, aside from huffing quietly in annoyance. That said, it was tempting to tailor my actions to the worlds I was influencing.


    "This way I can become more than a god of healing. Since Salifinos is already at war and has been for eons, I can use that to my advantage. I don''t really like the idea of experimenting freely with my darker powers on Torus, but in Salifinos?" I muttered, beginning to truly consider it.


    I intended to become omniscient and omnipotent. And the way the acquisition of powers had worked to date that would necessitate me performing countless atrocities across the cosmos. At various points in my life, I had thought about this simple fact and inched closer and closer to fully accepting it.


    "If powers are earned and not given, then the only possible way I can gain every power is by becoming a balanced god. For every act of benevolence, an equally cruel act must be performed. And I''ve performed many acts of benevolence..." I whispered, mulling over the strange ways morality and power meshed and clashed for gods.


    This frustrated me, as it meant that focus on any particular morality ultimately punished gods, which didn''t make sense. That said, I didn''t have the power to change that at my current level of strength. So instead, I decided to adapt to the realities I lived in.


    "I suppose I must do my best with the cards I have been given..." I whispered, accepting what I''d have to do to acquire more power. I wondered, for a second, if this was an aspect of my neutrality rearing its head and aiding me so that I could acquire more power. I mulled that over, while beginning to move towards enacting change in the world of Salifinos.


    I idly reached out to the world of Salifinos with my mind and targeted the world''s mortals. As powerful as I had become with regards to every domain and subdomain I possessed influence over, I still had some annoying restrictions on my powers.


    I quietly and remotely manipulated the air, as I now possessed the power to do that remotely, to target about 4 in every ten mortals on the planet. I willed the air itself to forcefully smack these mortals, hard enough to inflict a single point of damage on them. I grinned when I heard the chuckle of the subdomain of pain. That said, I had a greater purpose for doing this.


    The damage was felt by my foes instantly and opened them up to one of my powers: my ability to inflict diseases on distant targets. This was still a restriction I suffered from, and it greatly annoyed me, but now that I had met it I could begin to have some fun.


    ________________________________________________


    Perhaps the best part of gaining powers over diseases before I went on worldwide healing-sprees was that I gained power over every disease I healed. This led to me possessing a formidable arsenal of disease-based weaponry that I could unleash on my foes. And that fact was a fun one, for me at least. I suspected it wouldn''t be for my enemies: the mortals of Salifinos.


    I spent a few moments selecting a range of diseases, most of which weren''t that deadly but would force those who contracted them to be placed on bed rest. As I did so, I considered forcing every mortal to be put on bed rest, but then I realized that I liked the idea of my warriors clashing with the mortals of Salifinos.


    The world presented me with an opportunity to satiate the bloodlust my undead felt, and for me to gain greater powers over the subdomain of necromancy. I figured if I was gonna go full apocalypse, and frankly, I had little reason not to do so, I might as well fully embrace it.


    I inflicted the diseases I had selected on the mortals I had hurt and felt the sicknesses take hold almost immediately. I chuckled as my domain-sense lit up, and as I received notifications alerting me to the millions of mortals now suffering from the sicknesses I had handpicked.


    I reached out across the cosmos with my mind and targeted every abomination on Salifonos. As I did so I prepared a pair of notifications. I spent a few moments working on them to get to really stress how powerful I was, how apocalyptic my powers were, and the darker domains I had power over. If I was going to be seen as evil, I might as well attempt to be seen as evilly as I could be.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Althos has chosen a side


    A war has raged on Salifinos for eons. Althos'' coming represents the beginning of a new phase in that war: its end. And he has decided on the war''s winner.


    Althos has chosen to side with the abominations. He will guide them to victory over their foes. The victory will be absolute and will not be complete until every single mortal on Salifinos is undead and in service to Althos, become Althonian monsters infected with vile spores that twist and corrupt their minds, or are Althonian abominations themselves.


    The war''s end will be swift and will be bloody. Make no mistake Althos turning his gaze to this world is the beginning of an apocalypse and heralds the end of the old age.


    Althos is a god of healing, but he is also a god of nightmares, disease, war, famine, death, undeath, evil, and pain. He intends to bathe this world in cruelty and evil, and he will reward servants of his who enact his vile agenda on Salifinos.]


    [Alert: New rules of engagement


    All over the world, there are abominations being blessed with the necromancer class. Those selected for this honor are to be given positions of honor in their communities. They are some of Althos'' newest direct servants and they are to be the direct leaders of the newest faction to enter the war: Althonian undead.


    Althos is the god of the grave, and many of his servants are undead monsters who hate life. Their master is equally sadistic but often hides that from his living worshipers. The undead who serve the god of the grave wish to enact violence on mortals as much as you do. That said before you use them there are some rules to consider.


    The first rule is that if the undead are used against a community of mortals than they are to kill every mortal in that community. None shall be spared. Use them against communities you seek to utterly annihilate. If an abomination attempts to stop them from enacting their violence on a mortal community, for any reason, then the undead will turn on that abomination. These are your allies, but they serve only the god of the grave. Do not make the mistake of thinking you command them.


    The second rule is that when the undead are used against a community, the dead who are not eaten by the undead will be reanimated as undead monsters themselves. They are not to be eaten by the abominations. That said, Althos provides for his worshipers. No community of abominations shall starve so long as they serve Althos.


    The third rule really only applies when the undead first appear. Portals will appear across the lands controlled by abominations and undead shall step through them. If these undead stop in your communities it is because they have no other mission. Some undead will instead step through the portals that first appear and continue to move. Those undead have missions and will stop at nothing to fulfill them. They will come back in a few hours or days. Do not attempt to distract them.


    Althos is now the commander of all abominations on Salifinos. As such he has specific rules to follow. The first is that his followers must break their prisoners. Your god has the power to transform mortals into abominations, but first they must be driven mad. If you inflict pain on them, and make them lose their minds, then he can bolster your numbers. Cruelty to your foes grants you greater numbers and powers. Remember that.


    The second rule is that to displease Althos will result in community-wide punishments. Althos can inflict famine, and starvation on communities that displease him, as well as pain and disease. And if he is displeased than he will do so. To avoid that, he is bestowing the cleric class to at least one member of each community. This is a class that serves to enforce his will and they will do their best to use the powers he grants them to ensure none of his people displease him. Respect and listen to clerics.


    Worship Althos. Feast on his foes, and bathe in their blood. Praise the god of nightmares, evil, and abominations. He is your eternal king.]


    ________________________________________________


    Darkness was steadily making its way across the territory controlled by the gug tribe that Luthor led. They lived in an open plain, one that was devoid of trees or even much life other than the gugs themselves.


    Althos was swift, and mere moments after the tribe and the other abominations throughout the planet received the pair of notifications he had handcrafted for them, black portals appeared not far outside of the camps, towns, or rarely the cities that the abominations called home throughout the planet. The black portals were enormous, stretching ominously into the sky.


    The terrifying portal that appeared not far from Luthor''s tribe''s camp was still for a few moments, and it was also quiet aside from the gentle, humming sounds of ambient magical energy. It was still just long enough for scouts to appear and prepare themselves for what they suspected it would do. Almost as immediately as it had appeared, it began to spew out nightmarish undead monsters.


    Monsters began to step through the portal, skeletons, ghouls, zombies, as well as creatures that were altogether more frightening. The creatures that stepped out of the portal and into their new home were clearly undead monsters but unlike when Althos launched his nearly mindless horde at the reptilefolk encampment this legion was armed and armored.


    Each corporeal undead that Althos had ordered through the portal near Luthor''s tribe wore light armor and held some sort of weapon. Most held swords made of solidified darkness, but some held spears made of solidified light, or even maces that were little more than clumps of metals attached to wooden shafts.


    Incorporeal undead, terrifying things like shadows, wraiths, and ghosts, flew out of the portal. They screamed, wailed, or just moaned as they did so and filled the area with terrifying noises.


    The undead that stepped through the portal had a range of body types. Some of them were small, and had clearly been dwarves or gnomes in life. Others were medium in size, and had probably come from orcs, humans, or elves. The largest were horrifying things like driders, giants, and even gugs.


    Luthor''s scouts saw this and gasped in shock and awe. They stared at the sight of their alien kinsmen and the undead states the massive beast-like creatures were in.


    The undead, for their role in all of this, ignored the scouts and instead marched silently towards their mission: to destroy a community of mortals, and thus secure the second tier of influence over the necromancy subdomain for their wicked master.


    ________________________________________________


    Luthor himself was squatting over a firepit inside the tribal encampment. His multi-armed limbs were near the blazing fire and he was eagerly soaking in the ambient warmth the fire radiated. The massive monster was the biggest member of the tribe he led, and he was lost in thought.


    The beast-like abomination''s thoughts were centered on his new god. Luthor, as a reward for his humility, had been bestowed with the cleric class and he was currently mentally praising his new master.


    All Luthor wished for was to exterminate the mortals that lived throughout Salifinos, and the massive monster was happy that his divine master felt the same way. The abomination was so overwhelmed by joy that he hadn''t even given much thought to the fact that Althos had initially healed all life on Salifinos, including the monster''s hated foes.


    His fellow tribespeople were equally overjoyed but they were demonstrating that in a different way. The gugs were celebrating their new, cruel master by beating their human prisoners. All around Luthor the sounds of violence could be heard. Pained screams, the sounds of gigantic fists pummeling small bodies, and bestial roars from the gug''s kin, filled the air.


    Luthor, barely aware of the actions of his kin, was in a trance-like state as he communed with his god and profusely thanked Althos for choosing to aid the abominations. Althos was not interested in replying, and instead, what little attention he paid to Salifinos was fully focused on a single task: directing his undead legions across the planet to successfully attack and destroy communities of mortals, especially humanoid ones.


    The god was mentally aware of the actions of his followers, as they surged across the planet and marched towards countless communities on the frontlines of the war.

 131 Dreams And Blessings

    Even as the undead continued to enter the portals that had appeared before them and would lead them to Salifinos they were mentally uttering messages of gratitude. They were well on their way to execute an order of mine: to destroy well over two dozen communities inhabited by mortals.


    The undead legions I had commanded to be the first warriors in the genocidal war I was waging on Salifinos'' mortal population included the warriors who fought in the battle against the reptilefolk encampment, and many, many more undead.


    They were all bloodthirsty, violent creatures who wanted to execute the living for committing an unforgivable sin: living. Among them, only the most powerful and important could reanimate the dead unaided, creatures similar in strength to Nivar.


    As they marched, flew, and crawled to try and be the first to get to bathe in the blood of their enemies, I quietly turned a small portion of my mind to the hyenoid encampment in Puerto Rico. At last, the most important hyenoids had fallen asleep which gave what I needed to begin to enact another of my schemes.


    ________________________________________________


    Darkness wasn''t the only thing spreading out across the plain on which Luthor and his kin lived. So too did a vast, brutally armed legion of the undead. The skies were darkened by the spectral bodies of undead monsters who worshiped a god of death, nightmares, and pain. The plain''s ground was covered in his servants who ineffectually crawled, walked, and shuffled across it, driven by a singular desire: to kill mortals.


    From worlds away, their god focused a fair amount of his divine mind on them. He was aware of their actions, of their urges, and he enjoyed the emotions they felt. Their beliefs and their hate fascinated him, and he found their emotions surprisingly amusing to examine. That said, he was doing his best to let them roam freely and to give them free rein to act, so long as they generally obeyed his orders to hunt down and kill mortals. And they fully intended to do that.


    There was precisely one thing that kept the mortals of the town''s closest to the frontlines of the war alive: the distance that separated them from the undead Althonian hordes. That said, that distance was shrinking more and more every second.


    ________________________________________________


    My tower was hundreds of kilometers away from Puerto Rico. But I could reach out across the cosmos and freely interact with people and objects in other worlds, it was all too easy for me to reach out to my home and the closest thing I had to a birthplace.


    Without any sign of mental or divine strain, I quietly flexed a divine muscle and hurled a part of my mind into the dream of the first of the targets I had for my schemes to acquire the second tier of influence over the corruption subdomain. I proceeded to flex my divine muscles more and hurled more of my mind into other dreams, dreams belonging to hyenoids and humans alike.


    Fomenting conflict was not something I usually did, but I didn''t mind doing it this time. I actually liked the idea of experimenting and discovering if I had a talent for stoking conflict. This would be the first time I was purposefully doing such a thing.


    The fragments of myself that appeared within the dreams I had invaded all entered vastly different dreamscapes. I could see and drive each of my dream-selves at the same time thanks to my expanded powers, and I had no difficulties awakening my dream-selves with merely the mental version of a flick of the wrist.


    One fragment awoke within a dreamscape that was of a vast forest. Another appeared within a rustic house. The other two woke up in a hyenoid camp, and in the Silver Xana. All four of the dream-selves I had generated had goals in their "minds": appeal to the mortal, manipulable emotions mortals felt and use those emotions to start conflicts.


    The "true" me, my physical body, smiled as the dream-selves I had created begin to move through the dream-worlds imagined by the people whose minds I had invaded. My dream-selves took on distinct forms and began to investigate the personalized dreamworlds of my victims.


    ________________________________________________


    Nivar was silent as her mount dashed towards a town just barely becoming visible in the darkness. The disgusting, wormy mass that only superficially resembled a gigantic humanoid, stared straight ahead. She had no eyes, as every bit of her humanoid corpse had been devoured by her master''s chosen mound of worms, but she was clearly facing the distant community she was approaching.


    The worm that walked was standing on top of a strange, slack-jawed, and quadrupedal zombie giant. The zombie giant was mindlessly dashing towards the town and was one of the fastest creatures in the particular horde she had been assigned too. Nivar would have sighed if she could, but that sound was too complex for her to make, given what passed for her throat.


    The creature was composed entirely of filthy worms. A countless number of filthy, wallowing worms were magically and psychically fused together and driven by the incredibly powerful will Nivar possessed.


    Nivar herself was a grave-giant who had initially been reanimated by Althos and then deanimated so that he could experiment with a magical corpse. Althos allowed worms to devour her deanimated corpse and then aided her in handcrafting a disgusting new form, made of those same worms.


    At first, her new form had been a thing she had hated. But days had passed since she gained her new form, days which she had to mull it over and to accustom herself to her new body. And now she was indifferent to her new form. She quietly assumed that it pleased her master, and for her, for now, that was enough. That said what she was about to do was pleasing to her.


    The giant was silent because she was focused on the sight in front of her. She could see a thick, wooden, wall that outlined and protected a small town off in the distance. She smiled and mentally thanked her dark lord for the chance to be one of the undead warriors who got to be violent in today''s brutal activities.


    She raised a single hand made of worms and pointed a single finger, in so far as she possessed a finger, and took aim. The giant was silent as she channeled the magical energy she possessed.


    Gathering magical energy, when done by non-deific beings, was a laborious and concentration-intensive activity that took serious effort. Even for a purely magical being like Nivar it wasn''t easily done. The grave giant was utterly still for several seconds, aside from the disgusting movement of the worms that made up her form before she had successfully gathered the energy she needed for what she had in mind.


    When she had the needed amount, she began to grin. Or at least she tried to grin. A mortal would not have been able to tell. As soon as the energy she needed was concentrated and at her disposal, she took a moment to shape the necromantic lance that was about to fly out of her finger. It only took a second, as this was perhaps the easiest part of magic usage aside from the release of the magic.


    When the energy was primed within her, and shaped to her satisfaction, she merely unleashed it. A thick lance of magical energy shot out of her fingertip and rocketed towards the wall that outlined the town she and her allies were intent on destroying. The lance was the color of midnight, was several meters long, and amazingly enough, it managed to be even thicker than it was long.


    Nivar watched, curious to see what would happen when her attack collided with the walls protecting the mortal community. It took the lance several seconds of sailing through the air before it finally collided with the wall. When it did the strange, magical attack ripped into the thick wooden posts that comprised the barrier and torn a sizable hole in the wall. The spell continued past the wall and sailed into the town itself before finally slamming into a small home and ceasing to exist.


    The grave giant felt ecstatic as she realized just how powerful the first of the magical powers she now possessed was. She hadn''t had the chance to use this when battling at the encampment, but now that she had seen it with her own eyes she was quick to begin to ready another lance.


    It was while she was preparing another evocation-based magical attack that her master began to move. The distant god was not burdened or bothered by mortal constraints like distance. His divine powers could stretch across the universe if he wanted it too. And in this instance, all it had to do was reach partway across the solar system and reward one of his servants.


    Nivar smiled as she felt her master''s approval seep into her and as she read the notification she just received. It filled her with pride and made her feel that what she was doing was something her master approved of.


    [Alert:


    You have received a dual blessing, bestowed upon you by the god of the grave. The god has been pleased by the power you''ve displayed and seeks to aid you. He has magically and evocatively blessed you.


    Your next there low-level magical spells, such as your dark spear attack, will cost you no magical energy. In addition to that, your evocation magic will be cheaper even beyond the next three spells you cast, and the spells will be stronger. If you continue to please Althos, he may bless you even more.]


    Nivar grinned sadistically, a terrifying sight made all the more frightening by the fact that her mouth was literally made of wriggling worms, when she was done reading the notification. She felt power and magical energy surging back into herself and did what she could to prepare for the wicked power that would be exploding out of her fingertips soon.


    "Thank you... Master." She whispered as she took careful aim with her other hand. Behind her the undead army that was roving towards the settlement inhabited by living mortals cheered in sadistic joy as they began to be able to see the settlement. The distant sight of the town invigorated the undead horde and they dashed with renewed enthusiasm towards the living community.

 132 Undead Unleashed

    Nivar stood atop her bizarre pet, a zombified giant. The giant was a primitive-looking thing, dressed in the furs of some massive animal, and with a dazed look on its passive face. Both of its tree-truck-like arms and legs were on the ground and even on all fours it stood several meters tall.


    Unlike her pet, Nivar was not merely a mobile corpse. Nivar was a fully intelligent, almost autonomous undead being. And she had thoughts of her own. Presently all of her thoughts were fixated on the thick wooden wall that stood between her and her master''s objectives: the extermination of a community of living mortals.


    Nivar''s hands were at her side. She had lowered them after receiving her blessing. After a few moments of quiet contemplation, the young grave giant rose them and did her own verminous version of a smile. But there was no magical energy gathered in her hands. She had a different idea in mind for how to finish the destruction she had begun. One that''d allow her to save her supped up spells for when she''d need them.


    She stretched a single finger at the wall and spoke. "Destroy." She muttered, her voice soft and causing her to experience pangs of discomfort. Fortunately for her, she was as loud as she needed to be. The giant she was mounted on top of started forward with a halting gait, before finally beginning to sprint at the wall.


    ________________________________________________


    There was a smile on my face when Nivar uttered that single word. It showed me something admirable about her: she knew she didn''t need to do everything alone. There was a point in my life, days ago, when I felt that I couldn''t rely on others. It was a feeling I never voiced, but one I felt all the same. I know better than that now. And I was happy that my worshipers were already so wise.


    Parts of my mind were elsewhere, beyond my physical form, but the part of me that remained within my body was delighted at the events on Salifinos. Nivar and her pet were currently the undead servants of mine that were closest to mortal life on Salifinos and Nivar was showing me a little bit of leadership potential.


    Depending on how she did here a part of me was open to making her a real leader within my horde. I could use leaders within that messy mass of undead might and it''d be nice if Nivar, one of the original undead I rose up before I had a horde, was one of them.


    My dream-selves were making progress. They steadily explored the dreams they had infiltrated and were corrupting things. None of them had yet encountered the dream-forms of the people whose minds they had invaded, but I wasn''t in a rush. I knew they just needed time.


    ________________________________________________


    I watched as Nivar''s pet swung its mighty arms at the wall that obstructed it. The beast panted as a result of the physical exertions it was being forced to do, to complete the command it had been given.


    The giant was an eerie thing. It was far taller than Nivar herself, even when crouching on all fours, and had larger muscles than any other living creature I had seen aside from a dragon. It swung its limbs in an uncoordinated manner, merely bashing them against the walls that ringed the boundaries of the town the monsters were attacking, but it was strong enough to be effective anyway.


    Each time one of its limbs bashed into the wall, or the oaf hurled its body against the wood that stood between it and slaughter, the barrier budged a bit more. Each strike brought the horde closer and closer to the living mortals they sought to devour, but only produced a noise comparable to a dull thud, and not the explosive roar that such an attack should have produced. I watched the giant strike the wall three times, before I sighed and had had enough of its limited strength.


    I reached out with my mind, and spoke directly to Nivar.


    ________________________________________________


    "Your pet looks like he could use... A boost." I told my servant, deciding to hint at what I was about to do. I felt her excitement, as an echo of it radiated out of her and into me.


    "Master... Are you enjoying yourself?" She asked me, her mental voice much clearer than her physical one. I heard no signs of pain in it, only the excitement of a subordinate who had been seeking their superior''s approval. I chuckled.


    "I am. But your pet seems to be struggling." I told her, speaking cryptically. She couldn''t see me, but I was smiling.


    "Oh? Is he?" She asked, beginning to sound a little bit concerned, but I merely rose a metaphorical hand, and began to bless the massive beast. I was bestowing it with a temporary blessing, one that increased its strength.


    "He is. But he won''t be for long." I told the grave-giant turned worm-that-walks. I sensed a bit of confusion radiated off of her, but it only lasted the time that it took her mount to hurl another powerful strike against the wall. This time there wasn''t a dull thud when it tried to bash the wall in.


    The beast''s attack was a powerful one that made use of its thick body. My blessing was fast-acting and even seconds after I blessed the thing the difference in power was immediately noticeable. The wall was visibly forced back, but the craftsmanship of the thing was commendable and the wall refused to collapse. Nivar was encouraged by this though and cheered her pet on. She radiated genuine joy, and I chuckled at the positive outburst.


    "One more attack." I muttered, inaudibly. The beast Nivar was riding reared up and proceeded to throw a single, powerful punch at the wall.


    The beast''s meaty fist collided with the already damaged barrier and proceeded to not only smash through the wall, busting the area the fist collided with into splinters, but continued onwards until lazily coming to a stop a few seconds after smashing the wall to bits.

 133 Worms

    The zombified giant was the first creature to step past where the walls had once been. It did so with happiness, and I momentarily wondered if I should awaken the thing. I knew that that would increase its potential and turn the monster into a real beast, but I knew that such an activity would force Nivar to try and control it, which might not work.


    I mulled it over, and after a second or two of internal debating decided to hold off on awakening the giant. For now. Right now was Nivar''s chance to shine. I wanted to see if she could.


    The area the pair had just reached were the town''s outskirts. In front of the pair stood a number of small houses, houses I knew contained life. But here''s the thing: the noise of the wall falling had alerted the town''s guards, a small number of men who were on their way to see what had caused the collapse of the wall. Nivar had a few moments to decide how to proceed.


    I knew that the grave giant instinctually knew that her enemies were approaching. It was both logical to assume that, and also something that should have been within the realm of possibility as a sensory thing for a worm that walks, the particular type of undead that Nivar was.


    Nivar spent a moment or two being as still as a worm that walks could be. There was no movement from her actual form, though the tiny swarm that made up her body was constantly in motion. But then she tilted her head and turned to face the nearest, tiny hovel in front of her. And with a grim smirk she pointed at it. This time she didn''t even need to speak. Her pet lumbered forward, ready for more destruction.


    Not far behind her there were more undead. It wouldn''t take them long to get to her, and she was confident. She didn''t doubt that she could hold off any guards who might actually reach her before her allies backed her up. So she opted to begin to fulfill her objectives. It was a wise choice.


    "So she''s mission-oriented huh? A real ''get the job done'' type of creature..." I muttered, grinning wryly.


    ________________________________________________


    The giant''s pet closed in on the house in a few steps, and swung one of its arms at the tiny building. The house was a simple building, a tiny square made of wood with just enough for two rooms, an all-purpose room, and a bedroom. It was occupied by a single, sleeping person.


    The giant was still blessed by me, and I watched, satisfied, as the monster''s untrained arm crashed into one of the walls of the house and smashed through it. The noise this produced was incredible and inflicted lasting harm on the house. Nivar''s excitement spiked, and the truth was, so did mine.


    The wooden house''s wall broke apart against the overwhelming power of the giant''s fist. It stood no chance against the beast, and the zombie swiftly retracted its fist, all while inadvertently doing more damage to the house. The loud noise had awoken the mortal within the house, who was a single, human, woman. The woman leaped out of her bed, and opened the door that separated her from the destroyed wall and the rest of her home.


    I "heard" her gasp, thanks to my sensory powers and the proximity of my worshipers to her. And I heard the harsh laughter Nivar emitted when the grave giant heard her too. Nivar rose a single hand and pointed it at the house''s door. The giant somehow understood her intentions and aimed its other hand at the door.


    A single violent thrust of the beast''s limb was all it took for the massive monster to blow through the door. The monster''s limb was a blur of movement and the thing slammed through the object that protected the house''s inhabitant, prompting her to scream in terror. And that was a mistake.


    The fear-filled sound was heard by Nivar and Nivar''s pet. It was a fascinating sound that clearly communicated the horror she felt as a massive limb broke apart her house. I liked the way it sounded, and I recognized the... eerieness of that. But the problem wasn''t that I heard it, the problem was that Nivar and her pet heard it.


    Nivar was radiating bloodlust. I sensed it wafting off of her, and wondered how long it''d take her to act on it. She was perfectly still, and I had a theory that she was actually a bit overwhelmed by the emotions she was feeling at this moment. Her pet, a much simpler creature, was not.


    The giant''s thick hand was momentarily still just inside of the house. The woman who lived in it could see that it was still, and even in her dark, unlit house, she could see the pallid skin tone of the hand. It made the hand''s appearance stand out against the dark, and also filled her with fear.


    She was overwhelmed by fear and paralyzed because of it, as she frantically studied the hand. The hand abruptly shot forward, easily crossing the distance that separated the woman from the monster and grabbing her.


    The hand was larger than she was, and also easily strong enough to wrap around her and drag her out of the house. It was only when she began to be dragged closer to the undead monsters that I had ordered to exterminate her village that she began to scream again.


    Nivar would finally come to her senses right as other undead crossed the threshold into the town behind her. It was the sounds of their footfalls, the creaks and groans of their bones, and the occasional sounds they made that allowed her to snap back to reality. She hopped off of her pet to move closer to the woman it had captured.


    The grave-giant looked down at the woman and studied her. She had an olive skin tone and was wearing a light outfit meant for sleep. The woman gasped when she first laid eyes on Nivar. She was utterly petrified, especially of Nivar.


    I knew enough about mortals to know that her reaction was a reasonable one. It made sense for her to be afraid of a mass of writhing worms in the loose shape of a massive creature.


    Nivar towered above the woman, standing entire meters taller than her. The woman was a human, after all, she stood a measly meter and a half tall. There was a hopelessness to her, almost auric in nature, but a part of me wondered if that was new or if it had always been there.


    Nivar studied her for a few moments, even as other undead surged into the community and began to break into houses. The next screams to fill the night were heard, and they were close. After a few moments, Nivar had had enough and moved with a swiftness that belied the large nature of her form.


    One of Nivar''s hands shot out and grabbed the woman''s chin. She applied a bit of force to forcibly open the woman''s mouth. The woman feebly resisted, but even with adrenaline aiding her was no match for her opponent. Nivar''s other hand shot forward but didn''t stop at the woman''s open mouth. It entered it. Her prisoner''s eyes shot open, even more fear filling them as she realized what was going on.


    Nivar was silent but was enjoying this. Her hand that was inside of the woman''s mouth was purposefully made up of the filthiest worms that comprised her form. Nivar let go out of the woman''s face, and reflexively the woman closed her mouth. She was able to bite partway through the giant''s hand, an impressive feat all things considered. Sadly, that was what Nivar wanted.


    The limb the human damaged was made up of living worms. Worms she had just freed from their partially psychic and partially magical prison, a prison that made them controllable by Nivar. Those freed worms showed their gratitude by writhing around the woman''s mouth and a few, the ones furthest in, even tried to go into her throat. This caused her to begin choking. I had watched this whole gruesome display and quietly healed Nivar.


    The giantess sighed in delight, almost purring at the sensations of worms spawning spontaneously within her and crawling over to her damaged hand, to remake it and heal her. Nivar watched as the woman she had attacked collapsed into a choking heap, her face turning red, even as the worms inside of her tried to explore their new home. I quietly sent her a new message. It was simple.


    "Kill." I commanded her, having enjoyed the brutality of what I had just witnessed. The woman was still alive, and in considerable pain. Nivar turned to her pet, and relayed my order. The giant''s response was simple. It closed its hand, lifted it above the woman, and then brought it crashing down on top of her. There was a sickening crunch as the giant''s fist crushed the woman, but it was at least a swift end.


    Nivar seemed to melt into a swarm of worms, worms which crawled onto and then on top of her pet. It was when they were all squarely assembled on the giant''s back that they got back together and formed the strange vaguely humanoid mass that was more properly recognizable as Nivar. The process took about fifteen seconds, as the worms were supernaturally fast and collaborative.


    Another scream filled the air, and the first airborne undead, monsters like shadows and wraiths, began to descend on the town. The carnage was about to begin in full.

 134 The End Of Resistance

    After watching Nivar order the execution of the woman she had begun to suffocate, a smile appeared on my lips. It was a reminder that despite how rarely I used the undead, they were chillingly effective weapons and tools I should make more direct use of.


    Once the woman was dead and pounded into the ground, and Nivar was back atop her pet the two began to move again. But now they weren''t the only agents of mine that were inside of the town. There were, in fact, more of my servants than inhabitants of the town within the town at this point.


    I quickly shifted my mental vision, scanning the area for other servants. Of the corporeal servants at my command in the area, I was consciously made aware of the fact that this particular army was fairly even in its ranks. There were equal numbers of zombies and skeletons, which were the most populous of my servants in the town, and then a much smaller number of other corporeal undead.


    Wrights, mummies, vampires, and creatures like hungry hands were some of the other bodily undead servants who were merely hunting down and butchering the living. And I could tell that they were quite effective at it. Thanks to and through them I could hear the screams of the living. And it was a fun sound to be able to hear.


    I quickly scanned the whole town and found that already many living people had been killed. That warmed my heart to know, since I was attempting to embrace my role as a god of calamity, eldritch horrors, and death, on Salifinos if nowhere else.


    The truth was, that the delight my servants felt as they were bathed in the blood of the living was affecting me too. I felt an echo of it, and since so many undead were on Salifinos, exterminating living mortals, even an echo of their emotions was significant.


    ________________________________________________


    Another servant of mine who was in the town and contributing to its destruction was a dark elven vampire. This servant hadn''t particularly distinguished himself during the battle in the reptilefolk encampment, but currently he was rushing headfirst to confront the town''s guards.


    The town''s guards were a handful of human men who wore light armor, held simple shields, and had shortswords in their other hands. They were a gruff group of men who had spent years training and defending their community, and they boldly dashed at the undead, corporeal and incorporeal alike, who had invaded their town. They were afraid, but there was something admirable in their ability to overcome their fear enough for them to rush headlong into battle.


    I didn''t know if they knew much about the undead. There weren''t many necromancers on Salifinos, and most of them were eldritch abominations, which meant many mortals most likely either never saw the undead or only saw them shortly before their lives ended. So in the eyes of the town''s guard, even guards on the frontier and frontlines of the war, odds are the monsters that there were attacking them and their friends was a never before seen class of terrifying monster.


    I watched, grinning sadistically as my vampiric minion''s dashing enabled him to close the distance that separated him from the guards. He was equally happy and reached out with his claw-tipped hands. The guard closest to him attempted to stab into him with his sword, the weapon giving him a slight reach advantage, but the vampire was too fast and narrowly dodged the weapon all while moving close to the guard and using his claw-tipped fingers to slice through the guard''s light armor. The blow was quick and light, but it also successfully damaged the guard''s armor.


    "Heh. You''re doomed." The vampire muttered, in the language of his people. The human didn''t understand it, and growled in anger in response. Instinctively the human man could tell he was being taunted and his pride didn''t let him take that and stay silent in the face of it.


    He pulled back his blade and was attempting to ready another blow when the vampire surprised him by leaping at the militia-man. The guard was too close to be able to dodge the unusual technique and was instead hit, full-force by the vampire''s muscled form. The vampire proceeded to force the guard to the ground, causing the man to land flat on his back.


    "I am so... damn... thirsty." The vampire growled, a sadistic smile on his lips as he did so. He knelt on top of the guard and his scarlet eyes flashed with hunger. Each time he spoke his teeth were revealed, including elongated canines that were common to the kind of undead monsters he happened to be.


    As soon as he was done speaking he hurled his mouth at the guard''s exposed neck and began to bite the guard''s soft neck. His fangs immediately penetrated the flesh of the guard, and the man began to wail in pain. The guard would only suffer for a few moments, but while he was suffering he was enduring excruciating pain as his most precious bodily fluid was stolen from him.


    The guard wasn''t alone, but the other guards couldn''t reach him. Even though they were close, other undead monsters were backing the vampire. Skeletons and zombies, as well as wraiths, had closed in on the battle and began to engage the other guards who normally would have prioritized rescuing their friend.


    Not that it would have mattered, the guard was dead, fully drained by the vampire in a matter of seconds. The vampire''s personal vice was gluttony and it powered his ability to drain life from the living in a speedy manner. The guard was fully deceased rather quickly, but that wasn''t even the end of the guard''s existence. Vampires didn''t just kill their victims.


    The guard''s corpse began to moan, and his eyes began to vibrate. His moan had an unnervingly erotic component to it and was definitely the sound of a man having a pleasurable experience, and not a corpse becoming something far more terrible than just a dead body.


    Not far from them, a skeleton and a guard exchanged blows. The guard was quickly learning that trying to stab a skeleton, who lacked both flesh and blood, wasn''t a great tactic even when his blade actually connected with one of the monster''s bones. Meanwhile, the skeleton''s axe was a fantastic weapon against the living guard.


    In other parts of the town the violence was far more one-sided. The town had little over one hundred people. It was amazing that it had twelve guards, or that it had had twelve guards and now had eleven. That number wouldn''t be that high for long.


    I pulled myself away from an up-close observation of the battle and instead took on a bird''s eye view of the conflict. In doing so I saw the dozens of incorporeal, flying spirits that surrounded the town. I learned, over the course of a few minutes of watching them that they were vulture-like in attitude and swooped down on any mortals who attempted to flee the town.


    Wraiths and ghosts hurled themselves at any children who managed to escape from their homes unaided, and that number was surprisingly small. Only five children lived in the town, an impossibly small number even given the town''s small size.


    It was this realization that made me stand up and teleport myself to this town. In an instant, I went from standing in my tower to standing at the edge of the town, where Nivar and her pet had wreaked havoc, minutes ago.


    Elsewhere my servants were causing mayhem, but this far from the battle only the slowest undead were still active. I could see them in the distance, entering houses and exploring them.


    ________________________________________________


    This town was already largely wrecked. The air smelled of death and of blood and was filled with screams, wails, and the sound of distant battle. Houses that I could see were visibly damaged, most not quite as much as the house Nivar had attacked, but many had broken windows, shattered doors, and bloodied walls. Thanks to my vision I could see both distant battles and also countless bodies.


    "I suppose I should explore..." I said, curious to see if I could figure out why this town had so few children. My theory was that the mortals here tried to send their children away since this town was situated on the frontlines of a savage war. This theory was one I believed was possible since this particular town lacked a sizable defense, and relied on militiamen who were being easily wiped out by my servants. That said, I wanted to find out for sure if I could.


    I took my first few steps onto this new world and would spend the next few minutes exploring the town''s outskirts. It was during this time that my horde would advance into the town and proceeded to successfully exterminate the town''s populace. Each death brought a macabre smile to my face, and the final death brought the biggest smile. It marked the completion of the quest to acquire the second tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy.

 135 Subdomain On Display

    "What is power worth, to me?" I asked myself as I mulled over the successes of my decision to become a god of evil, at least in Salifinos. It was difficult for me to say it was little when I considered how easily my forces were overwhelming my enemies and the power I had just gained.


    I felt the power of the second tier of influence over necromancy coursing through me. It felt... good. And I also felt, more keenly than ever, the hatred my undead minions possessed towards the living. I could feel it within me, thanks to my connection with my undead minions increasing in potency. Their hatred was now a dull roar I felt in the back of my mind.


    I felt it all. The nearly mindless hate most undead felt towards the living. The distinct, dehydrated thirst vampires felt towards blood and blood alone. The envy shadows felt towards the living. The incredible wrath felt by wraiths and wrights. And the other, universally sinful emotions felt by the undead who worshiped me.


    "This feels... good." I muttered as I felt the darkness of their emotions, mixed with the sheer weight of the hatred they felt, attempt to infiltrate my heart. I sighed and disregarded it, effortlessly pushing it away from me and rejecting it.


    "That said... I''m not gonna be evil everywhere. So I can''t accept this darkness. It''d interfere with me becoming a god of goodness, life, and healing." I reminded myself, pushing away the worst of the emotions.


    I sighed and began to read the notification that awarded me the second tier of influence over the necromancy subdomain.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Your undead hordes have begun to near-mindlessly exterminate mortal settlements across the war-torn planet of Salifinos. Several communities with populations over 5,000 have been exterminated already and many more are in the process of being destroyed. Congratulations on acquiring the second tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy.


    These are the key powers you''ve gained. But there are other, synergistic ones as well.


    New necromancy passive powers:


    Reanimation mastery: The second tier of influence over the subdomain of necromancy brings with it total control over reanimation. This potent power grants gods with it the ability to bring corpses to unlife remotely, freely, and also deanimate corporeal undead


    This power allows you to raise armies of the simplest undead at will, provided corpses exist to reanimate. It also allows you to destroy armies of the simplest undead as well. You can also take existing corporeal undead and snatch away any control someone else may have over them and instead make them your servants.


    Intermediate undead mastery: Liches, death-kings, and other intermediate-tier undead such as grim-reapers, and flesh titans, will now begin to worship you just as lesser undead do. They can no longer resist your influence. This includes the weakest of the extraplanars who are undead. You can also create them from appropriate corpses and conditions.


    Necromantic lord: This is perhaps the strongest power you''ve acquired as a result of gaining this tier of influence. With this, if someone is a mortal necromancer you can completely strip them of their abilities to use necromantic magic. You cannot yet do this to undead beings who are necromancers, but with this power you can not only give power to mortals, you can take it away.


    New necromancy active powers:


    Deadly gaze: Synergistic, once a day power that allows you to kill with a glance.


    Conversion: This power allows you to instantly turn a living person who worships you into an undead creature of your choice.]


    ________________________________________________


    The eerie power that coursed through me was the power of the unholy subdomain of necromancy. It was a strange, corrosive power and feeling it within me made me want to cause more carnage and misery. That said I pushed those feelings down, and closed my eyes.


    The not-so-minimap filled my view and brought a macabre smile to my face. I could see all of the relatively nearby communities, communities that were filled with death, destruction, and the nightmarish undead monsters who served me.


    Corpses abounded in these towns, corpses that were just waiting to be brought back to unholy unlife. I could feel them, and the idea that they should just sit where they died and rot felt... disgusting. It felt almost offensive.


    I kept my eyes closed and focused on each body I could find. In doing so I was targeting them. I kept them firmly locked in my mind and then envisioned the necromantic power that infused me seeping out of my skin and into the ground at my feet.


    I envisioned that very same energy crawling out of my skin and beginning the long path it would have to take to reach the bodies near me and not so near me. I imagined the energy traveling, in some cases for dozens of kilometers, and eventually reaching each body. And then I mentally willed the bodies to reanimate.


    I pictured the bodies beginning to move again. Slowly at first, as if reacclimating to the land of the living. I imagined that limbs regrew and even heads themselves were remade.


    I pictured nearly wholly destroyed bodies, being regrown from single limbs, or even lone digits. And I made my will manifest. Or rather, I tried.


    It turned out that remaking bodies wasn''t an easy thing to do. I had powers that aided in this, and one that should have made this process automatic that was evidently... not working, but the less of the body that remained, the harder this was to do. Even with my powers over necromancy and healing, this strained and stressed my mind if I was trying to do it en-masse.


    My undead creations were hungry, gluttonous little things. They had devoured people nearly entirely whenever they could. If I wanted to recreate as many corpses as possible to add to my legions, I needed to be creative and forward-thinking.


    And it just so turned out the thought of creating bodies, reminded me of a power of mine. A life-domain ability that I fully suspected wasn''t intended to work the way I was about to use it.


    I possessed the power to create bodies. It was one of my newer abilities. And incidentally, one of the species that I could create them for were humans. The people of the towns my forces had overwhelmed were entirely human.


    The first non-necromantic power I used was my power to create bodies. But I mixed it with my powers over healing and targeted the singular limbs and digits that my undead servants had overlooked or left behind after a full and satisfying meal.


    I smiled grimly as my powers washed over the faintest bodily remains of countless thousand humans. I could somehow sense their limbs begin to radiate a distinct silvery glow as they began to serve as the focus around which entire bodies appeared throughout the fallen villages. This was a challenge, as it involved a lot of careful manipulations I wasn''t used to doing. Like training an unfamiliar muscle.


    "Come on... Help out..." I muttered, as the act of doing so many things at once strained even my mind. I was talking to the domain of time, another domain whose influence I sensed could help.


    "It might be easier if you just help me out. Locally... rewind time or something!" I grumbled, asking for some aid from a greater domain. I heard an almost robotic chuckle in the back of my mind. After hearing that I could have sworn it began to be a bit easier for me to do this. But it''s well within the realm of possibility that I was inadvertently wanting something to be true rather than actually seeing a pattern.


    Eventually though, I began to feel it. I began to feel myself inch towards success.


    "That''s it..." I muttered, smiling as I spoke. The smile on my face would have likely unsettled anyone who saw it, had they been members of the living. My only company at the moment were the undead.


    All over the fallen villages, bodies sprang into being. They were not alive, instead they were the exact corpses of the fallen. It took several minutes, as even for a god this was an unusual act, but when it began to happen I cheered internally. As it happened, I heard an annoyed sigh.


    "Oh come on! Did you manage to do it, successfully, even without my help? Darn it!" A voice grumbled in my mind.


    "I can''t believe you succeeded! And after I even turned off the power that let you use singular scraps of flesh and bone to make bodies whole..." Complained the subdomain of necromancy. It sounded annoyed. I chuckled at its expense. That did explain why doing this felt harder than when I had done it in the past. I had done this before, and it shouldn''t have felt like this much effort.


    "You''re only encouraging me to diversify the powers and domains I make use of." I told the annoyed subdomain. I didn''t even know why it was annoyed in the first place. Pragmatically what I had just done should have made it overjoyed, I had slaughtered the living and was hells-bent on reanimating them to serve me.


    "Why are you even annoyed?" I asked the subdomain. I heard a surprisingly cat-like hiss in my head as a response and it was followed by silence. It took the subdomain nearly a full two minutes to formulate an answer.


    "Because so far you''ve only used undead creatures in relation to life! You fought living slavers with the undead, and now you''re fighting mortals as an evil god, which is an improvement, but you''ve put them in the hands of abominations!" The subdomain told me, which made a certain kind of sense. That said, I still sighed in response.


    "I want you to use undead to create more undead! Not to help the living jockey for power!" The subdomain snapped. I could feel its irritation growing.


    "If you just used me... You could build cults that don''t need food, or to breathe... They could worship you for all eternity as their creator and lord. And yet you restrain them. And use them solely in relation to the living." The subdomain told me. There was a sudden tonal shift that caught me off guard.


    "You have undead worshipers. You care for and perform miracles for the living, but what about the undead? Do they not deserve a god worth worshipping?" The subdomain asked, rather pointedly.


    I mulled over this for a few moments. It was a revealing statement. The subdomain of necromancy wasn''t as interested in universal unlife as I thought, or at least it was more interested in multiple things and not purely an entity of unmaking. That said, this remark wasn''t entirely fair.


    "I understand your perspective, but I don''t feel that you''re being entirely fair here. I have awoken once nearly mindless undead. I have fulfilled your quests. I have made undead out of creatures I''ve killed, and also reanimated corpses that were long dead. Your anger isn''t fair. At least not fully." I told the subdomain, defending myself and pointing out that at least some of what it felt wasn''t accurate.


    "I am pursuing power. I am finally inching towards building faiths around myself. And that''s an admittedly imperfect process so far, but I am still doing it. It takes time! What makes you think I don''t care about the undead?" I asked, curious and also still shocked by the fact that a subdomain apparently just shut off access to a power of mine. I hadn''t known they could do that.


    "You don''t destroy for destruction''s sake! You don''t kill to create more undead. You do it for reasons. Real ones!" The subdomain told me, shocking me with the absurdity of its response. I was mulling over that response when my thoughts were interrupted by the intrusion of another voice.


    "Althos, you''re overthinking this. The necromancy subdomain is a chaotic one. Its reasoning is... poor, at best. It is a creature of raw power and destruction. It seeks to overwhelm universes and commit omnicide for the sake of filling entire universes with undead monsters. Don''t try to apply logic to it." Muttered the voice. It was a voice I was familiar with, as it belonged to the domain of knowledge.


    Listening to that helped center my thoughts, but it didn''t make me feel better. I groaned in annoyance.


    "Since you managed to succeed... I suppose I''ll turn your power back on. But the next quest I devise is going to be far grander in scale!" The necromantic subdomain told me, founding more like an angry child than an embodiment of an entire school of magic. There was something mildly amusing about that though.


    That was when I received an interesting notification. One that took a second to truly catch my eye. It was a prayer, from a figure with a familiar name.


    ________________________________________________


    [Lord Althos... I come to you in search of a purpose. In search of a destiny. I am approaching you, on my hands and knees, metaphorically speaking, because I seek... I seek a master.


    My name is Ava and I am a ''freed'' slave from the city of Aronms. When you commanded the Ardor family to liberate their slaves, I was one of the ones who resisted. But I and others like me were defeated. And the Ardors refused to let us stay with them. We suspect they feared to anger you.


    I have spent these last few days in search of a purpose. In search of a master to serve. And, because of your emphasis on personal freedoms, those I''ve approached have rejected me. So now, I''m plainly approaching you.


    I am freely choosing to approach you and ask for a purpose. I know not the intricate ways of prayer, or even how to ask for a master, but that''s ultimately what I seek. Would you please allow me to serve you?


    If so, please tell me how I am to serve. I care not what role you put me in, solely that you decide my destiny. Which in a way you did. I am now asking you to reconsider in my case, and to consider how to give purpose to the others like me, who didn''t want to be freed.


    Do we not have the freedom to decide to serve, of our own volition? If we do, just know this: I decide to serve you. I only seek direction in how you''d like me to do that.]


    ________________________________________________


    "Ava? Aoife''s sister... How intriguing." I muttered, a sadistic smile on my face as a mortal asked me to "decide her destiny".


    I of course knew of her already. I knew that she and a few others had wanted to continue to serve the dark elves. That they were an odd camp wanted to be with their slave-owners, and that they had been thoroughly broken by those who called them their "masters".


    I also knew that their hearts were still filled with a longing to have some sort of purpose, which they felt I had taken from them. It was an odd condition. But Ava was the first of her kind to approach me so boldly. So I wanted to "reward" her. And I could picture a few ways to do so.

 136 Practice And Training

    The town was currently infested with the walking dead, but somehow they managed to be the least strange of its invaders. The strangest creature to invade the town, the genocidal-entity who had maliciously commanded them to annihilate it, was a being who was fully and horrifyingly alive.


    The entity whose worshipers had invaded the town had a deceptive appearance. He looked human. He looked like a tall, older, tan-skinned human man and he even walked like one. He was leisurely exploring the ruins of the town, and as he did so he performed odd actions.


    He stood in front of the wreckage of one of the houses. The god was silent, and behaving oddly even for him. He was in a "playful" mood after having listened to a prayer by a particular mortal in another world, and when gods were "playful" entire worlds could be left changed.


    His mind was an eerie thing, and it was currently connecting him to the life that was left in the town. Such life was unlike most of the life he had interacted with before. He was interacting with fungi.


    Life remained in the invaded town in two forms. Plants and fungi. For the first time in his life, Althos was utilizing his fungal abilities.


    Another, smaller, part of his mind was also thinking exclusively about the strange dwarf who had prayed to him. He was wondering what to do with her. He had an array of options at his disposal, now that his powers were diversifying.


    He could turn her into some form of undead. He didn''t doubt that she''d make a great vampire if that was the route he went.


    He could also infect her with his parasitic spores. Normally he wouldn''t even consider using that power on someone, but he was trying to be open-minded to his darker-powers, but she didn''t want freedom, so he wasn''t taking it off the table unnecessarily.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself standing still in front of an empty house. The house wasn''t what I was interested in though. I was only standing still because doing so was convenient. It was my mind that was at work, and not my body after all.


    "This feels... odd." I mentally muttered as I studied what my detection-based abilities had revealed to me. The buildings in this place were made from wood and from stone and such buildings had a fair amount of fungus contained within them. I focused on the thousands of patches of fungal matter that existed within the town and began to smile.


    I focused on them for a moment longer before I mentally reached out and did the mental equivalent of stroking the fungal patches and related lifeforms found throughout the town. Doing so was easy like I was petting a dog that was right in front of me. And the fungal patches immediately reacted to my gentle, mental touch.


    The eerie lifeforms reacted to me joyously. Such creatures weren''t usually emotional beings, but something about my actions filled them with a strange energy that left them amusingly active. I could sense them react to me in a purely internal way, but more than I could also sense their physical reaction.


    Actual mushrooms, a few of which could be found throughout the town in small, relatively isolated patches, began to almost bounce in fungal delight. They impossibly bobbed up and down in a mad dance. I smiled as I saw some of them do so, my incredibly powerful vision allowing me to see them effortlessly despite the distance that separated them from me.


    "How delightful..." I muttered, amused by the display. For a moment I considered reaching out to the fungal patches and fully evolving them. That was something I could do, if I wanted too, thanks to a power I possessed entitled "Lesser fungal manipulation". I thought about it for a moment, before deciding not to do it.


    "No need to create new, complex life here." I told myself, aware that such a choice would, in a way fly in the face of my choice to annihilate the people of this town. Instead, I allowed my powers to wash over the fungal patches that existed here and awoke them.


    ________________________________________________


    Awakening a lifeform was a strange process. The truth was that it involved flooding a non-sapient entity with some form of energy, a normally dangerous process, in a controlled, precise way. When a god did it they flooded whatever they were awakening with the divine power that coursed through their deific veins, but it needn''t be divine energy that floods whatever is to be awakened.


    When Althos reached out to the assorted fungal patches, in and out of houses and other buildings throughout the town, he initially established a simple and stable connection. Now he was making use of that same connection to flood countless fungal patches with an equal amount of divine energy. It seeped out of him, not at all affecting the god but boosting the patches it was entering quite dramatically.


    The energy seeped into the patches and infused every cell within even the smallest mushrooms with energy and complex life-force. The energy was greedily absorbed by each fungus who received it, and it did... something to them.


    The energy caused the fungal lifeforms to increase in complexity. It caused them to spontaneously generate minds that were comparable to the minds of awakened animals as well as awakened plants. This was a strange phenomenon, and even indirectly Althos sensed it as well in the form of a strange feeling filling him. The minds of the fungi were immediately attuned to the existence of Althos and their first complex thoughts were praises to the glory of their frightening god.


    As he was doing this a voice spoke to him.


    ________________________________________________


    "Althos! Are you having fun making friends?" Asked a chipper voice. It spoke directly into my mind and was a voice I was loosely familiar with. It was the voice of the fungal subdomain.


    "Making friends?" I asked, curiously. It wasn''t difficult for me to piece together a possible meaning for its question, that in my awakening of the town''s fungi I had somehow made them my friends, but I wanted to be sure.


    "Yes! You''ve made so many friends just now! And they are the best kind of friends! Fungus! Like me." The voice replied. I chuckled and nodded, despite the subdomain''s voice being in my head and not coming from a physical entity in front of me.


    "Yes. Yes, I am having fun ''making friends''." I told it.


    "That''s great news! You should let them be friends with each other too. That way they''re never alone!" It told me, speaking excitedly. I realized, almost immediately that it was talking about my new mastery over hive-minds.


    I considered the suggestion for a moment. And then I shrugged my shoulders, almost subconsciously, and decided to follow the advice of the subdomain. It wasn''t even difficult for me to begin to construct the complex web of mental connections that would form the hive-mind, thanks to my experience creating such things.


    Creating a hive-mind was a simple process. All I had to do was initially tie my mind to that of others, whosoever I desired to include in the hive-mind. Once I had created the initial connection tying myself and whoever I wanted to include in the hive, I merely needed to tie their minds together. And from there I could tie others into their link.


    I was already linked to the creatures I had awoken. For me to tether together all of the local fungi, all I had to do was "select" the minds that were linked to mine and link them together. What was better though was that my mind was strong enough that I could easily tie all of the thousands of patches of fungal matter I had awoken in a matter of moments. I did so with a soft grin on my face.


    "Wow! You really did it!" The fungal subdomain declared, speaking joyously. Delight was audible in its voice, and I smiled, finding its happiness a bit contagious.


    "Fungi throughout here will never be alone again. How delightful! With your powers, you could already awaken every single patch of fungi throughout the solar system and make them never be alone again. You could also construct a single mind space that ties together every fungal being in the solar system. Just think about it... No fungi, no matter how remote, would ever feel alone again..." The subdomain told me, fantasizing about a supermind the scale of which exceeded anything I had ever even heard of.


    The childlike subdomain was strange to me. I sensed that it desired for me to tether together every fungal being in the solar system. I considered this, but ultimately decided not to do it, yet. That said, for the first time I fully predicted something: this was gonna be a quest in the future. I shook my head and refocused on the situation at hand.


    "I should... continue practicing my powers." I muttered, after mulling over the realizations I was making about the strange subdomain.

 137 Honing Ones Own Spore-Skills

    I could hear the mental voices of the fungi I had connected excitedly chatter to each other. Their voices were all distinct, to me at least, and they discussed a range of topics. I was listening to them when the fungi subdomain spoke to me once more.


    "Althos, if you cause a lesser fungal or mold creature to evolve they''ll automatically become infused with your parasitic spores. They''ll become new friends!" The subdomain informed me, catching me off guard. And it wasn''t done either.


    "And if you opt to cause a creature infected with spores they gain a new evolutionary route: a fungal path that allows even humans or other humanoids to become true fungal creatures." The subdomain informed me, making a small part of me want to try that. The part of me that thought about things from a purely neutral point of view was intrigued by the possibilities and power of the spores.


    "Fungal friends..." I muttered, in my mind. I worded it that way to excite the subdomain and I internally laughed when the subdomain excitedly gasped.


    "Yes! Fungal friends! And unless when you cause them to evolve you mentally will them to come out like any other fungal friends would if they evolved alone they''ll take on traits influenced by the other domains and subdomains you have influence over." The subdomain told me, catching me off guard. This well and truly surprised me, and was enough to persuade me to experiment.


    While I was mentally chatting with the subdomain I had been moving and was now near the center of the town. I was also in the presence of several patches of fungi. I glanced at them excitedly and began to activate my fungal powers.


    ________________________________________________


    The deity who stood near the heart of the now-annihilated community activated his powers over fungi with an excited grin. He took a second and mentally targeted the patches of fungal matter around him.


    The patches of fungal matter he selected were thriving mushrooms that were on the unmaintained dirt roads that connected parts of the community he was in. The mushrooms were a range of colors and were mushrooms that were unique to Salifinos.


    They began to visibly bounce as their god drew near. They were visibly "dancing" to celebrate the coming of their god, as his mere presence infused them with new energy and powered them. They had no idea just how much more exciting their days were about to become.


    When the god had targeted all three patches of the fungal matter, he silently activated his "Lesser fungal manipulation" power, which allowed him to forcibly cause the mushrooms to evolve.


    He was totally silent, at least externally, as his mind cycled through the menus that his powers made him fill out to force the evolution of the simple mushrooms. It took him a few seconds to do, and as he did it the smile on his face grew wider and wider.


    In navigating the menus before him he was able to learn more about evolution, and about the full and diverse scope of what was considered a "lesser fungal creature". It was surprisingly diverse, and wasn''t just simple mushrooms and mold and then fungal folks.


    He was delighted to learn of creatures like "Mushroom mages" and "Spore stalkers". The first of those two creatures were magical, bipedal mushrooms, and the second were eerie spider-like creatures that existed to infect creatures with spores and came in a range of sizes.


    The god wasn''t searching for spiders. He selected the magical mushroom people and watched as the evolutions began.


    ________________________________________________


    Before my very eyes the mushrooms began to radiate intense, almost solar, light. I could see through it no problem thanks to mastery over light itself, but it was still fascinating to watch.


    The mushrooms radiated light for a few seconds and then began to expand. Their odd, reverse silhouettes began to grow in size and take on a new shape. The three mushrooms were shaped and reshaped by my fantastical powers. As they grew in height and width, they also took on a distinctly humanoid shape, two legs and all. When they stood about a meter and a half tall each the light that illuminated their forms began to dim, until it was completely gone.


    The first and most immediately noticeable change that wasn''t expected was that the creatures appeared to be gendered. They were naked, and they had the distinctive sexual organs that distinguished males and females. Two of them were male and one was female, or at least those were the organs they possessed.


    The two male-looking mushroom mages were red and blue respectively. The female was bright green. All three looked like humanoids but they lacked eyes and mouths and their skin wasn''t skin. Their equivalent of skin was a thick mat of fungal matter. They possessed two hands each and had fingers made of the same matter as the rest of their skin.


    A second after their forms became truly visible they began to dance excitedly. I chuckled at the trio of creatures, who were displaying more energy than ever before. It was while I was chuckling that they first transmitted a mental message my way.


    "Mushroom monarch! Thank you for this blessing! We can walk now... We can interact with the surface world now! This is all thanks to you and your kindness!" They excitedly thought. Their messages weren''t exactly the same, but they all had the same attitude and talked about the same things.


    "How may we serve you? Tell us about your objectives, my lord!" One of them mentally remarked, causing me to pause for a moment. It only took me a second to recall that I still had a quest for a second tier of influence over one of my domains. The domain of knowledge.


    I smiled at my minions and started off by granting all three of them the monk class. They sighed in delight in unison as they felt the rush of power that accompanied such a deed. I chuckled as I proceeded to begin to do two things at once.


    "Now for the monastery..." I muttered, a grin on my face as I did so. I activated my lone power over civilization and willed a single, small monastery made of dark stone to come into being a few meters away from where I and the mushroom mages were standing.


    I kept the place very simple. I had the power to make decisions pertaining to the interior of the buildings I had constructed, and I didn''t want it to be complex. I made it a building containing a single room: one with a stairwell that descended into the ground. I knew the complex would be largely underground anyway.


    I effortlessly used made use of my earth powers to modify the earth underneath the building and to clear it out. In the span of a second I created a number of chambers. In the seconds following that, I "decorated" the chambers. This was where the fun began.


    Some were "private" chambers for my servants to rest without being disturbed by the other, more monstrous inhabitants of the now conquered settlement. Some were chambers where I went ahead and created I filled with spores I generated and transported using my powers that would eventually grow into more mushrooms and thus more mushroom mages. I could have sped their evolution but I opted instead to let their growth proceed naturally. I was in no rush.


    The main chamber I created was the one directly underneath the small monastery. It was a gigantic one that was a common space designed to serve as the main area the mushroom mages would spend time in. I didn''t decorate it with anything, as while I was doing this I was beginning to mentally visualize the sort of monastic order I sought to create.


    ________________________________________________


    The remainder of today, the fourteenth day of my life would be spent working on the monastery and the order I had created. I effortlessly evolved several other mushrooms and fungi into mushroom mages and made them monks. In doing so, along with creating the monastery, I completed the quest to gain the second tier of influence over the domain of knowledge.


    I also organized the monks I had created into my first true organization: The Sporetarians. Before I returned home to Torus I would inform command the undead armies to return to the communities of abominations that they had come into Salifinos close to.


    I also informed Luthor and his kin of the strange new order living in the town. I told the guys that the mushroom mages were my servants and were to be treated as friends and allies. It was only upon informing them of that that I teleported myself back home.


    Upon returning home I immediately set out to send a message to any and all people in Torus who had yet to free their slaves, or even think about it. I utilized the same trick I had utilized on Salifinos with the wind, and then heaped numerous delibating diseases on slave-owners who refused to obey me.


    I also summoned Ava to my side and had the strange dwarf accompany me in my tower. I wasn''t sure what to do with her, so I opted to have her keep me company.


    This was how I began a busy period that would last for almost a whole month. For the next twenty days I remained in my tower, idly sowing discord in some places, and helping to create peace in others through the very healthy mixing of my powers.


    I harassed both slave-owners and any nobility who sought to create a war in Torus. I did this by mixing my powers, smoothly combining my powers over the dead, as well as my ability to steal years off of someone''s life, to influence any war-mongering nobles into obeying me and to frighten slave-owners into releasing their slaves.


    I acquired the worship of almost every dark elf in Aronms, and even established a few distinct cults in the city, dedicated to things like thievery, disease, and assassinations, all while finally practicing my skills myself.


    I was disappointed to find that it was difficult to get the people of Comillas and the hyenoids to go to blows, despite the impact of almost three weeks of dreams, because I was trying to corrupt them and not just get them to attack each other.


    And the world of Torus itself began to change in response to my actions. By the time I was a month old the world was different. Thanks to my actions.

 138 Interlude: Awareness

    The fiendish throne room was a macabre place. It was dimly lit, which was fine for its inhabitants and only accentuated the terror felt by those who were imprisoned in it. Blood, sweat, and other bodily fluids flavored the smell of the throne room. The sounds of hoarse screaming were the auditory backdrops which made being within the throne room a sensory experience.


    Demons and mortals alike were imprisoned within the room. In some cases, they were impaled on spikes, or left battered and bleeding within gigantic cages. They were admired as something akin to brutish and senselessly violent art by the non-imprisoned demons within the room.


    The room itself was utterly gigantic. It must have been close to twenty meters tall, and around fifty meters wide. It was within a massive palace made of fiendish stone the color of ripe grapes, and the floor, the ceiling, and the walls that surrounded the demons were all the same color. The heart of the room was where a humble-looking dais housed a sleek, ruby-red throne.


    The throne itself was being used at this very moment. An eerily human-like demon sat in it, his golden eyes furrowed in frustration and shock. He couldn''t believe what he had just heard. He was lost in thought for a moment.


    In front of the throne were a number of demons. There were all on their hands and knees, begging their master for mercy. They possessed a number of forms, some were almost humanlike, while others were entirely and obviously monstrous. They whimpered and made disgustingly obsequious sounds, hoping that the sight of their often unseemly bodies in even more unseemly positions would be enough to please the Soluto demon in front of them.


    "Son of a bitch. What are the odds?" The demon asked, rhetorically. The creature knew that its servants wouldn''t lie to it. And that they couldn''t. He had his throne to thank for that. The nearly impossible powerful manifestation of evil and pride let out an angered sigh and then tilted his head to glower at the demons on their knees before him.


    "And you all... A god of chaos and evil exists, something that hasn''t been the case for half a million years and you come back to tell me, without even bringing it with you?" The demon asked, his delicate voice filling the crowd with an incredible amount of fear. There was anger audible within the demon''s strangely soothing voice. And a fury visible within his gaze. A barely contained hurricane of fury.


    "It''s one thing to fail to secure the acquisition of a new world. It''s another thing altogether to confirm that a god walks the universe again, without bringing it back here." The demon hissed, his voice filled with unusual rage and disappointment, mixing into a miasmic rage.


    The demon rose a single hand, a distinctly inhuman appendage that ended in scaled claws, and pointed it at one of the demons who was on the floor before it. "Failure." The demon muttered, angered by a number of things and taking it out on a creature that was powerless to stop it.


    A bolt of violet light shot out of the tip of the demon''s claw and dashed towards the demon until it collided with the evil monstrosity. The creature was effortlessly hit by the destructive and dangerous light, which proceeded to coil around it like a whip, or a snake and lift it into the air.


    "Gah!" The victim of Agustino''s attack roared, shouting in pain as demonically powered chaos lifted it up and scourged its flesh. The demon, a weirdly bovine creature, began to make unmanly noises as its body was subjected to Agustino''s wrath.


    "Failures." Agustino muttered, not even bothering to get up from his throne. The strange attack lifted the cow-like demon higher into the air.


    "Deserve." The demon continued, as he intensified the amount of power he put into the potent and natural attack. The attack mutated, transforming from a strange burst of lightning into a continuous whip of violet fire that seemed to come out of the demon''s fingertip.


    "Pain." He finished, a smirk slowly emerging on his face. The fire intensified, causing the temperature of the room to rocket up. The fire visibly intensified to the point that the demon vanished entirely within it.


    It was at this point that the other demons reacted to the display of brutality before them, by shooting up and hurrying to their feet. The fastest of them could even manage to turn their heads in the direction of the nearest exits out of the throne room. Not that that helped. Agustino was faster than they were.


    The demon simply snapped a few of his other fingers together. The sound rang out and filled the throne room with noise. It was impossibly loud given the cause of the noise. Agustino''s minions, aside from the bovine-demon still trapped in the conflagration, froze in fear as the sound echoed far and wide within the palace. And as they heard other things rumble to life and begin a flurry of motion, violence, and action.


    The first thing to occur that was immediately visible to the demons was the floor that led them in and out of the throne behind them beginning to explode. The once flat, evenly paved surface was suddenly cracked and destroyed by a sudden earthquake-like burst of gigantic, ebony-colored spikes that smashed through the floor of the throne room. These black-spikes ruptured the floor and sped towards them with frightening accuracy.


    The next thing to happen was the sudden appearance of new foes. The empty air above the demons was suddenly not empty. Strange fusions of women and gigantic bats, harpies, seemed to phase into existence just below the throne room''s massive ceiling. The monstrous women cackled, their shrill laughter enraging some of the demons who were now facing either enemies or obstacles from three directions.


    For a moment the throne room was strangely peaceful. At least relative to other places within the Heart of Darkness, the strange dimension all demons called home. The only real action in the gigantic room was the constant motion of the spikes towards the demons. That changed when the first of the harpies got foolishly brave and attempted to attack one of the demons.


    The harpy, a hauntingly beautiful woman who had the wings of a gigantic bat where her arms should have been, sped towards an incubus. The incubus, enraged at his predicament didn''t think his response to her aggression through and instead of using his desire-based powers opted to lash out at her. Or at least lash out at her as much as he could, given her protected status that shielded her from true harm, at least by any demon who valued in its life.


    The winged-woman was almost within arms reach of the demon in an instant, thanks to the demonid blood in her veins that empowered her but before she could viciously tear into the incubus, the mighty demon reacted. The incubus pointed a finger at the creature, aimed squarely at her right wing, and reached deep within himself.


    He found his wellspring of magical energy within a second and focused on bending it to his will. When it proved receptive to his desires, he willed it forth, expelling it outward in the form of a potent burst of electrical energy. The air between the harpy and the demon was filled with electric energy in an instant, crackling, loud electricity that collided with the arrogant bird-woman and caused her to lose control of her muscles mid-flight, turning her into an uncontrollable bird-missile for a moment.


    Instead of colliding with the demon and cutting into him with her talons as she planned, the bird-woman was sent hurtling uselessly off to the side, smoke radiating off of her form. She hit the floor of the throne room hard, and came to a stop, unconscious due to the force of her collision with the floor, not far from the throne itself. Sadly for the demons who failed Agustino, this was met with an immediate response by the harpies.


    There were over two dozen harpies in the air above the throne and throughout the rest of the room. They each began to nonsensically shriek, enraged by the sight of their fallen sister. After a second of enraged wailing, the harpies hurled themselves at the demons they now truly believed were their enemies. They were frighteningly fast, and reached their enemies in a matter of heartbeats, flying far faster than the demons could run and descending on them with an unmatchable fury.


    Agustino, a demon known for his cruelty and unmatchable arrogance, enjoyed the sight of his daughters descending on those he deemed failures. He enjoyed it so much that he turned his attention to the theater of violence before him. He watched as his daughters, a veritable flock of half-demon harpies, began to enact senseless violence on their hated enemies.


    Harpies landed in front of, beside, behind, and even on top of demons. The beautiful, naked women immediately proceeded to buffet and harass their enemies with a number of attacks, ranging from carefully aimed scratches to battering them with their wings, to even trying to tear out vulnerable parts of their bodies with their sharp teeth. The demons for their part in all of this knew better than to try and truly defend themselves from the harpies.


    The only measure the demons took to protect themselves from the flock of bat-women was to try and redirect their attacks, hurl them away, or get into a position to shield themselves from the attacks of their master''s daughters. Even the enraged incubus had been careful not to kill the harpy who attacked him, instead doing his best to take the woman out of the fight, all while keeping her alive.


    The incubus was quietly relieved when Agustine didn''t immediately turn to face him for defending himself from the Soluto''s daughter. He was so quietly relieved that he only barely noticed that the tide of stone-spikes rushing towards them stopped short of his kin that were closest to the exits out of the throne room.


    This orgy of violence lasted for more than a few minutes, and in time the floor of the throne room beneath the demons was covered in slick, scarlet blood. The blood belonged largely to the true demons, but it also belonged to a number of the half-demon harpies who took blows from their prey. That said, this unstoppable onslaught of violence began to take a toll on the demons. An endless number of limbs and teeth coming for them had the effect of gradually wearing them down, especially when combined with the strain of the demon''s having to not try to kill the harpies.


    Agustino watched this violence as a mortal human of class and sophistication might watch a play. There was an entertained smile on his face the whole time the violence was occurring. He studied the motion and trajectory of each blow, be it from a harpy or a demon. The demon was especially focused on his fellow demons, and his proud gaze longingly studied each of them. Perhaps twelve minutes after this orgy of violence commenced, Agustino felt satisfied. He wasn''t sure why, or how, but he knew that he had his fill of violence. For the moment anyway.


    The oldest harpy was in the middle of launching a powerful strike at the incubus who had harmed her sister when Agustino once more snapped his fingers. The sound supernaturally rang out, again, and the harpies ceased their assaults. Even those of them that were mid-attack were able to either stop their attacks or use their momentum to make their attacks miss. A few moments after the sound of the snapping fingers filled the room, the action and violence that had filled the last few minutes were over. The only sounds left in the room were those that were present before.


    The demons glared at the half-demon harpies, fury filling their eyes. Many of them mentally swore oaths of vengeance, but they consciously knew they had little chance of exacting that vengeance. Agustino merely laughed, capriciously sated, for now. His laughter filled the room for a moment before it came to an abrupt end. He then glared at the demons present, making eye contact with each of them. And then the demon began to speak.


    "Demons." He said, his voice filled with power and pride. The demons froze, terrified of whatever he had left to say.


    "I have a mission for you. One more important than bringing Torus into our home." The demon told his somewhat captive audience. The path behind them, out of the palace and towards freedom, was still closed off by spikes and the harpies were still a threat. And demons often enjoyed simple violence. After all, the bovine demon in Agustino''s flame-lightning was still trapped in a pillar of fire.


    "Bring me the god. I wish to see him face to face. I wish to experience his power." Agustino told the crowd of demons. This surprised them, and they were still out of sheer shock for a moment.


    Agustino smiled at them. There was a look of maniacal pride in his gaze. The bloodlust the demon felt earlier was gone. Now there was just pride. The demon was so insanely proud, so convinced of his own power, that he wanted to meet the strange god of chaos and evil that evidently lived in Torus. After silence filled the air for a few moments, irritation wracked Agustino''s face and the demon shouted at his followers.


    "Well? What are you waiting for?! Go get him!" The demon roared, his voice filling with fury again. This shocked the demons out of their other shock, and they backed away from their master. As they backed away there was a loud rumbling noise as the spikes behind them retracted into the floor of the throne room. This gave the demons a chance to flee from the presence of their master, terrified of failure and of the dark god who had tricked the mortals living in Torus into believing that he was their friend.


    It was while the demons were fleeing, that Agustino undid the spell that ensorcelled the bovine demon, causing the creature to fall to his knees, unconscious. His fiery was largely burned off, exposing thick patches of ugly, scar-covered skin. The creature clattered to the floor, producing a loud noise as its ugly head smashed into stone tiles that made up the floor of the palace.

 139 The Order of the Heated Blade

    Twenty days after I returned to Torus from the war-torn world of Salifinos I found myself inside the one place I could loosely consider my home: the eerie tower I had long-ago constructed to serve as a strange base of operations.


    I was inside of a loosely occupied chamber, accompanied by Ava. We were silently watching a flurry of strange, cult-related activity. There were a number of humans tied to stone slabs, their faces wracked with fear, anxiety, and in a few cases unbecoming anticipations for what was to come. They were entirely naked and were both male and female. They weren''t the only occupants of the strange room.


    A number of strange creatures, slavish worshipers of mine who worshiped me as in an unsettling way, were running around and preparing for something. The creatures were demons, devils, and pain-bringers, all of whom were evil-extraplanar entities who worshiped me as a powerful god of evil and pain.


    Succubi, incubi, humanoid devils, and even some of my newer worshipers, humanlike pain-bringers, were frantically moving about the strange chamber. They were grabbing an assortment of weapons and other tools that could easily cause pain, in preparation for a ritual that I was slowly coming to enjoy.


    Over the course of the last few days, the odd extraplanar entities had come together to form something odd: an organic cult dedicated to me. I had summoned all of them myself, but merely to test and familiarize myself with my own powers related to conjugation and alignment. After summoning them, I had largely let them have free roam of my tower. I had been curious to see what they would do if I left them to their own devices. It turned out that their inclinations to obey powerful, evil entities superseded their innate dislike for each other.


    The chamber was filled with the sounds of their feet pounding the floor beneath them. And the quieter sound of humans straining against the bounds that left them stuck to the slabs. Each of the humans was carefully tied to the slabs they were on top of. Their hands and legs were bound to the slabs with spider-silk I had created and gifted to the cult days ago.


    Ava was beside me. She enthusiastically watched this, her eyes glued to both the bound humans and to the extraplanars who were about to ritualistically maim them. She enjoyed the theatrics of this and came to watch it on a daily basis, even when I wasn''t here with her.


    The bound victims were a number of humans I had created for the purpose of giving my cult victims on which they could be sadistic without care. I had done this days ago, fully expecting them to kill them the day I created them. Much to my surprise, the decidedly evil cult had kept them alive for days thanks to the leadership of a surprisingly charismatic pain-bringer who was in essence this cult''s high-priest. He had managed to convince even the least patient demons in the cult to draw out the suffering of their victims as a tribute to me and what he deemed my "dark glory".


    The humans themselves were now covered in vicious scars, and in a few cases possessed still-bleeding wounds from days of torture. Their pain was something I had begun to feed on, and a few of them were slowly turning into masochists who legitimately enjoyed the suffering they were forced to endure every day. I fully suspected this was due to my relative proximity and the effects of my multitude of auras, but especially my corruptive, painful, and lustful auras.


    A powerful smell filled the air of the chamber. It mixed the scents of sweat, blood, and other bodily fluids into a toxic cocktail of a smell. It would have been nauseating to many mortals, and even Ava was only unaffected by it thanks to a quiet intervention on my part. I kept her from being affected by it, by targeting her with a persistent illusion that only targeted her sense of smell. The smell did nauseate the humans but was fully ignored by the extraplanars.


    I watched, silently, as the extraplanars began to enter the final phase of preparation for their dark ritual. Those of them that aided in this phase ran to the far end of the chamber we were in.


    This chamber wasn''t an especially large or tall one, it was built for creatures of humanoid size, and was only so long. A number of open entrances and exits led in and out of this place, gigantic openings in the marble-like walls that surrounded us. At one end of the chamber was a collection of supplies for the ritual.


    Among the collection of supplies were things like blades to cut into foes, scalpels for surgical purposes, and even dark buckets meant to collect drained blood. The extraplanars grabbed these tools and transported them to their allies and fellow cultists.


    I watched, mildly entertained, as imps and other devils aided in the efforts to supply their evil-kin with the assorted instruments they had grown accustomed to using during this ritual. In a few minutes, each of the dozens of extraplanar beings was beside a bound human and carrying a sharpened, perpetually heated, but not to the extent that it reduced the suffering their victims underwent, tool meant to mutilate and maim.


    Every single extraplanar had a dark grin on their faces as they stared at their victims. The facial expressions of their victims differed from person to person, but some had almost lewd expressions on their faces. It was at this point that their high priest approached me.


    The high priest of one of the newest cults devoted to me was a strange individual. He was a pain-knight, a member of a medium-tiered species within the strange hierarchy of races collectively known as the "Pain-Bringers". He wore light-blue robes that covered his sickeningly scarred body, and only his thoroughly scarred face was exposed to anyone who laid their eyes on him. He had pale skin, honey-colored eyes, and was bald.


    He carried no weapons and was the only member of the cult to make use of his unarmed body to inflict pain. He was also a devoted worshiper of mine who gave me his heart and soul in exchange for power and for chances to inflict pain on anyone who I deemed deserving of either suffering or pleasure, including himself. The man was a sadomasochist, as were many members of his species.


    "Master... We present this macabre display to you, in hopes that it pleases you." The man told me, his voice soft and reverential. He then humbly fell to his knees before me, eager to debase himself if it meant that I was pleased.


    When he fell to his knees, the other extraplanar entities in the room rose their blades high above their heads. They then brought their weapons screaming down and into the bodies of the bound humans. Ava grinned as she watched this, enthralled by the violence in front of her.


    The humans in the chamber wailed out in agony as their bodies were penetrated by the sickeningly hot weapons. The extraplanars were all incredibly strong, at least relative to their frail victims and the blades they wielded stabbed deep into their victims. Blood splattered the blades, the victims, and in the cases of the strongest extraplanars, shot forth so violently that the perpetrators of the violence were themselves coated in the scarlet fluids.


    A sound of twisted laughter filled the chamber. The noise was at least as loud as the sound of the agonized wails that sounded out from the victims of the cruel and routine sacrifice. The extraplanar entities were delighting in the violence and pain they were inflicting on their victims. Each of them was visibly smiling, and their grins weren''t unlike those of children who just got a new toy. They weren''t the only people smiling though.


    Ava was grinning, fully enthralled by the violence she was seeing. There was an excitement in her eyes that was unlike any other emotion she ever showed. I sensed her approval of this, and not for the first time I wondered if she''d make a good leader of a pain-based cult.


    A few other mortals were also grinning, and in some cases even looking at the blades embedded in them, with delight. They too had cried out in pain but their cries also contained a hint of delight and euphoric, almost sexual joy. Their faces were flushed, and even the blood that poured out of them seemed to pour out slowly as if to ensure they had more time to enjoy this.


    The perpetrators of the violence quickly grabbed and pulled out their blades, indelicately yanking them out of their victims. The wicked weapons were cruelly designed and as they slid out of the bodies of their victims they inflicted greater pain on the mortals the demons had used as living sheaths. I shivered, feeling a strange sense of delight as the mortals cried out again, in greater pain this time.


    One of the strange changes that had occurred to me over the course of these last few weeks was that I had acquired a greater sensitivity to things. I had begun to develop a much stronger awareness of reality, and especially of the sacrifices worshipers of mine had given to me. This was a consequence of my acquisition of the second tier of influence over the knowledge domain and was a single component of a power intersecting the domains of faith and knowledge.


    This manifested itself in two ways: the first was a sort of physical sense, a delight that I felt at being given things by my worshipers, and the second was that I began to receive notifications informing me of sacrifices. I received the notification alerting me to this sacrifice, while I shivered. It was a simple one, but one that I liked to see nonetheless.


    [Alert: The Order of the Heated Blade is performing another of its daily rituals to you. Their entire membership is currently mutilating nearly forty human victims. These human victims are humans you created. The human victims are becoming more and more corrupted, and a small number of them are becoming aware of their secret masochistic desires.


    The Order of the Heated Blade summary: This is one of your newer Torunian cults. It is a strange, public cult that is situated in your tower.


    It worships you as a god of fire, pain, and evil. It has almost fifty members and is led by a pain-knight. This cult is the first cult of yours that mixes different types of extraplanars in its membership and is currently composed entirely of extraplanars.]


    ________________________________________________


    As the creatures continued the ritual before me, I began to walk among them. I took my first steps forward and quickly found myself beside on the other side of an incubus and his victim.


    The demon''s victim was a tanned-skinned man who was doing his best to suppress a smile, working hard to look like he was in agony. His eyes were wide open, and there was a conflict clearly visible within them. I chuckled as I looked at him, studying him for a moment.


    I gazed into his pain-wracked eyes for a moment, and immediately learned his most "shameful" secret, thanks to a new, passive power of mine that synergized the subdomains of pain and truth and the knowledge domain. The secret was whispered into my mind by the voice of the subdomain of truth, and learning it was a delightful experience.


    The man was a masochist and he secretly enjoyed these rituals. It was, in his mind anyway, an embarrassing and terrible source of shame for him. But it didn''t have to be.


    "Don''t be ashamed." I told him, smiling at the man. My smile was serene. "I am a god of life, pain, and pleasure. I created you for the purpose of being a perpetual sacrifice. It is your destiny to be here, in what for you might well be a paradise, forever. Embrace your desires. Delight in your agony." I told the man, telling him the truth. The incubus on the other side of him smiled savagely at the man.


    In terms of my overall morality, a significant shift had occurred during the time that I was in this tower. I had grown used to the idea of using my power over life to create lifeforms that would exist solely to be sacrificed.


    This was a natural consequence of my increased awareness of sacrifices to me and to the rise of a number of different types of cults appearing throughout Torus and beyond. It was also decisively evil, as was the fact that I had actually begun to create living beings fully intending for them to be sacrificed. That said, because of this change to my morality, my powers over life and pain had actually begun to expand.


    The power I had activated earlier was called "Confession" and with it, I could learn a person''s secrets by gazing into their eyes while they were in pain. With it, under the right circumstances, I could learn any dark and hated secret a person possessed. It was a truly and deliciously evil power that I was actually quite fond of. It was far from the only power I had gained that I liked, though it was certainly a flashier one.


    I mulled over my new powers, all while the extraplanars around me continued their savage ritual. Many of my new powers were wide-spread ones rather than personal abilities. And more than a few of the knowledge-based powers I had acquired were linked to me sharing my knowledge with others. Among other things I could now sap someone''s sanity all while whispering eldritch truths in their ears, and I could inspire someone by sharing possible futures with them.


    I could also target someone who is willing to share their memories with me and create copies of their memories to infuse myself with or to share with others. My newest powers, especially those tied to knowledge were a strange array of abilities. My new abilities were quite fun to mess around with, and in doing so while in my tower I had gained an incredible amount of new knowledge.

 140 Manipulations

    While in the presence of my cultists I allowed my mind to wander and recalled the notification I received that informed me of the variety of new powers I received as a consequence of gaining the second tier of influence over knowledge. It was a bit of a longer one, but it wasn''t hugely verbose.


    [New Knowledge Domain Primary Passive Powers:


    Confession: This passive power synergizes the knowledge domain and a number of subdomains. It allows you to learn secrets from targets by gazing into their eyes while they are in pain.


    Corrupting Whispers: You can share knowledge with a target in the form of a sinister whisper that inspires them to behave maliciously and slowly turns their souls towards evil.


    Dark Destiny: This power takes from the domains of evil and fate as well as the knowledge domain. It allows you to inspire evil people by infusing them with knowledge of their possible futures. This power is addictive and corruptive as it shows someone at the height of their power and evil. Using it on someone is an evil act that can easily make someone dependent on you. Currently alignment-locked.


    Eldritch Secrets: By synergizing the powers of the eldritch and knowledge domains you gain the power to whisper maddening secrets into the minds that sap their sanity while giving them either conscious or unconscious knowledge of horrifying abominations.


    Faith Awareness: Your domain-sense and ties to the domain of faith and knowledge have increased in potency to the point that you can sense the actions of your cults, especially sacrifices, and gain notifications pertaining to meaningful actions undertaken by your worshipers. This power is hyper-sensitive to sacrifices, but it is also sensitive to rituals and the creation and celebration of holy-days devoted to you.


    Heroic Vision: This power takes from the domains of goodness and fate as well as the knowledge domain. It allows you to inspire good people by infusing them with knowledge of their possible future. This power strengthens the mind and resolve of the one being affected by it. Currently alignment-locked.


    Memory Receiver: If a target is willing to share their memories with you, you can create copies of their memories and automatically absorb and experience them as if you lived through them yourself. You can persuade targets to share their memories with you in a number of ways, but you must be given explicit permission to select the memories at your current level of power and influence over memories.


    Language Sharing: You gain true mastery over all languages, which differs from the universal language you''ve been speaking to date. This power also allows you to bestow anyone with the ability to speak any mortal language, but not with the ability to speak the languages of extraplanars.


    Tactile Teaching: You can share knowledge via touch. For you "touch" isn''t limited to physically touching someone either. If you are in the same body of shadows as someone you can "touch" them, which is especially potent underground. At the moment you can''t share knowledge related to the fact that you are a higher being, but as you gain greater influence over the domain of faith this restriction will ease and eventually be lifted altogether.


    New Knowledge Domain Active Power:


    Class Manipulation: This synergistic power manipulates the soul, knowledge, and fate domains. With it, you can forcibly alter someone''s class level, or even delete a person''s class altogether once per week. This power is a potentially life-changing one depending on the circumstances under which it''s used. Someone''s class grants them knowledge, alters their souls, and more often than not alters their fate.]


    I was also subconsciously aware of various new abilities that had emerged within me as a consequence of my increased powers over knowledge. The powers I had just remembered were all abilities that were marked as primarily knowledge-based, rather than every single power that I had just gained access too.


    These powers were all handy ones and I had been having fun using them to alter Torus in a variety of creative ways.


    ________________________________________________


    Nearly a month has passed since I left my tower. That said I did not idly sit by in my tower, growing lazy and complacent during that time. The overwhelming majority of my powers had no range constraints, so long as I had a means of accurately targeting wherever I wanted to hit. And thanks to my powers over the domain of stars, I possessed the perfect power to aim precisely.


    My "Stellar Awareness" ability was my greatest detection-based ability. Thanks to it I essentially had no limited range on my abilities. And I had been using it, indirectly, very regularly over the last few weeks. Over the course of the last month, no one in the world had starved to death. Nor did they did from illnesses.


    This irrevocably transformed the world. A world without starvation and illness was, as I had learned, one rife with chances to create social change.


    I started off slow and experimental. One thing I was fond of doing was picking and choosing people to groom into followers of mine. I gained druidic followers and practiced my agricultural abilities by initially restricting my usage of my powers to farmers and manipulating their lives in a number of ways.


    In the beginning, I was careful and I used things like "Abundance Manipulation", a power I had successfully transformed into a passive power, subtly. I increased a harvest noticeably, but only to the extent that the affected farmers only doubted their initial counts rather than wonder if something supernatural was at play. But then I began to target dreams.


    I was quite fond of infesting the dreams of farmers. By doing so I was able to introduce myself to the farmers and see if they would worship me as a god of fertility, the earth, and agriculture. Oftentimes I paired this inquiry with a promise to demonstrate my powers the next day. If they were interested I would cause their fields to overflow with crops while they slept and grant them the druid class which invariably ensured they would worship me if nothing else as a surefire route to power and security.


    Farmers who willingly agreed to worship me would get to witness their farms blossoming to life. Animals and crops alike would grow in greater numbers than ever before, and I would even bless them with things like fruits of life; crops that would actually increase their lifespan, and sapient animal companions. In some cases, I would even create dryads and alraunes for them to befriend and fall in love with.


    If they were hesitant I would destroy their fields, activating the famine part of the agriculture subdomain, which was its original form. I would then plague them with nightmares and restless sleep until they begged me to stop. I would only grant them a reprieve if they sacrificed an animal to me and then vowed to serve me.


    Farmers who had to be coerced into serving me would still experience significant boons to their productivity, but that was it. I wasn''t about to waste time and powers like my "Fruit of life and fruit of knowledge", ones that were still only a few times an hour, on farmers who wouldn''t have willingly worshiped me. In fact I had devised a special punishment for them that would only bear fruits months from now.


    Any farmer who resisted my overtures, even those who gave it without much struggle was a victim of an unusually cruel form of revenge. Over the course of the last month I have gained a few thousand incubi and succubi servants. I had gained many of them as part of a strategy to create half-demons and I created a special test as a way to test members of my new tiny legion of seductive sex-demons.


    Whenever a Torunian farmer resisted me I selected a new member of my legion of demons and ordered them to exact an act of painful revenge. The selected servant was sent out to seduce the wives of the farmers and impregnate them with a half-demon. So far this special form of revenge has been levied against thousands of farmers and I''ve gained thousands of loyal incubi servants as a result of it. In the months to come it''ll result in the creation of thousands of half-demons.


    Succubi were sent out to seduce the sons and daughters of the farmers, something which I did partially to give my armies busywork and also to begin to cement my role as a deity of fertility by playing a direct role in the creation of the next generation of farmers and half-demons. Many of my succubi servants were currently pregnant, including Lilim, the very first succubi I had ever summoned who was currently pregnant following a tryst with Ygaynth and divine intervention on my part. And many of my incubi servants were fathers-to-be


    Farmers were just one of the groups of people that I began to recruit to my side over the course of the last few weeks. That said, I value them and so I absolutely went out of my way to recruit as many of them as I could, happily rewarding those of them wise enough to willingly join me.


    ________________________________________________


    Returning to the present, I spent a moment studying Ava. The dwarf was a curious creature, even though I knew everything about her. She was the first mortal to grant me all of her memories. As a result of that, I knew more about her than I knew about almost anyone else.


    She spent her early childhood in a dwarven community not far from where Sombra was first summoned to Torus. It was one of several dwarven communities destroyed by the dark elves of Aronms and the other dark-elven city beneath Puerto Rico. Her childhood was a mundane, pleasant one. It was when her community was destroyed by the dark-elves I now ruled over that her life began to take a darker turn.


    "What are you thinking about?" I asked the strange creature. She turned to me and I watched as a number of emotions washed over her face in rapid succession. I saw conflict, hatred, dissatisfaction, and more rapidly shift her facial expression until her face was a hard mask of hate and other negative emotions. She was silent for a moment longer before she finally spoke.


    "I was thinking about my sister." She confessed, which was rather unsurprising. Ava''s gradual descent into the darkness that eventually transformed her into a "dark dwarf" was a result of her hatred of her sister, the dwarf named Aoife.


    Over the course of the last month, I had occasionally thought about Aoife myself. She was a skilled miner and one of the leaders of the underground town of Oscuridad. Oscuridad was a town I had created days after I first came to life, which was currently populated by a healthy number of freed slaves as well as a handful of the oldest members of the Swarm, an intelligent collective of evolved ants, bees, and wasps, I had elevated from a base existence into an intelligent and complex theocratic civilization.


    "Master... Is there a way I can convince you to give me the power and permission needed to exact my revenge against my sister?" Ava asked, and in a move of uncharacteristic bravery locked eyes with me. There was a look of anger and bitter hatred shimmering in her gaze as she thought about her sister.


    I recognized that the woman in front of me was possessed by a fierce hatred for her sister. The hatred she felt for her sister was one of the most intense emotions I had heard felt in my entire life, and I had experienced it every bit as savagely as she did thanks to my newfound powers over memories. She was willing to fearlessly bargain with me, a creature she knew to be a powerful and thoroughly evil being if it meant she could exact her revenge. I almost admired the depths of the emotions she felt towards her sister.


    As I pondered what to tell her, I began to remember the moments in Ava''s life that led her to have such an obsessive hatred for a family member. They were moments that had utterly transformed the dark dwarf''s life and led her to her current circumstances in very real ways.

 141 Schemes and Trickery

    "Hey! Wait up!" A voice cried out behind Ava.


    In the eerie darkness of the underground world, Ava had been in her almost her entire life, it was difficult for her to see her sister, given the cloaking nature of the strange and mystical armor the woman wore, but it was easy for the young dwarf to hear her. The young warrior was already comfortable in the heavy armor of her people, but even her comfort wasn''t enough to keep the armor from being tremendously noisy.


    The sounds of heavy footfalls were fast approaching Ava. She had a smile on her face as she listened to the telltale noises of her sister''s approaching form. The two were inseparable, and Ava was well-known for her speed and precise, while Aoife was known for her sturdiness and her resilience to the potent magics of the dark elves.


    At the moment the pair found themselves patrolling the edges of the contemporarily fallen dwarven territory once known as Goldenheart, a shimmering dwarven settlement beneath Puerto Rico, destroyed and sacked long before Atmost summoned a demon who''d later engage in considerable, self-destructive acts.


    This was a moment of fate for the sisters. It was only when Aoife managed to catch up with her sister and notice a strange sight out in the wilderness beyond Goldenheart that the cogs of destiny began to turn.


    Creeping ever closer to her home was the first half of an army of dark-elves. This strange militia would be the first of a horde that would eventually destroy


    ________________________________________________


    In the present, I listened to my servant. Ava was ready to bargain.


    "Master... I beg of you, please aid me in avenging myself." She told me, her voice filled with sincerity and unusual conviction. The tiny dwarf was a surprisingly powerful, and oddly classless individual. I had learned firsthand of Ava''s surprising might and even been party to seeing her destructive might be unleashed on those she or I deemed her foes.


    "You know everything I know. Please... give me the power I need to right the wrongs my sister inflicted on me. Allow me to finally correct the injustice I suffered at her hands!" She said, almost shouting. This was a mistake, and it turned the attention of some of the demons gathered around us to her. Their crazed eyes left the bodies of their victims, countless human men, and human women alike many of whom still had blades impaled inside of them, and turned to her.


    There was a look, a promise, of violence in their gazes. They didn''t speak but demons didn''t have to speak to be heard. They were focused sorts and had ignored Ava until now, thanks to the promises of violence their head-priest had offered them. That said, Ava''s outburst drew their attention and I heard their queries in my mind.


    "Master... May we offer this one to you?" "Dwarf flesh is delicious. Their pain and blood must be more so. Pain for the god of pain?" "She looks delicious. I wonder if we''d be permitted to breed with her before sacrificing her..."


    The thoughts of the incubi were a tangled web of emotions and rantings about violence. Many of their minds were overflowing with joy at the thought of wreaking havoc on normal mortals, not ones created to be their playthings but ones whose origins were mundane. Ava was one of the very few mundanely originated mortals, a natural member of her kind, to ever step foot in this tower. And thus in her, they saw a perfect chance to give me a sacrifice and also slake their bloodlust. But until now they had largely ignored her, since I was with her. I suppose her outburst made them wonder what I was thinking.


    "Did the daft bimbo finally do it? Has our king finally lost his patience?" "Will our king finally let us take her?" "I wonder if he''d let us remake her..." "If we can''t transform her, I wish he would at least use her as a chair... Or a toilet." "I imagine that the incubi would love her if we removed her vocal cords. She could use that mouth for something that matters." "I could serve him much more thoroughly than that loudmouth."


    The succubi were less into bloodletting and purely violent endeavors but their thoughts would have still frightened intelligent mortals who possessed the means to hear them. The succubi were fixated on the transformation of mortal flesh and they viewed my companion as coldly as they viewed any other mortal. I could respect the impartiality of their disdain for Ava. Some of them even mildly envied what they saw as her position of prestige at my side.


    I was silent, and I didn''t mentally command them to fall on her either, so after a few moments the demons huffed and turned their attention back to their victims.


    "Ava, inform me of the precise powers you seek." I commanded, curious to hear the thoughts of the dwarf. She had offered me her memories, all of them when I first conjured her to my side nearly a month ago. In that time I have shown her the wonders and dark cruelties of my powers. I had even shown her my ability to grant classes. That said, my words were a mere smokescreen. I knew, vaguely at least, what sort of powers she sought. That said, my focus wasn''t on her.


    ________________________________________________


    While my physical form was in my tower, my mind was elsewhere. Or rather it was in multiple places at once. One of those places was the area where I originally built my tower. This was at the edge of the settlement of Oscuridad.


    The area outside of the settlement was a strange place. The tower was gone, I took it with me when I created my floating island home. Instead, where it once stood there was an empty space. This empty space was unoccupied and consciously ignored by the residents of Oscuridad. It was here where I began to enact a particularly unusual scheme.


    The first thing I did was mentally target the ground where my tower once stood. I focused on this place and began to activate a particularly unusual and potent power of mine. "Enrichen the illusion".


    This exceptionally deceitful power was one I had not yet used in my life, but with it, I would be able to pull off an extreme deception. Inwardly I smiled, as I felt a menu appear in front of my mental view.


    [Greetings! Welcome to the Illusion menu. This menu exists to facilitate the usage of exceptional illusion and enchantment powers. Your usage of "Enrichen the illusion" has caused this menu to appear to aid in the execution of your will. Please describe the illusion you seek to create and bring to life.]


    This menu was fascinating to me. I took a second to read it and prepare my mental description of Ava''s sister, the dwarf named Aoife. The dwarf had a memorable appearance and was easy to describe. I mentally communicated that appearance to the menu, and a smile crept across my face as I watched the power begin to activate.


    The area that I initially targeted began to glow, a fierce and almost violent light filling the empty space. This light was initially empty, merely an impossibly bright glow deep underground. But that changed in a matter of seconds. Within moments a faint outline began to appear within the light, a silhouette in the shape of the dwarven warrior Aoife.


    The light began to vanish not long after it initially appeared, and I watched with great joy as a figure with the exact appearance of Aoife began to fully appear before my mind''s eye. The dwarven warrior wore the metallic armor of the dwarven warrior and had her same hairstyle. That said, the dwarf was a distinct and wholly separate living creature.


    She came into being with her eyes closed. She stood still for a moment, while I wove together a soul for her. Crafting a simple soul for the simple being was no challenging task and indeed I had spared greater effort for my mortal creations created using powers granted to me by the life domain, because they served a greater purpose than this thing would.


    Crafting a soul was an easy enough task. It simply required will and a modicum of patience if the soul was meant to possess real power. This soul wasn''t. When I finished the immaterial process of crafting a soul for the dwarf, I mentally hurled it into the being''s body. This process immediately awoke it, and her eyes shot open as she took her first breath.


    The final step in the process was for me to share with her the knowledge I needed her to have. Which was something I hadn''t done yet. And something I couldn''t do remotely. At least not from this remote. I had learned that the hard way over the course of the last three weeks. I had to be in reach of a person to safely transfer memories to them, and even that I could only do through my "Tactile Teaching" power. So it would have to wait, for now. Instead, I crafted a link between my creation and myself and gave it its first command.


    "Go to the nearby community and seek out Aoife. Tell her her sister is coming and you are there to help." I told the creature I had just created.


    ________________________________________________


    "I seek the power to humiliate my sister. Eternally. I seek to become a necromancer." Ava told me, her eyes glistening with joy at the thought of the violence she hoped she''d soon exact on her sister. I chuckled. I knew what she had planned. Or at least I knew a bit of it. Her plans weren''t fully formed when she shared her memories with me.


    I chuckled as she spoke. Her plans for revenge were simple, but I didn''t hate that. The fact that it was her sole true desire made it even better. I wasn''t even opposed to aiding her in getting her revenge, I just didn''t want Aoife to die for so silly a reason. That was why I thought it was worth using my "Enrichen the illusion" power to save Aoife from the plans Ava had in mind for her. Ava watched my silent chuckle and fell silent herself for a few moments. Eventually though the dwarf spoke once more.


    "Master... What must I offer to you for you to think it worth aiding me in fulfilling my desires? Must I start a cult in your name? Must I dedicate my soul to you? My... body?" The dark dwarf asked, tears pooling in her eyes as she spoke. I audibly laughed this time, before speaking.


    "Oh, Ava... I plan to aid you. In fact, I have already begun to do so." I told the dwarf, as I quietly targeted her and bestowed upon her the necromancer class. Her eyes flashed a vibrant shade of blue as her menu opened up in front of her and alerted her to the prize she sought. And more than that I wasn''t done either.


    "What you shall offer me is extensive, little dwarf. But in exchange, I shall grant you all you seek. You shall have your precious revenge." I told her, my own eyes shimmering as I spoke. This visibly excited her, her cheeks flushing with delight as she considered the sudden reality that her longest goal was within her reach for the first time in her entire life.


    I knew what Ava was willing to give up in exchange for her revenge. And the darkest recesses of my mind was already hard at work imagining the actual price she would pay. The heavy price I would demand after I helped her achieve her childish dreams of revenge. But for now, I had other things to focus on.


    "I am being... generous." I informed the dwarf, as I quietly targeted her with one of my newest active powers, "Class Manipulation". I had activated it once before, targeting another necromancer out of curiosity to see how it worked on a physical level. The results were amazing to watch.


    I selected her newly received class and boosted it significantly, sending it skyrocketing from level one to level 12 in an instant. The dwarf had been a necromancer for less than a minute when she suddenly and violently shuddered and nearly fell to her knees.


    I was infusing her with experience, altering the very makeup of her soul even further than I had just by bestowing upon her a class. And in the case of necromancers, this was a dangerous thing to do that suddenly swamped one''s soul with the potent energy known as "unlife energy" which infuses all necromancers, something I learned when I first used this power, so I was prepared for it and found it amusing to watch.


    "Ugh..." The dwarf muttered, as unlife energy caressed her soul and warped her very being. I chuckled, amused by the sight of the pained being.


    "This is the power with which you will eternally harry your sister''s soul. Feel it caress your being, and remember that this is it in a friendly, somewhat controlled state. What you are going to do to your sister is far worse than this." I told her, having familiarized myself with some of the components of unlife energy during these last few weeks. The power of the evil energy was one I was beginning to be familiar with. Especially how it touched and corrupted the living.


    Ava began to smile as she realized the sinister reality of my words. She knew that I was telling the truth. Or at least that I was telling the truth as far as she understood. In a very real sense, I was telling the truth. I intended to help Ava get her revenge against someone.


    Whether or not this someone was Aoife was a matter of debate. If someone was the same race and gender as someone else and had all of their memories, how far apart were they from being that person? It ultimately didn''t matter all that much to me, but a part of me was keenly aware that it might one day matter to Ava, if this deception were to be discovered.


    Aoife was one of many worshipers of mine whose memories I possessed. I intended to impart her memories to the illusion I had created and use my powers as well as the dwarf''s potent charisma, which I began to boost via a blessing even while I was watching Ava suffer for her power, to fool Ava into thinking that the living illusion was truly her sister. This scheme would let Aoife live a life unimpeded and unendangered by her sister''s wild machinations, while also giving Ava everything she ever wanted.


    Ava spent nearly a minute on her knees. Around me, my demons snickered at her misfortune. The evil creatures enjoyed the sight of her suffering and I felt a number of them experience a renewed burst of devotion to me after watching me cause even a worshipper of mine suffer. In time though, Ava stood up and I chuckled as I examined her.


    [Name: Ava (Level twelve necromancer)


    Species: Dwarf (Dark)


    Alignment: Neutral-Evil


    Personal virtue: Diligence


    Personal vice: Wrath


    Magic sensing: Ava is a dark dwarf, a bizarre mutational offshoot of regular dwarves. Dark dwarves are naturally tuned to evocation magic, and are capable of casting evocation magic without much training. Her soul is tuned to necromantic magic, due to your intervention and abilities.


    Faith sense: Her soul is well-tuned to the acquisition of power and her uniquely ambitious nature and simple goals make her an ideal candidate to become a witch.


    Authority detection: Ava serves you whole-heartedly. Her only other desire, aside from serving you, is to avenge herself with regard to the indignities she suffered at the hands of her former masters. Her target? Her sister, Aoife. Once she has done that, she''ll be ready to devote herself entirely to your glory and to your ambitions.


    Soul sense: Ava seeks to serve you with all of her being. She is a pious sort, as are almost all dark dwarves. She could do well as any sort of religious class, but especially as a specialist like a witch.


    Reading through the table only brought a smile to my face. I grinned in Ava''s direction and summoned a few friends to aid her in her journey, a pair of undead driders I had special plans for. Imbrosa and her mate, another beautiful and sinister fusion of dark-elf and spider appeared next to me.]


    Ava gasped as she studied the frightening and inhumanly beautiful undead. Not that they would be undead for much longer. My plans for the pair of them were especially unique and I felt like having them accompany Ava and myself as we embarked on this little quest to aid her in finally achieving her life-long goal.


    My plans for the two driders were distinct and unlike any plans I had for any other creatures I had met to date. I planned to do something about the strange sort of unlife the two driders were locked in. Plans that involved the usage of some of the powers I had worked the hardest to obtain.

 142 Life And Darkness

    Ava stared at the two eerily beautiful spider-elf hybrids standing before her. Imbrosa was one of them, so I couldn''t say I really blamed her. The other was Imbrosa''s mate, himself a distractingly handsome drider with skin the color of a moonless night. The pair of creatures were malevolent undead, powerfully reanimated, and strengthened by my divine necromancy.


    The sinister creatures were motionless before us, awaiting my commands. I allowed Ava to study them while I considered the history-shaping ramifications of the ideas brewing in my mind. I had summoned them here and not just to aid Ava.


    I was about to do something more substantial than loan out two undead, ghoulish driders. Something infinitely more substantial than allow two personal creations of mine to be used as instruments of a creature''s dreadful plot to exact revenge. I made eye contact with the driders and smiled.


    ________________________________________________


    Weeks ago I had gained access to potent powers thanks to my acquisition of the first tier of influence over the domains and life and death. Both domains are greater domains, exceptionally powerful domains that are considered keys to the acquisition of greater overall divine power.


    By gaining influence over them I had added them to the domains that I sensed through my distinct "Domain-sense" power. They were the two most common notifications I received, through the perpetually active power. And thanks to them I was keenly aware of the legitimately astounding number of births, and deaths that occurred every moment in the universe. That allowed me to recognize the unconscious respect I had acquired for the powers I wielded over them.


    I possessed a power unique to the gods, as a result of the considerable power I possessed over appropriate domains and subdomains. One granted to me by the intersections of a number of domains and subdomains. The power to defeat even death itself, and perform "true resurrection" on deceased beings and even corporeal undead.


    My powers over life were unsettling, but one of them was the power to perform what the system, as well as domains and subdomains, dubbed a "true resurrection". This was the sort of power that allowed me to restore life to any once-living-non-higher-being so long as their souls weren''t destroyed.


    One of the things I had learned over the course of the last few weeks related to the nature of certain processes that took place in this universe. One of them related to the deaths of mortals, and what happened to a mortal when they died.


    Whenever a mortal dies their soul is supposed to go to the dimension that most closely matches their alignment. Once there, its fate is up to the rules of that dimension. In the Heart of Darkness souls either become demons or are consumed by demons before they can undergo an evil hypothesis.


    In Infernius souls inevitably become soul-orbs, the lowest rank of devils, though in the mythic age it was supposedly possible for arch-devils to intervene and accelerate the rates at which souls proceeded along the devilish hierarchy, the social structure of devilish society. And there were seven other dimensions that received souls, each of which had their own rules for determining the fates of souls that found their ways there.


    Additionally, it was certainly possible for other fates to befall the souls of mortals. One such fate was related to undeath. Certain types of undeath preserved the soul. Liches, one of the greatest kinds of originally mortal undead beings, intentionally retained possession of their souls. Other kinds of undead like death-kings and grim-reapers had their souls owned and controlled by someone else, almost invariably an individual who stole it from them post-mortem.


    In the cases of the two driders before me I was already aware that the precise fates that befall their souls were not important, and I also knew that they weren''t mysteries beyond my reach. I could sense that they were resurrectable and I innately knew that upon resurrecting the pair of creatures I''d be able to learn precisely what had happened to their souls.


    I quietly targeted the creatures and grinned as I prepared myself for what was to come.


    ________________________________________________


    The scene in the chamber was unusual. The abrupt appearance of the driders caused a strange silence to fall over the chamber. The lovely driders were distracting, not just to Ava, but also to the extraplanars who dwelled in the wide chamber.


    Everyone''s eyes were on the undead, arachnid monstrosities. The monsters themselves were cold towards the entities who stared at them, caring only for their master. And their master was cold towards them, not even speaking as he targeted them and quietly deanimated them.


    The eyes of the monsters went wide as they stiffened and suddenly became true corpses, death once more overtaking them. Everyone watching sensed their sudden deaths, but they weren''t sure of the purpose of Althos'' actions. Althos didn''t move to share his machinations with them, quietly opting to instead focus on acting.


    The deity kept the pair of driders targeted. There had been a grin on his face throughout this whole process, that only widened at this moment. For the first time in his life, he quietly activated his "Resurrection" ability, and both of the driders began to radiate an intense silvery light. This light was so bright that the creatures in the room swiftly turned away so as to avoid incurring any sort of damage to their vision.


    ________________________________________________


    An incredible amount of divine power was radiating invisibly out of me. I felt it seep out of every pore in my body as it soaked the air in ambient and life-based power.


    The driders themselves were glowing as life-based energy seeped into their corpses. It infused every centimeter of their flesh and I felt their bodies begin to change. I could see through the light they were radiating, thanks to my powers, and I watched as their hearts began to beat, and as blood began to flow through them for the first time in months.


    Their skin began to lose the unsettling, inhuman, deathlike pallor they had once possessed as blood colored their skin. A few moments passed before the creatures breathed for the first time, ragged sighs filling the air with the noise of life, and they abruptly opened their eyes. It was when they opened their eyes that the light they radiated began to fade, but they stared at me just as I stared at them.


    "Hello there. Welcome back to the world of the living." I said, greeting them. There was an intense, radiant joy in my gaze as I studied them.


    The two stunningly beautiful creatures studied me in considerable confusion. That said, their bodies recognized me as their master and I felt their minds struggle to combat the urges they felt to praise me. I chuckled and my smile widened. Their eyes lit up as an alert filled their vision.


    It took a moment for one of them to speak, and unsurprisingly it was Imbrosa who spoke first. "We''re...alive... How?" Imbrosa asked, her voice even more fantastically beautiful than it had once been.


    "The system... What it''s saying is impossible right?" Her mate asked, knowing that the system could only tell them the truth. The handsome drider''s, a blue-skinned and powerful looking creature, voice trembled as he spoke.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Death, Overthrown


    Althos, a young god who possesses power over life and death, has come into being. There was a period during which your corpses served him as undead monsters. Althos was fond of your bodies during that time and deployed you to battle his enemies, which were once many.


    The god won decisive victory after decisive victory and steadily acquired greater and greater power. Recently he acquired power over both life and death. And in celebration of that, he chose to resurrect you and your mate. His schemes and ambitions are not limited to things like the acquisition of territory. No, as a god his goals are loftier.


    Althos seeks to do more than just defeat death or conquer all of existence. Althos seeks to master all, to acquire every power in existence and become the one true god of all of reality, of every dark and loathsome corner of every single universe. And you have a role to play in those schemes.


    Althos resurrected you to show that he could and because he plans to create a life cult dedicated to himself which you two shall lead. He figured that few figures would be better suited to leading a cult of life than creatures that he himself resurrected. Congratulations, not only are you alive once more, you are now the leaders of a soon to be established cult of life.]


    ________________________________________________


    The two read the notifications and bowed their heads as they did so. I sensed their submission, and felt their hearts turn towards me as they read the words the system had shared with them.


    I turned to Ava and grinned. "My power grows... I can feel it deep within me, growing with every heart I turn towards me." I told her, happily speaking honestly.


    "Death is no obstacle to me. It is indeed... more or like a friend than a foe." I told the dwarf, feeling my sinister power grow as the two driders lifted their heads up. It was at this point that the demon''s finally began to react to the sight before them.


    "Did... Did he just resurrect those driders?" One of them asked, stunned at the sight before him.


    "Resurrections... Something even demon-lords were said to not be able to do." Whispered a succubus.


    "A higher-being who can perform resurrections, consorting and lording over demons." Muttered an incubus.


    I smugly smiled and turned to face the assortment of evil extraplanar beings who I had conjured and become the ruler of. "I am a god. Do not compare me to creatures as weak as demon-lords. The powers I already possess can transform a dying mortal into one of your kind. And the powers I possess over evil are considerable." I informed the assorted crowd of extraplanar entities.


    "The powers I possess already can rend your minds to pieces. And I seek to grow in power. I could rip your souls out of your bodies and devour them." I told the crowd of extraplanar monsters I had summoned to serve me. "I could transform you into spider-like monsters, like them, and make you only desire to serve me." I said to the demons, devils, and pain-bringers while pointing at the driders.


    This was all true. I had enough power under my control, and the right domains and subdomains under my influence to be able to make my words a reality. I could easily mutate the extraplanars and warp their bodies into something truly monstrous while using something like the subdomain of fungi to leave them permanently enthralled if I had wanted too.


    The extraplanars considered my words for a second, before suddenly realizing that they were probably true. That realization was enough to frighten them into willing obedience and stunned silence. I grinned darkly at them and leered, allowing my eyes to momentarily become a vivid shade of yellow. I turned back to Ava, satisfied with my display of power and curious to read her mood.


    The dark dwarf was impressed, and also afraid. This only reinforced her impression of the terrifying powers I possessed and used regularly. Ava was used to seeing me as a lord of the swarm and as a necromancer, but the truth was that I was far more than that.


    I was a healer and a corruptor, an entity who could touch souls and leave them darkened by ambition, desire, and more. I was a dream-walker who was at all times infiltrating dreams and spreading my darkness through nightmares and lurid dreams alike. I was a druid who possessed potent and eerie powers over untouched nature and agriculture alike. And my powers were growing. Every day more and more power became convinced of some aspect of my influence and turned their hearts towards me.


    "Ava... Do you fear me?" I asked her, my eyes twinkling with amusement. She nodded at me, wisely telling the truth. She learned long ago of the perpetually active truth-ability that made mortals unable to lie in my presence.


    "Good. My powers are dark. And that''s why you want my help, isn''t it?" I asked her, amused by this. I found it funny that a deity of healing and life could be considered evil, but here we were after all. Ava was silent, and she mulled over my words for a moment. And then she nodded at me, speaking once more.


    "Yes it is. Are you ready for us to depart?" She asked me, curious and eager to get on with her dark task. I chuckled and shook my head.


    "Patience, little one." I told her, as I activated another of my abilities. This one wasn''t a conventional divine ability but was instead a spell. As it activated my shadow expanded and in a matter of seconds was covering the entire floor of the chamber.


    "I have to make you a few more gifts. And trust me... you''ll like them." I told the dwarf as I knelt down and reached my hand into my massively expanded shadow. I closed my fist around some of the darkness and yanked it out of the floor, grabbing and holding shadow-stuff as if it were a ball of solid matter. I still had to make Ava''s equipment, otherwise, she''d just be challenging her heavily armed and armored "sister" to battle with her own raw magical abilities, untested and untempered. She might well lose that battle. I wasn''t about to let that happen.


    I grinned as I prepared to activate a number of darkness domain powers.

 143 Equipment And Minions

    The darkness in my hand functioned, for me anyway, as a solid object would in the hands of any corporeal mortal. It had weight and solidity. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as I began to activate "Darkness manipulation". As I did so, I opened my mouth to speak.


    "Ava, what sort of weapon would you like to use to confront your sister?" I asked the young dwarf. With my powers the shadow-stuff I held onto would become a powerful weapon that Ava would use in her confrontation with her sister. Or at least the entity she believed to be her sister.


    I held a sphere of shadow-stuff in my hand. It felt light yet solid in my grasp. I had routinely formed weapons out of both darkness and light for my legions before and I was intuitively familiar with the strange process of shaping things out of both light and darkness. The objects I formed were real and truly existed for as long as I desired for them, but they were strange things. They were powerful weapons capable of great destruction, and as my powers grew so did their versatility.


    The weapons I formed from light and from darkness were capable of changing form mid-fight. This was an eerie phenomenon that I had witnessed while encouraging the war between abominations and mortals in Salifinos and it was one of the natural upgrades my powers had received during the last few weeks. I was still learning how to utilize it myself, which was a testament to how strange an upgrade it was. Indeed, some of the few undead who had fallen to my enemies were undead who had the misfortune of wielding a weapon in battle as it shifted from one form to the next.


    It had taken me a bit of time to consciously learn to control this strange evolution, and longer still to realize the nature of this change. This was one consequence of the chaotic powers I wielded and a sort of hitherto unprecedented mutation of the nature of an ability. The truth was that I was actually delighted by this, even though I wish it hadn''t happened mid-battle in the past. That said through hours of practice I had learned how to control this ability and now, thanks to "Tactile Teaching" so had my undead minions who had begun to use this to devastating effect against our foes.


    Ava looked at me and her eyes began to glow with excitement. She almost began to tremble. I did a surface-level reading of her thoughts and found that the dwarf was incredibly excited because she was actually close to achieving her goals for the first time ever. I chuckled, appreciating her excitement.


    "Can you make me a sword?" She asked, excitedly imagining stabbing her sister. I nodded at her and swiftly began to shape and shave the darkness in my hand in such a way that it took on the shape of a potent longsword. While doing that I turned my focus to her and began to speak.


    "Ava, I want you to know that you have precisely one target you can kill. Aoife. I am willing to allow you to kill her, because I know why you hate her but do not mistake that as a license for you to go on a rampage to take her head. You have no such freedom." I told the dwarf. I glared at her while I spoke to cement my point.


    "I am not a proponent of mindless violence. I will allow violence, or even enact it myself if that''s what it takes to acquire greater power but your vengeance and indeed your very existence, are not worth enough to me for me to give you the freedom you''d need to rampage. Single-mindedly focus on your true enemy. If you act out of turn, I will step in. You don''t want that." I warned her.


    As I spoke I completed the blade, having shaped the shadow-stuff in my hand to the appropriate form. The blade looked simple, but it also looked incredibly sharp. And it was. I had seen ghouls and skeletons use this exact sort of blade on their enemies and I had seen the wounds it left behind. Victims of the swords were to be pitied, their last moments were invariably filled with suffering. That said, I wasn''t done with the blade just yet. I was creating more than just a sword. I was creating an artifact.


    I turned my focus to the sword and activated one of my lesser-used abilities: "Enhance". This was an alteration power that allowed me to add properties to an item, effectively ensorcelling it and creating a sort of "magical" item.


    ________________________________________________


    [Hello, once again Althos! Welcome back to the enhancement table. The item you''ve selected, a "Shadow Sword" contains the following properties:


    Chaotic: This blade was fashioned by a chaotic deity and thus is a mutable, alien, and semi-sentient weapon. It can, either in response to intense emotions or even at times purely randomly shift into a new form. This power can be controlled and even harnessed by the wielder, if the wielder is aware of the property.


    Darkness: This blade is made from solidified darkness and thus is stronger in the dark.


    Divine: This blade is a divine creation and thus surpasses resistances that may otherwise allow some of the damage it would inflict to be ignored.


    What properties would you like to attach to the sword? Here are just some of the suggested ones that every weapon should have.


    Absorption: This blade absorbs some of the blood of those it damages and transforms that blood into ethereal life-energy. That life-energy is then directed to the wielder, reinvigorating them in battle.


    Anathema: This blade becomes stronger against those deemed by you to be enemies of the faiths dedicated to you.


    Anarchist: Chaos further infuses the blade and increases the damage it does to lawful beings.


    Armor-piercing: This blade can ignore the defensive capabilities of any armor that wasn''t divinely constructed.


    Elemental: The blade does elemental damage of some sort. The precise sort of elemental damage is determined by the blade''s wielder the first time this is applied to the weapon.


    Healing: This unusual property grants weapons it is attached to an alternate usage. With it, the blade begins to "store" the pain it inflicts, and once a day it can be turned into a restorative item. If willed to shift into a restorative item, anyone it "cuts" into is healed. It can only heal as much as it harmed, so effective usage of this property requires that the blade be regularly used in battle.


    Heroic: This blade becomes infused with goodness and becomes a powerful weapon against evil. It does greater damage to evil-aligned beings.


    Poisoned: The blade constantly secretes a potent poison that envenoms victims. This poison is horrifyingly deadly and ensures that anyone it stabs spends several moments in agony.


    Sentience: This property is only accessible to you because of your acquisition of the second tier of influence over the domain of knowledge. If you attach it to something the thing you attach it too gains awareness and comes alive.


    Sharpness: This blade is a more effective weapon in combat. It does increased damage to anyone or anything it cuts into.


    Sinful: This blade becomes stained by evil and inflicts more damage and greater pain on those of any "good" alignment.


    Soul-snatcher: This weapon gains a sort of spiritual hollowness. Killing a creature with it causes it to be filled with the soul of the creature it just played a role in slaying. This soul can be extracted via magic and used in a number of ways.]


    ________________________________________________


    I chuckled and selected a handful of potent properties to attach to the sword. I appreciated the diversity of the properties at my disposal.


    I had experimented considerably with alteration while in my tower and I had come to appreciate the potential of this domain. One of the things I had learned was that the properties I had access too were determined by the domains I had influence over. That was something I had come to realize while "enhancing" food and crops using my power. And it was something I occasionally used to create mischief and have fun on Torus and elsewhere.


    Another thing I had learned was that non-divine items had a limit to the number of properties they could contain. Divine items did not. That included weapons, armor, and even potions, poisons, and food. I had the power to alter the properties of any item, and I could do this remotely.


    I gave Ava''s blade the "Soul-snatcher", "Sharpness", "Armor-Piercing", and "Elemental" properties. When I was done the blade was vibrating in my hands. I had other, more potent, and more devastating properties I could attach to it, but the truth was that this was going to be a minor artifact of mine.


    I wasn''t intending for it to be a super-weapon, just one that could make up for Ava''s relative lack of combat experience. Aoife, and indeed her clone, had more combat experience than Ava did so the dark dwarf needed advantages that would make up the discrepancy. The sword was just one of those things. I studied it for a second, thoroughly examining it, before handing it to Ava.


    "This blade is now yours. For the moment anyway. This blade is a powerful and chaotic one that can penetrate defenses and can shapeshift mid-battle. Use that to your advantage against your sister and make sure that the blade doesn''t shapeshift mid-battle. They... do that sometimes." I told the dwarf. This news surprised her and her eyes widened in shock.


    "Whoa, a shape-shifting sword..." She muttered, surprised at that news. I grinned at her.


    "You can will the sword to shift, but if you aren''t focused on fighting your sister the blade can take advantage of your lack of focus to move on its own. It''s a chaotic weapon. Recently all of the weapons I''ve made like this are." I told her, speaking frankly. I sensed her nervousness and grinned. That said our preparations weren''t done just yet.


    I rose my hand and gathered a mixture of arcane and divine energy into it. As I did so I willed some of the darkness at my feet to rise into my hand so I could continue to craft the potent artifacts Ava would be supplied with prior to confronting her sister.


    "I refuse to send you on your way without a few more things." I told the dwarf, surprising her. I sensed her hesitation, but I had a reason for this.


    ________________________________________________


    Aoife was an exceptionally powerful warrior. She was an individual with multiple classes, which was just one aspect of her strength. She was also just plain strong, even in terms of raw stats. The dwarf also used weapons and armor she had forged herself, and it turned out that she was an expert blacksmith. Weapons and armor she would be giving her almost-clone.


    Ava, without aid, would be crushed if she fought Aoife. Even the powerful equipment I gave her wouldn''t guarantee a victory against the Aoife-clone had created, once I gave the clone Aoife''s memories. That said, Ava didn''t have to fight fair.


    ________________________________________________


    With the mixture of divine and arcane power I had in one hand, I began a strange process. A thin portal opened in front of me, and from it came an unsettling droning noise, the sounds of ant wings beating and ant legs scuttling. The area beyond the portal was a floor covered in a number of white eggs, ones far larger than they should have been.


    I had created a portal to one of the settlements created by the first true faction I had ever created: The Swarm. The Swarm was a fierce collective of awakened or evolved insects who worshiped and served me. This settlement was vibrant and alive, filled with thousands of evolved, sapient, and zealous insects.


    The eggs belonged to a form of evolved ants, the myremekes. I sensed the potent life-force within them and knew that when the eggs hatched the creatures that emerged wouldn''t be unevolved ants but rather be myremekes. Which was perfect.


    I reached out and grabbed a handful of them, all while manipulating their sizes, and pulled them out of the portal. As I did so I was quietly grateful for the numerous upgrades my powers had received since I started acting truly godlike, as that allowed me to turn one of my synergistic abilities, "Size manipulation", from an active power with a cooldown to a passive power I could use freely.


    I stopped taking eggs when I had about five of them. There were tens of thousands of eggs that I could detect through the portal so I didn''t feel bad about taking a handful.


    I casually closed the portal and began to coat the eggs with life-energy. This accelerated their growth and was something I had frequently done remotely, even before the nearly month-long break I had taken to practice my powers. Ava saw all of this and curiously approached one of the eggs. As she did so, the lifeform within it began to break it open.


    ________________________________________________


    Within a few minutes, Ava was standing in front of five fully grown and mature myremekes warriors. She was wearing enhanced clothing and had a grim smile on her face as she pointed her sword at one of the warriors.


    The towering, chitinous monster was nearly three meters tall and had arms that were longer than she was tall. The creature was docile though. It recognized me as its god and master and was under orders to not engage in combat against Ava. I was about to witness a slaughter.


    I had used my aging powers on the thing, as well as my Hymenoptera abilities on it to "raise" it to maturity, and to ensure that Ava would not be in any actual danger while she transformed it and its siblings into her servants. Ava''s success in her confrontation against Aoife''s almost-clone would hinge on the role these massive insectoid beasts played in the fighting.


    The ants in front of me were sadomasochistic. I had ensured that this was the case by using five of my ten hourly usages of "Attitudes towards pain", a power I was granted as a result of my influence over the pain subdomain, and that had also undergone upgrades over the course of my life. I used the power and warped the attitudes the ants had towards suffering and pain to ensure that they were excited to fall to Ava''s amateurish swordplay, rather than angered, and would eagerly submit to her sword.


    I smiled as Ava roared and dashed towards the one she had designated as the first to fall. This was all part of my plan to both equip and train the dark dwarf. I didn''t just want her to be equipped to take down her sister''s almost-clone, I wanted her to be familiar with and confident in her strange new skills. And that ultimately required having her kill and reanimate things before the actual fight. I wanted her to grow familiar with the sword in her hand, while gaining new servants and this was a great way to kill two birds with one stone.


    A part of me, the small part of me that was fond of violence, grew excited as Ava closed in on her chosen victim. I was eager to witness this one-sided slaughter.

 144 Preparations

    Aoife was silent as she stared at the creature in front of her. Her mind was racing but it was because of that that she couldn''t easily find the words to articulate the complex emotions she was feeling.


    Her mind was also racing because of Althos'' own vague instructions, given to her telepathically shortly after the creature appeared in front of her: "Do not interfere, merely house this creature until I arrive. If she were running around freely others might think she was you, and that would be no good for anyone. This creature is part of a plan I have in place to protect you and placate your sister at the same time."


    He informed her of painfully little. Only a bit more than he told the creature seated across from her. It greatly frustrated the dwarf who now knew that her sister was apparently still bent on revenge.


    The woman and her pseudo-clone were seated across from each other. They were inside of the house that the mysterious god Althos had divinely constructed for her when adding buildings to the town so that its first inhabitants had places to live. Her house was a small one, perfect for her since she didn''t need or want much.


    A strange creature was seated across from her. The entity appeared to be a dwarf. On a purely physical level, it was impossible to tell the two apart. That said, all it took for someone who knew Aoife to be able to differentiate between the dwarf and her doppelganger was a chance to see the pseudo-clone walk. She lacked Aoife''s belief in herself and her body-language whenever she moved revealed as much to any astute observer.


    The strange dwarf-like creature was Althos'' mysterious creation. Aoife had heard her repeat her commands and found herself at a loss for words. So for now the two sat in awkward silence.


    The room they found themselves in was a simple one. It was supposed to serve as a combination kitchen and living room that was split precisely down the middle. The two occupants of the room were facing each other from across a kitchen island made of divinely generated metal. After several minutes, Aoife''s almost-clone looked at her and spoke.


    "Listen... are you going to tell me what''s going on?" The creature asked, in a voice that was a hauntingly perfect replica of Aoife''s own. It was unsettling for the dwarf to hear someone mimic her voice so perfectly. Aoife considered the question, then shook her head.


    "No. Althos spoke to me, and he told me not to interfere. You are here because if you were elsewhere people might think you were me." The dwarf explained. This caused the creature to grimace. That grimace elicited a small smile from Aoife, who sympathized with the creature who wore her face.


    ________________________________________________


    In the tower, the smell of sweat and blood mixed together to create a nauseating miasma. That said, I didn''t doubt that the demons and the ants who could smell it loved it. It was the perfect sort of toxic miasma for them.


    Ava was in motion. She was dashing towards her chosen victim, the first of the creatures who would fall to her blade. Her target was a powerfully built myremekes warrior who stood nearly three-meters tall. The creature grinned, a masochistic smile on its face as it waited for the sting of the blade that would soon penetrate its body.


    Ava''s feet smacked the floor beneath her several times before she finished closing in on her enemy. The sound of her footsteps was a quiet one, thanks to her diminutive stature as well as her small weight. When she closed in on her foe she smiled and leaped into the air.


    I watched this, studying how her muscles pushed against her clothing and immediately realized she wouldn''t be able to reach where she wanted to go unaided. Ava was staring at the unprotected skin of the massive ant-human hybrid. She wasn''t trying to penetrate the insectoid''s scales, she was trying to stab deep into its flesh. This was a smart choice but it was not one she was capable of making alone. At least not successfully. I chuckled and quietly intervened.


    Silently, I directed the air beneath Ava to give her a boost. The air instinctively obeyed me and uplifted Ava in mid-air. With it, she received the boost she needed to successfully reach the place she was aiming at, the unarmored torso of her foe. Her foe had a distinctly human torso and upper body. He had a pale, muscular chest, and a handsome face that was wracked with anticipation. He was eagerly awaiting


    "Heeyah!" She shouted, as she shot her blade forward at and into her opponent. The blade, composed of shadow-stuff, effortlessly sank into her enemy who welcomed Ava with a smile and reached out with his bladed arms. He wrapped them around her and pulled her into his chest even as he began to feel the exquisite pain she was inflicting with her savage weapon.


    He sighed, a strange smile on his humanlike face, as he helped her push the blade deeper and deeper and into himself. His eyes were alight with joy and pleasure, even as he felt his life-force seeping out of his body. The creature looked at Ava and studied her. I studied him, finding this whole thing amusing in a dark and macabre way.


    I had never fully seen the dreadful impact of my powers over pain in play before. Watching them in action was fascinating to me, and affirmed that I made the right choice in doing this. The ant-monster who was dying was in eerie and unsettling ecstasy as he perished, the life leaving his eyes but not the light. There was a sinister, sexual satisfaction visible in his gaze.


    His heart was beating rapidly and thus was accelerating his demise. I watched as scarlet fluid began to be spat out of the space where Ava had lodged her blade into him, and I could hear him gently laugh, the sound an innocent and delighted one. Ava grunted and gripped her sword tightly. Without moving I quietly buffed her strength and watched as she violently tore the blade from his chest.


    "Ahh..." The ant gasped, his eyes more lit than ever, as he felt new and unexpected pain from Ava''s violent and unskilled movements and motions. I audibly chuckled, as the ant staggered and fell, his legs no longer containing the strength needed to support his massive weight. His face was now on the floor, within reach of Ava even when she wasn''t in mid-air. I turned my attention to my servant, Ava, and spoke.


    "Finish the creature. Touch its head with your fingers." I told the dark-dwarf as I reached out and began to modify her. I swiftly made use of one of my more potent abilities and began to alter Ava herself.


    ________________________________________________


    [Hello! Welcome to the "Alter" menu. This menu allows you to glimpse at the traits possessed by a creature and select new traits to paste onto them.


    Ava is your current target. Here are her traits.


    Corruption: Ava is a dark-dwarf. This is an unusual and dangerous state of being for dwarves in which their hearts are corrupted and they physically take on darker and bleaker traits.


    Divinely empowered: Ava was already surprisingly powerful before you began to pour some of your divine, magical, and otherworldly power into her. Now she is even stronger and possesses the "Divinely empowered" trait which increases her potent power considerably.


    Sadist: Ava is a sadist. She relishes the pain she inflicts on her victims.


    What alterations would you like to make to her? Here are some possibilities:


    Acidic: This powerful alteration causes Ava to gain immunity to acid and to gain a natural attack in which even her touch transfers devastatingly powerful acid to a target and begins to break it or them down.


    Abomination: This alteration causes abomination to view a non-abomination as like them. Abominations who would normally be hostile towards recipients of this alteration instead leave them alone unless attacked first.


    Cold: This power stems from the liquid subdomain and it functions like "Acidic" in that it grants immunity to the cold and also bestows the altered individuals with a new natural attack. This one is a strange attack that chills or even outright freezes enemies in place.


    Empowered, necromantically: This alteration makes someone into a more potent necromancer. It increases how rapidly they gain levels as a necromancer, empowers the undead creations they animate, and even increases the raw, destructive power of their powers.


    Fungal: This fundamentally alters targets and turns them into potent fungal monstrosities. This power alters their appearance as much as you wish or will allow, and grants them hyphae and other useful fungal appendages. They gain the power to speak to fungi. They can also root themselves into the ground and begin to ambiently heal while rooted in soil.


    Parasitic: This allows for the altered individual to drain life from their victims and use it to power themselves.


    Plant-like: Similar to fungal, but with the power to exude a calming fragrance, natural regeneration while in the light of the sun, and the ability to gain control over victims if they are either persuaded or forced to ingest a seed created by the altered individual. They gain the power to speak to plants.


    Poisonous: This functions similarly to acidic but with poison instead of acid.]


    ________________________________________________


    I smiled and altered Ava to make her poisonous and I empowered her necromancy with the "Empowered, necromantically" alteration. The dwarf froze at my suggestion but considered it for a moment. And then she opted to obey me and placed a single, finger on the monster''s human-like head with surprising gentleness. She placed her index-finger squarely on the monster''s forehead. As she did so her entire body radiated a gentle, silver-light. My alteration was taking hold.


    The moment the dark-dwarf placed her finger on the humanlike face of her victim, he emanated a noise that was a mixture of pain and pleasure. The utterance was a guttural half-moan, half-agonized shout. It was loud, and with it the creature perished almost frighteningly quickly. Mere moments after Ava touched his head.


    I watched as his breathing sped up for a moment, and then slowed down considerably. Moments later he stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating. Ava noticed this too, and her face contorted itself. There was a look of cruel satisfaction in her eyes and on her lips in the form of twisted lips that were half smiling, half smirking. She began to speak as she moved her hands until they were positioned just over the creature.


    "Finally... With this, I can begin my revenge in full." She said, aware of her own powers and the spell she was mentally preparing to cast. An instant after she finished speaking rays of dark green energy shot out of her fingers and into the corpse at her feet.


    The still corpse began to radiate an eerie and dark greenish glow as Ava''s imprecise and untrained necromantic magics filled it with an unholy and homicidal unlife. I watched as the body began to vibrate as if someone were attempting to restart its heart, and I chuckled. I felt the unlife energy that Ava had just conjured begin to settle in the strange body of the monster.


    After a few seconds of waiting, Ava began to tap her feet onto the stone floor of my tower. It was a rapid tapping, one that increased in frequency the more she had to wait. Her inexperienced, imprecise spellcasting was more than enough to reanimate the corpse, but it wasn''t enough to do it immediately as I could. Her mortality and her weak soul made it impossible for her to have the same innate, inborn mastery over unlife energy that I possessed. That said, I knew that she succeeded.


    "Patience." I told her, smiling as the corpse''s vibrations finally began to slow down. Ava''s tapping slowed as the vibrations did, the impressive creature keenly aware of the speed of the vibration of her first undead creation.


    Nearly two minutes after she cast the spell she cast on the ghoulified ant-monster, the creature finally stopped vibrating. And began to move. Ava smiled at the thing and helped it up, while turning her eyes towards the rest of the myremekes ants. It wouldn''t take her even fifteen minutes to finish slaughtering and reanimating them. Each time she had to reanimate a corpse it was a quicker process than the last time.


    When Ava and her squadron of undead ant-monsters were fully prepared and ready to go, I rose a hand to my right and opened up a single, moderately large portal. We could see beyond it, and were peering into Oscuridad'' mine, a place I created to give the residents of the small community a way to pass time and to arm themselves without too much work on my part.

 145 The Wheels of Destiny

    [Alert: A Dark Destiny


    Your influence over the domain of fate and your ties to dwarves were so significant that even as an echo of the god you once were, you deserve to know what you are about to be told. Prepare yourself, vestige of Morehammer, for what you are about to learn and the decisions you make based on that knowledge will influence the destinies of entire worlds.


    A newborn deity is about to set in motion events that may permanently alter the destiny of the dwarven species. Althos, a lesser deity who has acquired a plethora of dark powers, is aiding a powerful dark-dwarf in her insatiable, insane quest for vengeance against her sister. He has given her considerable power, and even now then they are on their way to accomplish her goals.


    Althos knows not the long-standing and possibly permanent consequences of what may come from aiding the dark-dwarf, Ava. Even his particular version of the system is not fully aware of what may happen if he continues on his current path. He does not yet possess influence over the domain of fate so his particular version of the system is infantile in its knowledge.


    Althos is now within the island that the humans of Torus call "Puerto-Rico". He and Ava are minutes away from accomplishing their goals. In minutes Ava may believe she has achieved her vengeance against Aoife, her sister. And if she comes to believe that, then odds are there is no going back.


    You once fought to prevent the emergence of a god of dark-dwarves. As valiant and as persistent as your efforts were, they may turn out to be for naught unless you act now. If you do not use what remains of your power to intervene and lay-low the machinations of this alien god, the dwarven race may begin down a path like that of the elves or the unicorns, one that permanently divides them.


    Vestige of the once-mighty Morehammer... Will you act? Will you save your people, from the ignorant clutches of a newborn god of corruption and ambition? Are you willing to sacrifice what remains of your might, if it means your people get to continue to be united?]


    ________________________________________________


    One of the greatest secrets Atlantis'' Emerald Palace contained was a number of utterly impenetrable barriers deep within its darkest and most obscure reaches. These barriers were composed of incredibly potent divine energy, pure power that prevented anyone from bypassing them. The secrets these barriers contained were not known to mortals, and even most versions of the system were ignorant of the true natures of the treasures these barriers protected.


    Past the third and final barrier laid a small nave, a rectangular chamber once intended to house members of a congregation during services dedicated to the ancient chief of the dwarven gods: Morehammer. It was here that a solitary, strange, and ethereal being wandered eternally.


    This mysterious entity had the superficial appearance of a powerfully built, armed, and armored dwarf. He wore armor made of golden-colored and gleaming metal and had on a helm that was covered in images of hammers both for construction and for war. This dwarf stood a bit under one and a half meters tall and had long brown hair that spilled freely out of his helm and down to his back.


    He had a tense look on his face. He was deep in thought.


    "What do I do here?" He asked himself. He was mentally scanning through his still considerable list of powers, but he was finding none that he could use to warn anyone of the danger to the future that was going on elsewhere.


    After the vestige spent a few moments searching through the hundreds of powers he possessed, he realized that the system may indeed have been correct when it cryptically suggested that he may need to sacrifice what remained of his might to intervene and save his people from a dreadful destiny. And Morehammer, or at least what remained of Morehammer after the true deity was slain half a million years ago, thought about whether or not he would do that. While he did so he closed his eyes.


    "Has the time finally come to begin to end my eternal existence? Is it finally time for me to cease to exist?" The vestige asked. A number of emotions were audible within his voice. Fear, excitement, curiosity, and even a twinge of hope would have been audible to anyone who was able to hear him. But no one did.


    Perhaps the worst part of the vestige''s eternal existence was his inability to be heard by anyone else. The vestige was utterly alone and so deep within the bowels of the palace the dwarves had built that no one could hear him. And as a vestige, many common godly powers were lost to him such as the ability to establish mental links or to communicate with mortals through dreams. If he truly wanted too he could sacrifice his own might to use these abilities, but doing so would permanently weaken him.


    Morehammer''s echo smiled as he realized, after considering his situation, that it was time to begin to hasten the end of his eternal existence. In life the dwarven god had been a valiant hero who went to great lengths to protect his people. In death, he figured he ought to do the same. He came to this realization with the blinding speed that was possible only for a god or their echo.


    "For the sake of my creations... I shall finally begin to move again." The vestige declared. There was joy in his voice.


    "I shall not abandon even a single daughter of mine to the darkness of an ignorant, newborn god." The phantom of a deity declared. His eyes were beginning to glow as he spoke. The vestige sighed after he finished speaking, and began readying himself for what was to come.


    ________________________________________________


    I starred into the portal in front of me. It showed me a sight from many hundred kilometers away, the depths of a mine I carved by hand. The mine''s interior was dark, almost pitch-black. Only the faint luminescence of some of the stones within the mine radiated a gentle glow that showed us the way.


    My servants and worshipers all turned to look at me. Their eyes were filled with anticipation and I chuckled at them. I took the few steps I needed to take to cross the distance separating me from the portal, and then through it.


    I stepped into the mine with ease and found myself standing face to face with a thick, dark wall. The dark wall was composed of the natural stone that filled most of the space within this hand-carved tunnel. My eyes were easily able to peer through the dark stone and identify the assortment of secretive natural treasures located within the mine, but I knew my servants wouldn''t be able to so easily see through this unaided. Without breaking a sweat I easily gave all of them the ability to see in the dark, so to make travel a bit easier. I then stepped to the side while motioning for them to follow me.


    As I moved to give my forces more room to come through, I gently placed a hand on the wall in front of me and willed it to collapse. The wall obeyed me, crumbling quite easily and filling the tunnel with noise. I knew that that would happen. Doing this much was well within my capacity as an elemental overlord, and indeed I could do so much more than just cause earthen walls to fall apart at my touch.


    Of all of my elemental powers, the one I was the most familiar with was that of the earth. Between the earth powers, I possessed through the earth subdomain and the subdomain of agriculture, as well as the generalized elemental overlord powers I possessed a keen awareness of the earth and a number of considerable powers through it that I could wield.


    The earth at my feet was my friend, my ally. I not only controlled stones and sand, but even dirt and soil were mine to command. And my oldest detection based ability was one based on powers over the earth itself, a potent ability to be aware of anyone or anything else with feet on the earth.


    Beside me, a number of creatures were crossing through the portal I created. Demons, undead myremekes, and Ava stepped through the portal I had made while studying the sights before them. They all had excited looks on their faces and a number of emotions visible in their faces. I smiled at them and then began to speak.


    "We are minutes away from finally accomplishing Ava''s dream. All we have to do is find Aoife. And kill her." I told the assembled creatures. As soon as I was finished speaking, I began to set in motion another part of my grand scheme.


    An instant after the word "her" left my lips, I cast a powerful illusion over the diverse crowd of dark-hearted beings. An explosion of light radiated out of me and filled the vision of my targets with potent, hypnotic light. It also instantly filled the minds of the targets with colorful images and absorbed all of their attention. Their eyes widened and their faces grew slack, even those of the demons. My potent "Divine illusionist" ability was no doubt responsible for this success.


    I waited for a second to ensure that they weren''t aware of me. I performed a surface-level examination of their minds using my basic mind-reading powers and found that they were well and truly distracted. When I was sure that they were, I teleported myself out of the mine and elsewhere. To the room in which Aoife and her pseudo-clone were currently waiting for something to happen or for instructions from me to arrive.


    In an instant, my surroundings instantly shifted from the interior of the mine to the simple room in which two dwarves were patiently looking at each other. Both almost leaped out of their seats when they noticed me beside them at the front of the strange island around which they positioned themselves. I chuckled at the pair and began to speak.


    "Hello, you two. The time is almost upon us. Even now, Ava awaits you." I informed them, as they began to recover their composure. Aoife glared at me as I revealed this and I calmly smiled at her. I could tell that a part of her was unnerved by my unflappable nature right now. To be fair to her she hadn''t interacted directly with me all that much so it was unsurprising that she found my behavior strange. That said, she wasn''t my main focus at the moment. I turned my attention to my creation.


    "You are the star of the performance we''re going to be putting on." I told her, speaking frankly. Without her I''d need to risk Aoife, and one way or another at least one of the two sisters would die. She looked at me curiously, and I reached out and grabbed her hand. It felt rough, calloused, and strong.


    As I did so I quietly activated my "tactile teaching" power. I shared every single one of Ava''s and Aoife''s memories with the strange clone, filling her up with two lifetimes of knowledge, experience, and memories. Her consciousness was suddenly taken from her by the potency of what I was doing and how much of her mind it took from her at once.


    As I activated my strange power, the clone froze and her eyes began to almost violently radiate a powerful, silvery light. I could feel her brain reacting, painfully to the sudden and incredible overload of knowledge, experience, and memories. I chuckled and began to pour potent holy-energy directly into her mind.


    The holy-energy poured into her brain and began to undo the harm and pain she had suffered from the sudden backlash of receiving too much information in any form. The silvery light her eyes were radiated began to increase in intensity, but a smile lit up her face. Her brain was adjusting to the information properly, all while the holy energy made her feel comfortable and experience temporary bliss.


    Aoife and I sat in uncomfortable silence until the silvery light radiating out of the clone''s eyes began to dim a bit. As it did, the clone began to move. She was gradually regaining consciousness.


    "Hello, Aoife." I said, referring to the clone. My eyes were locked on her face. She tilted her head in my direction and smiled at me.


    "Hello, creator." She told me. Her voice was gentle, calm, and relaxed. She knew everything now. Everything she needed to know. And she understood Ava''s point of view. She did know both sides after all.

 146 Confrontations And Executions

    "Just one more barrier." The dwarf-looking entity muttered. He found himself standing in front of the last barrier between himself and his objective: the outside world. To others though, it would have been the first barrier standing between them and his artifacts.


    The artifacts in question included but weren''t limited to the objects he held in his hands. A towering shield in one, and a gigantic hammer in the other.


    The barrier was a powerful construct that the universe itself put in place to protect him and to protect his divine armory. No mortal or extraplanar being could hope to penetrate it. In his eyes, it resembled a rainbow-hued whirlpool of the life-force that his living-self had once leaked into the multiverse during the catastrophe that ended the mythic age. It had been eons since he last stood here.


    He closed his eyes, mostly to keep copper-colored tears from falling and staining his beard. He solemnly lifted his war hammer, using a single hand as if the massive object were a toy despite it being an object that stood taller than he did, and pointed it at the barrier. The ornate weapon was tethered to his soul and was the very first weapon he had ever forged.


    The gigantic hammer began to radiate scarlet energy. It coalesced around the head of the hammer and wrapped the blunt head of the weapon in a delicate glow. As it did, he began to smile. He waited a few moments and allowed more and more of the strange, ghostly energy to wrap around his weapon. When it was ready he felt the hammer begin to hum. His lips turned upward in his own oddly mechanical imitation of a smile.


    He lifted the hammer up high and then inhaled. Air surged into his lungs for the first time in centuries. The irony that he was ready and willing to sacrifice himself to keep his people alive and that that was what made him feel more alive now than he had in centuries was not lost on him. He then aimed his hammer so that he would be able to unleash its full weight maximally on the barrier while expending the minimum amount of energy needed to do so. When he was ready, he brought the hammer crashing down.


    The hammer rocketed downwards, aimed squarely at the center of the rainbow-colored barrier. It crashed into, and then through the barrier with little resistance. The shell of the god''s home had been built to withstand any invasion from the outside, not attempts to break it from within. The barrier fell apart, having successfully accomplished its mission of protecting Morehammer''s vestige for as long as the echo felt like being protected. Now it was time for the entity to act.


    The godly ghost, a divine echo of the past, had successfully shattered the barrier that kept intrudes from encroaching on his home and could now act freely for the first time since he was a living god. As the barrier fell apart, the god took his first steps into the outside world. He shivered as he felt the chilly, dusty air of the bowels of the palace one of his own children had once built.


    Having experienced death himself, the godly echo knew that some things were worth dying for. He could imagine few things worth dying for that mattered more to him than the fates of the people he created and died trying to protect. As he considered the reality and heavy consequences he would have to face for doing what he was doing, his mind was already flooding with new information, as trillions of alerts flooded into his soul.


    Reading through the alerts, it only took him a few moments to figure out where Puerto Rico was. And only a few more moments after that to divine the location of Oscuridad and its mine, through notifications related to the dwarves who lived in the settlement.


    As soon as he figured it out, the deific apparition wasted no time and teleported himself there. He was ready to prevent his people from falling into darkness by any means necessary.


    ________________________________________________


    If I didn''t know better I would have believed that the two dwarves sitting with me were twins. They looked eerily alike, even to my eyes. That said, I did know better. Partially because I created one of them. And the one I created had a serene expression on her face.


    Aoife''s clone had a perfectly peaceful smile on her face. Aoife herself had a confused look on hers. I could tell that she was unsure of what was to come. I turned my attention to her.


    "Ava has sought nothing less than your death for years. What she seeks now is something more. She seeks to kill and then control you. Through necromancy." I told her, speaking truthfully of her sister''s machinations. Aoife shivered as she began to finally understand the shape of her sister''s sinister hatred.


    "But... why? What did I do that was so vile to Ava that she now seeks to do something so.... atrocious to me?" Aoife asked, her voice revealing the depths of her sorrow and confusion. I considered what to say, but was beaten to the punch by the clone.


    "Aoife, Ava believes you abandoned her. Her memory of the day you were captured differs from yours." The clone revealed, now possessing the full story, at least as far as both dwarves remembered. I considered how to proceed from here, but almost immediately realized that there was no point in keeping the truth from Aoife.


    I reached out and grabbed the dwarf''s hand, and as she gasped in reflexive response to my actions I went ahead and transferred all of Ava''s memories into her. Just like with her clone, her eyes immediately began to radiate silvery light and she froze up. This time I was faster with my infusion of holy-energy and began to pour the power into her brain immediately. That kept her from experiencing any pain, though she did tighten her grip on my hand in response to my actions.


    I released my hand from her grip with a sudden and somewhat forceful yank. As I did so I turned to Aoife''s clone. I was about to speak when my mini-map suddenly... changed. And then I received a notification through my domain-sense power, one pertaining to the death domain, that alarmed me and spurred me to action.


    In an instant I teleported myself out of Aoife''s home and into the tunnels where someone was enacting a hurricane of violence on my followers.


    ________________________________________________


    The tunnel housing Ava and her allies and observers was a small place that was only barely able to accommodate the powerful and imposing looking undead warriors the necromancer commanded. Tragically, for them anyway, Morehammer''s vestige was only the size of a short human. He wasn''t uncomfortable in the strange dimensions of the place.


    The deity had teleported himself to the entrance of the mine, incorrectly assuming that that would be where he could find Aoife. When he arrived at the mine he didn''t find the dwarf, but he did find the scent of a dark-dwarf. Vestiges possessed senses only a tenth as powerful as gods, but his senses were sharp enough for him to be able to sniff out the precise location of Ava, one of the two foes he knew of by name.


    He had entered the mine and wandered it, guided solely by his sense of smell. And it led him to the eerie tunnel where he found his foe. She along with a whole host of horrors stood, paralyzed by an illusion. And this brought an uneasy expression to the divine apparition''s face.


    "How... Strange." The god muttered, speaking slowly and carefully as if to not alert his foes. When the creatures did not stir or react to his muttered words the god felt a bit better, but not much.


    "What is going on?" He wondered, speaking aloud once more. This too didn''t stir them from their strange, magical stupor. The god approached them, his eyes focused on the lone dwarf in the group.


    Ava was a strange creature. She had dark, almost obsidian-like skin and was clothed in robes that managed the impressive feat of being darker than her flesh. There was an odd-looking blade in a sheath made of shadows attached to a belt at her waist. She had a relaxed expression on her face, but her actual eyes were swirling arrays of multicolored light, reflecting the strange illusion that trapped and paralyzed her.


    The once-deity approached her and studied her. As he did so he began to frown. He was studying everything about her, not just her physical appearance, but her personality and her dreams. The child was disappointingly dark, and until this point, the entity had hoped to spare her life. That said, he now knew that doing so wasn''t possible.


    Without a shred of hesitation or mercy, Morehammer lifted his hammer and rose it to the point where the thing was even with Ava''s face. He then moved it so that it was distant from her head. And in a third motion, he swung the weapon at a speed that exceeded the speed of sound and the weapon effortlessly smashed through Ava''s head, killing her painlessly and also splattering her skull, flesh, and blood everywhere behind her.


    What remained of her head, following her execution was splattered across the strange tunnel she was in and coated her companions with gore, skull-fragments, and brain-matter. The corpse was also thrown by the force of the blow, but even as the corpse was sent sailing away from the place it had once stood, Morehammer flew into motion. The once-deity didn''t have the time to mourn the loss of a dwarf life, even though in time he didn''t doubt that he would.


    The godly apparition exploded into violence. He turned first on the undead ant-human hybrids and then focused on the extraplanar horde behind Ava. He threw himself at them and swung his hammer, seemingly with abandon. That said, he was actually quite careful and precisely aimed his hammer to kill each extraplanar entity in a single blow, crushing skulls and destroying spines with the ease of a practiced martial artist going through drills they could perform in their sleep.


    His body in motion was a thing of beauty, even if it would have been impossible for a mortal to appreciate it. His armor caught what little light existed in the tunnel and even the abundant darkness quite artistically, and his movements were maximally efficient even as he performed acts of horrifying violence with an unsettling detachment towards what he was doing.


    In his eyes what he was doing was a simple act of goodwill, one that shouldn''t be fun in and of itself as that would be sadistic enjoyment of suffering and not a necessary purging of evil. Morehammer''s mission was simple: put down the threat that was insidiously on the precipice of forever dividing the dwarven people. There was no enjoyment or amusement in his heart, only a dedication to his mission.


    Althos noticed his presence at the same time as the strange entity was bringing his hammer down on the pain-knight who led the cult, and teleported into the tunnel just in time to see Morehammer finish off the head of the newest cult of Althonians. In all, perhaps half a second had passed since the dwarven-god had executed Ava.


    Morehammer finished his whirlwind of violence by coming to a stop beside the defeated corpse of the pain-knight who worshiped Althos. He turned to face the youthful god, silently and covered in the blood of Althos'' fallen servants. His armor, his face, and his hammer were covered in the slightly acidic blood of evil extraplanars.


    ________________________________________________


    The tunnel I was in was illuminated by the little light that existed in the tunnel, and the light of the portal that led into and out of my tower. In an instant, I closed the portal that led to my home and studied the figure before me.


    The figure did not appear on my mini-map or my not-so-mini-map. My senses hadn''t detected him either, though now that he was in front of me I could perceive him. I quietly activated a familiar knowledge-domain ability and attempted to appraise him. Thankfully that managed to shed some light on who he was. And the truth was so much weirder than anything I could have imagined.


    ________________________________________________


    [Name: Morehammer (Level 20 berserker, level 20 warrior, level 20 paladin)


    Species: Vestige*


    Alignment: Lawful Good


    Personal Virtue: Diligence


    Personal Vice: Pride


    Sexuality: Heterosexual


    Magic sensing: This is a vestige of the creator-god of the dwarves. Its magic is beyond that of any creature you''ve ever met.


    Faith sense \u0026 authority detection: Morehammer was the god of the dwarves. Other gods existed in the ancient dwarven pantheon but they were all the creations of Morehammer. Morehammer was a greater god once, a being of unimaginable power who you in your current state wouldn''t even be able to touch. That said, as a vestige it''s power is barely a tenth of what it was when Morehammer was alive.


    As the chief god of the dwarves, Morehammer held nearly absolute power over the dwarves as a species. Now, as a vestige, a ghostly echo of a god left behind when it dies, it''s power is comparable to yours. If dwarves who are pure of heart stand in his presence they will no doubt begin to worship him again, swayed by his radiant aura to love and serve him.


    In life, Morehammer closely led and strictly watched over his creations, working hard to keep them pious and good-natured. His stewardship was so effective that it kept them good-natured as a species, with only relatively minor exceptions even half a million years after his passing.


    Soul sense: This creature''s soul is a pale shadow of that of the actual Morehammer. That''s why it is only level 20 what classes it retained even in death and of the religious classes, it only kept the paladin class.


    *: When a god dies, the divine power they collected mixes with the faith of their followers and the domains they had influence over. All of this collects in their holiest sites and transforms such places into something vaguely like a grave for a god. Minutes after they perish, a vestige coalesces in their holiest site, and their artifacts appear there as well. Vestiges are the eerie echoes of the gods, as gods are too powerful to merely die, even when truly and permanently slain.


    These strange entities are free-willed, almost truly alive creatures that contain the souls and almost all of the memories of whatever god whose death gave them their strange imitation of life. The overwhelming majority of these entities are content to rest for eternity within their holiest sites, where they are as close to immortal as any non-higher-being can be. That said, rumors persist that some can leave their holiest sites, even if only temporarily.


    These beings are undetectable by any of your detection based abilities at your current level of divine power and overall influence over any domain or subdomain. These beings are also able to largely resist even your powers over knowledge and thus I cannot get a firm reading on Morehammer''s intentions. That said, they are not incapable of escaping the notice of domain-based notifications.


    These terrifyingly powerful entities retain only the barest connection to the system, but they retain many of the powers they once possessed in life. As far as I, the domain of knowledge, know these creatures are the most dangerous beings in the multiverse, aside from perhaps yourself.


    Morehammer began to quietly study me. He was silent as he did so, but before even a split second had passed I willingly shed my physical form and took on an incorporeal one. It was only after my physical form was completely gone that I dared to speak.]


    ________________________________________________


    I was no fool. This creature''s actions filled me with anger, as it had intruded upon and destroyed a scheme in process, but it was also apparently close to as, or even stronger as I was. I wasn''t about to challenge it to a fight that didn''t benefit me.


    "Morehammer... I never imagined that I''d come across you in any capacity this early in my life." I confessed. I knew of the creature through the dwarves who lived in this world, particularly in Atlantis, but all of my dwarven worshipers knew of him in some capacity. The vestige didn''t move, but he did speak.


    "Althos... To think that a newborn god would cause such mischief." The creature said, speaking even as he stared where my body had once been. His voice was powerful. It mixed the force of an avalanche rushing down a snow-topped mountain with the vibrato pulsations of an earthquake.


    "Little god... Do I frighten you so much that you dare not stand in my presence?" Morehammer asked, even as he began to step towards me.


    "Do you fear that I shall do to you, what I did to your servants?" The armored echo asked, his tone indicating his displeasure at my actions. I chuckled in response, a sound that revibrated throughout the tunnel. This made the strange being stop and look around in interest and confusion.


    "Do you think I fear you?" I asked it, sincerely. My question caught the entity off-guard. I could tell that it appeared to have believed that and hearing me to question it so directly had evidently thrown the being off-guard. That caused me to laugh, which unfortunately refocused the strange being. He growled in anger, and began to approach me again.


    "Enough talk... I shall not allow you to corrupt even another dwarf. When I finish doing to you what I am about to do, I will track down your vestige and make sure it also gets no chance to corrupt or further corrupt even one of my children." The dwarf-god growled, his voice suddenly taking on the intensity of a landslide, with the heat and ferocity of a volcanic eruption.


    The dwarf reached close enough to swing his hammer at me, and I was surprised when I felt the mighty weapon actually connect with me and blow my incorporeal form back and into the walls of the mine. I was so surprised at that, that before I felt the relatively unfamiliar sensation of pain begin to wrack my mind, I felt a wave of shock and something resembling a more hateful form of awe creep into my heart and mind. Those emotions were aimed at my powerful foe. That was all before the pain hit through.


    The pain was considerable, nauseating, and had I been a lesser being would have unfocused me enough for me to not catch the sensation of the wall I was blown into beginning to come apart, thanks to my foe. That said, my connection to the earth itself was strong enough that I felt the rumbling sensation of the dwarf''s divinely-powered attack on the walls that surrounded my incorporeal form.


    It was while the dwarf was focusing on tearing apart the wall I had been blown into that I received a new notification. It detailed a simple, yet ominous quest.


    As I read it, I began to ready a gift for my enemy, and I began to strengthen the wall that separated Morehammer from me. I could do many things at once.


    ________________________________________________


    [Quest: Survive


    Quest type: Survival


    Quest giver: The System


    Quest details: Everything about this is wrong. A vestige is on the loose. Very, very few vestiges should be able to roam freely and Morehammer isn''t one of them. That said, this vestige is dangerous and could inflict lasting damage on you that is beyond your current ability to recover from.


    If you want to uncover the truth behind this, and if you want to see tomorrow, it is critical that you find a way through this. If you ask me, the best possible way out of this is to flee. But no matter what you do, take care and treat this vestige seriously. It possesses abilities beyond yours.


    Deadline: This is a waste of space.


    Reward: I don''t seriously need to give you a reward for this right?]


    ________________________________________________


    As Althos was reading through the notification that the system sent him to warn him of the serious nature of the threat Morehammer posed, Morehammer closed in on him. The echo was an echo of a dwarven god, one who possessed influence over the earth itself and so each of his blows destroyed part of the wall that protected the young god.


    The wall Althos had been blown into by the dwarf''s Warhammer was solid and thick, and even for the vestige it didn''t entirely give way immediately. As powerful as the entity was, he wasn''t a god. His opponent, on the other hand, was.


    Althos'' mind was taking on multiple tasks all at once, including reading the notification, strengthening the wall, and preparing an unpleasant gift for the vestige. As soon as Althos finished reading the notification, the god teleported himself out of the tunnel. Now that he knew the stranger was an enemy, Althos immediately began to take him seriously. As a consequence of that, Althos activated a number of his other powers at once.


    The floor beneath Morehammer''s feet lost its solidity and became a toxic, wet, marsh in an instant. And the wall Morehammer was destroying abruptly liquified and came hurtling towards the strange vestige. Morehammer roared in annoyance as he felt his prey slip through his fingertips, and as the wall he had once sought to destroy surged towards and then over him, hitting him with torrential force.


    ________________________________________________


    Tasting a legitimate defeat for the first time, with the deaths of my extraplanar minions and Ava, I fled from the mine beside Oscuridad. I felt a number of emotions as I teleported myself far from the deep subterranean area close to where my tower once was. I knew that the mine, and almost certainly the town of Oscuridad were lost to me. My power may annoy or even slow down the vestige, but I knew that such weak abilities wouldn''t stop him. I sensed it, in my heart.


    His war hammer had struck me in the face, and it inflicted real damage, which I proceeded to heal almost immediately. That said, I still felt some sort of phantom pain. My face stung and that didn''t go away. It was uncomfortable and served to remind me of the defeat I had just suffered.


    I had an enemy now. And it was one who could stand against me in a direct fight. I didn''t flee to my tower, instead, I fled further than that. I teleported myself beyond the world of Torus, and into outer space, just outside of Torus.


    As I did so, I opened portals all over Oscuridad and sent out a mass notification to the town''s inhabitants. I falsely warned them of an attack by devils on the mine and encouraged them to run through the portals, to distant, allied communities. Without fail the people of Oscuridad obeyed me and in minutes the town was abandoned.


    I was thankful to not have to read another notification detailing a servant of mine dying a painful death at the hands of the "mysterious entity" which was what the notification that alerted me to the death of Ava had said. When the town was abandoned, I remotely willed the cavern that once housed Oscuridad to suffer a cave-in.


    Millions of tons of rocks and stones collapsed into it, filling it. I didn''t doubt that my enemy would have survived it if he had even been in it, but it was nice to give him an extra challenge if he didn''t have an instantaneous way out of my cavern. Believing that he was stuck in there for a few hours, or even days brought a thin, cruel smile to my face.

 147 The Aftermath

    Ava''s death was a setback... But not the end. I reassured myself, shortly after escaping from the mine''s tunnel below Puerto Rico. I was in the frigid depths of outer space, floating beyond even the outermost layer of Torus'' atmosphere. I calmly activated my "Resurrection" power, aware that I didn''t need a body to perform a successful resurrection. Nothing happened at first.


    I had my target firmly in my mind, and I was at the point with my powers where I didn''t need to precisely target someone to have my powers affect them if I knew them well. And I knew Ava. I knew Ava as much as she knew herself. But nothing happened. I initially chalked this up to a delay in retrieving her soul and forming a new body for her. So I was able to be patient. At first.


    It was easy enough, at first. I hadn''t considered the horrible truth. I didn''t think my foe would either possess the powers or the disposition to make his actions permanent. That said I didn''t have to wait long before receiving a notification, perhaps only half a minute passed, before I learned the true consequences of my failure.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Limitations Of Resurrection


    Resurrection, especially at your current level of power, is an imperfect ability. It cannot work on someone whose soul has been destroyed. As Ava''s has been. There may come a time when this limitation is lifted, maybe. But for now, Ava is beyond even your reach. Ava''s soul was destroyed in the minutes that have passed since your confrontation with Morehammer''s vestige.]


    ________________________________________________


    What? I... Can''t believe this. I thought when I read the notification.


    I felt a painful throbbing in my heart. It felt... fiery and filled me with frustration. I... was angry. I had never experienced this emotion firsthand, at least not to this extent before, but it made me want to enact violence. And it was far from the only emotion I felt at this particular moment in time.


    Ava... I thought, moments after reading the terrible message. I closed my eyes and felt tears welling up in them. These emotions were ones I was unfamiliar with. That said, my powers over memories and the various lifetimes of memories I had within me allowed me to realize that this particular emotion was sadness.


    I found myself floating far away from Puerto Rico, or even Torus. If I looked off in the distance I could see Torus, orbiting the star around which the planet flew. It was a beautiful sight to be sure, a breath-taking one really, but as beautiful as it was it wasn''t enough to distract me from the toxic cocktail of emotions I was enduring at the moment.


    This is... Painful. I mentally muttered as I began to scowl. I possessed a supernatural awareness of how I looked at all times and because of this I knew that at the moment there was grief and anger visible in my expression.


    A part of me, the part possessed by anger, wanted to go out and attempt to exact revenge on Morehammer''s vestige. That said, I wasn''t foolish. I could reasonably predict that such an effort would end in failure. My revenge would need to be more creative.


    I''m gonna need to be clever in order to defeat Morehammer. I thought as I kept floating in space. Morehammer was an incredibly powerful foe, and I could assume that he possessed a number of potent abilities thanks to his first life as a god. I was operating under the assumption that he possessed powers greater than mine, at least with regards to his prime domains.


    For now... I need to do something to distract myself from the pain I''m feeling. Preferably something productive. I thought, opting to focus on something I could do, rather than brooding in the depths of space. My closed eyes allowed my mini-map to manifest in its true form, as the not-so-mini-map. This was useful because it alerted me to a relatively closeby treasure trove: radiation.


    My not-so-mini-map was alerting me to pockets of radiation near me. Seeing the tiny pockets on the map turned my attention away from my current predicament. Temporarily anyway.


    Radiation was a potent source of power for me, a power that I could absorb and use if I wanted too. I already had some stored within me, but here in space, I found myself faced with an opportunity to absorb even more. It didn''t take me long to decide to indulge in the chance to gain some more of what was currently a limited resource.


    I reached out a hand in the direction of the radiation and idly began to draw it towards myself using my powers over gravity.


    Controlling gravity was the simplest way in which I could use my powers over physics. Whenever I activated my "Gravity mastery" power, I selected an area or targets which would be affected, and then I selected the direction in which gravity would flow in that area or for that target. With the radiation, the target of my powers, I changed gravity so that it would flow towards me.


    A grin crossed my face as I felt the radiation begin to float towards me, drawn by my power over gravity. I stayed still and willed my movement to stop while I waited for the radiation to seep into me.


    I had only done this once before, in the days before my nearly month-long time in my tower. I had luxuriated in a dark part of the countless subterranean chambers and caverns deep beneath Puerto Rico when I was first acquiring influence over the subdomain of radiation. At the time I gained significant powers over radiation, powers I had yet to use.


    I suppose it might be worthwhile to change that... I thought to myself, a grin beginning to spread on my face. If I was serious about being creative in the pursuit of my revenge I ought to take chances to explore my powers and learn which ones were the best suited to help me defeat the mighty enemy I was now facing.


    ________________________________________________


    In the depths of my mind, I contemplated what I knew about my enemy. Morehammer, my foe, was the ancient creator and god of dwarves. He was once a god of blacksmithing, his children, and metals.


    He was a powerful father-figure to every non-dark-dwarf and his influence was so incredibly significant to the lives of his children that even half a million years after he lived he was remembered, to some extent, by his children. He was an incredibly powerful deity once, so much so that even his vestige was considerably powerful. I didn''t like the idea of fighting the vestige again, at least not at my current level of strength. So my revenge would need to be more subtle than a regular fight to the death.


    What else do I know about Morehammer? He''s... lawful good. I recalled, and suddenly a smile began to slowly inch its way onto my face. Because Morehammer''s lawful-goodness was a perfect match for my chaotic wickedness. And if I wanted power, which I did, then I ought to defeat Morehammer, take his artifacts, and if possible absorb his power.


    Can... Can I do that? I wondered, before shaking my head, even as radiation began to seep into me. I knew that I didn''t have to wonder about such things. I instead asked my question, taking advantage of the ties I had to the system and to domains.


    "Morehammer''s vestige... If I kill it, can I absorb what remains of its power?" I asked, projecting my question outward towards the domains and subdomains that dwelt within me. Directing a thought inward was a weird thing to do, but it was also my best bet for receiving helpful answers. I was met with silence initially before I began to hear a low chuckle.


    The chuckle was akin to a quiet rumbling, like the ground right before a volcanic eruption. And at first it was a singular chuckle, a quiet one, but in time it grew. In time it got louder and louder, before other voices began to join in. Some of them were distinctly recognizable, even from their chuckles. The domains of evil and fire were two of the ones I instinctively recognized as in the eerie chorus of inhuman, impossible voices. Others were stranger.


    One of the chuckling voices didn''t sound like it was chuckling. It sounded like a series of natural and not-so-natural disasters mixing together to form one supernatural, cacophonous sound. Another was altogether stranger, like the sounds that echo from a distant, haunted asylum. The destruction and eldritch domains... I thought, audibly gasping before I began to chuckle along with the eerie choir. In time a single feminine voice cut through the choir.


    "If you actually want an answer..." The voice began, before doing the domain-version of clearing its throat. The reliable voice belonged to the domain of knowledge. The choir quieted down, the chuckles gradually dimming in volume and in intensity. It was at that point that the domain of knowledge spoke again.


    "It is really important that you know that vestiges are not gods. They are the final echoes of a god''s existence, but themselves are not gods. They can be killed. And when they are, they die. Like mortals. If you kill one... You can absorb what passes for its soul, and in doing so gain a fraction of the god who the vestige was of''s power." The voice revealed, causing me to begin to grin. That was until it spoke again.


    "That said, Morehammer is not a foe you can hope to beat. Not right now. Or rather... You can''t kill him. Not yet. Even if you defeated him, that alone wouldn''t be enough to kill him." The voice told me. It wasn''t done talking either.


    "Morehammer wasn''t himself an overgod, at least not a true one, but he was the overgod of blacksmithing. He was the finest master smith of all of the gods. Becoming an overgod of a domain or subdomain, even a lesser one, confers certain powers that extend even to one''s vestige." The domain of knowledge revealed, causing me to sigh in annoyance.


    "It''s never simple is it?" I asked, rhetorically. I chuckled at my own witticism and shook my head.


    That said... My objectives should be more than just to kill and steal his power. I ought to take from him something he cares about. To pay in kind the debt I am owed since he stole Ava''s life. I mused, grinning all the while.


    This creature views all dwarves as his children and he steers them away from evil. But in doing so he establishes himself as a tyrant. He creates a world for his children where they can only go so far from him, before he cruelly abandons them and leaves them to their fate. I should offer dwarves a different path. I realized, beginning to feel the smallest bits of a scheme come together in the depths of my mind.


    But first... Let''s usher in a new age. I thought, grinning all the while. For the first time since Ava''s death and my attempt to resurrect her, I turned my full mind to Torus. And began to herald the next era in the world''s history. And to send a signal to a specific asshole.


    ________________________________________________


    Torus has several volcanos. And nearly all of them were surrounded by a variety of lifeforms. Some of them housed creatures I was familiar with, volcanic angels. Others were inhabited by strange and powerful creatures like fire-giants and phoenixes. And in the month that had passed, I had secured the faithful worship or at least service of many volcanic lifeforms.


    I had done this through the usage of my volcanic and magmic and lava-based abilities. I had freely unleashed my powers and introduced myself through unique miracles and incomparable devastation, unleashing floods, tidal-waves, earth-quakes, and even tornados, as well as causing volcanoes to erupt and even stripping away immunity to fire and heat damage from the creatures who lived near my holy sites until they agreed to worship and serve me.


    That said, I hadn''t unleashed global disasters. I had just wanted to secure the areas near my holiest sites. I kept the destruction I had unleashed restrained and localized. Before now I hadn''t been trying to spill blood or cause needless loss of life.


    I mentally focused on each of my holy sites and smiled. Morehammer had had his fun, but now it was time for him to be reminded of a simple fact: I am a god and he is not. I would be sure to etch that into his memory with fire and blood.


    If he was determined to be a creature of goodness and tyranny, then I would become an embodied nightmare of chaos and terror. I teleported myself back to my tower, at the same time as I willed every volcano in the world to erupt at once.


    I went from the darkness of space to a floating island in a world that was about to be shrouded in ashes. As the fastest volcanoes began to erupt, I quickly prepared a notification alerting the people of the world of the cause of their misfortune: Morehammer, the pretender.

 148 Elemental Wrath

    [Alert: The Wrath of the Forgotten


    In the ancient past, the universe was filled with gods and other beings like them. Races worshiped entire pantheons of the beings and they ruled the universe. Half a million years ago a catastrophe occurred and the gods and their kin of that mythic era were slain in a single battle of unimaginable proportions and universe-changing consequences.


    Althos coming to life is but one event of the modern era that serves as a callback to the forgotten past. One almost forgotten member of the ancient past was Morehammer the deceiver.


    Morehammer was a demon lord and an evil monarch who deceived the dwarves into worshipping him as their creator. He ruled over them and tyrannically controlled their destinies, violently exterminating anyone who dared oppose his rules or attempted to encourage dwarves to worship gods of kindness and goodness.


    Now the last dredges of his power have manifested, in response to Althos'' glorious offers of freedom and desire to liberate the peoples of the world. His final shade manifested and confronted Althos in battle, deep underground, and the deceitful demon-lord was strong enough to deal a powerful, lingering blow to the god of freedom.


    The demon-lord then fled and is now using his greater experience and a wider range of powers than the god has to cowardly hide from the god of freedom. That said, he had one more trick up his sleeve.


    The devious and spiteful demon-lord of dwarves and blacksmithing was, like the dwarves themselves, a creature of mountains and fire. In his wrathful hatred of Althos, he opted to use his powers to kill Althonians all over the world. He is activating one of his more devastating abilities and setting off volcanos all over the world. At the moment Althos is recovering from the blow the coward dealt him and is unable to provide much aid to his followers as doing so would distract him from his recovery.


    If you wish to help your god and to help yourselves, offer your prayers to the god of freedom and choice. Grant him the power to wrest control of volcanos from the deceitful demon-lord.


    Stop the followers of the deceiver of the dwarves. Weaken his connection to those he falsely claims are "his children". Survive and turn your wills towards the sky. Beg for help from above. Pray for the power to endure this.]


    ________________________________________________


    This message was transmitted to every non-dwarf in the world. It was a terrifying message that in many cases alerted people of the coming catastrophe before they would have noticed the effects of the volcanic eruptions themselves.


    It infuriated many of the people of the world. And some people, most notably those with belligerent attitudes and whose neighbors included dwarves, swiftly assembled their militias or their militaries. More than a few of them were even able to issue proclamations of war against their nearby dwarven settlements and strongholds.


    The most common group of species that did this were giants, with several tribes of several different types of giants doing this, followed closely by orcs. Orcs and giants were infamous for their bellicose natures and they often enjoyed waging war on their neighbors so none of this was surprising.


    This was a wrath-based decision, which had an unintended side-effect. These conflicts would enable Althos to gain the second tier of influence over the corruption subdomain, something he had yet to do with his other schemes. That said, there were complications that prevented him from successfully completing the quest. Namely that the forces in question didn''t actually physically clash. At least not immediately.


    ________________________________________________


    A rather curious thing happened as the god wrote the devious global notification that he was preparing to send out. He began to transform.


    The emotions he felt deep within himself were too much for his deceptive "natural" form. They burned within him and unconsciously caused him to take on a more terrifying and elemental visage. One that radiated pure elemental power.


    The unconscious, unasked for changes couldn''t completely change his body. They couldn''t grant him new appendages or destroy existing ones. His unconscious mind didn''t yet have that power. But they could begin to hint at his true power by tearing past the mortal and false appearance he commonly wore.


    His flesh burned away from the inside and took on a look that was both natural and supernatural. It was natural in that it involved the four classical elements, but supernatural in how it did so.


    To begin with, his hair transformed from its normal dark-color into a small field of flames. It was a strange transformation. And the area just underneath his hair transformed into something that managed to be even stranger.


    One half of the area directly underneath his hair was engulfed in lava-like flames. The other half became stoney and even more solid than it had been prior to this. One of his eyes became a blood-red orb of intense flames and the other seemed to almost dissolve entirely into a colorless sphere of water.


    The halves of the bottom of his head transformed in other ways. One half, the half below the part of his face that transformed into lava-like flames became airy and immaterial. The final fourth of his face transformed into clear-blue ocean-water. His neck took on a windlike aspect and became ethereal, causing his head to look detached from the rest of his body.


    The god''s body below the neck took on a new appearance as well. Each of the classical elements got a limb to themselves. His right arm became a powerful and rocky thing made up of parched earth. His left arm became a chaotic and shifting tendril of controlled air that undulated like a snake in motion.


    One of his legs became a pillar of flames that left burning footsteps in its wake and the other became a vaporous thing that from a distance didn''t even seem to exist at all. However, the abrupt changes he was undergoing weren''t completely done.


    Even as the god was attempting to take in the details of his new form, he shimmered and began to change once more. This time he took on mostly solid traits.


    His head was the first to transform this time. It became an oval of fire, entirely composed of lava-like, scarlet-colored flames. His neck was also firey. His chest, arms, and legs were entirely different from before though. They became a single, joined earthen mass riddled with cracks.


    The cracks were themselves as fascinating as the earthen core his new, second-form possessed. They were filled with one of the elements. The cracks were filled with water which almost flowed down his body like a river or a waterfall.


    Both of his hands were surrounded by three mini tornadoes which perpetually cycled his digits. Each of the cyclones was a different color, and they were responsive to his mental commands, twisting in the direction he commanded and even vanishing at his command.


    This new form was even more fascinating to him and he took a moment to study it.


    ________________________________________________


    "This is so... amazing." I muttered as I took in my two new forms. Both of them were strange, almost naturalistic looking things and I felt awed by either form.


    Both forms were strange, inhuman things. And that was part of what I liked about them. It fascinated me to apparently naturally acquire a pair of new forms, something that had never happened before. That said, thanks to the time I took to study my powers I knew what this was: it was an environmental mutation of something that already existed. Or in this case a pair of mutations.


    "Judging from the nature of this... If I had to guess I''d assume this was a natural mutation of my shapeshifting?" I asked myself, speaking aloud within an empty chamber in my tower. I waited for a second and then heard a response.


    "Well... Not natural per se." Muttered the shifty voice of the domain of chaos. I grinned when I heard this voice, not quite having expected it but not being caught completely off-guard either. I knew it was someone, I just didn''t know who.


    "Your elemental overlord abilities are becoming more and more powerful Althos." The chaos domain told me, confidence seeping into its voice.


    "When you make use of your powers as an elemental overlord they will begin to evolve on their own. Right now your powers are rising in power. Because of your usage of your volcanic abilities. As an elemental overlord, all of your elemental powers are tied to the same... wellspring of experience. Experience which you acquire from the usage of your powers and by how many people your powers affect." The domain explained, causing my eyes to widen in shock.


    That would explain the sudden and abrupt mutation. Currently, all over the world volcanoes were erupting or at least beginning to erupt and these eruptions were affecting billions of people at once. They were violently coming to life and I was receiving dozens of domain-sense type notifications every second purely related to the volcanoes and their fiery payloads.


    I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel the pure power at my fingertips. Every volcano in Torus and Salifinos for that matter was under my control, thousands of volcanos, many of which were presently erupting. And the power they offered me, though small in the grand scheme of things, was still considerable. And as they did, I begin to become more sensitive to the power I was receiving curtesy of the devastating power I was unleashing on the world.


    ________________________________________________


    Althos'' wrathful fury first manifested itself in the activation of one of the first elemental overlord abilities he had gained: his mastery over volcanoes. And at first, this power was slow to activate.


    The first volcanoes to erupt were almost universally underwater ones. They were located throughout the seas that dotted the largely blue planet. Their eruptions were strange affairs that went unnoticed by some, but not all of the world''s inhabitants.


    Underwater civilizations felt the impact of the submarine volcanoes erupting. They felt temperatures for ranges of up to a few dozen kilometers away rise up abruptly, thanks to the divinely empowered eruptions having greater potency than natural ones, and settlements near submarine volcanoes were instantly boiled. That said, Althos'' warning reached everyone at the same time. This warning came right before the earliest eruptions and allowed some creatures living near the volcanoes to swiftly flee.


    That''s not to say that no one died, thousands of lifeforms were abruptly boiled to death, but Althos'' foreshadowing his elemental fury saved thousands of creatures from unpleasant deaths. That said, not every underwater volcano was known to living creatures outside of the seas. And underwater volcanoes had one especially bizarre effect on the oceans that was relevant for populations of creatures living on the surface, near them.


    Submarine volcanoes still released volcanic gasses. Volcanic gasses often escaped from submarine volcanoes in the form of bubbles that lowered the density of water near the volcanoes, and these gases were released far more often and far more violently during eruptions.


    These gasses created sinking zones that caused many of the victims of submarine volcanoes to be surface-dwelling air-breathers whose ships abruptly sank beneath the waves and who themselves drowned or were crushed by water. These sinking ships themselves killed a small handful of sea-creatures who were near the sinking zones. Some of the victims of the ships were individuals who managed to escape the immediate vicinity of an underwater eruption.


    The most powerful of the submarine eruptions were actually capable of breaching the surface. These eruptions, only caused by a few hundred of the several thousands of volcanoes located under the sea, sent steam and debris into the air in oceans all over the world. Pillars of steam erupted from the surface of the seas all over the planet, and this was before the volcanoes that jutted out from the surface of the world added their own ashes and gases to the mix.


    The world began to change abruptly as the god''s rage manifested. Though some volcanoes erupted effusively, their lava steadily flowing out and onto the ground, many erupted explosively.


    Explosive volcanic eruptions were the main source of a lot of chaos and death in the first few minutes after the final volcano began to erupt. These eruptions sent up a toxic miasma that blocked out the light of the sun and within the hour following the commencement of the final volcanoes eruption a dark, ashen shroud covered the sky.


    Within a quarter of an hour after the eruptions began the temperature of the planet, in areas far from the volcanic eruptions, began to cool down. Even the totality of the volcanic activity couldn''t touch the entire planet at once, so some areas went almost unaffected by the continent-changing bursts of volcanic power. Some areas became so hot that they incinerated entire settlements and thousands of people perished in the immediate aftermath of the initiation of Althos'' fiery fury.


    But Althos himself was quite busy. He was answering prayers left and right.


    ________________________________________________


    Unsurprisingly, initiating what had the potential to be a global apocalypse made lots of people very religious. As a god that was to my benefit. I received millions of prayers immediately and they continued to flow in even minutes after the beginning of the newest age in Torunian history.


    Many of them were prayers for protection. These prayers were easy for me to answer. On those I felt like aiding I bestowed an immunity to fire and heat damage, and sometimes even immortality. At this point using such powers were child''s play for me, even remotely. Creatures in every continent received my protection, as did at least some members of every single royal family in the world. That said, I ignored many, many such prayers.


    Some prayers were not prayers for protection. They were prayers for aid in exacting revenge on the dwarves who, according to my lie-filled notification, served Morehammer.


    These prayers were predominantly by fire-giants and by orcs, two especially pious races who historically were known for serving gods of war, destruction, and conquest. They asked for omens, and in some cases for the power needed to endure the environmental hazards they''d need to face to be able to attack my enemies and send a message to Morehammer in my name. There was a smirk on my face as I answered those prayers.


    "War..." I said, to no one in particular. There was a bright grin on my face, as I began to utilize the dreadful powers I possessed over and related to war itself. This was the first time I was making direct usage of those abilities, and I began to feel excitement creep into my heart as I did so.


    Some of my powers were naturally easy to use in broad strokes and over a group of people as opposed to being naturally focused on singular targets. My war-domain powers were a perfect example of this. I started off by targeting the men and women who prayed to me, seeking vengeance against my foes, and I blessed them.


    The war-domain''s blessing was an indirect and subtle one that increased the talent one has with commanding troops and improved their abilities related to strategizing. I applied it exclusively to the leaders of the communities that were excited to go to war. Other powers though, I made much more liberal use of.


    I effortlessly manipulated their emotions, stoking the existing hatred and anger they felt until almost all they could think about were a number of ways to slay and flay dwarves. It was at that point that I activated "death empowerment", which gave them the ability to feed off of the deaths they would inflict on their foes. Over the course of a few moments, I had empowered thousands of brutal warriors all over the world and I still had one more gift to give them.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the simplest ways a god can manipulate a soul is to grant them a class. Classes alter the very composition of one''s immortal essence, the thing that is most commonly called a soul.


    Over the course of my life, I had gained the power to grant people a number of classes. But right now what I needed was simple. I just needed simple worshipers who enjoyed war and warfare. Which I had. But came the part where I needed to strengthen them. Several of them already had the warrior class under their belt so I needed something else. Fortunately, I had just the right ability.


    I targeted the followers of the people who sought to go to war with dwarves all over the world. And in an instant I granted them the templar class, enhancing their considerable strength even further. In return for my gifts, I felt something pleasant: a warm emotion flowed out of them and into me. I was feeling their love and admiration for me, and for my power, grow. Which in turn served to amplify my powers, even if it was just a little bit.


    That said, what wasn''t small was the bloodlust these warriors felt. They were eager for conflict. I closed my eyes and prepared another notification even as I opened up portals into where dwarves were living, to speed up the bloodshed.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Stopping the servants of Morehammer


    Althos is proud of every warrior who bravely stands up in defense of his, her, or their home. He is proud of those who are willing to take up arms to fight back against the darkness that has hidden away in the earth. He has blessed those who opt to stand against the coming darkness.


    Take up your swords and cleave through the followers of this devious lord of darkness. Stand up for your home. Stand up against the doom this creature would unleash on your world and a thousand others.]


    ________________________________________________


    I chuckled as my incredibly powerful sensory abilities alerted me that my followers were indeed dashing off to confront their enemies. And with that, I received a notification I had long waited for: the one alerting me that at last, I had acquired the second tier of influence over the potent subdomain of corruption.


    As I read through it, I smiled wider than I ever had. I was on the precipice of acquiring significant power, at a time when I needed such power. That elevated my mood even further than my acquisition of new worshipers had.


    ________________________________________________


    [Corruption subdomain alert:


    You have successfully incited conflict between two or more communities on the basis of one of the seven deadly sins. The sin that was utilized was the sin of wrath. As a result of that, you now get to choose one of the six remaining sins you do not have influence over. Which will you pick? When you make your choice you''ll gain power over that sin, and greater power over the sin you can already influence: lust.]

 149 A Moment Of Introspection

    "The seven deadly sins..." I thought, a grim grin on my face as I was finally able to pick and choose which of the remaining six I was able to gain control over.


    I had lived my whole life to date with influence over lust. Lust, though often conceptualized as sexual desire, was a bit more nuanced than that.


    In truth, though I had used it as a way to weaponize sexual desire, lust was really just intense desire for someone or something. It was an incredibly handy thing to have control over, and I knew that I''d gain more power over it as a result of the second tier of influence over corruption I had just earned. That excited me.


    The other six... Greed, pride, sloth, envy, wrath, and gluttony. I had learned a considerable amount about each of them during my time in my tower. All of them were incredibly handy things that a part of me really wanted to get my hands on. Especially now, in my conflict against Morehammer.


    Greed. Greed was the overwhelming, obsessive desire for material wealth. It paired well with my powers over the earth, as I could now create things like gold and silver with but a thought. I could make someone infinitely wealthy if I felt like it, and pairing that with greed was an especially potent and devastating combination. With greed I could also have a lot of fun, getting people to serve me in exchange for both wealth beyond imagining and also by instilling greed in their hearts.


    Pride. At it''s worst it is the false belief that one is superior to someone else. Even in a less destructive state, it is still the embodiment of selfishness. It is the placement of one''s own desires before the needs and welfare of others.


    Pride can lead to all sorts of malicious behavior and it is a fantastic tool with which to corrupt people with good intentions. That in and of itself makes it worth considering. If I can become a master of pride... Who knows what sort of mischief I could create?


    Sloth. The vice of apathy. This one is perhaps the most interesting one to me. Not only is it the opposite of diligence, Morehammer''s personal virtue, it is also perhaps the most powerful of the deadly sins to have in a war. With it, I can turn the dwarves Morehammer will turn into his servants into apathetic creatures which my worshippers can slaughter.


    With power over sloth, I''d no doubt I would gain a number of incredibly powerful abilities. I could also mix it with powers I already had, ones like the power to grant immortality to people. I bet I could even mix it with powers over dreams, or synergize it with lust in a number of ways. Sloth had a lot of potential.


    Envy. It is not just generalized desire, but a desire for that that others possess. This is a truly powerful sin. In many cases, especially from what I''ve seen in the memories my worshippers have given me, wanting what others have is usually more than just taking something that belongs to someone else, but taking it from them. There''s an almost sadistic component to this.


    Powers over envy would allow me to more easily cause wars, much like powers over wrath would. With envy, I could also more easily foment hatred and strife. Envy and sloth were probably the two of the sins with the most society-wide impact if used correctly and cleverly.


    Wrath. A simple sin but not one to be underestimated. I have felt this one before and I know just how powerful it can be. Wrath is merely uncontrolled or uncontrollable anger but that simplicity is powerful. Even the most carefully laid scheme can be undone in a moment of rage.


    Combining wrath with powers over chaos, evil, or war would be incredibly powerful. I could do a lot of damage if I used powers over wrath on a demon, dragon, or a tribe of giants.


    Gluttony. Excessive consumption of things to the point of waste. This particular sin, mixed with my powers over agriculture and famine, could be incredibly devastating if there were any communities I wanted to cause to waste away. This one was especially interesting to me, but at the moment I didn''t really think it would be useful.


    What should I pick? I wondered. I would continue to contemplate which of the remaining six deadly sins to pick, while I began to expand my mind once more and began to explore the world again using my powerful mind-domain abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    The world wasn''t still just because I was in my tower. The volcanic eruptions continued to spew countless tons of ash and other harmful substances high into the sky. People continued to pray to me for protection. I continued to answer prayers, idly scanning through them and picking and choosing a fair number of creatures to aid. That said, some groups definitely fared better than others.


    Subterranean civilizations only learned of the eruptions through my mass notification, and since I had excluded dwarves the dwarves who lived in the deepest depths of the planet were sparred knowledge of the environmental catastrophes I was causing. They hadn''t even been targeted by Morehammer yet, though I didn''t doubt that the dwarven god would soon be on the move again.


    Puerto Rico itself was doing fine, or at least as fine as any place on the surface could be. There were no volcanoes on or near the island, and this led to the place only experiencing the indirect effects of the eruptions. The skies above San Gerardo and Comillas were darkening due to the intense amount of ash in the air, but right now people could even breathe without too much difficulty.


    The inhabitants of the Rodan forest were doing just fine and this was one area that I shielded from some of the chaos by warding away the ash in the air. I was able to blow it away thanks to my power over ash, even remotely. I did so to protect some of my most loyal followers, the goblin Cosechians who obeyed their dryadic high-priestess, Raiz.


    Over the course of the past month, they had been eking out a simple and pious existence. They lived in balance with nature, as commanded by the dryad named Raiz who was the very first creature I had ever brought to life. Raiz herself was a powerful being who prayed to me multiple times a day and whose dreams I often visited. She was a worshipper I quite liked who had shown herself to be wise and to be patient to her followers.


    Far from the Rodan forest though stood the settlement of Florida. This was a place that had once been home to the swarm. The swarm was a collective of intelligent insectoid creatures who worshipped and served me. They were led primarily by myremekes'', evolved ants with fierce intelligence and a complex social structure. Florida was still inhabited by a number of members of the swarm. They had prayed to me, but I didn''t intend for them to die so I granted them protection even before they prayed.


    Florida was in Iredale, a continent not far from Puerto Rico. I had commanded my followers to take it over and they had done so without much difficulty. That was last month though. Even though I had taken most of Torus'' swarm population to my sanctuary I had left a small number in Florida to keep it occupied and to see if anyone would come for it. No one had. But I liked having followers there so I left it guarded.


    The settlement was home to a grisly population of warriors. Mostly myremekes, but also some giant, powerful, and cruel parasitic wasps who possessed a number of especially potent talents that would make encountering them a horrifying experience. They were servants whose methods I quite admired, but I hadn''t gotten to know well just yet. I hoped to change that, and soon.


    Florida was also where a specific servant of mine was currently located. One who had been practicing her skills and doing her best to serve me.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep underground, beneath Florida, I observed a young creature studiously interrogate a human I had provided for her. She was dressed in dark robes that matched her features well. She had the exact same face as one of the few women I''ve thought was truly beautiful: Imbrosa, the newly resurrected drider. But this wasn''t the drider. This was the first demon I had ever interacted with, Sombra.


    Sombra''s robes hid much of her body but they didn''t hide her breasts. The sizable mounds of dark flesh were revealed to her prisoner, who between hits would sometimes find his eyes drawn to them. And to the strange brand that was on them.


    She was too proud of the mark to hide it. She refused to do so actually. Not unless I commanded her too. So she had cut holes in the robes to expose her breasts herself.


    An odd, seven-sided star, a heptagram, was burned onto her flesh, just below the nipple on her left breast. But it was burned in such a way that it was visible even against the shadowy demon''s delft-blue skin.


    Sombra''s brand marked her as a witch and also served as her arcane tether to me, her patron. Not only had I given her a real body, but I had also given her considerable mystical might.


    I had stationed her in Florida days ago and have since encouraged her to practice and hone her magic. She was the strongest witch in my service to date and this was partially due to the ways she wielded her arcane arsenal and her regular service to me. She was perhaps my most faithful servant.


    "Tell me your secrets." She commanded, her stunning, scarlet eyes focused on the human in front of her. The human I had given to her was a human who lived in Puerto Rico. He was a member of the administration of the governor of Puerto Rico, and I had used a succubus to get him into Florida.


    The man she was interrogating was stripped naked and was partially embedded in a wall right in front of Sombra. His slender chest was exposed to the praereptor and so was his face, but his lower body was hidden from view, thanks to my powers. The parts of him that were visible were covered in wounds and burns. Sombra was quite fond of fire magic and made very liberal usage of it on the man.


    The man groaned in pain and blood began to ooze out of his open mouth. The sight of this made me chuckle, and over the last few weeks, I would often spend time watching Sombra practice her magic on him. She would subject him to terrible pain, and I found his reactions fascinating.


    He quickly told her everything he knew, but I simply never gave her the order to stop so she persisted in subjecting him to pain. She enjoyed inflicting pain on him. But she wasn''t good at taking care of the human. She didn''t feed him, or give him water. He only survived because I liked his pain and so I granted him immortality so he wouldn''t die of a lack of sleep, food, or water.


    The man had stopped responding to her words days ago. Now only he hissed in pain at her attempts to coax more information out of him, and sometimes began to breathe loudly and audibly. His mind had long since left him. And now it was time that she leave him too. I reached out across the distance between us with my mind, and I spoke directly to Sombra.


    "Sombra... Come home." I commanded as I created a pair of portals. I created one directly in front of me, right as I transformed back into my "normal" form. And the other portal appeared right in front of her. It actually appeared between her and the man she had been tormenting for several days. I watched as she began to elatedly smile and threw herself into the portal, and thus at me.


    As Sombra threw herself at me, I quickly picked which of the sins I would next choose. In order to alert the system, I quietly transmitted my thoughts to it. I smiled when a second later I received a nice notification alerting me to my new abilities.

 150 Activity And Action

    [New corruption subdomain passive powers:


    Obsession inducement: Obsession is one component of high-end power over lust. Lust is an intense desire for someone or something, and when desires get too intense they can become obsessive. As a dark divinity with power over lust you now have power over obsession. You can cause someone to become obsessed with someone else or with something. This obsession can be controlled and manipulated by you and can take on a number of different forms.


    Obsession detection: You can detect what someone is obsessed with. This power allows you to better understand mortals in question and also allows finer manipulation of them.


    Obsession destruction: This synergistic power takes from the subdomain of healing and allows you to free people of obsession if you wish.


    Obsession aura: You can radiate an aura that causes people to become obsessed with you. This power is actually a synergistic one that intersects the eldritch domain and the sin of lust. This is an eerily fast-acting aura that can have a life-long impact if people are exposed to it for even a few moments. Its effects are especially pronounced and dramatic when they affect evil people.


    Apathy inducement: You can cause people to lose interest in something or someone. This power is an exceedingly dangerous one that can cause families or communities to fall apart if targeted carefully and thoughtfully.


    Apathy aura: You can project an aura that can be used to cause targeted creatures around you to become lazy. Targets within a few meters of you cannot become hostile towards you unless you attack them, not attacking you even if you attack their friends and family. Such creatures also become highly suggestible, lacking the willpower to resist the suggestions of a god. This power doesn''t work on the strongest willed enemies, but many mortals and extraplanar beings would succumb to it.


    Apathy attack: You can infuse apathetic energy into your attacks. These strikes do not do physical harm but instead, they fill those struck by them with apathy.


    Despair inducement: You can infect someone with the idea that there is nothing worth doing or worth fighting for. This power causes them to wallow in sadness and become listless.


    Despair aura: Creatures you target that are in your presence are overwhelmed by despair. They may cease efforts to resist you or even begin to turn to you in hopes that you''ll kill them, or be merciful and rid them of this feeling.


    Despair attacks: You can launch attacks that cause your enemies to feel a sense of overwhelming despair. This fear is often enough to drive mortals to surrender to the cause of it if they can identify you.


    Exhaustion inducement: You can induce exhaustion in targets. This power can be used to cause someone to fall asleep for as long as you wish and enter into a dreaming state that is entirely controllable by you. It can also be used to slow someone down or make movements take longer.


    Exhaustion aura: You can project an aura that saps the energies of selected creatures.


    Numbing: You can numb someone, draining them of their capacity to feel. This renders pain less harsh and even inhibits their ability to feel positive emotions. It also slows their reaction time.


    Obedience: Creatures affected by sloth based powers are highly unlikely to resist commands given by you or your followers. They lack the willpower to resist you or those who venerate you.


    Paralysis: You can induce paralysis in mortals and in the undead. This paralysis is dangerous, targeted, and also numbs people''s minds.


    Sleep inducement: By synergizing the domain of dreams and the sin of sloth you can cause creatures to fall asleep. Victims of this power dream dreams you have utter control over.


    Sleep aura: Only the strongest-willed creatures can stay awake in your presence if you activate this power.


    New corruption domain active powers:


    Sloth sphere: Once per hour you can create a fifteen meter wide and high area wherein anyone in it is immediately sapped of all of their energy.


    Contagious Obsession: Once per hour you can induce a contagious obsession in someone. This is a synergistic power fusing the disease domain and the sin of lust and it allows obsessions to spread in a manner similar to a pandemic.


    Sloth blessing and curse details:


    Slothfully blessing someone enables them to resist sloth more effectively. It also grants them resistance to the negative, wasting effects of sloth. Cursing someone with this sin burdens them and affects them similarly to how depression affects mortals.]


    ________________________________________________


    Reading through the notification filled me with confidence. These new powers were... they were something else. I felt them within me, and was cognizant of their dark capabilities from the second I began to read them.


    I didn''t often use my powers over lust itself. I did from time to time but I wasn''t an especially lustful creature and I preferred to leave desires of the flesh to my followers so when I did use my desire-based abilities it was often for fun. That said, obsession... Obsession was something I could begin to make use of. And sloth was quite nice too.


    I thought about possible applications for my new powers and the truth was that there were many possible ways I could use these powers. One of the easy ones was that I could mix sloth''s powers with civilization and law to reorder societies and instill authorities that I liked in positions of power. Another simple application of these powers was that I could use them to destroy societies I didn''t care for. Such usage of my powers would be quite simple.


    If I felt like being benevolent I could even use this power to topple dictators and to get them to step down. All I had to do was fill them with apathy or despair until they decided to abandon their responsibilities. Or to stop evil-beings from behaving evilly by exhausting them. The potential of these new abilities was immense.


    "Corruption is so... powerful." I thought to myself, even as Sombra reached me and wrapped her arms around me. She began to proclaim how much she missed me, and how powerful she had gotten. I heard her and smiled idly at the demon, but my mind was elsewhere. When I turned my attention to her, I decided to perform a simple test of my abilities.


    I studied the shadowy witch and activated one of my newly acquired abilities: "Obsession detection". I was surprised when the silky voice of the sin of lust whispered into my mind.


    "This praereptor demon is obsessed with you. You did defeat her, but also you gave her a physical body and considerable power. She whole-heartedly, obsessively wants to serve you and be useful to you. You can manipulate this obsession if you wish." The voice informed me, telling me something I had already unconsciously come to know but hadn''t yet fully unpacked.


    This confirmation of what a part of me had suspected for a while was unsurprising. But it did confirm the usefulness of my new powers. My scheming mind was already hard at work thinking up ways that this information could be used to advance plenty of schemes. That said, I had things I wished to do.


    "Sombra... I see that you have grown powerful while you were enacting my will." I told the demon who was hugging me. I wasn''t fond of physical contact that I didn''t initiate, but allowing her this little encouraged her and so I opted to permit it for now.


    "Yes... Yes!" She said, excitedly. Her scarlet eyes were lit up with fascination and she was quite excited by my recognition of her advances in strength. I quietly began to run my fingers through her hair, and I was surprised when she began to make a noise that was similar to a cat''s delighted purr.


    "Do I... deserve a reward for my work? I think I do..." Sombra whispered, her voice reminding me of a moment in the past wherein I once spoke of taking her and called it a "reward" that she hadn''t yet earned. I grinned as I considered the sort of reward that she had in mind. It was one of a... carnal nature.


    As before, a part of me wanted to give in to the temptation of her flesh. Even some gods weren''t immune to lusts. But also as before I still had work to do. And she hadn''t yet done what I tasked her with doing anyway. I sighed and shook my head.


    "You have not yet done what I once tasked you with doing." I informed her. She hissed, sounding almost comically cat-like and glaring at me.


    "You told me to go and harvest the secrets that man kept! I did!" She said, annoyed with my resistance. I chuckled at her display.


    "When I first crafted your body, I told you I sought to become a demon-lord. And that I wanted you to become a powerful and charismatic cultist in my service. One who leads a cult who worships me as a demon-lord." I told her, harkening back to some of our earlier interactions. Her eyes lit up as she remembered those moments.


    "Yes, but I have been obeying your commands! I do as you bid. All I want is a reward for my service." She rebutted, rightfully pointing out that she was doing as I commanded.


    I fell silent and I began to consider her words. After a few moments I felt the weight of them, and quietly opted to reward her.


    One of the powers I possessed was the ability to generate wood anywhere. This was a power I gained when I acquired influence over a healthy number of life-based subdomains when performing the miracles through which I acquired countless worshippers across the solar system. I activated this power with a mental flex, and a thin, brown stick that ended in a sharp point came into being in my hand, the one that wasn''t running through Sombra''s hair.


    "I have a reward for you, it is just not what you think." I told her, opting to deceive her. She looked up at me longingly and excitedly and I chuckled. She had fallen for my lie. Mostly because she wanted to believe it.


    The branch I held, by itself anyway, wasn''t much to look at. But that didn''t remain true for long. I silently activated my ability to alter objects and bestowed a few alterations onto it.


    The first alteration that I bestowed upon it was the power to absorb spiritual energy and lifeforce. This was a potent power that allowed the instrument to drain spiritual and thus magical energy from those it struck, as well as serve as an external power source for some spells. It also meant that she could heal from injuries simply by attacking nearby creatures.


    The second alteration that I bestowed upon it was a limited power to bend elements. With this power Sombra could manipulate fire, water, earth, and air. It wasn''t perfect, and I''d definitely need to teach it to her, but this was a power that made the gift I planned to give her considerably stronger.


    My final alteration was to imbue the stick with corruption, making it sensitive and receptive to evil. This powerful alteration made it more like Sombra and also ensured that the evil demon would also remember her who it was that she served.


    When I was done with altering the stick it was a thin instrument wreathed in shadowy and vile energies. It wasn''t an exceptionally powerful wand, but I knew that in time I would make it something truly incredible. It was thin and light in my grasp and I gently motioned for Sombra to turn around. She did as she was bid, releasing me from her hug, and gasped in delight when she saw the instrument.


    "This is an artifact I have created. You fulfilled a mission I sent you to accomplish. I am not going to reward you what you do not deserve, but this is a tool with great power. One that I have created to reward you for your service and for the time you spent interrogating Christopher." I told her, even as she stared longingly at the instrument in my hand. She began to reach for it, a covetous smile on her face.


    "This is a wand that is connected to me. It is one with a number of powers and in time I may bestow even greater powers onto it. This is an artifact you are to use in service to me." I told her, even as I began to slowly inch the wand closer to her. She nodded, her scarlet eyes filling with greed as she moved closer and closer to the instrument I had created for her.


    She reached it as I spoke once more. There was a cunning smile on my lips as I let go of the tool and she grasped it, before beginning to shiver in delight as the wand''s own darkness seeped into her.


    "I seek to become a god of all things. Magic is one of those things. I already possess the most minor amount of influence over magic. I can create tools like this with ease. Service to me guarantees that you acquire other instruments of great power." I told her, excited to be making use of my powers over magic.


    "Master..." She whispered, pleasure seeping into her voice. She was thoroughly delighted by her reward, and gratitude began to seep from her. It was at that point I that created a portal in front of the two of us.


    The portal that appeared before us was in the shape of a door made of magic and it showed us a fascinating sight. On the other side of the door we could see a battlefield, and a sizable force of dwarves in metallic armor getting forced back by an advancing legion of orcs dressed in furs and wielding machetes. Sombra looked at the battlefield and her eyes began to shine with excitement.


    Without even waiting to be commanded to do so, she walked forward and through the portal. I followed after her, and stepped onto the raging battlefield.


    ________________________________________________


    We stepped through the portal and emerged off to the side and on a ledge overlooking a raging battle. We could both clearly hear raging roars and mortals on death''s door whimpering in pain. I could smell the distinct scent of freshly shed blood, as well as the disgusting scents of blood, bowels, and sweat mixing together into one unclear scent.


    We were inside of a cave that had formed naturally that had been occupied by dwarves at some point in the past and had long since been transformed into their home. Behind the dwarves, I could see tiny homes built into the cave''s innermost depths. The cave was dimly lit by a number of torches, and some of the orcs themselves used flaming weapons that illuminated their fierce countenances as well as those of their enemies when the orcs successfully assaulted their tiny foes.


    The din of the battle was too much for anyone to notice us immediately. That said I didn''t intend for that to last long. I rose a hand that had previously been laying against my side and commanded the earth underneath my enemies, the dwarves, to rise up and attack the ones unlucky enough to be at the back of the rows upon rows of dwarven defenders.


    The earth obeyed me, and tilted slightly so as to trip the dwarves who were clamoring for a chance to defend their peers and their homes. But that wasn''t all my attack did. I quietly infused the indirect attack with despair, and I chuckled as I felt the hearts of those who were tripped sink due to my divine interference. At the same time I used my other hand to point at another group of dwarves closer to the fighting. Sombra noticed this and grinned savagely. She was a demon, a creature of chaos and evil. Battlefields like this were one of her homes.


    "Use your wand to unleash a wildfire on those dwarves in the middle." I commanded her, wanting to get the praereptor to practice with her wand. Her grip on her instrument tightened and she pointed it at the same area I had pointed it. She closed her eyes and began to gather magic deep within herself for the spell she was about to use.


    This took her a second, but then she abruptly opened her eyes and unleashed the spell. As she did so a thin line of bright red energy shot out of the wand and sped towards the area the weapon was aimed at. I watched with satisfaction as her wand properly unleashed the explosive spell Sombra herself was quite fond of, Wildfire burst.


    ________________________________________________


    The dwarves had been faring as well as they could hope to fare against the orcs. Plenty of the brutal, pig-faced monsters littered the floor, but so too did plenty of dwarven bodies. That said, their efforts to defend themselves against the brutal and seemingly random assortment of enemies had distracted them from a true threat they could have never predicted: a god and his servant.


    Althos had appeared off in the distance, overlooking the carnage. The battle was too fierce for anyone, dwarf or orc to look up at the ledge and see him and his minion there. But they quickly felt his presence.


    The god''s first move was to convince the earth itself to strike some of his foes. He was here to aid the orcs, hone his mastery over his new skills, and to allow Sombra to practice her weapon. He did that right away.


    The cave titled slightly, causing the dwarves at the end of the formation they were in to stumble forward. This, coupled with the god''s power over the earth itself, qualified as an attack and the god eagerly also applied his powers over despair to those struck by this blow. Even as the dwarven warriors, all of them battle-hardened veterans, were in mid-air, their hearts were clutched with a supernatural yet irrepressible fear of failure, death, pain, and war. But that wasn''t all that happened.


    A few moments later Sombra took aim with her wand and shortly thereafter, her instrument of vile power unleashed a thin, heated line that raced from the tip of the wand into the cave-floor, where plenty of dwarves had been inching for a chance to vent their fury on their foes. They never got the chance. Sombra''s spell caused a conflagration to appear, as if from nowhere and begin to scorch her foes.


    The explosive sound of the sudden wildfire that magically came to life in the middle of the dwarven troops was enough to unnerve the warriors on both sides enough that there was a pause while they all looked to see what had just happened. During this pause in the action Althos commanded his minion to stay there, and walked towards where the fighting had been the heaviest.


    He did so in an instant thanks to his ability to move at the speed of light, suddenly disappearing from beside Sombra and appearing where he intended to be. As he did so he activated two of his newly earned auric abilities, sapping his foes of both their will to fight and their energy in one fell-swoop and cleared his throat so that everyone could turn and lay their eyes on him.


    Behind him, the weapons in the hands of the orcs clattered to the ground as they stared at him in a mixture of shock and awe. The simple-minded creatures knew that he was responsible for the fire that raged on the battlefield and was claiming the lives of dwarves.


    Althos had arrived on the battlefield and he was ready to experiment with his abilities. He gazed at the dwarves in the manner in which a wolf might gaze at a chicken''s coop, eyes filled with hunger and delight.

 151 The God Of Freedom

    Althos stood right between the orcs and the dwarves. His abrupt appearance had caused all of their eyes to turn to him. The dwarves were mystified by his sudden appearance, ignorant to the role he had played in orchestrating the invasion of their home. His aura was seeping out of him, and in an instant, it made contact with the dwarves closest to him.


    It filled them with despair, all while stealing an abundance of their energy. For the dwarves unlucky enough to be close to him his aura was leechlike. It shrouded him in a hazy field of shimmering, silver-tinted air and began to steal the energy of those he was opposed too. It also instilled in them a potent fear of him and the orcs behind him, those he viewed as his allies.


    The orcs, one of many tribes that had sworn fealty to him, were not aware that he was their god. For once he was not proclaiming that fact. He had other, stranger goals in mind here.


    The youthful and mischievous god was still and silent for a heartbeat before raising his fingers high into the air. And then with a swift snap of two of the slender digits, the odd divinity called a line of fire into being behind himself that forcibly stopped the fighting that he had egged on earlier that day. He closed his eyes and smiled at the dwarves before him.


    He looked human, but something about him informed the dwarves that he wasn''t. There was something eerily unsettling about the odd god. And it wasn''t just his strange capabilities, it was something primal and almost genetic. A sort of innate madness that he leaked as readily as he radiated his deific auric powers.


    ________________________________________________


    The dwarves in front of me were afraid of me. I sensed their terror, their despair at not only the invasion of the orcish warriors who had chosen to become some of those who delivered my unkind vengeance on Morehammer but at my actual presence.


    This satisfied a dark part of me. A part of me that hungered for blood, and for fear. It was one of many parts of me that existed deep within my mind.


    During my time in the tower over the course of the past twenty days, I had spent a considerable amount of time being introspective. I explored my mind and engaged freely with the domains and subdomains that lurked within me. I had also begun to learn about the potent desires I had lurking deep within me.


    Some of these desires were simple. Heck, I had even learned that to an extent at least some of these desires were felt by mortals. Many but not all mortals craved love, community, and respect, though admittedly more often than not they carved these things in ways that were unlike how than I craved them. I desired to be loved, not to love. I desired to create communities that praised and served me. I craved to be respected and feared. These sentiments were not often shared by mortals.


    Other desires were not so simple. I desired to be worshiped. I enjoyed the rush of a range of emotions I felt when other beings supplicated themselves before me and offered me their hearts, their lives, and their fearful yet potent love of me.


    I desired to grow in power, as I wanted to become omnipotent. That goal was not impossible for me but it was still far out of reach. I wanted to become a being who could destroy worlds with a glance, and resurrect entire fallen civilizations at will. I wanted the power to create stars and the ability to destroy entire galaxies.


    I was greedy in this context, and I had become addicted to gaining new powers, yet recently I had begun to contend with this. I was reaching a point in my development where for me to gain new powers it was necessary for me to use the ones I already had, rather than excitedly get them and not make use of them. This was a good thing for me if I was being honest.


    A part of me desired blood and carnage. This wasn''t just my dark side either. I had a side that was good that enjoyed the idea of facing down armies of darkness and using powers over light and goodness to prevent wholesale massacres. I didn''t mind the idea of going toe to toe with large armies even by myself. I knew what sort of brutality I was capable of, what my powers would allow me to do.


    The dark side of me wanted to slay and maim far more than I felt comfortable with. Even now I was carefully protecting a fair portion of the world from the effects of the volcanoes, and I knew that I possessed the power to bring a near-instantaneous end to the volcanic fury I was unleashing on the world. I also possessed a number of potent abilities that would mitigate the actual damage the volcanoes did to the life found on Torus if nothing else.


    One ability "False resurrection" was a passive power that I possessed that I knew I''d be able to do a considerable amount with. With it, I knew that this miniaturized apocalypse would only allow me to grow in power. It was an incredibly insidious power that allowed me to make use of corpses to create living cults of evil that worshiped me.


    I knew in the time shortly before I began to aid Ava that I ought to indulge in my darker side. I didn''t doubt that doing so would reap rewards and allow me to explore things I hadn''t really begun to explore. I had no idea that it would result in such tragedy, and in myself beginning to experience new emotions associated with loss.


    Such emotions were unpleasant for me to experience, but I knew they''d one day make mighty weapons in my arsenal. The emotion domain was one of the few I was aware of that eluded me. One day though I''d gain power over it. And when I did... My ambitions would only climb.


    That said, I also possessed a good side. This good side was a quieter part of me lately, but it wasn''t gone. And this part of me also recognized the importance of defeating Morehammer. Morehammer was a tyrant who had refused his people''s freedom. He had lorded over them and utterly abandoned those whose hearts became too dark for him. More than that though, he told me he had worked to prevent a god of dark dwarves from coming into existence.


    That almost certainly meant that one could have existed and guided dark dwarves if not for his interference. That was an act of evil itself. An act of tyranny. Something he ought to be held accountable for. And I honestly believed that I was the right god to stop him and to hold him accountable.


    I had told many lies over the course of my life. But something I had legitimately worked to be was a god of freedom. I allowed people to worship me in ways that made sense to them, I fought to free slaves all over Torus, and I had allowed people to live as their true selves. I had even given bodies to the bodyless and worked against possession with demons like Sombra who''d otherwise fill their days with possession while yearning for a real body of their own.


    I legitimately valued freedom. It was perhaps the single strongest value I possessed, as an intrinsically chaotic and naturally neutral being. That was why the only people I had subjected to mind and will breaking powers were people like Milene who had once enjoyed slicing through the freedoms and lives of others. I didn''t regret doing what I did to her, as it cooled her off and the main thing I stopped her from doing was behaving cruelly towards those who were "owned" by her family.


    After spending a few moments of introspective musing, I refocused on the scene in front of me. One wherein I was surrounded by confused and awed beings.


    ________________________________________________


    The dwarves in front of me were terrified. This was in part because I was radiating a front-facing aura of despair that almost paralyzed my foes. That said, some of this was a wholly natural and reasonable fear of a strange, eldritch being who they knew radiated a sort of quiet yet palpable aura of power.


    I studied them for a moment, my eyes lazily examining them. Their eyes were wide, but a few of them were visibly exhausted and I knew that it was only because of the situation they were in that they were able to stand up. That made me chuckle.


    The total number of dwarves in front of me who were still alive numbered in the tens of dozens. A few hundred of the brave humanoids were still here, attempting to defend their home from what felt, to them anyway, like a random and weirdly skillful invasion of their home by hundreds of brutal orcs. Many of the orcs had fallen, but their deaths wouldn''t be permanent. At least not in the corporeal sense. I didn''t feel like resurrecting the fallen warriors, but their bodies were still useful to me. They''d make good missionaries, under the power of a false resurrection.


    I rose my hand and closed my fist, willing the flames behind me to intensify as I did so. "Enough." I proclaimed, speaking commandingly. Silently I called my staff to my other hand and pointed it at the dwarves in front of me.


    "Cease your resistance." I commanded, my voice softening as I did so. I was feigning sympathy, and I allowed my gaze to soften even as I made eye contact with the dozens of dwarves that stood right in front of me.


    "You are victims as much as we are. And not just of us. Not just of overly... passionate Althonians, but of the real enemy." I told the dwarves, causing their eyes to further fill with fear and now with legitimate confusion. Some of them began to push back against each other, attempting to increase the distance between themselves and myself. I stifled a small chuckle, so as to not appear to be mocking them. They met with resistance from their comrades, who pushed them back to where they were, or only grudgingly gave way.


    One of them, a tough-looking male warrior with a braided beard didn''t back away from me. He wasn''t close to me though so he wasn''t fully exposed to my auric powers which explained his ability to stand so defiantly. But he did boldly do more than the other warriors did. He pointed his battleax at me and this time I didn''t bother to hide my chuckle. This didn''t anger him but his eyes did narrow as he opened his mouth to speak.


    "Hey! Who are you? Are you the commander of these orcs?" He shouted, his axe still pointed at me. His voice was a low, gravel-like one, but he spoke with an energy unbecoming of someone with which a voice. He also spoke quite speedily. Undeterred by him I began to speak again.


    "The dwarven people have long been deceived by an ancient demon-lord. Morehammer tricked all of your ancestors into believing in him. And following his death he has remained as a phantasmal echo of the past. Now, something has stirred him into action against a new foe, Althos the god of freedom." I told the dwarves in front of me. This caused them to stir in confusion, and they began to grumble both at me and in general. I didn''t allow them to complain loudly though.


    "Althos is currently resting and recovering from an encounter with Morehammer. He sent out a notification, since he is a true god, to the overwhelming majority of the world. He excluded dwarves. He urged his followers to defeat followers of Morehammer. Some Althonians are very zealous and fanatically love Torus'' god. Some members of that particular camp are these orcs back here." I told the dwarves. This provoked an outburst from the dwarves.


    "We serve no one!"


    "Morehammer can''t be a demon lord?!"


    "So many of our kin... Slain!"


    "Is Althos taking the side of these monsters? What about justice?"


    "I can''t believe this... My son and my father, slain, by overzealous followers of a wounded god."


    I allowed them to speak their minds for a few moments, just long enough to get the worst outbursts out of them. And then I rose my hand again.


    "The lives that were lost were not lost. Althos has bestowed me with some of his power. I am one of his angels. An angel of life. I possess the power to resurrect those who have fallen." I explained. I was of course lying, but a good portion of my words were true. I would be resurrecting the fallen. Or at least their bodies.


    "Althos is a god of many things. Allow him to show you a mere fraction of his powers. I will dismiss these followers, and you will be able to live in peace." I proclaimed, speaking self-confidently. They looked at me uncertainly, which was a reasonable reaction all things considered. I chuckled and deactivated my auras. And then I targeted the living dwarves and began to remotely heal them.


    I heard a number of sighs, but these ones were relieved and not the pained or sorrowful ones I heard in the aftermath of when I explained the origins of the orcs. I waited for a second to allow the dwarves to begin to focus on me and to actually adjust to their sudden lack of wounds and pain.


    When they were done recuperating I rose my hand and began to casually project an illusion of the radiant golden energy that would be familiar to many life forms as holy energy. I did this so as to lend legitimacy to the idea that I was going to perform a mass, true resurrection.

 152 The Angel Of Deception

    As a literal god, I possessed an endless array of formidable abilities. One power that I possessed that I hadn''t really been utilizing all that often was my power to manipulate the senses of mortals around me. It was a power I acquired when I gained the first tier of influence over the subdomain of enchantment.


    As I activated it my eyes suddenly changed from their usual dark color and abruptly became a striking shade of blue. I felt the shift and noticed it for future study. Odds are this was a natural consequence of making use of enchantment magic or abilities. As I activated the power cerulean colored energy began to radiate out of my hands, casually leaking into the air around me.


    I fused this energy with the magical illusion I was creating to begin to tell an incredible lie. A truly dazzling and ambitious one. One that I knew these dwarves wouldn''t see through.


    ________________________________________________


    The truth of what the god was up to was simple. He was performing a mass false resurrection. This was a simple technique for dark gods, one that allowed ancient gods of evil to create surprisingly sizable cults in a number of worlds quite easily if they could train even a few cultists to become assassins.


    Althos himself moved with pomp and circumstance as a strange and grim grin began to pull his lips upward in a dark sneer. His eyes were fixated on the dwarves before him as he quietly readied the strange energy that was about to explode out of him. He felt it well up within him and shivered as the potent energy primed itself for release.


    It was a dark miasma of necromantic energy mixed with the bright spark of life. Together the two disparate types of energy felt very odd and distinct within the god. He could feel each of the dozens of sparks of life well up within him as if they had always been there and had only been waiting for release instead of being odd things he had created within himself only moments ago.


    The odd god quietly read the descriptions for a few of his abilities that had received upgrades while he dwelt in his tower. He gave them once-overs to ensure that he remembered them correctly.


    ________________________________________________


    [Body creation: You can create bodies. This power is a synergistic one that fuses biology and life. Bodies that you are that are left without a life-giving spark are just inanimate corpses, but if they are given a soul and a life-giving spark they come to life. That said, we''re sure you can find something to do with lifeless bodies.


    Currently, you can create bodies for all types of animals found on Torus, and plants, assorted abominations, elves, humans, dwarves, and orcs.


    Soul creation: You can create souls. Your souls are now stronger than they once were, but you still can''t create specific types of souls. Once you absorb more souls you will be able to create souls that are designed to maximize the potential of specific types of bodies.


    This is a logical ability: if you absorb dwarven souls you''ll eventually gain the ability to create dwarven souls. Absorbing elven souls gives you the ability to create elven souls. And so on and so forth.]


    ________________________________________________


    I quietly chuckled as I read over those descriptions. The ability to create corpses of creatures like humans, elves, and even abominations was an incredibly powerful ability. It was one that I could quite easily abuse as a dreadful god of necromancy.


    I had the power to create an army, and what made that an even better ability was that I could use it remotely. With it I could unleash terror anywhere I could detect. Tragically, my detection-based abilities were limited. I couldn''t detect everything in the universe. Not yet anyway. That was something I was going to change in the near future. With the help of my "Stellar awareness" power. But it wasn''t time to do that just yet. I refocused on the scene in front of me.


    I took a deep breath and I targeted not just the dwarven corpses, but all of the corpses near me. I kept my eyes on the living dwarves, and maintained the illusions that I had already begin to inflict on them.


    The illusions were surprisingly simple. I was simply creating a number of illusions that together made it look like there was a radiant aura around me, an aura of golden light. This aura would soon, in their eyes anyway, begin to seep into the fallen dwarves and revive them. The true nature of what I was doing to the dwarves was far less pleasant than a true resurrection, and it was also far more useful to me than a true resurrection would be.


    In performing a large number of false resurrections I was gaining loyal, and evil worshippers who''d slyly infiltrate this community. A part of me recognized the viability of using this approach on every dwarven community. It was definitely tempting, and I had the servants to do it if I opted too. That said, for now, I''d use this community as an experiment. And I''d plant the seeds to create an evil cult of life and earth in this community.


    I closed my eyes and expelled the shards of life and necromantic energy that I had placed within myself. I felt odd as they left me, and as a wave of cold entered me in their place. They swiftly flew out of me, imperceptible to the naked eye, and flew into the fallen dwarves in front of me. Even with my eyes closed I could "see" the warm, deceptive energy they radiated.


    The shards sank into their targets, easily seeping into them and beginning to repair the grievous damage the orcs had inflicted on them. I opened my eyes and I could see the horrific cuts that the dwarves succumbed too begin to mend themselves and swiftly coming undone before my eyes. I watched as arrows were pushed out of dwarven skin, as flesh began to regrow, and even as limbs began to rejoin dwarven bodies. In the most extreme cases heads began to regrow from once headless neck stumps.


    Even I had to stop for a moment to admire the sheer potency of my own powers. This was beyond what I had expected, even though I knew that one of my most powerful powers, true resurrections, were capable of forming new bodies and I had the power to bring illusions to life. Even with those sorts of abilities under my control, I sensed the sheer power of my "False resurrection" power as I watched it heal the wounds that had once ended lives.


    The actual appearance of the power was visually striking and distinct. The bodies of the dwarves were shrouded in dark energy, and the healing that was going on wasn''t beautiful and gloriously but instead eerie and unsettling. Flesh spontaneously regrowing and stitching itself together is never a nice sight. I watched as the dark energy repaired the bodies, and then as the eyes of the dwarves shot open. Right when they did I received a notification that caught my eye. It asked me something.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: One of the quirks of the "False resurrection" power is that it allows gods to have direct power over the cults that the resurrected beings will try to establish. What sort of cult would you like for these supposedly resurrected beings to create?]


    ________________________________________________


    "Oh? How... intriguing." I thought, a smirk on my face as I read through the notification. This was a neat opportunity for me. At the moment this definitely guaranteed that I''d use this power many times in the future.


    But for now, I had a challenging decision I needed to make. One that would definitely influence the future. That said, this was a nice sort of challenging decision and one that I was quite happy to have to make.


    I silently considered what to do next. One of the particular quirks of the powers of a god was that for us to gain greater influence over many but not all domains and subdomains we had to build cults dedicated to ourselves and the thing we wanted to influence. So right now the decision I was being asked to make was one of considerable importance.


    As I paused to make this decision I quietly amped up the illusions the dwarves were seeing, and as I did so the very first of the resurrected dwarves began to shake violently. Life was beginning to violently surge into their bodies.

 153 Parasitism

    "How can I best oppose Morehammer? After all that''s the whole point of what I''m doing here, isn''t it?" I wondered as I paused to consider what sort of cult would be the most effective in aiding me as I began to pursue my new overall goal.


    Morehammer was once the chief deity of the dwarves. In the unspeakably ancient past, he created dwarves as his most treasured children. The creatures I was resurrecting at the moment were themselves dwarves and that gave me an unusual opportunity: a chance to plant the seeds for cults within dwarven society that would undermine and oppose the control Morehammer had over his children. So I needed to be cautious and thoughtful as I made this choice.


    "I possess an array of powers and I can influence... A lot actually." Those thoughts weren''t idle, self-congratulatory praises either. I was born a god of the earth, vermin, and agriculture, and yet I''ve risen to become much more.


    "I was born... a god of vermin. Hmm..." Something about that spoke to me. And it had been a while since I had given my lordship over vermin serious thought. But at the moment I was in a precarious situation, facing a powerful and serious foe. So now, was the time for creative and innovative thinking.


    "Vermin and parasites... What an idea." I mused, within the safety of my own mind. I began to feel a flicker of intrigue, the same sensation I felt whenever a scheme was beginning to slowly form at the outer edges of my mind.


    ________________________________________________


    One peculiar quirk of my innate subdomains was that they were tricky things. I came to life possessing innate power over three subdomains, earth, vermin, and agriculture. Of those three, only earth was simple and even it wasn''t actually simple. It was simply more straightforward than the other two.


    The agriculture subdomain was once known as the subdomain of famine. It was a member of the three domains and one subdomain known as the "Apocalypse quadrangle", four fonts of divine power that allowed gods to wield considerable power and to devastate entire worlds. With my powers over both agriculture and famine, I could reward and protect my followers while starving and killing my foes.


    The vermin subdomain wasn''t limited to animals that humanoids disliked and found destructive but also possessed considerable power over parasites. And the more I considered that the more fascinated by it I became. Parasites... Hmm... I had never really thought all that much about parasites.


    Before now I never had all that much of a reason to consider adding power over creatures that steal health and strength from others to my ever-expanding set of abilities, talents, and forces. But since I was facing a creature who was roughly my equal and appeared to exceed me in strength this was actually the perfect moment for me to do that. That said when I first looked at the powers that the vermin subdomain possessed I had been left thoroughly unimpressed.


    "I suppose this is the moment to see what powers over vermin and parasites I''ve gained over the course of the last month." I quietly told myself. I swiftly went through the mental motions needed to check up on my newest vermin subdomain abilities.


    When the abilities actually appeared in front of me I was stunned. They were... far stronger than I had anticipated them being.


    ________________________________________________


    [New primarily vermin subdomain passive powers:


    Drain: This is a cornerstone power of the vermin subdomain. It is an incredibly useful one that allows gods of parasites to grow in power incredibly fast. This upgradeable power allows you to take things from mortals, even immaterial things that shouldn''t be able to be taken from them.


    This power allows you to steal life-force, memories, stat points, spiritual energy, resistances, and even class levels. This power takes whatever you drained from a victim of this ability and gives it to you. You can drain things remotely, but this lacks the power and speed of an up-close-and-personal drain. You can also cause this power to feel pleasurable, corruptive, and addictive to victims if you wish. If someone just died you can use this to absorb someone''s soul.


    As befits synergies with other things you have influence over you can drain some unusual things. You can drain sanity, knowledge of spells, someone''s sense of duty, or even their ability to resist desires of all sorts. You can also return things you''ve drained if you so wish. Since you''re a god you can return these things to those you took them from without losing them, effectively creating copies of whatever you''ve drained. Whenever someone with a class loses all of their class levels they effectively lose that class but you don''t actually cut them off from the class they just need to gain experience in it again.


    Possession: This is an incredibly potent and parasitic power that allows you to seize control of the body of a mortal and do a number of things with it. You can attempt to seize control of it and effectively pretend to be that person, though this can be resisted by a mortal with a strong enough will. Due to synergies between the vermin subdomain and the other subdomains you possess influence over the sensations your victims receive while they are possessed by you are addictive and maddening and when you leave the victims you''re possessing they will crave sensations similar to being possessed.


    You can steal stat points, health, and more from those you possess. You can also empower the individual you''re possessing, similarly to when you bless them. Or you can merely ride along with the person, lurking within them, undetected by them or anyone else. Some of your followers, like praereptors and some undead have less potent versions of this ability.


    Swarm genesis: You gain power over swarms of vermin and parasites. This means you can command large numbers of vermin and parasites at once. You can also command parasites and vermin, even ones of different types, to come together and form large swarms. These swarms can be any size from 30 creatures to even as large as 10,000.


    Vermin awakening: You can awaken vermin at will. This power allows you to grant humanoid level intelligence to even the smallest and least dangerous-looking vermin and parasites such as mosquitoes and mice. You can also cause them to evolve into their second tiered evolutionary forms at will.


    Vermin subdomain active powers:


    Blight: Once per day you can use this power to infest an area, home, or field with a condition that makes it appealing to vermin. This makes an area wildly popular for vermin and parasites.


    Infestation: You can spontaneously spawn up to thirty vermin and or parasites at once. This power also allows you to cause your newly created vermin and parasites to have a special enmity for a specific place you can choose at will. The creatures you create will always try to target this one location and will scour it of resources. Despite being an active power this is an at-will ability.]


    ________________________________________________


    Whoa... I muttered to myself when I was finished reading through the new powers I had gained. As I read through them I recognized the incredible power of these abilities. Of all of them "drain" and "possession" were the most broadly usable and directly handy to me as a god who was facing another god''s echo. And that was what inspired me to do what I did next.


    I looked out in front of me and swiftly changed my environment in a subtle way. Even as I looked out at the dwarves nearest to me I quietly called on the subdomains of air and poison to form a mist that spread out from my corporeal form. This mist would have an unpleasant effect on those who inhaled it, something my victims might have learned if I had cared to release them from the illusion they were under. I wasn''t nice enough to do that though.


    The thin mist was green-tinted though in the relative darkness of the cave we were inside of that was hard for mortals, with their light-dependent vision, to tell. It spread out from me incredibly quickly and in seconds covered both the dwarves who survived to the end, as well as the ones who I had brought back to life. The purpose of the mist was simple. To put them to sleep. And I watched for a moment or two as it took effect nearly instantly.


    The mist was made from fusing some of the subtler powers over the air subdomain and the poison subdomain together. The sleep effect was derived from my powers over sloth. I merely mixed and matched the effects together to create circumstances in which I could more favorably begin to utilize some of the powers I possessed that intrigued me.


    I closed my eyes and kept them shut this time. I took a deep breath and then silently targeted the hundreds of dwarves in front of me. The dwarves, exhausted from the battle they had fought or from the strain of being brought back to life, all fell asleep instantly the second they were touched by the mist.


    I rose a single hand straight up and began to use "Drain". As I did I targeted two things: their memories and their class levels. I also knew what sort of a cult I would be creating here.


    ________________________________________________


    The scene beyond the fire separating the dwarves from the orcs was an odd one. A single human-looking entity had one hand stretched out above him and was facing an entire army of sleeping dwarves.


    The dwarves began to shift uncomfortably. They twisted and contorted in their sleep as they were suddenly and greedily drained of something immaterial and yet incredibly valuable.


    The eerie god of parasites and vermin''s power that had once put them to sleep was now actively stealing from them. It was within them, and taking things that lacked physical form from them. Targeting their experience, their muscles, and even their very minds and souls.


    In that moment their true foe, Althos, was revealing an aspect of his true nature. He was embodying the sins of greed, gluttony, envy, and sloth.


    He had wanted what was rightfully theirs and begun to greedily take what never belonged to him. He had taken a lazy approach to acquire power by embracing the parasitic nature of some of his more frightening abilities. And he was even overconsuming something that no one else would be able to consume, taking in more than twenty levels in the classes of ranger, brawler, berserker, and warrior, all at once.


    Seconds after he activated the parasitic power he had just learned he possessed he shivered as he began to feel... something, or rather somethings seep into him from hundreds of sources all at once. He was momentarily confused by this until his mind began to become overwhelmed by past sensations and he began to remember conversations he had never been a part of.


    He was experiencing memories that weren''t his, and learning secrets that predated his youthful life. Entire lifetimes of memories, often centuries worth of memories were rapidly absorbed into him. He was lucky his mind was a greedy sponge that relished chances to take in new information.


    On an even more internal level than his mind, his soul was undergoing a change as well. The god had made a powerful choice. He had opted to steal the class-levels of the dwarves, and in doing so gained hundreds of class-levels all at once.


    This caused his soul to swell with power, and had anyone been able to see him at that moment they would have seen his muscles undergo a temporary but physical change. He grew taller and his body swelled in width due to a sudden and unexpected acquisition of muscle mass.


    This elicited a small chuckle from the god. After the chuckle, he willed himself back to his prior, slim but handsome appearance. That said the shock of this was enough for the god to open his eyes again. The god''s mind and soul were being stretched and were expanding to accommodate the new information and the new powers he possessed but for a god this was easy. This was merely what happened whenever a god gained a new worshiper but on a much grander and more rapid scale.


    ________________________________________________


    The aftermath of my usage of "drain" left me feeling... different. I felt stronger than ever before, on a physical level, even though I already possessed infinite strength. Something about the class levels I had taken into myself from the fooled dwarves had made me feel more physically powerful and aware than I ever had before now. The combined strength of the martial classes, warrior, brawler, berserker, and ranger put together left me feeling quite dangerous.


    After opening my eyes, all while I was still adjusting to the things that I had taken from the dwarves, I glanced at my hand. It was indeed small again, but there was something... different about it. There was something threatening about my hand. As if on a purely instinctual level I recognized that my hand contained new power and was more dangerous now than it had been minutes ago. I wasn''t sure if this was due to the new abilities I possessed, thanks to the classes I had just gotten to level 20, or to the thousands of years of collective memories I had just taken from the dwarves.


    A part of my mind was preoccupied with adjusting to the new memories I possessed. In every case, I had absorbed every memory of the dwarf in question, and so I must have taken in close to twenty thousand years of memories total since even a single dwarf can live for centuries before perishing. The oldest dwarf in my presence was over eight centuries old, and my power hungrily fed on each of his memories, from the moment he was birthed to the moment he fell in battle to an orc''s machete.


    "Heh." I uttered, audibly chuckling as I learned an entire community''s secrets seeped into my mind and became things that I knew as readily as I knew my own name. That said, I wasn''t here to steal needlessly.


    I closed my eyes and activated another handy power of mine: "Projection". With it, I called an army of myself into existence, and felt me begin to appear all over the part of the cave I found myself in. Each projected copy of myself had a simple task to do: give the memories of the dwarves back to them. And they sprang to action surprisingly quickly, each leaping at the dwarf closest to them and activating the "Tactile teaching" power so that their memories could be returned to them.


    All in all this process took roughly fifteen minutes. During this time Sombra appeared at my side and stood next to me while I waited for this to task be completed.


    ________________________________________________


    When the shadowy witch was back by my side and I had completed my task I turned to her and watched as she reacted. She stiffened unexpectedly, caught off guard by my abrupt action. I stifled a chuckle and began to speak.


    "I found a new source of strength. One that may allow me to properly take my revenge on Morehammer." I informed her, speaking and thinking aloud. She relaxed when she heard this, though the smile on her face was an excited one.


    "Master, do you care to share what this new source of power is?" She asked, knowing that at times I spoke to think aloud and not to inform those who could hear me. I smiled at the young demon and replied to her jovially.


    "It relates to what I''ve always been. A parasite of incredible power. And parasitism." I told her, speaking cryptically. Over the course of the time that I was returning the memories I had taken from the dwarves I came to an important conclusion.


    I was a god of parasites. Innately. Not long ago I might have looked down on this, or on a being who claimed to be a parasite, but now I knew better. Tasting defeat, even a relatively minor one, had humbled me.


    Just as important as being humbled, the act of gaining power through parasitism had excited me. Taking from others felt good. And in my case it was rewarding. With powers like "Drain" at my disposal, I may eventually have an ability suitable to steal what remains of Morehammer''s power from his vestige. Realizing this was deeply inspiring in its own, twisted way.


    I was born a god of parasites and if I had learned and embraced that sooner I may have been able to defeat Morehammer the first time I encountered him. But I knew better than to fixate on that. This power I possessed needed to be cultivated. It needed to be honed.


    Frankly, under different circumstances, I may have needed to train and hone the new abilities I had gained thanks to the class levels I stole, but I had memories that engrained in me new instincts. Including instinctual understandings of my new powers. I momentarily considered returning the class levels, since I was able to do so without losing them thanks to my godhood.


    "Should I return them? After all the dwarves are weaker without them..." I mused, a cruel grin on my face as I thought about what to do with my new abilities.


    "But at the same time... The dwarves were losing this battle. If they weren''t strong enough to win, do they really deserve these abilities?" I thought, my grin growing in cruelty as I considered that aspect of all of this. The battle would have been even more costly for both sides by its end, but the dwarves would have lost.


    "Hmm... Nah, I think they''ll just have to re-earn their levels on their own." I eventually decided. I quite enjoyed this decision of mine. I took Sombra''s hand in my mine and suddenly teleported us to the other side of the fire, where the orcs were watching and waiting. As I did so I informed the system of the choice I had made regarding the sort of cult I wanted the resurrected dwarves to make.


    I wanted them to make a chaotic cult of evil and parasitism, which masqueraded as a cult of community and health. A cult that hid its true ends and even the means by which it sought to accomplish those ends.


    It was at the same time as this was occurring that the dwarves began to awaken, only to immediately fall under an illusion that the fire was gone, that I was gone, and that the orcs were gone. An illusion that falsely promised that I had fulfilled my promise.


    It was while the dwarves were under this illusion that I turned my attention to the orcs and readied to make at least part of my promise a reality.

 154 Return To Nature

    [Congratulatory alert:


    You have reached level 20 in the following classes: berserker, warrior, ranger, brawler, and rogue. You did this in an unusual way for the classes other than rogue, but it is commendable nonetheless. You have gained a formidable array of martial abilities and talents with weapons as well as your own fists and other body parts.


    You have been awarded the 20th level of rogue due to the stunning and otherwise impossible nature of the theft you performed. By utilizing your parasitic abilities to steal entire centuries worth of memories and experience the system has deemed you deserving of this powerup. You truly are a memorable theft, and hopefully gaining more theft-related abilities will incentivize you to use more diverse powers in the future.]


    ________________________________________________


    The notification was visible to me but at the moment I didn''t preoccupy myself with it. Instead, I focused on the scene in front of me. It was much more interesting.


    At last I had turned my attention away from the dwarves and onto the orcs. The orcs had been separated from their foes by a wall of flames I had raised in order to stop the fighting and begin to enact schemes. But now I could truly concentrate on this battle''s inevitable victors, the orcs who had answered my call.


    In front of me stood a horde of pig-faced, variously hued orcs. On average these creatures stood roughly the height of an unusually tall human. Orcs of both genders stood before me. They were too confused or too prideful to kneel. Not that I particularly cared. The horde extended for past the furthest point I could see, which at the moment was a straight line in the cave we were in that stretched on for a vast distance. This cave we were in was by no means shallow.


    Now that I could actually focus on and make out the composition of their horde I wasn''t surprised to see that it was more diverse than I initially noticed.


    Orc males were at the forefront of the horde. They held bloody machetes, ones that smelled of the thick blood of the defeated dwarves. They were clad in a variety of armor types, but most commonly they wore fur. They smelled of wilder places than this cave.


    Orc females were at the middle and the back of the horde and they stood far taller than their male counterparts. They carried a number of weapons. Only some of them carried machetes.


    Most carried ranged tools, bows and arrows, staffs, and slings, all of which were handy weapons that allowed them to fire on their enemies from a distance. They were dressed in thick furs and they smelled of a number of things but mostly the stink of their male counterparts mixed with the scent of their own sweat.


    Weirdly they hadn''t really participated during the fighting. Both during the bits and pieces of the fighting that I got to see while Sombra readied her new tool and the actual memories of the fallen but now resurrected dwarves illustrated a clear lack of ranged support from the female orcs. The air also distinctly lacked any noticeable tint of magic. It was... quite odd.


    Sombra was next to me, and I could hear her heart pounding in her chest. I could also hear the blood circulating within her, generously flowing to sensitive parts of her anatomy as well as to her face, giving her dark skin a strange sort of radiant glow. Sombra''s hand was in mine, and I could sense the joy radiating out of her. She was smiling but there was something... Off about her expression. Something deeply unsettling.


    She was elated. It was easy to tell that she was sincerely, almost manically happy. She wasn''t paying that much attention to the orcs, but they were studying her. And occasionally their noses crinkled as if they were sniffing her.


    The orcs were intelligent creatures even if they looked somewhat feral. A few of them noticed that her hand was in mine, and the bravest of them approached us slowly and uncertainly. I allowed this before beginning to speak.


    "Orcs! I am a servant of Althos." I declared, speaking deceptively once more. I didn''t feel like revealing the truth of my ruse to these orcs. They didn''t immediately reply, but they did look around in confusion and wait a moment. One of them though, a male with a blood-caked machete turned to look at me with bright green eyes. He didn''t move to approach me, but behind him someone began to make her way towards Sombra and I.


    I could see a female orc carrying a large staff ambling towards us, through the horde. I didn''t make a physical motion but I did quietly begin to move the female orc faster using telekinesis. I was subtle with my aid and only helped her in little ways like gently helping her peers out of the way. It didn''t take her long to reach us. When she did she moved beside the orc with the blood-caked machete.


    The two were large orcs both towering over other orcs of their gender. Interestingly, orcs were one of the first species of humanoids I had seen to date where the females were taller, on average than the males. The female orc was not only standing upright, she was also almost half a meter taller than her companion. She looked to her companion and nodded. A toothy grin emerged on his face right before he opened his mouth to speak.


    "Hello! I am... Grog." He told me, speaking slowly and with considerable difficulty. His eyes glowed with intelligence, but it was clear that communicating was not his strong suit.


    "I am... chieftain of Red-Hawk orc tribe." He informed me, still speaking slowly and carefully. I could see the cogs in his brain working to ensure that he communicated as effectively as possible. I smiled respectfully at him.


    "I am Raphael." I told the orc, lying and taking on the name of one of my angelic servants. The orc''s eyes lit up with fascination as he heard my name.


    "I am one of Althos'' angelic servants. I am an angel of life and healing." I explained, continuing to lie. The orc''s eyes increased in brightness, and a smile crept across my face.


    "Raphael... Why are you... here?" The chieftain asked, curiosity audibly creeping into his voice. I considered how to best answer his words for a second.


    "I am here to bring about peace." I explained, before quietly activating a number of peace-domain abilities.


    I started off by activating my "Bloodlust dismissal" while targeting all of the orcs in front of me. I quietly banished as much of their bloodlust as I could, and that was a considerable amount of the anger they felt but it wasn''t everything. The power was easy to use, and effective, but as it said in its description it wasn''t capable of removing all of any target''s bloodlust by itself.


    The orcs all sighed as they felt much of their bloodlust fade away, banished, and expelled from them. I also activated another one of my auric abilities: my aura of peace. This powerful ability of mine allowed me to make it incredibly difficult for creatures to clash so long as they were in my presence. My aura of peace manifested by illuminating the air around me in a bright silvery glow.


    The final ability I activated was another one I had never used before. It was a potent curse-based ability which made those struck by it worse at violence, and more susceptible to efforts to engage peacefully with the world around them. It had a simple name: "Non-violence". I used it and I targeted all of the orcs in the area, including the deceased orcs. This ability was invisible and imperceptible to those I targeted, but I watched as the living orcs in my presence abruptly slowed down, as if weighed down by something invisible to them.


    It was only at this point that I closed my eyes and activated my false resurrection ability. I felt the corrupted, necromantically tinted sparks of life come into being within me. I didn''t bother to keep them within me though, and I immediately expelled them outward to the dozens of fallen orcs. It was at this point, perhaps a quarter of a minute after I last spoke, that I began to speak again.


    "As an angel of life and healing I possess the power to overturn death. I did that for the dwarves. I am doing it for you too." I explained, speaking not just to Grog but also to the other orcs he commanded. I did this by utilizing my powers over sound to project my voice and to make it clearly audible for each orc in front of me. Before he even knew what he was doing Grog''s muscles tightened and I could sense that he was about to object to my decision to heal the dwarves. So I continued to speak, cutting him off before he could.


    "I am here on Althos'' orders. If you have an objection to my actions you are objecting to Althos'' will." I explained, speaking softer this time. My statement was only heard by Grog. I wasn''t about to needlessly humiliate Grog in front of his subordinates, but I also wasn''t about to let him talk back to me. The orc stiffened.


    "Althos recognizes your loyalty and zeal. All of you. That''s why he has a reward for you." I explained, once more speaking to everyone. As I spoke the sparks I had created within myself infused the corpses and this time, faster than before they began to vibrate, indicating that they were already undoing the damage done to the orcs that had ended their lives. I received a notification asking me to decide what sort of cult these orcs would create and knew the answer to it right away.


    ________________________________________________


    Orcs were powerful combatants. They were also fierce creatures, far more attuned to nature than many other humanoids. In a way, they represented a sort of missing link between many of the brighter animals and the more civilization oriented humanoids. Which made them perfect for the sort of cult I''d need if I wanted to defeat Morehammer.


    Morehammer, according to what both he and the system told me, was a dangerous foe who embodied concepts like civilization, creation, and law. He was a totalitarian, albeit benevolent dictator in how he governed dwarves and embodied creation in the form of blacksmithing. So to become someone who stood in stark opposition to him, I''d need to embody nature, destruction, and chaos. And orcs were perfect for that.


    The cult I wanted the orcs to create was a public one of destruction, nature, and chaos. A sort of anti-modernization movement. In fact part of my effort to turn the races of the world against the dwarves was to watch out for groups like the Red-Hawk tribe that could easily be turned into destructive, nature-oriented cults. I silently informed the system of my desires.


    ________________________________________________


    "Your loyalty and fury have touched Althos'' heart. He sent me here not to prevent you from shedding blood, but to put you on a better, more natural path." I explained, a smile on my face as I spoke to all of the orcs in the cave.


    As I spoke I took a step forward, gently pulling Sombra along with me, and used my dominion over fire to bring an end to the wall of fire behind me. It died down a second after I willed it to stop burning. That said, I wasn''t fully done. I made use of my powers over the earth to seal the dwarven community by causing the floor I had just stepped off of to rise up behind me. No orcs would enter the community, and no dwarves would leave it either.


    "The god we all worship wishes for you to reconnect with nature." I proclaimed, speaking energetically now. There was zeal in my eyes and my voice, and my words intrigued the orcs.


    "Althos wishes for you to abandon manmade things, and he wishes for you to embrace the power and virality of your own bodies once more. Throw away your tools, and seek to master the power within!" I said, speaking passionately. Many of the orcs, male and female alike looked at the implements in their hands and then suddenly dropped them, disappointment and shame in their eyes.


    "Civilization is for those who are afraid of the might of nature. Tell me... Do you fear the night? Do you fear the mighty predators that lie outside of view, waiting for moments of weakness?" I asked the orcs, appealing to their innate pride.


    I was unsurprised when I heard them began to chant "No!" as a response to my words. I grinned at them, savagely.


    "My master believes in your power and ferocity. He believes in the strength that civilization has sapped from you. He seeks to restore you to greatness." I told the orcs, and I chuckled silently when they replied to me with a single great and excited roar. At this point I released the hand of Sombra and took a step towards the orcs in front of me.


    I reached out and touched one of them, placing my hand gently against the orc''s muscular chest. He was a fair bit taller than I was, with yellow skin and a face covered in dried, dwarven blood. I closed my eyes and activated a potent power of mine, the ability to make humanoids were-creatures.


    I had the power to do with this any sort of humanoid and make them any sort of were-creature. But for the Red-Tusk tribe I''d keep it simple. I planned to make them were-boars. To connect them to their roots as evolved pigs and boars.


    The second I activated the power, the orc audibly gasped and suddenly fell to his knees. When he was on his knees he was about my height. Salvia and spittle began to dribble down his mouth, which was open while he was on his knees. His eyes were wide open as he began to feel the newfound power surging through him.


    "Those of you who embrace nature and who become strong will be made stronger by our god''s gifts and love. He will allow you to retain your cognitive powers and your sense of self, while giving you free access to the strongest aspects of your pig and boar ancestors. If you embrace our god, make his will your will, and in turn return to nature... Your power shall become greater than you could ever imagine." I told them, cryptically.


    I place my other hand on the orc on his knees. I do this gently, touching his forehead, and I begin to alter his appearance.


    The orc had a handsome, muscular face. His eyes were a soft shade of yellow, like his skin. His mouth was made up mostly of humanlike teeth, but he had two prominent tusks that jutted out a little bit from the lower half of his jaw.


    It is on those that I focused. I swiftly altered them, making them far larger and more prominent, to mark this orc as different from the others. A second later I took my hands off of the orc''s face and chest, freeing him from my touch. As I released the orc from my touch, I locked eyes with him, and activated my powers over addiction.


    For the millisecond our eyes are interlocked I cause this orc to become addicted to the sensation of the power flowing through him, the boar-power he now wielded. I did this to ensure that he would forever seek to fulfill my will, so long as he continued to be able to revel in his abilities.


    At the same time I returned my attention to the rest of the orcs. I looked out at them, and as I did so I continued to remember how I first came into being. I was born a powerful druid with powers over the very earth at my feet, and over agriculture and vermin. It felt good to remember the being I was at birth.


    I would spend the next few hours with Sombra and the orcs. As I prepared to do that I began to mentally command the earth that made up the cave we were in to carve out a new home for my servants. A home that would house the first true nature cult I was creating, a cult I hoped would one day be made up of nearly feral orcs and eventually their powerful animal companions.


    ________________________________________________


    "I am a god of nature." I reminded myself. I knew that I had a special connection to nature, as it was one of my original domains. And it wasn''t one given to all gods at birth either.


    "I am a god of chaos." I told myself, recalling the first moments of my life. I was over a month old, and in that time I had begun to forget what I was born with control over.


    If I wanted to defeat Morehammer I suspected I would need to become more powerful than I was at the moment. A key component of that would almost certainly be me mastering my current set of powers. Especially things I was born capable of influencing. Things like nature, chaos, and knowledge.


    "I must continue to gain power." I inwardly muttered, a determined expression on my face even while I busied myself interacting with the orcs I had converted into my newest cult.


    Nearly two hours after I transformed the orc tribe into the newest major group of Althonians I received an unexpected but most welcome notification.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    The creation of your newest cults and your role in the creation of several communities have been deemed influential enough for you to acquire the quest to gain the second tiers of influence over the faith and the civilization domains. This quest is a straight forward one. Your followers must build a holy city and appoint a high-priest or high-priestess to govern it.]

 155 Destruction And Construction

    The world of Torus was a strange place. Even before the spontaneous emergence of the last god in existence took place in a tiny, remote island on its surface, ancient and dark mysteries lurked on, underneath, or in very rare cases above, its surface. That said, the aforementioned deity was one source of considerable mysteries of various degrees of eerieness, despite his youth.


    One mystery the god was responsible for was the sudden existence of an eerie island floating over a vast sea. The closest thing that the youthful god had to a home was itself the gravity-defying and tower-housing island. The surface of this place was idyllic, yet disturbingly quiet. Very little lived on the surface of the island. It was within the island''s rocky surface that the life and unlife existed in any large number.


    Within the island itself, far from the harsh rays of the sun, there was an eerie, phantasmal reproduction of a city. This ghoulish facade of a metropolis was inhabited by scores and scores of the undead. This was the one place in the world where undead entities did things other than plot genocides and fantasize about committing atrocities against the living.


    ________________________________________________


    No light illuminated the nameless wen. And no living creatures sullied the forsaken streets. It was a dreary place, inhabited by undead of various levels of strength.


    The nightmarish mockery of a city was entirely controlled by potent undead such as the feared magic-users known as "Worms that walk", and their allies: vampires, mummies, and wrights. Occupying a middle-class of sorts were ghouls and ghosts, as well as other spectral undead of not inconsiderable power who retained their sentience. The lower class was made up of the nameless legions of zombies and skeletons, even though skeletons had always retained their sentience and the zombies controlled by Althos had universally been awoken by the dark god.


    The city was largely ungoverned by Althos directly, but the nightmarish entities that prowled its dead streets all served their god with incredible loyalty. There were two groups in particular that had a legitimately remarkable loyalty to the alien god that exceeded the norm even for undead: zombies and ghouls. Zombies were fanatically loyal to the god because he was directly responsible for granting them sentience and made a conscious choice to do so.


    Ghouls on the other hand were loyal to Althos because they believed he favored them. Their leaders included the original ghouls who Althos reanimated at the beginning of his life, most notably Mof the highly charismatic Satyr whose death Sombra played a key role in. Mof spread the tale of his own reanimation and thus was responsible for the widespread myth that Althos favored ghouls.


    This drove ghouls to be especially pious, and within the city there wasn''t a single ghoul who wasn''t also an extremely proud and arrogant follower of the god of the grave. Some ghouls even spent time perpetually in a state of unholy prayer, whispering observations about their surroundings to their distant god. Althos was aware of this, and he actually liked it, but he was also perpetually in motion and thus only rarely commanded or even spoke to the ghouls who were so devoted to him.


    Minutes after Althos received the notification alerting him to the quest he''d need to complete to be able to gain the second tiers of influence over the faith and civilization domains he sprung into action. And this meant that he finally turned a significant amount of attention to the undead metropolis.


    ________________________________________________


    "I need to create a holy city? Okay... I can do that." I thought, in the safety and privacy of my own mind. I turned my mind towards the places either under my control or at least led by servants of mine.


    In truth that was a considerable number of places both in Salifinos and in Torus. I was worshipped in a number of ways throughout the solar system, but my presence was directly felt by people in both of those worlds. Torus was my home but the people of Salifinos knew of me in a way more maddening and terrifying way: as the god of abominations and madness, and thus as a potent and terrifying warlord whose decision represented the final nail in the coffin of mortals on Salifinos.


    Physically I was still with the orcs, but many of my more potent powers didn''t require that I be physically present in a place to actually affect it. I was quiet as I considered which place would be the easiest for my minions to transform into a holy city. It didn''t take me long to come to the realization that there was a single location that would be perfect: the necropolis within my floating home.


    I chuckled and smiled when I realized this. It was perfect because it was already inhabited by extremely pious worshipers of mine, and because if I told them what to do they would do it without question. I knew this through experience and I trusted my undead servants beyond any shadow of a doubt.


    The ferocious and loyal undead I commanded were in many ways the ideal servants. They didn''t balk at evil commands. They wouldn''t die of hunger or thirst, making them perfect guardians. They were pious and patient. And more than anything else they worshipped me whole-heartedly, even if it was in their own black-hearted sort of way.


    I turned my attention to the city and its numerous inhabitants. All at once I did a number of different things, all while feeling happy that I had the powerful and reality-warping mind of a god.


    ________________________________________________


    The undead metropolis that Althos allowed to exist underneath his tower and inside of his island was abruptly changed. The first change wasn''t a physical one, though it was at least as important as the ways in which the god who indirectly ruled over the island sought to physically change the city.


    Althos'' prying, intrusive mind entered the minds and hearts of the undead servants he commanded. He did this loudly and in a display of deific might. His otherworldly and confusing personality seeped into and further dominated his servants and he made use of one of his eldritch domain abilities for the first times ever: "Fanaticism inducement".


    This power was one of the more sinister powers the dark god possessed. With it, someone''s sanity was at risk but the truth was that no undead being was ever truly, fully sane anyway. This power eroded the mind of someone who already worshiped the god of the grave and transformed them into fanatics devoted to their dark god in any way he desired them to be.


    The dark god''s mind was a powerful and overwhelming thing. Even the strongest extraplanar beings wouldn''t be able to touch it or be touched by it, and somehow be left unchanged. And the undead inhabitants of the city were not as strong as the mightiest extraplanar beings. Their minds were nothing compared to their god, and all at once, the inhabitants of the city felt the chilling touch of the mind of their god and master.


    The undead universally fell to their knees as they felt, to them anyway, a loving and glorious mental caress. Their god''s power washed over them like a dark tidal wave and filled their minds with the glory of their unholy master who was also the source of their unlife. They were helpless to resist even the lightest mental touches of their deity of death and reanimation. That said, there were effects caused by the particular sort of corruption their master exuded that were unexpected by the god himself.


    One such effect was that his powers as a lord of lust and god of sexuality would wash over his undead servants, and infect them like a sinful, sexual plague, yet that was exactly what happened. Moments after the undead fell to their knees in collective supplication to their dark god they felt a potent rush of pleasure flood their undead, reanimated amygdala, or in the cases of the ghosts and the skeletons they felt it suffuse their very essences, soaking into their ectoplasmic cores and their bones respectively.


    This unholy burst of unexpected pleasure was misunderstood by the undead as a reward for their renewed devotion to their master. Even the least sensitive of them felt the dark pleasure as powerfully as a sex-addict might feel their first orgasm in a fortnight. This feeling was more powerful than the feelings of dark elation vampires got when they drank the blood of their victims or when a ghoul bit into a living human for the first time. It was rapturous.


    Undead who still possessed their flesh, especially vampires and wrights, felt the full-body pleasure as intensely as when they had had sex as living creatures. And thus their love and devotion for their master took on newer, more sensual shades. Far away from the city, Althos felt an echo of the city''s collective sexual pleasure and relief, and he chuckled at the potency of his own power.


    Another such effect of the dark god''s power was that for a moment it overcame the hatred the undead felt towards the living. The power of Althos'' eerie, mind-altering corruption was so suffused with pleasure and laziness that it enabled the undead to momentarily forget their previously all-consuming hatred of the living. Their minds were so thoroughly corrupted that they could momentarily imagine a future in which they transformed their bastion of pious hatred into a macabre, hedonistic playground devoted to two great evils: the utterly selfish pleasures of the flesh and incredibly lazy dereliction of duty.


    Althos felt this too. It was the first time he ever felt anything resembling indifference coming from undead entities and it legitimately caught him off-guard. It was the first time since he had encountered Morehammer, hours ago, that he felt actual surprise, and the second time in weeks he had done so.


    Far away from the undead he mentally muttered "So this is the power of sloth huh? Enough that even fanatical undead become lazy...". It was interesting to him, to watch even for a moment as creatures who in mortal eyes were incapable of anything but hatred for mortals, become indifferent to them. It opened his eyes to a world of possibilities, even if this was a moment that came and went in an instant as a second after it occurred the hatred the undead felt for the living returned and washed out such slothful thoughts from their minds.


    The final unexpected aspect of his power that washed over them was a personality-shifting ability to induce addiction, obsession, and desire. Their hearts were thoroughly overwhelmed by an addiction to the sensations of their minds being flooded with his dark power, and they felt an obsessive desire to hear his voice etch itself into their souls.


    It was only an instant later that he felt the powerful effects of their newfound devotion to him. Their collective emotions surged into his heart, and he was stunned to find that this was the closest thing they could feel to love. It was a gruesome obsession, a community-wide addiction to serving him and an almost kind-hearted desire to share the pleasures of service with the rest of existence. But he recognized that last one for what it was: a new attempt by some of the wiser undead to justify their violent hatred of life.


    After allowing himself to bask in the emotions of his undead worshipers he quietly turned his mind towards his grander objective. After refocusing he quietly gave the destructive monsters a single command directed at the strange city itself: "Destroy". His words echoed in their minds, and filled them with a desire to see the city fall apart. Then rose up off of their knees and turned towards the city, destruction on their minds.


    The fury of the undead legion that slavishly served Althos was almost a thing of beauty. They moved as one and began to tear down the walls they had built weeks ago, and the buildings they had constructed for various purposes. It didn''t matter if they were wrights, zombies, ghosts, mummies, or skeletons, they took their hands, their weapons, and their energy to devastate the buildings they had once occupied their time building. The total destruction of the city would take around two hours to complete.


    Once the destruction was complete, the undead felt momentarily sated. Althos, cognizant of their work this time purposefully transmitted feelings of pleasure to them. They wallowed in this emotion for perhaps half an hour, before Althos refocused and gave them another vague and equally simple command: "Build a city".


    The undead refocused and threw themselves with equal fervor into the task of building a city. This time they built far faster and with much more focus than when they first gradually built the city. After all, they were commanded by their god to do so. And as zealots of their dark god, their new overriding goals were to enact whatever strange whims struck their god. Unfortunately, creation was much harder and much more work than destruction and even with a tireless legion of undead building an entire city was much more work than destroying one.

 156 Freedom

    One of the powers I had gained right before I went to live in my tower and actually begin to make use of my powers was the ability to create copies of memories and absorb them from willing targets. I also possessed a power that allowed me to take memories from unwilling targets. This power was one that I knew that I''d soon grow addicted to using even though it had just been hours since I learned of it and how incredibly powerful it was sure to be.


    In the time that has passed since I first acquired these abilities, especially the later, I had used them to quickly and intelligently learn about the solar system and the universe I live in. By positioning myself as a god of healing, health, life, and freedom I managed to gain countless worshipers who were willing to share their memories with me and thus actually acquiring new memories was far from difficult.


    I spent a considerable amount of time in my tower over the course of the past few weeks targeting creatures, approaching them, and then acquiring their memories. This had led me to finally beginning to feel as knowledgeable as I suppose a god ought to feel and very slowly becoming as knowledgeable as a god ought to be not long before I left the tower with Ava and inadvertently led her to her death at the hands of an angry echo of the distant, nearly forgotten past.


    In the most spectacular cases, especially regarding the war-torn planet of Salifinos, I had managed to acquire the collective knowledge of entire civilizations. This was because of the exceedingly strong impression I left on the inhabitants of a number of civilizations, coupled with quiet schemes like my decision to continually provide the inhabitants of some civilizations with food.


    The truth was that my ability to influence those who ate the food that I created, be it divinely or magically created, allowed me to easily gain worshipers over time through mortal consumption of food. One of the most subtle yet incredibly powerful tools I possessed was a combination of my ability to create unlimited amounts of food and one of my other abilities to acquire influence over creatures who ate food I created. These two powers allowed me to gain influence over civilizations passively if I felt like it.


    That said I wasn''t lazy enough to do that. So I had always opted for a more active approach, even while quietly ensuring that I acquired followers by using food freely. And even this led to discoveries concerning the nature of influence and how it altered minds. But in the time since I entered my tower, knowledge of the inner workings of mortal minds had not been the most important thing I had discovered.


    ________________________________________________


    As a chaotic-neutral being, I was both neutral, as in I was motivated by my own self-interests rather than sadism or altruism, and chaotic in that freedom fascinated me and I preferred to let others generally be free so long as they didn''t use their freedom to usurp the freedom of others or stand in the way of my objectives.


    I had by and large managed to stick to the basic principles of self-interest while pursuing the overall motivations of protective and contagious liberty. Many of my most evil acts had been done to acquire new powers and to secure the worship and service of evil beings, such as the destruction of Florida or the declaration of war against the mortals who inhabited Salifinos.


    Perhaps the most important knowledge I had begun to gain was knowledge of the various alignments. I had begun to understand the various aspects and forms of the chaotic alignment. Not only could I now think of my own desires to see the multiverse free from one of the few things I hated, slavery, but I could begin to understand how it was that other chaotic entities felt about various moral issues.


    Chaotic good beings viewed things from a freedom-oriented perspective and believed in the best of people all while standing in opposition to oppression and oppressive societies. This was an annoying perspective, and such creatures would probably often stand in my way since I myself leaned towards chaotic evil and was actively embracing chaos in its darker form to exact my revenge. Chaotic evil entities acted purely based on their whims, and their impulses. In their cases, the whims and impulses in question were often destructive.


    Chaos itself as a positive force was interested in growth, freedom, and creativity. But as a negative force, it was a source of disorder, entropy, and confusion. As a neutral force, it was one of the grand causes of change, mutations, and inspiration.


    Chaos stood in stark opposition to the rigid hierarchies and false order imposed on people by law. Chaos, at its core, was about freedom and in many ways about truth whereas law was about artificial organization and lied to people to get them to abandon chaos in favor of what they felt made them safer. They gave up their freedom to enjoy an artificial and superficial sense of safety.


    Morehammer exemplified law''s propensity towards rigid falsehoods. He created a rigid structure with him at the top of it so that he could control his creations under the guise of protecting and caring for them.


    It seemed that whenever a dwarf began to step too far from his commands and his rigid sense of morality he''d abandon them but what''s worse is that he apparently prevented any god from turning to these abandoned dwarves and becoming their god. Morehammer was a dictator, though I had no doubt that he viewed himself as a benevolent or at least neutral one, rather than some evil and oppressive ruler.


    A chaotic pantheon chief would have been fine with dwarves choosing their own path. And such a figure would have accepted a god turning towards the dwarves who left the main fold and seeking to become the god of the wayward dwarves. Dwarves deserved a god who accepted their free will and who let them make morally complex choices like what god to worship or how to worship their chosen god. And such a pantheon chief wouldn''t have killed Ava for daring to choose to pursue vengeance.


    The truth was that that loss still stung. I wasn''t about to let myself get overly emotional with regards to the death of my servant, but I quite liked Ava. I had plans for her, and I actually enjoyed her company. Her death was a real blow to my plans. Morehammer''s decision to kill her, and to snatch her soul from me was a decision I wasn''t planning on forgiving. I would exact my revenge on the annoying vestige. One day, hopefully one day soon, I would not only kill the vestige but I''d also become what it hated: a god who ruled over the dark dwarves.


    While opening a portal that led Sombra and I out of the new home of my orcish followers, I quietly rechecked my chaos domain abilities, looking specifically for new powers that I had gained since I last checked my chaotic abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    [New Chaos Domain Passive Powers:


    Discord detection: Gaining greater awareness of chaos, and gaining powers over the war domain as well as the knowledge domain allows you to detect discord. This is a potent power that you can use to exacerbate conflict.


    Discord manipulation: You can manipulate discord and cause it to feel worse for those who are experiencing it. This power allows you to more easily transform disagreements into battles or worse. Alternatively, you can also lessen the impacts of discord, which is useful if you want to cause chaos by making peace possible.


    Disorder disease: You can create mutative plagues that cause the infected to act chaotic and to undergo mutations you pick at will. Synergistic power intersecting the disease domain and the chaos domain.


    Disruption: This dangerous power can be used to disrupt the functions of things. If it''s used on a clock the clock stops, if it''s used on a bow the bow stops firing arrows, so on and so forth. It can also be used on the limbs and organs of mortals, but not yet on other types of living creatures.


    Freedom: You can grant creatures freedom from effects that would impede their movement, or usurp their wills unless such effects are caused by you. This power also retroactively cures them of any conditions that were affecting them in the aforementioned ways.


    New Chaos Domain Active Power:


    Paradox causation: This is a potent upgradeable power that grows in might as you gain more influence over chaos. You can ignore or overturn logic or established rules of reality when it comes to mortals, undead, and lesser extraplanars. This is a once-a-day power that allows you to, for example, turn a demon good or lawful, or cause an undead creature to stop hating life.]


    ________________________________________________


    "These abilities are... nice." I mentally muttered. Two of them, "Disruption" and "Freedom" were especially useful even at a glance. At the moment I was with Sombra, but the nicest part of being a god was that my abilities didn''t often have range limits so long as I could detect the targets I wanted to use them on. And in this case, I could.


    "Freedom" was an incredibly useful power when going up against another creature with auric powers. Especially since I was rapidly learning that true mastery of the law domain came with an assortment of powers related to dominance and hierarchies and Morehammer''s vestige still possessed one of those, an auric one at that. But with "Freedom" I had a potent counter to that power.


    I swiftly targeted all of the dwarves in the world, and activated the power, thus ensuring that dwarves would, for the time being, be able to resist Morehammer''s unconscious ability to enslave them. This, coupled with a notification I was preparing, would no doubt complicate any plans the tyrannical vestige had in mind.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Ensuring Freedom


    Althos, in his kindness and wisdom, has used one of his powers to ensure that all dwarves retain their free-will. As a deity who possesses powers over chaos and freedom, he is naturally opposed to the dying echo of the secretive and dictatorial demon-lord, Morehammer. Morehammer fooled dwarves throughout history into believing that he was their creator. This allowed him to gain power from their worship and love, and he ruled over a group of creatures like him who also benefitted from the worship and love of the dwarven people.


    Morehammer''s vestige is still powerful enough to possess an aura that captivates and enslaves dwarves. Althos'' latest intervention, through the usage of one of his powers, ensures that dwarves are immune to the enthralling effect of this aura. Morehammer is a tyrannical foe of freedom and an enemy of free will.]


    ________________________________________________


    He is considerably powerful but if he has it his way all dwarves will be under his thumb forever, even in death. For the sake of the future of all dwarves, it is important that he be resisted and fought against whenever he can. Althos is currently in the process of preparing to defeat him, but he was harmed during their first clash and is still recovering from the damage he endured.


    All over the world, dwarves were surprised to read the notification as it intrusively crept into their minds. And though not every dwarf believed it, they all felt the power of Althos'' quiet ability seep into their minds and souls and grant them immunity to the devastating and sinister power possessed by the specter of the creator of dwarves.


    Unbeknownst to them, they did in fact benefit from Althos'' power as it offered them a needed defense against the will-eroding abilities possessed by the echo of their long-dead creator. Whether they were in Atlantis, Humana, Iredale, or elsewhere, they were now given necessary protection to retain their free will from the invasive powers possessed by the unsettling, driven vestige, mere hours before he would have attempted to use them on the world''s dwarves.


    Morehammer himself was ignorant to this development, but the vestige was so connected to the dwarves that he surely sensed a troubling and vague development that threatened his connection to his children. And this filled the eerie, stoic echo of an ancient age with dread. Something he hadn''t felt for a long time.


    ________________________________________________


    Sombra and I stepped through an open, one-way portal and in doing so teleported ourselves from the depths of the new home of the orcs and into the Rodan forest. It was time for Cosecha to make another appearance and for me to begin to more directly manage the communities I controlled.

 157 The Quiet Demon

    The Rodan forest stretched out in front of Sombra and I. We found ourselves on a well-defined path, one that the people of Comillas once created before they stopped venturing into the forest and the goblins we were about to visit had continued to define by using it themselves. It was a simple dirt path, but it was defined well enough that it stood out from the rest of the forest floor even in the dark.


    The air around us was clean, which was an oddity on the surface. There was no ash creating a breathing hazard, and the sky above us was dark but only because it was night and we were in a forest with vast trees looming over us. That was because I intervened and protected the entirety of Puerto Rico by remotely warding away ash and other harmful substances with my powers over ash and volcanoes. I was heartened to see that my efforts were rather effective.


    Sombra and I both liked this casual darkness. It was night outside and coupled with the darkened leaves of the trees that loomed over us exceptionally little light reached us on the forest floor. That said, as a god of darkness that didn''t inhibit my ability to see in the slightest. And since Sombra had once been an incorporeal demon of darkness she could effortlessly see in the dark. This actually allowed us to wander about unseen even though we were surrounded by animals.


    The forest floor was alive and quite loud. Animals roamed very close to us, unbothered by either of our presences. They were unbothered by me because I was their god and they were awakened by me long ago. They were unbothered by Sombra because of her ties to me and the natural energies she radiated as a result of her being a high-level witch in my service.


    "From a cave to a forest..." Sombra muttered, softly. She wasn''t complaining, she was merely making a pointless observation. Her eyes were open now, though I knew that she possessed potent extrasensory perception abilities that allowed her to perceive her surroundings even while her eyes were closed.


    She tightened her grip on my hand, merely to feel that it was there and real. I allowed this and didn''t physically react to it. Beside me, she smiled softly. There was a lightness, a gentleness to her now. It belied her true ferocity and the sadistic darkness in her shadowy, immaterial heart.


    Our steps were slow, steady, and in sync. With each step, our feet sank a bit into the dirt beneath us as we slowly made our way closer and closer to the goblin encampment. Sombra had been there before. Back when she was possessing Troik, a tiny goblin who was one of my first worshippers. And once I had seen her as a dreadful enemy to be opposed, not as an ally and servant. A small part of me was amazed at how different things were now.


    Well, they weren''t learning of "my" true nature as a god... They were learning of "Cosecha''s" true nature. Those elves were among the first to convert to Cosecha''s faith, though other elves like them have since become adherents of that particular religion.


    High elves and forest elves adored Cosecha and they were among the people for whom notifications that identified me as "Althos" were changed to "Cosecha", allowing me to continue to be myself when among them while not being recognized as a divine-being unless I went in and self-identified as "Cosecha". Elves that worshiped my persona viewed it as a deity of harmony between nature and civilization with potent power over both.


    ________________________________________________


    After a few minutes of walking, I quietly and fluidly began to transform. My Althonian body, the usual near-human form I wore like an outfit, melted away and was instantly replaced with the Cosechian form I wore to identify myself as the strange nature and civilization deity who inspired and protected agrarian communities in exchange for their love and worship.


    My body swiftly became the alien thing that Cosechians knew sometimes visited their dreams. This was a shift I was used to making so it only took moments for my legs to become the solid hunk of stone and soil that Cosecha had in place of legs, for my arms to become tendrils of water and flames respectively, and for my head to become ethereal and made of clean and gently billowing air. The hand of mine in which Sombra''s own hand was intertwined was my watery hand, and she held onto it anyway.


    When I was done transforming Sombra turned to look at me and she studied me. We kept walking, or I suppose in my case rolling, towards the village but her eyes were locked on my strange form. This was one of the first times she had ever seen me like this and at all of the other things she had also found the form odd. She didn''t say anything though.


    Off in the distance, I could see the encampment. That said I had been able to see the encampment off in the distance ever since we arrived in the forest thanks to my impossibly sharp divine senses.


    We were now close enough that Sombra''s eyes widened as she began to become able to see the home of the goblin''s off in the distance. She tried to tighten her grip on my hand, but instead put too much strength in her grip and her fingers slid through the watery tendril she was holding onto. She gasped, the sound conveying both her shock and annoyance in equal measure.


    "Althos!" She hissed. I chuckled, the sound airy and soft due to the current physical nature of my head at the moment. I retracted my tendril away from her for a moment and quietly used my powers over ice to freeze the appendage solid in the vague shape of a hand. I used telekinesis to grab her hand and return it to mine, since she was so insistent on holding it.


    She shivered as she felt the coldness of the ice touch her bare skin, but she didn''t pull her hand back and instead began to grin again. Her behavior was fascinating to me, even though I didn''t make any moves to let her know this. We continued to close in on the encampment until we were finally close enough that scouts protecting the encampment could see us.


    ________________________________________________


    In the time since I last visited this place, during the first week I had a moment of peace and practiced my powers, following my completion of the tutorial, the encampment had changed. The once tiny encampment had expanded, but thanks to the help and leadership of Raiz it had expanded in conjunction with nature and the changes were subtle enough to be difficult to notice.


    I studied Sombra, quietly watching to see if she noticed the subtle ways in which the settlement had expanded outward. I watched as she lightly relaxed and grew used to the temperature of my "hand", which took up a fair amount of the attention she was willing to give. Inwardly I sighed in disappointment, but I was unsurprised.


    At the moment Sombra and I were still on the path, and still a healthy distance away from the old outskirts of the encampment, but we were inching closer and closer to the entrance I had once walked through the day I gained my first worshippers. We were not far at all from the expanded encampment either.


    Trees ahead of us just outside of the actual path provided natural cover for a series of holes that led underground and to the series of chambers that most goblins slept in. Raiz had cleverly used her powers to speed the growth of the trees closest to the path leading to and from the encampment, while goblins dug the holes that led underground so that they could slyly spy on anyone approaching their home. It was a wise defense, and it would have gone undetected by many creatures, just not me.


    Thanks to both my senses and my detection-based abilities I was keenly aware of the fact that ahead of us there were a few goblins who were currently hiding behind trees and were able to see us as faint specks in the distance. I could feel their eyes on me, and I wondered if Sombra could too, but if she did she was indifferent to their gazes. The praereptor demon was at ease now and as usual she was indifferent to just about everything else.


    ________________________________________________


    Sombra was unlike anyone else I had ever met. She was perfectly content nearly all of the time. It was honestly unsettling, even for me.


    The strange and shadowy demoness was a surprisingly powerful creature. Ever since she had become a witch in my service she had practiced her magic every single day without fail, even when on missions I had ordered her to fulfill and she had become quite potent when it came to fire magic. She also frequently prayed and was an earnestly pious individual. She was not at all like the other demons I had begun to get to know, even forsaking violence most of the time unless I commanded or allowed her to indulge in the base instincts of her kind.


    Sombra was quieter than many other Althonians, especially in comparison to the other demons I had managed to transform into my servants and worshippers. She lacked the manic energy her demonic peers radiated perpetually and was far more suited to subtle or delicate tasks like interrogation or capturing someone alive than many of them were.


    ________________________________________________


    As we inched nearer and nearer to the goblin encampment I heard the shocked and excited gasps of the scouts ahead of us. I cracked a smile and turned my head towards them, making eye contact with one of several goblins and the goblin in question leaped back in shock at the fact that I could see him, far ahead of us. He gasped as he leaped back and the goblins turned to face him. He opened his fang-filled mouth to speak and began to babble excitedly at his companions.


    "I... I think it can see us!" He told his companions. A part of me was tempted to reach out mentally and alert the goblin as to who was I was, but instead I decided to save some time and reach out to Raiz herself. As I began to do so I retracted my hand from Sombra''s, and allowed my icy hand to melt back into water.


    I momentarily closed my eyes and began to extend my mind until I made contact with the second individual to become a cleric in service to me, who also happened to be the very first creature I ever created by hand: Raiz, the dryadic cleric-druid. And when I did so I began to whisper to my arboreal servant.

 158 Mental Prowess

    The god and his creation, the dryad named Raiz were not in the same place. There was a considerable distance, well over two hundred and fifty meters between them. Yet that was in no way an obstacle for the god who, if he could detect them, could target creatures in another galaxy with his powers and had in fact targeted creatures living on other planets with his divine abilities.


    If he had wanted too, the god could have mentally spoken to the dryad. This was an easy thing for the unsettling deity to do. That said, he didn''t want to do that. He wanted to roam the world in his mind-form, and so he did.


    The god''s mind was an almost physical thing and by using it he could effortlessly interact with the world around him, on an astonishing scale. If he felt like it the god could tear entire chunks of the island he stood on and lift them into the sky, or he could read the minds of an entire civilization from incomparable distances. Solely by using his mind he could permanently alter the world and yet most of the time he chose not to do this, preferring to act in ways that were understandable by mortals.


    As he and his servant, the praereptor demon named Sombra, walked closer and closer to the goblin encampment the god reached out using his mind. Doing this was an odd thing that he normally only did unconsciously, but he was consciously willing his mind out of his body and sending it in Raiz''s direction. His mind left his physical body and rushed towards the encampment zipping towards it at truly astonishing speeds.


    His mind was an ethereal, unstoppable thing. Even with as little influence as he possessed over the domain of minds his mind was capable of tearing apart armies and destroying communities if he wanted it too. Fortunately, for all of Althos'' flaws and quirks, he wasn''t an innately destructive or even violent entity, though persuading him to perform violence was never particularly difficult.


    His mind whisked away from his body and dashed through the dark forest. It quickly passed the goblins and entered their encampment.


    The encampment looked similar to how it had once looked, but now there stood a massive and impressive tree at the heart of it. As his mind dashed into the encampment, the skeletal stag he had given the goblins as a gift turned in his general direction, detecting... something. The entity couldn''t quite make out what it had detected, but it was able to sense Althos'' presence. Althos, unsurprisingly, opted to ignore this for now though he was impressed by it.


    Without hesitation, the god''s mind entered the tree that stood at the heart of the encampment. As he did so he ambiently detected surprisingly powerful magic emanating from it. Alteration magic, to be exact.


    ________________________________________________


    The entryway I was in was just barely large enough to house a single person of my height at any time, though the foyer this entryway led into was considerably larger. I moved my mental form, a strange thing to do that was similar to how I moved my physical form but far more thought-driven rather than unconscious, through the entryway and into the foyer.


    The entryway was a thin, white space, and the "walls" that defined it were composed of vibrant, white roots that moved and writhed around me. I didn''t touch them, even mentally, but I sensed that I could manipulate them if I had opted to use my powers over roots. I considered this for a second but ultimately decided not to do so since I wouldn''t have a purpose in mind.


    This area was around twelve meters long and making it out of the entryway was easy. Nothing in here had detected me, though I could sense the ambient magic that permeated the warm air of this magical space and I knew that if I had been detected odds are the entryway would react to me hostilely unless I had Raiz''s permission to be here. Or at least that''s what it would have been like for a mortal.


    The foyer was a much wider space and a much longer one. This space was about the width and height of a regular foyer. It had a nature motif that was unsurprising since this was the "home" of a dryad. And it was here that I found her, Raiz. Raiz was walking down a set of stairs within the foyer, preparing to go outside. She looked distracted and was quite beautiful.


    ________________________________________________


    Raiz was the very first lifeform that Althos had ever created. She was a meter and a half tall and had a pale complexion. Her hair was long and wavy, and it was the color of a "red delicious" apple.


    The dryad had a curvy body, which was currently only partially hidden from view by an outfit of thorns and grass held together by magic. She was descending down a set of stairs and was looking down. Her mind was clearly elsewhere, and when Althos performed a simple surface-level reading of her mind he found that she was thinking of possible solutions to a dispute between two goblins.


    One of her hands was holding onto the wall beside her, the wall also made of roots just like the wall of the entryway. These ones were holding her steady as she walked down the stairs, allowing her to be distracted without fear. Her other hand held a "staff" which was a thick and gnarled tree branch she used to more precisely aim her magic whenever she found it necessary to do so.


    Raiz had large eyes that changed color based on the weather of her surroundings. At the moment her eyes were green and she was distractedly looking downward at the stairs at her feet and not straight ahead. Althos'' mind form closed his eyes and took on a new form.


    The Cosechian form the god''s body was currently in had also been the form taken by the mind of the deity. That changed instantly, even as Raiz descended down the stairs and kept her gaze firmly rooted on the floor beneath her.


    ________________________________________________


    Shapeshifting was one of many natural talents possessed by every god. I had learned over the course of my time in my tower that though I was truly a dastardly expert at shapeshifting, all gods were capable of minor shapeshifting without much difficulty.


    Molding my form was as simple for me as breathing was for mortals. Initially, I had only suspected that this was the case, but my newer abilities over memories had allowed me to confirm this myself by granting me the power to explore the memories of my worshipers and I quickly learned just how essential breathing was for them.


    I pictured my elemental form vanishing and becoming something new. It wasn''t difficult for me to mentally construct a powerful form that looked like an especially hairy and nude nearly-human male. This form was that of an idealized satyr, an especially tall one that stood nearly two and a half meters tall and had dense and dangerous-looking horns protroding out from my head.


    Even as I constructed this form I activated a familiar and useful power "Unfettered Divinity". This power surrounded me in divine energy, and light, and made it impossible for creatures to deny that I was a god. It was a handy ability for a creature who routinely shapeshifted like I did, and was one that allowed me to prove that I was who I said was whenever I used it since I tended to be more or less honest.


    This power, which had gotten upgrades as I built more cults and as I gained vast numbers of worshipers, was now stronger than before. My satyr-form was radiating the incredible light of the power and had there been other sapient things in the room with us they would have noticed me as well. The light radiating from my new form was powerful enough that Raiz saw it and glanced upwards. When she laid her eyes on my powerful new form, as it was coming into existence, her mouth opened in shock.


    "Hello Raiz... How are you?" I asked, a smile on my still incomplete face. She could see my mouth, a large maw filled with unsettling fangs, and my thick and muscled chin, but the rest of my face was a blank slate.


    Raiz''s shocked expression stayed on her face for a moment as her mind adjusted to the reality that I was who I was. When her mind acclimated to the reality that I was Althos, her creator and the entity who had created the nonexistent deity named "Cosecha" her shocked expression slowly transformed into a peaceful, serene one. She continued her descent down the stairs, and began to speak.


    "Creator... To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" She asked, smiling serenely at me. I could sense that she was legitimately surprised by my visit but she wasn''t unhappy about it. I was quiet for a moment, and I knew that Sombra and my physical form were closing in on the encampment.


    "Sombra and I on our way here." I told her, speaking simply. This confused her and even as she continued to walk down the stairs leading towards me she tilted her head. I chuckled at her confusion, even as my face began to gradually form.


    "This is a mind-form of mine. My physical body, in so far as gods have physical bodies, is with Sombra in my Cosechian form, and they are minutes away from arriving at the encampment. I want to exert more control over the cult so I am coming, and Sombra is... Well, Sombra''s Sombra. She is my shadow." I explained, speaking quite simply. This caused the dryad''s eyes to open wide as she considered the ramification of my words on her life here.


    "Creator, do you seek to gain more powers over nature?" She asked, speaking softly. I chuckled and nodded at her.


    "Well Raiz... It''s true that I seek more power over nature, but it''s more complicated than that. I seek more power over everything." I explained, speaking a bit cryptically. This confused her, but that was fine. I didn''t feel like explaining myself to her. Not now. Instead I merely gave her one command. I did so gently, but my tone made it clear that I was giving her an order.


    "Go outside and gather the goblins. I shall arrive soon. I wish to be greeted by my worshipers." I told her, before vanishing from view.


    ________________________________________________


    Reuniting my mind-form with my corporeal-form was simple. All I had to do was wish for the two to become one. And when I did I was instantly teleported back to my body, hundreds of meters away.


    Sombra walked next to me and we could both plainly see the outskirts of the encampment. One of the skeletal guardians that I had given to the goblins as a gift a long time ago stood at the edge of the encampment and its skeletal, horned head was looking at us.


    The creature was still, and eerily majestic in its own way. Its empty eye-sockets were clearly locked on us but there was no hostility in its gaze, though there was also no warmth either. It was a true undead being, one that despised life. That meant it had a contemptible fate: it was tasked with protecting living creatures, and that meant that it only rarely had chances to slake its anger.


    As we began to close in on the edge of the encampment I turned my mind to my mental powers. I knew I''d need some of them in the interaction to come.


    ________________________________________________


    [Mind domain passive powers:


    Absorption: You can absorb mortal memories and process them instantly. This is a synergistic power that amplifies the effects of your other memory-based powers, allowing you to instantly be able to use memories you take or copy from mortals.


    Astral projection: With this power, you can separate your mind from your body and use it to remotely interact with the world around you. At the moment this power''s range is limited to what you can detect. This power is also known as "Mind-form".


    Linguistic genesis: This synergistic power takes from the domains of knowledge and mind. It allows you to instantly create a language and teach it to anyone you wish. With this power, espionage becomes easier for you or for your followers, and you gain a handy tool for manipulating cultures.


    Linguistic erasure: This synergistic power takes from the domains of knowledge, mind, and destruction. It is a targeted power with which you can cause a creature to forget a language they once knew. They can relearn this language, over time, but it''d take them a while to do so.


    Mental blast: This is an offensive power that allows you to blast mental energy at anyone you wish as often as you wish. This power deals significant damage, though it isn''t lethal unless you wish for it to be. The blast is incredibly painful.


    Mental presence: Your mind is tied to your holy sites in a direct, physical way. You can manifest at them at will so long as your physical form isn''t destroyed, and you can manifest at multiple holy sites at once. You can also sense and even interact with things and people up to a full four-hundred meters away from any holy site of yours at once.


    Mental shatter: This power destroys the consciousness and sapience of affected mortals. It is a cruel power that decimates and ravages their minds.


    Omni-communication: This power utilizes your powers over language and allows you to communicate with any sapient creature, even ones that lack a language. This isn''t so much a power as it is a sort of filter that aids when you communicate with creatures that lack languages.


    Projection: This synergistic power intersects the subdomain of enchantment and allows you to manifest illusions that show others what you are thinking and what others are thinking. It also allows for memories as one remembers them to be shown to others in a physical way.


    Silence: With this power, you can deprive someone of their ability to speak for as long as you wish. It works on anyone who isn''t a higher being.


    Secret seer: You can detect a secret a creature is determined to hide. This is a power that is swept up with your identification abilities. It is a synergistic power that takes from the truth domain.


    Mind domain active power:


    Brainwave manipulation: This once an hour power is a handy one that allows you to target up to ten creatures and affect their sensory abilities and also their ability to react in time to things. You can induce confusion, sleep, paralysis, and a number of other statuses on victims of this power. You can also induce brain death in someone with this power.]


    ________________________________________________


    By the time I was done mentally checking in on my mind-domain abilities Sombra and I were standing in front of the goblin tribe. Dozens of goblins, some of whom were only alive because of me, were bowing in front of us. They were muttering quiet prayers to me and I enjoyed the sounds of their pious voices.


    I allowed this zealous display to continue for a few moments before I turned my full attention to the goblins and began to act.

 159 Debates

    Goblins surrounded me. Moments after we had entered the encampment they formed a reverential circle around Sombra and I. It felt... good to be surrounded by my worshipers. For a moment, all I could hear were the words they muttered. Their voices were soft and I could hear and feel both fear and love in them. This was one of those moments in which I truly felt like a god.


    Goblins were curious little creatures. They all stood between a meter and a meter and a quarter tall, and of the dozens gathered around Sombra and I more than a few had very different skin tones. I saw some with bright yellow skin, others with green skin, and some of them had skin tones that were pink or even purple.


    I studied the goblins for a few moments. I recognized each of them, and I was delighted at the increase in piety that I felt from many of them. Their admiration for me had shot up since I was a god who had been willing to appear in front of them.


    Raiz was also here, as was the orc chieftain who ruled over the goblins, Gnorl. He and his pet, the ebony-furred panther named Hunahpu, were in the crowd, both bowing. Raiz, Gnorl, and Hunahpu were the only non-goblins in the crowd, but each of them managed to be uniquely pious.


    Raiz was a direct creation of mine. She was fanatically loyal to me, in my capacity as a nature god. Gnorl was a vicious orc shaman and was a powerful creature who had successfully hunted down very weak spirits, an impressive feat. He was also thoroughly cowed by my power and served me with surprising loyalty as the chieftain of the goblins. His panther, Hunahpu, was a cat and had been awakened when I healed every lifeform in the world.


    Hunahpu worshiped and loved me in the same way that other animals did. It was a sort of pure, all-consuming love. Hunahpu''s love for me outshined even his love and respect for Gnorl. I enjoyed the fact that if I wanted too I could order Hunahpu to turn on his partner and the massive panther would do so without hesitation. Wielding that power was quite fun, even if I didn''t intend to use it. That said I did intend to use some of my powers.


    I quietly activated an auric ability of mine that made creatures around me ambiently feel sinful, physical pleasure, akin to being in the midst of a sexual encounter. This was an upgraded version of my "Pleasure manipulation" ability, an upgrade I gained when I had gained the second tier of influence over the corruption subdomain, thanks to my innate power over lust. I heard several goblins, as well as Raiz herself, work to suppress pleasured sighs as my power washed over them. Sombra sighed openly, and I chuckled at the lustful demoness.


    The third command of the Cosechian faith was for adherents to act on their desires and have large families. This teaching was a significant one that I actually quite liked. It reminded people of the Cosechian faith''s ties to prosperity, which I only planned to increase in the future. Long term this teaching promised to transform agrarian communities into sizable communities devoted to me, which excited me significantly.


    I quietly increased the pleasure creatures around me felt for a second, intensifying it to an incredible degree for one moment before dropping it back to more tolerable levels. As I did this I heard the rush of blood to various body parts sharply increase, and I chuckled, the sound airy coming from my incorporeal head. I also heard more than a few creatures sigh in pleasure, the sounds slovenly and animalistic. I waited until my worshipers were done sighing before I began to speak.


    "Hello dear goblins..." I said, speaking soothingly. My voice was gentle.


    "There are those of you here who do not know who I am. Some of you are, in a manner speaking, my children." I explain, speaking rather cryptically.


    "I am Cosecha, a powerful spirit of civilization, abundance, and the harvest. And I am the entity who is responsible for your success, rapid growth, and the joy you''ve experienced so far in your short lives." I announce, my voice filled with confidence. I was speaking to the new goblins, as I had sped the pregnancies of many goblin women and then aged many of the newly born goblin infants to young adulthood in an instant following their births.


    "I have come here to begin to establish a new order. To begin to reveal a new path forward." I explained, my voice increasing in seriousness and in volume the more I spoke.


    "It is time to create a new government! A new society!" I announced, which caused a shocked expression to appear on Gnorl''s face. As shocked as the orc was, I was not lying. I had come here to reward the goblins and to turn this society on its head.


    ________________________________________________


    The Emerald Palace was a stunning piece of architectural artwork. It was a brilliantly shimmering testament to dwarven ingenuity and to the prowess of the divine. It gleamed and glittered at the heart of a vast and incredibly dark cavern.


    Within it lived and worked some of the mightiest leaders of dwarven kind in the world of Torus. Deadly generals, talented tacticians, shrewd politicians, and royalty all lived within the vast palace.


    In a tiny chamber near the top of the palace, a small council of dwarves was engaged in furious conversation. Their differing points of view were all carefully articulated and they were all struggling to keep themselves composed. One of them, the very same princess Althos had once helped and saved from an unwanted political marriage sighed in annoyance and began to speak.


    "Are you all seriously suggesting we turn our backs on Althos? He is the one who helped me! I am keenly aware of how quickly you''ve forgotten that..." She said, disappointment seeping into her voice. Princess Rachel was a young progressive, in so far as dwarves could be young progressives. She valued freedom, especially her own, and though she respected tradition she knew whom was responsible for her freedom and it simply was not Morehammer. She respected and trusted the figure responsible for ensuring that she get to live freely.


    Some of the people gathered around Princess Rachel lowered their gazes, as the biting edge of her words and her tone touched them. Not everyone felt that way though.


    "Althos is a liar!" One of the other individuals in the room, a dwarven general named Abraham shouted. As he spoke he hammered his gloved fist into the table that stood at the center of the room. The impact produced a loud noise, one that reverberated throughout the room. The table was a thick thing made of metal and large enough for every dwarf present to be seated around it. There was a visible rage in his gaze, one that didn''t fade even when he turned to face Rachel directly.


    "And you... You are selfish! You prayed to that... creature for a way to escape your duty." Abraham said, his words containing a vicious venom. This time his words didn''t go unchallenged though, as he took it a step too far. King Abel, one of several high ranking dwarves reacted to the general attacking his daughter by turning his almost acidic gaze on the warrior.


    "Abraham you go too far." He warned, his gaze harsh as he stared daggers at the general. An awkward silence fell over the room in the wake of the stern and efficient admonishment by the king. General Abraham turned his gaze away from the princess and let his gaze, still containing that same fire from before, fall on the table.


    The awkward silence lasted for a full minute. In that time each dwarf at the table considered what they had learned so far. They learned that Morehammer was free, and the historians who lived in the palace and had explored even its innermost depths had confirmed this minutes after receiving that notification.


    They also learned that their creator deity was apparently an ancient and deceitful demon-lord. This was something that they were skeptical about, but even the most zealous admirers of Morehammer felt the strange stirrings of Althos'' power linger within their hearts.


    "Morehammer..." Rachel''s aid and handmaiden, Amaris whispered. She had been raised to respect the attitudes that the ancient dwarven creator had instilled in his children. The dwarf was conflicted and her conflict was obvious to everyone in the room. Her instincts, the result of millions of years of evolution, told her to stand by Morehammer. But her heart and mind were fond of the freedom Althos offered, and she wanted to believe him over the ancient god who created her ancestors.


    "Althos has helped us. He has helped me." King Abel told the council after watching Amaris struggle to articulate her feelings. His gaze was still on her, but it was warm now. He himself was fond of the strange god who had protected his daughter from their ancestral enemies, the Dagwood dukedom.


    "I understand why you all might choose to protect our traditions but I would hope that you''d be sympathetic to my daughter and to her aide. And to me. Althos has helped my family. He did it freely and has asked for very little in return. I owe my health to him. Rachel owes her freedom to him. It''s not an exaggeration to state that anyone who likes the kingdom the way it is now owes at least a minor debt to him." The king said, speaking softly. His words weren''t false, Althos had secured the freedom of Atlantis and he had even healed the king using his powerful healing prowess.


    This expression of admiration for Althos did go a ways towards cooling the frustration felt by General Abraham. It was an honest declaration, and an accurate one, and the general was aware of that. Even though he was a traditionalist and wanted to trust Morehammer, he couldn''t deny that Althos had been the one to protect Atlantis in ways that Abraham could not have.


    The royal family favored Althos. This made sense, as the family was progressive in a way and valued freedom. The other inhabitants of the room were inclined to trust Morehammer and the attitudes that had existed in their people for so long that they were almost hard-wired into dwarven genetics. This discussion mirrored discussions happening throughout the world, as other dwarven communities wrestled with the false idea that Morehammer was sort of deceitful demon-lord who had fed on the worship of dwarves like a vile parasite.

 160 Rewards

    I looked out at the gathered goblins and smiled smugly. Before I said another word I silenced Gnorl and Hunahpu so that neither of them would interrupt me. This was simple enough since I had a power that allowed me to do so. Once they were silenced I began to speak.


    "It is time that this goblin society becomes a society that is composed only of goblins. Well... Goblins and their guardians." I said, speaking firmly. I sensed the shock that radiated out of Gnorl and Raiz alike, and even without looking at them I could tell that their eyes were locked onto me, and that they were now processing a lot of emotions at once.


    "I intend to properly reward all of my servants, including both Gnorl and Raiz, but my words are the truth. It is indeed time to create proper societies by and for distinct groups of people." I told the crowd.


    The truth was that I was doing this to begin to more properly inch towards greater influence over the domains of civilization and law, and I didn''t really need to do it but I had a number of powers that made it possible for me to do so. I turned towards Gnorl and studied the orc.


    Gnorl was handsome as far as orcs went. He was also a moderately talented leader and a powerful combatant. His inability to defeat me was not an indicator that he was weak, and any objective analysis of the shaman or of his memories would no doubt lead the analyzer to the reality that he was an all-around skilled individual.


    The truth was that the orc leader''s talents were being wasted here. So I was going to force him into a scenario where his talents wouldn''t be wasted. I began to communicate this by raising a hand, my watery tendril, in the direction of the shaman and then speaking to him.


    "Gnorl... This is not a punishment. This is a reward for your work to date." I told him, starting off simply enough. I began to activate one of my powers as I spoke.


    "You deserve to lead your own kind, not goblins. And that is your reward." I explained, even as the power I activated manifested itself fully before the crowd. A number of adult pigs phased into being where none had been before. They were variously pigmented pigs, males and females in equal numbers. I extended my fiery tendril in their direction and willed the creatures to transform and evolve. I envisioned them becoming the natural evolution of all wild pigs and boars: the powerful and naturalistic humanoids known as orcs.


    The pigs began to shed incredible light to the point that their bodies became impossible to make out against the light that was exploding out of them. All we could see were pig-shaped silhouettes. In a matter of moments, their bodies began to change before us.


    The orcs were naked. Their various body parts were fully on display to the goblins, Sombra, Raiz, and myself. They were all muscular individuals with intelligent eyes. I smiled at them, and they looked at me in awe. They knew that I was their creator and their god, the figure responsible not just for creating them but also for evolving them into orcs.


    I quietly bestowed a few classes upon them, mostly ones like warrior and berserker, but I also had a single male become a druid, another male a cleric, and I gave an assortment of the female orcs access to classes like rogue, assassin, and a few of the other magic classes. All in all, I had created fifteen pigs and transformed them into fifteen orcs. I then turned back to Gnorl.


    "Gnorl... This is your new tribe." I told the orc, smiling at him. The orcs, upon hearing that, immediately fell to their knees and faced the newly named orc chieftain. Gnorl himself began to smile, even as tears welled up in his eyes. I removed the "Silenced" condition that kept him from speaking, and he immediately began to weep openly. The cries were joyous ones and the orc''s fellow looked at their new leader curiously. Gnorl didn''t turn to face them immediately, instead beginning to speak through the tears streaming down his face.


    "Cosecha... Thank you... I will endeavor... To not disappoint you." He muttered, his voice a blubbering mess. He then took a moment to compose himself, an act that required him to pull himself together and took him taking a second to stop crying. When he was back to his normal, composed self he turned to actually face the orcs. He began to speak, with a smile on his face.


    "Orcs... We have so much to thank the great and mighty Cosecha for. Let''s do that by living lives that are pleasing to it." He said, his voice filled with false piety.


    Gnorl was one of the least pious of my followers, but I did sense something changing inside of him as he spoke. A part of me wondered if this display of my powers was actually beginning to make him... a believer in me.


    To be fair to the orc this was a powerful display of my abilities that invoked abilities beyond the ken of mortals. Mortals, even those at the pinnacle of power accessible to them, were weak compared to other kinds of beings. And even at the lowest tiers of influence over the proper domains and subdomains, I could create life and then immediately cause said life to evolve. This was the sort of truly divine power that would forever be out of reach of mortals and if any powers were able to impress him I suppose it made sense that this was one of them.


    Gnorl''s heart was absolutely turning in my direction, I sensed it doing so. I chuckled as I listened to him, and shortly after he spoke I spoke once more.


    "Gnorl... You are the chief of these orcs and you shall take two of the women as your wives. Pick whichever two you like." I told the orc, and I chuckled when I heard his heart begin to hammer in his chest. He began to smile lustfully as he eyed the orcish women in front of him.


    "And you shall pick a different part of Rodan to occupy and control as your own. You shall live there and work the land, and so long as you treat it with respect it shall provide you with all that you need." I declared, speaking authoritatively. I intended to use my powers to keep my word.


    I then turned to Raiz and focused on her. Raiz was my first creation. She was now far from alone in terms of being a creature created by me, but she was the only spirit. I studied her for a moment, silently, before I began to speak.


    "Raiz... Your reward for your work so far shall be something unique. I shall create for you, sisters with whom you can share your life and you shall also govern a section of the Rodan forest. Please, depart from us for now and select what area you''d like to occupy." I informed the dread. Her eyes widened when she learned of the gift I sought to give her, and she began to smile. She was evidently quite pleased with her reward. She did have something to say though.


    "Creator... What about my tree?" She asked me, speaking solemnly. I could tell she appreciated her gift, but by the tone of her voice, I sensed that she was attached to her tree. Sentimentally. I turned to look at the tree for a moment.


    It was a magnificent thing. It stood at the center of the encampment and imposed an extra layer of shade over everything underneath its top-most leaves. I studied it for a moment before turning back to Raiz.


    "When you select where you wish to inhabit I shall simply teleport your tree over there." I told her, opting to ensure that the tree not only survived but was in a place that she selected and was within reach for her. She was evidently comforted by the tree, and I suppose she deserved to stay close to it. The delighted the woman who rather uncharacteristically jumped with joy and clapped her hands together to express her delight. A second later she composed herself and then bowed in my direction.


    "Thank you creator. I shall endeavor to find a part of the forest that I can rule in your name and make you proud." The young dryad told me, a smile on her face. She then immediately rose up and departed from my presence, walking past me in the direction I came and entering the more forested section of the forest, in search of a place to call home.


    Goblins eyed her leaving and seemed saddened by it. I turned my attention to them in full and began to speak once more.


    "Goblins... You have been loyal to me and obeyed my teachings." I told them, smiling serenely at them as I spoke.


    "You have been kind to animals, and you have prayed to me during difficult or lean times. I have fed you and protected you, while carefully watching you." I declared, speaking with a kind sternness, a gentle solidity that conveyed my protectiveness of the goblins to the ones who could hear me. They began to smile back at me as my kind words filled their heads.


    As I spoke I began to activate an ability of mine. And then another. As well as one final power.


    I quietly activated my eldritch aura, which caused creatures near me to begin to lose their sanity. My aura was strong enough, thanks to the worship of countless beings I had accrued over the course of my life, to spread out over every goblin who was in the tribe. I watched it seep into and then past them, a smile on my face even as I spoke.


    I also activated my power to induce obsessions and I targeted the goblins as well. I infused them with obsessions with pleasing me, so as to ensure that they would find pleasure and joy in obeying my teachings. I felt their minds change as I activated these powers, and as I began to draw them towards the edge of sanity. Merely my eldritch aura wouldn''t really drive them insane, but it would push them closer to service-oriented insanity and that was enough for now.


    I began to quietly create food for the goblins, which phased into existence behind the creatures. Eating the food would result in them falling further under my influence, and it would sustain them while they began to prepare for the changes I wanted them to enact.


    "Children... Listen to me once more." I began, a sinister smile on my face as I spoke.


    "The time has come for you to begin to form a unique goblin society. One that uses my teachings to create a stable home for goblins throughout Puerto Rico, and beyond." I explained, slowly beginning to reveal my plans to the goblins.


    "I have deemed you worthy of learning more from me and in exchange using that knowledge to spread your version of the faith I inspire in others. You shall be some of my chosen servants, and in exchange, you shall live in peace and be protected so long as you keep the faith." I informed the goblins, speaking serenely.


    "That said... First you must do things on your own." I explained, slowing down my speech to make it more direct. The eyes of many of the goblins widened when they heard this and they all responded to me simultaneously in shock and fear. I let them speak until they began to quiet down and when they did I spoke again.


    "Calm yourselves children..." I responded, speaking soothingly and infusing my voice with my powers over sloth and exhaustion, thanks to my physics-based powers over sounds. This caused some of the goblins to close their eyes for a moment as a sudden and unnatural exhaustion threatened to knock them down. They managed to stay on their feet, but only barely.


    "The first task you shall be given is a simple one. In the days to come you shall select a goblin from amongst yourselves to lead you. You shall do this by vote, and the goblin who receives the most votes will receive a dream where they learn my machinations. They shall be advised by a number of goblin clerics, including Mawby and Xiax, as well as goblins I shall pick and elevate to the cleric class in the days to come." I explained.


    The truth was that I had been planning to do this before Ava''s death. It was one of several ideas I had on my mind in the later days of my time in my tower. It''s just that in the wake of Ava''s death I had to move quickly to begin to stir things up to keep Morehammer distracted, and also to prevent him from making every dwarf in the world his unwilling ally.


    Now that the dwarf-god couldn''t actually forcibly convert dwarves into his servants and I had begun to slander him, and would slander him more in the days to come, I could afford to make other, equally important moves.


    Goblins were a useful source of faith for me and they were simple-minded yet hard-working creatures who once awed would serve me faithfully so long as I appeared to keep my promises to them. I enjoyed their simple-minded yet pious prayers and I actually legitimately liked more than a few of the goblins in the tribe. I was sincere in my stated desire to protect them.


    "You have served me faithfully. I am proud of you. Continue to please me and be rewarded for your piety. Remember my teachings and keep them in your heart. So long as you do that, and you select the goblin you feel best possesses the ability to both lead you and serve me, you shall be fine and be happy." I informed them, sensing their admiration for me gradually increasing the more they stood in my presence. That made me happy, even though I knew that this was partially due to my powers.


    "Now goblins... Turn around and eat! Feast to your heart''s content! Celebrate your piety and the soft spot in my heart for you by eating your fill." I told them, still smiling. The goblins audibly cheered, and it was while they were cheering that I received a sudden notification. One that made me sigh and think snarky thoughts.


    I suppose I ought to fix this. I think it''s been long enough. I mused, after reading the notification. It was one that to a less powerful god, or a creature who wasn''t an elemental overlord might be concerning. But not to me.


    After all, I possessed great, though unpracticed, power over ice, and the environment as a whole. I quietly figured that learning through practice was the best way to learn. I prepared myself and began to act in response to the notification that had just filled my mind.


    In a way the notification was egging me on, urging me to act. It was time for my powers as an elemental overlord to finally get a chance to shine.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Climate consequences


    The hours of raging volcanic activity have warmed the planet. Though it is true that in the long-run volcanic activity of this scale would normally result in dramatic global cooling as a gigantic ash cloud blocks out the rays of the sun, in the short term the planet''s coldest points are actually heating up dramatically right now from the force of the volcanoes you unleashed as a global superweapon. Glaciers and other frosty places are melting, and entire communities are in immediate danger.


    There are other consequences of your potent powers, but in the short term it is possible that even hundreds of thousands of lives will be lost as the planet reels and begins to try to adjust to your imposed will. How will you act? What will you do?]

 161 Awakened Elemental Powers

    The powers of a fully awakened elemental overlord, even a weak one, were awe-inspiring. One moment the world of Torus was a world of disasters and cataclysmic weather, and the next it wasn''t. And it was all due to the fickle whims and desires of a single elemental overlord: Althos.


    The young entity abruptly ended every volcanic eruption ravaging the planet at once, with the same relative ease with which he had willed them to erupt in the first place. It took the same amount of mental effort required to recall a line from a book one once read as a child. Even while he was physically in the Rodan forest his incredibly potent powers allowed him to shut off the incredible disaster that within a few hours had decimated entire civilizations.


    Distantly, the god felt the grateful emotions of millions of lifeforms who lived near volcanoes and could see an immediate change in the skies near the volcanoes as they stopped spewing ash and lava. This brought a slight grin to his face, though very few of the creatures who worshipped him would ever see this particular grin.


    One part of the world that was especially ravaged was the world''s frozen poles. Both the north pole and the south pole were hit especially hard by the dramatic skyrocketing in global temperatures, and entire communities that were situated on glaciers or on the hospitable portions of both poles were in danger as their homes rapidly and visibly shrunk in size.


    ________________________________________________


    Inside of a gigantic yurt, a pair of blue, muscled hands deftly grabbed a pick fashioned from magically enchanted ice, and the tusk of an impressive walrus. The hands belonged to a particularly impressive frost giant, one with pigmentation the color of the frozen water visible off the peak of the melting glacier he had long lived on.


    He studied the pick for one moment, a look of sadness darkening his features before he steeled himself for whatever would be necessary for the next few minutes. He easily lifted it up and then quickly sped out the open flap of the yurt, a grim determination visible on his face.


    As he stepped outside of the yurt he felt the relative warmth of the sunlight that shone on the glacier, this being one of the few spots in the world with no looming, ominous ash cloud hanging high and sinisterly in the sky, and he began to speak, his voice booming across the rapidly shrinking glacier he and his tribe lived in.


    "Our prayers have not been heard! Or they are just not being answered in a way that we''d like. One way or another you must prepare yourselves. We have... minutes left to act. And if we fail now, then we may have minutes to live." He said, his voice echoing across the thick but thinning ice that had long housed his tribe. Other frost giants lived within or just outside of the glacier and they looked at him with expressions similar to the one that darkened his features moments earlier.


    The giant felt the glacier creak beneath him. Its stirrings reverberated mightily enough that he could feel its almost agonized moans. Inwardly he cursed, but he kept a cool, stoic face and lifted his pick aloft. With the pick in his hands, he was magically attuned to the glacier''s overall health and stability and it was worsening by the second.


    "Children of the glacier! Rally around me! Our home is dying beneath our feet, but we ourselves must not despair!" He proclaimed. In his hand, the handle of his pick seemed to absorb sunlight, and he felt it grow warm in his hand. He didn''t fret about this, it was normal after all. His magical pick was not weakened in the slightest by even the warmest and brightest sunlight that occasionally touched the pick.


    "We have always known that the day would come that our home would prove to be unsuitable for our needs. We just never imagined the exact circumstances under which-" He was in the middle of speaking when Althos'' distant powers began to make themselves felt by him and his tribesmen for the first time.


    The long solidified ice beneath their feet began to vibrate ominously, dramatically enough that they felt it beneath them even without the aid of a magically attuned instrument like the pick wielded by the chief of the tribe. Many of the giants worked to dig their feet into the ice while swiftly pulling out blades that they then stabbed into the ice underneath them. They stubbornly stayed on their feet, even as the world shook around them.


    "What is this?" The chief asked, his voice barely containing the shock he felt.


    ________________________________________________


    Turning off the volcanoes, as in ending their eruptions, was a simple affair. It did not take me any real effort to bring an end to the climate catastrophe I had created in the name of turning the world against the dwarves and their nuisance of a creator-god. And reversing much of the damage inflicted by my actions was also very easy.


    Over the course of my life I had become a deity and elemental overlord of the four classical elements. Water, fire, earth, air, and even things like liquids, solids, gases, and plasmas were all mine to command. And it was thanks to that that I had the power to prevent the loss of homes and the destruction of entire civilizations that were located in the northernmost and southernmost edges of the world.


    Physically I was still in the Rodan forest, but my senses and my mind were elsewhere. And it felt odd. My mind was far from my body, far farther than when my mind had been in Raiz''s tree. My mind was currently lingering inside of a rapidly melting glacier, one that was actually and oddly enough inhabited by a tribe of massive frost giants.


    Within the glacier, I had a much greater idea of how devastating my act of destruction had been. I could see cracks and even holes forming within the glacier, surrounding me on my all sides, and it allowed me to more properly see the sort of destructive abilities I had at my disposal than I could have previously. I could also hear the sounds of the glacier itself groaning as it continued to melt.


    Frost giants were, fittingly given their species name, utterly gigantic humanoids. They were heavy, blue, or white-skinned giants and they wore thick suits of tanned walrus skin, and judging by their size, each suit must have required numerous walruses to make.


    They held weapons fashioned from ice and they were all staring at and listening to one of the largest creatures I had ever seen. Most of them were between seven and eight meters tall.


    One frost giant was a legitimately enormous creature that was over 10 meters tall. I could look at him and sense the authority he radiated. It didn''t take a genius or a god to come to the reasonable conclusion that this giant was the leader of the frost giants living on this glacier. He held an impressive-looking pick that radiated a magical aura. The pick was almost as large as some of the smaller giants who stood in front of the one who held the object.


    The giants themselves were afraid. They sensed the decaying state of their home, or rather that was melting beneath their feet. They were clever creatures and I sensed that they were in the midst of preparing themselves to enter a new state of their lives. Fortunately for them, I was here and I had arrived to save them and others like them. I mentally sighed and focused as I began to target the glacier itself, in a move that I knew would save this place.


    ________________________________________________


    [Liquid subdomain passive powers:


    Blizzard: At will you can generate a snowstorm that surrounds you with ice, hail, snow, and freezing air. This blizzard''s intensity can be manipulated at will by you. It can be a gentle snowstorm that covers everything in a pristine blanket of snow or an impossibly intense storm that freezes creatures solid.


    Cold manipulation: Thanks to synergies between the domain of physics and the subdomain of liquid and the earth you can manipulate and reduce the kinetic energy of atoms to make things colder. This power allows you to make the overall temperature of a place drop, or even freeze a living creature if you so desire.


    Freeze: You can turn water and water vapor into ice. You can select any amount of water so long as you can detect it and freeze it at will. You can also freeze blood and the liquids inside of a body.


    Elemental healing: Your powers over healing and over the elements are so strong that you can heal non-living things, even the elements themselves. With this power you can heal the very earth itself, water, or even air. This is similar to "cleanse" except it can be used on things like glaciers, mountains, and more to undo melting or erosion.


    Evaporate: You can evaporate any amount of water or ice at will. This turns water into water vapor which you can manipulate with your powers as a deity and elemental overlord of air.


    Liquify: You can transform water vapor and ice into liquid water.


    State manipulation: This synergistic power allows you to switch the states of water, or other classical elements, fire, air, and earth. With it you can create liquid fire, gaseous earth, and other seemingly impossible things.


    Liquid Subdomain active power:


    Aquatic mutations: This active power synergizes the power of the liquid subdomain with the domains of biology and chaos. With it, creatures gain an enhanced version of the effects of "Aquatic freedom" including the ability to speak to fish and other underwater life. This once a day power can be used on up to 1,000 lifeforms at once and greatly improves their ability to survive underwater.]


    ________________________________________________


    I wrapped myself in an aura of potent healing energy and began to go to work. The first thing I did was activate one of my handier and newer abilities "Elemental healing" so that the damage that was done to the glacier would begin to be repaired.


    This unusual power activated rather dramatically. Seconds after I activated it I watched as holes within the glacier began to be filled in by new ice, ice which appeared to be stitched seamlessly into place and connected almost ethereally to the older, natural ice. Cracks were phased out of existence, seeming to disappear almost immediately.


    The ice around me shuddered, and I felt the glacier itself vibrate louder than ever before. The noise was almost deafening, and I didn''t doubt that it could be felt by the giants who lingered atop the glacier, far above me. I was dozens of meters deep within the glacier, and within it I could see and feel the glacier abruptly stop melting and even begin to grow again.


    I glanced upwards at the giants, whom I could easily see thanks to my divine vision, and waited to watch their reaction. They were all doing their best to not fall over, and not speaking. The ice underneath them was shaking dramatically, so their desire to not fall over made sense.


    I took a second to begin to snake my thoughtform, currently manifesting as an ethereal orb, towards them. The tiny orb began to move through the glacier, unbothered by its temperature or its rapidly increasing solidity and quickly moved towards them. The glacier was no obstacle and I moved through it as easily I had walked along the trail towards the goblin encampment earlier today.


    It only took me a few seconds to reach a place where if my mind moved forward even a bit more I''d be out of the ice and surrounded by frost giants. That said I didn''t mind that at all. I paused, considering if I should truly manifest an illusionary form to facilitate interactions with the giants, or if I should just stay invisible. That thought process didn''t take me long at all to work through and so with that out of the way I burst through the ice and into the air between the variously sized frost giants. As I did so I activated a handy and dramatic ability that was perfect for this particular situation.


    ________________________________________________


    The giants themselves had been caught off guard by the sudden and terrifying vibration that shuddered from within the glacier, and so none of them had the calmness of mind or stillness of heart that would have been needed to see the astral form of the god when it phased through the ice and found itself between the regular giants and their chieftain. The strange diety didn''t even bother to look around as it activated one of its more potent powers that wouldn''t usher in a calamity of sorts.


    The giants were totally unprepared for the sudden and noticeable drop in temperature that the god caused. The ice underneath their feet had ceased vibrating, even as the god''s power undid the harm done to it by worldwide volcanic eruptions, and the god himself chuckled as his powers began to manifest fully.


    The blizzard, a moderately intense one but not one that would kill the giants, caused the arctic temperatures of the glacier to dip considerably below their usual bone-chilling norm and what was worse was that this was instantaneous. In addition to the chilling temperature, the god''s mental form was momentarily surrounded by a sphere of ice, snow, and hail that allowed the giants to quickly realize that they weren''t alone right as the sphere became visible and then proceeded to expand outward.


    The sphere spread out in a 360 degree spread around the god, smashing into giants and forcing them back away from where the sphere had originated before slowly beginning to disperse and act as a more traditional snowstorm. Even though the sky above them was cloudless and clear snow and ice began to form and speed through the air in a perfect circle dozens of meters wide around the god.


    Closer to the god snow wasn''t the only thing drifting through the air. Ice, hail, and even freezing rain came into existence at blazing speeds and surrounded the god in a protective sphere, confusing the chieftain of the giants who had been able to endure the sudden blow dealt to him by Althos'' power.


    He could peer through the hostile weather and saw nothing at the center of it but he wasn''t a fool and he knew that this obviously supernatural weather must have had a cause. A part of him wondered if it was the mysterious god who had healed everyone in the world weeks ago.


    "Althos? Is that... You?" He asked, projecting his voice in an effort to be heard over the raging and surprisingly noisy winds. Althos himself was in the middle of the storm, where the winds were the loudest and the snow and ice the thickest.


    ________________________________________________


    "So this is what my blizzard power looks like? How entertaining..." I muttered, in the middle of the wild and supernatural storm. I listened to the raging winds, and distantly I could hear the pained grunts of the frost giants. A part of me considering turning to face them, but for now I felt like doing something else.


    I examined the ice underneath me. It looked more solid than ever before and was a fascinating reflective surface. If I had had a physical form here I would have been able to reach down and touch it. I allowed myself to study it before coming to a nice realization.


    "If I use this right now... I could make some neat artwork couldn''t I?" I realized, a smile on my physical body''s face as I came to that handy discovery. I quietly activated "Cyrokinesis", a power of mine that allowed me to masterfully manipulate ice, and began to work. It was while I was beginning to create my first ever piece of art that I heard a loud and fierce voice.


    "Althos? Is that... You?" The voice asked, speaking powerfully and directing his words into the blizzard that protectively surrounded me. For the moment I ignored the voice.


    I willed the ice that was underneath me, underneath the orb-like astral object that represented my mind, to form a human-sized and human-shaped shell. The shell it created was a replica of a nude and featureless humanoid, almost like what I envisioned an ice elemental would look like. It stood over a meter and a half tall, positively tiny for the frost giants but I wasn''t building it for them.


    I studied the eerie shell I had created and chuckled at it. I enjoyed its featureless form, and for a second I wondered why I liked things like that. I often created strange, alien-looking forms when I wandered through dreams, and I was quite fond of them.


    "Is it because I myself lack a true form?" I muttered, speaking, and thinking aloud for once. The ice sculpture I had created was a strange thing like someone had a sort of template for the most basic and bland humanoids imaginable. And like me, even in my default form, it wasn''t anything special or especially unique.


    Meanwhile, even as I studied the sculpture I had created, I could hear the frost giants behind me struggling to get to their feet. A small part of me supposed that I ought to address them and reply to their fears and concerns before I finished messing around with my artwork.

 162 In The Frozen Wastes

    I allowed the blizzard to rage, as I extended an ethereal tendril of mental power. This was similar to how I used telekinesis, extending out tendrils of my consciousness to grab and hold things beyond the reach of my hands, but I didn''t use it to grab items. Instead, I allowed my tendrils to penetrate the skulls of the frost giants who surrounded me. They audibly groaned, and my impossibly sharp hearing allowed me to hear the sounds even over the roaring blizzard.


    I could have opted to simply tether our minds together without this particular form of doing so but I didn''t feel like doing that. I felt like taking time and having fun. The giants that surrounded me continued to struggle to their feet and the nosiness of their motions mildly annoyed me and so I decided to have my own fun with it. I quietly heaped on my powers related to exhaustion to my aura and as a consequence, the area around me began to greedily sap the energies of the giants.


    The air almost visibly seemed to thicken around me as a result of my power. It took on a sickly yellow tint, and I both heard and felt the giants struggle to adapt to it. I heard their hearts begin to beat faster, as each and every action they took was suddenly far harder for them to do. I also heard them fall to their hands again, only barely able to keep from unintentionally prostrating themselves before me. Their pride was enough to power them through this new obstacle, but only barely.


    "There there... You don''t need to stand. After all you''re in the presence of the one you called out too." I muttered cryptically, both audibly speaking and mentally transmitting my words into their minds. I didn''t feel like allowing them to stand before me. This would further cement the reality of my powers in their minds.


    "Ugh..." One of them groaned, still trying to stand in my presence. I chuckled, physically, at the act. It wasn''t an act of defiance or anything, but even a shallow reading of the giant''s mind told me that the giant in front of me wanted to prove his power to his peers and to me.


    He was filled with determination to not let my powers control him. It wasn''t at all a bad attitude to have, even though it wasn''t particularly appealing to me. I allowed him to struggle for a minute longer, before utilizing one of my newer abilities on him.


    I targeted him by shifting my focus from nothing in particular to him specifically and then launched a single "Mind-blast". I felt the psychic pulse explode out of my mind and lance towards the giant. Almost the same instant I launched it, the invisible wave of energy seared into his mind, and I heard a single, agonized, and muffled shout over the roaring winds that surrounded me. An instant later I heard a soft thud echo across the icy glacier.


    "Althos..." One of them muttered, struggling to speak due to the exhaustion I had struck her with. I could hear her struggle to get the words out. They couldn''t see me as a physical being, instead only being able to see me as a shimmering being made of mental light, but I had a smile on my face as I watched their discomfort and felt their exhaustion. I once again found myself admiring the potent powers of the sin of sloth.


    ________________________________________________


    In the hours that had passed since I gained power over sloth I had given it a lot of thought. It was, in all honesty, one of my favorite additions to my incredible treasure-trove of powers.


    Sloth gave me a considerable array of powers. With it, I could sap people of energy, put them to bed, or even make them begin to abandon their responsibilities. And it connected to my other powers brilliantly.


    If I wanted to use it I could cause cities to begin to fall apart, or turn sleepy hamlets into sleeping hamlets. If I wanted to mix this with my other powers I could use this to cause disease to run rampant by targeting those tasked with combatting diseases or otherwise ensure widespread calamity by preventing people from growing crops needed to survive a coming winter. Inversely I could use this power beneficially to ease acts of heroism by making villains easier to identify and subdue or even stop evil-doers from doing evil in the first place. I just needed to be creative in how I used it.


    There was a part of me, a malicious and hateful part that was defined by my enjoyment of violence, pain, and evil, that wanted to target entire cities with the powers this granted me, but I knew better than to do that unless I was going after enemies or had a real reason to do so. I needed to work on controlling my darker impulses and not mindlessly or maliciously acting evilly. At least not on Torus.


    If I wanted to do that freely I knew I should have selected a world wherein I would be defined and remembered as a god of evil and terror. Like Salifinos. By changing how I acted on different worlds I could more easily allow for the creation of differently behaving cults and thus more efficiently gather the followers I needed to acquire a vaster array of powers.


    ________________________________________________


    "Althos... Please, tell us, your humble worshippers..." Another giant began, also struggling to speak as a result of the extreme potency of my powers related to exhaustion. I knew what he wanted to say, thanks to my ability to perform shallow mind-readings. He wanted to know why I was here, and what, if anything I wanted.


    I quietly eased the potency of my auric power, slowing down the rate at which it sapped energy. And then a second later I transmitted some energy into the giants, using my powers over healing energy as well as the mental connection I had established with each of them. This allowed the giants to relax a little bit, and though it took some of them longer than others, a few moments after I performed this small act of mercy they all breathed a bit easier. And that only made my smile grow wider. For them to struggle to breathe as a result of my power was a sign of how incredibly potent it was.


    "I can almost admire your tenacity. I suppose I should acknowledge you." I declared, once again both speaking and transmitting my words into their mind. I did this because it was fun, but I also knew that it added an otherworldly effect to my actions, which was perfect for conveying to them the true and godly nature of my prowess. I quietly activated my typical religious abilities, and shrouded myself in my awe-inspiring mist.


    They were quickly surrounded by the mist, and as they began to breathe it in I began to feel their surprise and confusion become something else. I felt their confusion and shock slowly begin to transform into awe and fascination. I watched as their faces slacked and their minds became a bit hazier. It wasn''t a bad look for the band of giants.


    "I am indeed he who you called. I am here and I am also elsewhere repairing the damages caused by Morehammer." I explained to them. This was only sort of a lie. I chose this moment to begin to move my powers throughout the rest of the pole, and its sister pole, and use my world-changing powers over ice and snow to repair the damage caused by the momentarily global warming that accompanied the volcanic eruptions I had caused earlier.


    I targeted wide swaths of other glaciers, and other solid bodies of ice, and began to heal them. Seconds passed as the giants absorbed my words, and as they began to feel reverent awe and utter humility as they began to understand just how truly and maddeningly wide my scope of powers were. They had only known me as a god of freedom and healing, and now they were learning that I possessed the power to heal even environments.


    "Althos..." One of them whispered, saying my name with the awe someone might say the name of a fabled hero from an epic myth. He was one of the taller giants, but far from the tallest in the group. He was, unsurprisingly, the son of the chief. Though he couldn''t tell I was looking at him, studying him for a moment.


    He was on his knees. He wore an enormous outfit made from tanned walrus skin and on the floor beside him there was a simple axe made of ice. It was a lovely weapon, both despite and partially because of its simplicity. I studied him for a second, curiously memorizing every detail of his face before I returned my attention to the ice sculpture I was making.


    I reached out and mentally touched the strange object with a mental tendril. I touched it and envisioned the ice taking on a more definite shape, one that was inspired by the giant I had momentarily studied. The ice itself bent itself to my will, cracking and shattering in some places and reshaping itself altogether in others to mimic the edges of the face of the giant.


    I casually watched the ice as it did this and smiled, ethereally, as it did so. I also further dulled the blizzard and heard the giants begin to slowly work to rise to their feet, feeling some of their eyes on me and the tiny object in front of me.


    I kept my eyes glued to the sculpture and willed two depressions in the ice to come into existence to mimic eyesockets. The ice crashed in on itself where I wanted to create the illusion of eyes, and I chuckled at this. I then turned my attention to the limbs of the piece of art and audibly sighed. I would have done more to transform the sculpture, but it was at this point that my detection-based powers allowed me to notice something unusual: a strange figure approaching the giants and therefore my ethereal form.


    On the planet of Torus, and on the other planets in this solar system, my mini and not-so-mini-maps were potent powers that allowed me to perpetually detect the locations of all manner of living and undead beings. One figure of considerable power, at least relative to the frost giants in front of me, had just taken off from another, relatively closeby, glacier and was heading in the direction of the frost giants. A powerful adult ice-dragon named Glacial. The creature wasn''t on Ygaynth''s level, but as an adult dragon it was still an incredible force of nature.


    It was flying in my direction at an impressive speed and I could detect, thanks to a few of my other abilities, that it hated frost giants. At this rate it would arrive in less than five minutes, even across this beautiful and frozen tundra-like land and ocean scape. It would fly over the open and freezing ocean on its way to where these giants were physically located.


    Off in the incredible distance I could hear the beating of its enormous wings, and I could smell the scent of its skin, covered in old blood and fur from messily devoured meals of seals.


    "Hmm... How curious." I muttered, audibly. I could sense its intent. It intended to eat the giants located here, ignorantly opting to act during a time when it believed that the giants would be panicked and weakened by what it thought would be the extremely imminent vanishing of their home. The fact that they wouldn''t be would cause it to be surprised. Internally I wondered what to do.


    ________________________________________________


    "Would this be a good time to acquire a new draconic worshiper?" I mused internally. I heard an excited voice within my mind reply to me.


    "Of course! There is never a bad time to acquire draconic worshipers." Huffed the voice. It was the voice of the draconic domain, which led to me being rather unsurprised that that was its opinion. The draconic domain was the only lifeform based domain that was a domain, and it concerned all matters related to dragons and their lesser relatives and descendants. A moment after the draconic domain spoke another domain, this time a subdomain, spoke up.


    "Dragons are excellent... For transformation into undead monstrosities." The voice said, before beginning to giggle. This was the voice of the subdomain of necromancy and her words made me wonder, not for the first time, about how absurdly powerful an undead dragon would likely be.


    "Ice dragons are... They are truly brutal creatures. If you make this one a worshiper of yours that''d go a long way towards cementing your influence as a god of ice and as a god of this part of the world." The faith domain told me, almost whispering in my ear a plot to further my regional influence. Dragons as a whole were resistant to my worship, and I only had a few draconic worshipers of any sort. I wasn''t too proud to admit that that frustrated me.


    "Ice dragons represent the closest a mortal being can ever get to becoming one with nature. They have the most primal connection to the elements and to the savagery of my... well my nature. Gaining ice dragon worshipers might indeed enable you to further your influence over me and other domains and subdomains." The domain of nature explained, causing my interest to spike up considerably. Those were the words that gave me my newest little goal: gain the worship of Glacial. As he approached I felt my excitement spike up. I was ready to make him mine.

 163 The Dark God Of Disease

    [Name: Glacier Rimefrost (Level 16 druid)


    Species: Ice Dragon


    Alignment: Neutral Evil


    Personal Virtue: Faithfulness


    Personal Vice: Wrath


    Sexuality: Heterosexual


    Magic Sensing: Glacial is an adult dragon and an exceptionally powerful druid. He possesses a keen connection to ice and frost. He is a cold-soul druid, a rare sort of druid who was born with an innate, inborn connection to glaciers and other bodies of ice. The magic that resonates with his soul is evocation magic.


    Faith Sense \u0026 Authority Detection: Glacial is an influential dragon. He has a band of human followers and is served by wyverns and other devolved dragonkin. He is also treated with respect by other ice dragons.


    He has fathered many other dragons and is angry at the frost giants for daring to make the slaying of his children a cornerstone of their culture. He aspires to acquire vengeance and to freeze every last frost giant. His followers are aware of this goal of his and they were the ones who awoke him when glaciers began to melt so that he could take advantage of this time to lash out at the giants.


    Soul Sense: Glacial could make a potent dark-knight or warlock if given permission to use such powers to acquire vengeance. If not then odds are his will will have to be corrupted and corroded for him to become someone you can grant a religious class too, or at least for him to become someone who will serve you faithfully.]


    ________________________________________________


    The dragon sailed silently through the air. Its massive body was impressively sleek despite being incredibly long and measuring roughly fifteen meters from snout to tail. The dragon was not especially muscular and had a lithe build that belied its true strength. The beast could crush ice and had the power to smash through glacial walls.


    The dragon had ice-white eyes and deep within them, a visible fury swirled. But so too did something else: a smug satisfaction. The grim dragon was visibly eager, its claws vibrating with bloodthirsty delight at the thought of savaging frost giants and taking their lives.


    The creature was incredibly speedy. It sped through the icy, cloudless skies and its eyes could see for kilometers even at the speeds it was flying. The creature would occasionally be distracted by the rare, delectable morsel that was attempting to travel here or there atop the assorted glaciers or other solidly sized chunks of ice that floated through the icy sea.


    That said, in a testament to the beasts willpower, an especially rare trait in ice-dragons, it managed to overcome any and all temptation brought on by the sight of easy meals. It was saving its hunger for meals that would be more satisfying: the delicious taste of frost giant flesh.


    ________________________________________________


    They each stared at me, silently and with assorted emotions visible in their gazes. I could see awe, fear, admiration, and other emotions in their white, blue, green, and even scarlet eyes. I chuckled, the sound escaping the difficult to see thought-form I had adopted.


    I heard their muscles clench and tighten in anxiety as they realized that the sound I had uttered was a chuckle. I heard their heartbeats quicken, and I could almost see their muscles flex as they prepared to swing into action or to flee in terror at whatever I did next. I turned my attention to them fully, finally giving them the attention they had sought earlier.


    "Mortals... I have done what you asked of me." I explained, attempting to sound divine and boisterous. I infused divine power into my voice, and made it spread out evenly across the surface of the glacier we all stood on top of.


    "However, a god does not aid mortals for free..." I told the giants, ominously. I took a second to make eye contact with each and every one of them. As I did, they tried to avert their gazes from my powerful eyes. They attempted to turn away from the terrifying power of my gaze, but I didn''t allow them too. I felt their fear of me sharply increase when they realized they couldn''t control their own bodies.


    I did this very simply. All it took was an application of my powers over skin and bones. I simply prevented them from averting my gaze by locking them in place and ensuring that they looked at what passed for my face. This thought-form had two empty eye-sockets from which shone two brilliant yellow lights, one that was almost as bright as the sun which was visible in the skies above the glacier.


    "What will you give me in return for my aid?" I asked, speaking powerfully. My voice echoed eerily across the featureless wastes. I felt them shudder in fear once more, once again reminded that even though I was a god of freedom I was still a god and gods would always be different from the mortals they aid.


    "Althos... Thank you for your aid! Please inform us as to what would be an appropriate price for us to pay?" One of them asked, and that question caused me to pause and turn to face her.


    She was a young female giant. She had clear blue eyes and an innocent expression on her face. She stared into my eyes, and wasn''t trying to pull away from my stare. We gazed at each other for a few moments, long enough for the other giants to begin to relax, before I began to speak.


    "You would ask a god to name their own price? Curious..." I remarked, amused by this. I had busied myself during my time in the tower by making contact with mortals across the universe and though this wasn''t a first, I had enjoyed using chances like this to spread mischief. I could both hear and feel the other giants around her react in annoyance to the giant''s proclamation and to my response.


    "Hmm... And you are also the boldest of the giants present..." I observed, rewarding her willingness to speak first by acknowledging the truth. She was quite brave.


    Off in the distance, the dragon drew ever nearer. I could hear the beating of its wing, and I could hear its heart pounding faster and faster. I knew that soon the blasted beast would grow close enough to attack with its fierce frost breath. For a moment I dove into myself, into the strange part of my mind that tethered the system, the domains and subdomains, and myself together. As I did so I looked at the powers granted to me by a stranger domain of mine that I hadn''t had many chances to fully and truly use: the domain of disease.


    ________________________________________________


    [Disease domain passive powers:


    Symptom Manipulation: This particularly nasty power allows you to manipulate the symptoms someone feels and exacerbates them or lessen them. This power is a creative one whose potency is limited only to your imagination. With it, you can also cause perfectly healthy people to begin to experience symptoms of assorted diseases without any distinct cause, aside from your own will. For example, with this power you can cause someone to experience a fever, a headache, or nausea.


    Infection: You can now infect creatures with a disease without attacking them first. This power still requires that you make some form of contact with them, though "contact" as a god is a bit more loosely defined than it would be for mortals.


    Pathogen mastery: You can now control bacteria, viruses, and other microorganisms that can cause diseases. These organisms now obey you and can mutate at your command as well attack those whom you command them to attack.


    Subjugative illnesses: You can cause those who are infected with a disease or illness you can manipulate to want to serve you. This power is a synergistic one that takes from the eldritch, law, and faith domains. Creatures you control like this experience either relief from the pain they are enduring due to the diseases and illnesses or outright pleasure and joy when they serve you.


    Disease attacks: You can cause any attack of yours that you wish to infect those it hits with any disease you can manipulate.


    Corruption And Purity Infection: Your attacks can infuse creatures with pure or corruptive energy. This is a synergistic power that takes from the subdomains of corruption and purity and allows you to infect creatures with power from the seven virtues and the seven deadly sins.


    Forcible Mutation Inducement: You can now force creatures to become mutated, their very genes unable to resist your wicked and corrosive powers.


    Rot manipulation: This synergistic power takes from the domain of destruction and the subdomain of fungi. With it you can manipulate decay and can cause all sorts of matter to decompose at an accelerated rate. You can also undo rot and cause that which has decayed to regenerate and regrow.


    Disease domain active power:


    Possession Infection: You can grant extraplanars advanced mastery over possession, allowing them to do a number of things to creatures they possess beyond just riding them or controlling them. This power turns possession into something akin to an infection, not just a parasitic infection. Creatures who are targeted by this power are dominated by you but are also able to possess creatures and act independently. This is a once a day power.]


    ________________________________________________


    By the time I finished mulling over the powers over and related to diseases I had gained I glanced off at the sky and chuckled. The dragon was now in view, and within seconds it would have become visible to even my allies. Or rather it might have, if I didn''t immediately open a portal in front of it, one which led deep underground, and the dragon only had a second to react to it right before sailing right through it.


    I suppose I ought to get some practice fighting powerful creatures before I next fight against Morehammer... I thought, in the safety of my own mind. I wasn''t used to individual combat, and fighting a creature as powerful as Glacial would be some good practice for me to finally get used to fighting. Plus I had a number of powers that could easily allow me to control the battle, especially against a mortal.


    I opened a portal to the place the dragon had been deposited, and through it I could already hear the sounds of crashing and of pained roars. I glanced at the giants, and they shuddered as they heard the noises coming from the portal.


    "I''ll be back." I told them, my voice filled with a dark sadism, and an unbecoming excitement, as I stepped through the portal and into the portion of the world beneath Puerto Rico. I had transported Glacial Rimefrost into one of the empty caverns not far from the city of Aronms. And now I intended to "fight" the dragon. I was sure it would be a bloodbath. Even a dragon can''t hope to fight a god. Especially not one of disease. Even as I phased from the glacier into the darkened cavern I felt cruel schemes working their way into my brain.


    It was time to fight a dragon.

 164 Mortal & Immortal Comba

    I winked the portal behind me out of existence as I stepped through it. Doing so was as easy for me as releasing a held breath would be for a mortal, though admittedly less relieving. As the portal winked out of existence, a process that took less than a nanosecond, the surprisingly bright light it projected into the cavern also vanished.


    I looked around the cavern and allowed my senses the instant they needed to adjust. I could smell rocks, gravel, and fungi all around me. I could see a flat expanse stretched out before me, that extended hundreds of meters upwards and was roughly as wide. My divine sight didn''t require light which benefited me and was not a trait that was shared by the other sentient being within the cavern: the adult ice-dragon Glacial Rimefrost.


    Underneath me, the ground was surprisingly soft, not that it would have mattered since I was only here as a potent thought-form anyway. That said, my incredibly powerful senses allowed me to act and react as if I was truly and physically within this cavern, aside from the fact that unless I willed otherwise I was effectively incorporeal. I glanced around and then upwards and off in the distance I saw the creature I had come here to fight: Glacial Rimefrost.


    Near the top of the enormous cavern, the dragon wailed in pain and clumsily descended towards me. I could see portions of stone embedded in its body, as a result of it crashing into the ceiling. Its icy-white eyes were filled with pain and fury, but the thing wasn''t facing me. It slowly and steadily descended down towards the cavern''s floor.


    I chuckled and without even raising a hand towards the beast I turned my mind''s power towards it. My mind honed in on the monster and I steadily studied it. I focused on the beast''s draconic wings and then with the mental equivalent of a forceful tug I telekinetically grabbed the dragon''s wing and began to yank on it.


    "Argh!" The dragon roared, agonized pain escaping from between its toothy maw as it began to descend faster. I chuckled and targeted it with a wholly different power than the one I had just utilized. I glanced at the dragon and forcibly shifted its gravity, empowering the phenomena on the beast and therefore easily increasing how quickly the lizard descended. The dragon began to fall towards the ground, not only able to control the speed of its descent anymore but also under the effects of a power that made it fall even faster. I sneered at the beast as it fell, and began to ponder how to best continue to fight it and harm the thing.


    I silently activate an auric ability of mine, my "Poisonous aura", and watch as the air around me takes on a distinctive purple tint. The color is eerie in this lightless cavern, and I chuckle as I feel the air around me thicken and become a thing that is wickedly dangerous for mortals. This encounter isn''t like my meeting with Ygaynth. I intend to hurt this dragon.


    I pointed a finger at the cloud of dust and peered through it with my powerful eyes. I was able to pinpoint the dragon''s location and chuckled before sending a single, incredibly thin jet of azure-colored flames rocketing towards the beast. The flames were audible and filled the cavern with noise. The potent flames burned hot enough to distort the air in the cavern and I smiled excitedly as I heard the dragon begin to take in a deep breath. I knew what the creature was about to do and I knew I could handle it without any real problems.


    An instant after I launched the thin but pointed attack at the dragon, a burst of ice shot out of the beast''s maw. The clump og frozen air tore through the dust cloud, and the dragon had managed to randomly guess my general location, possibly due to the sound of the fire.


    The burst of cold air collided with the flames, but unsurprisingly my fire wasn''t at all bothered by some little dragon''s ice. I was a god of fire and my flames barely even slowed as they smashed through the ice. That said the dragon was now aware of me and was on the defensive, leaping deftly out of the way of the fire which proceeded past it and eventually collided with a wall on the far side of our battlefield.


    In leaping out of the way of the flames the dragon had cleared the dust cloud. It could now see me and opened its mouth to speak. That said I didn''t intend to give it any breathing room. I rose a hand and the earth the dragon had just landed on almost liquified underneath it, causing it to suddenly sink and catching it off guard. Without skipping a beat I resolidified the ground that surrounded the dragon''s feet, and therefore captured it.


    "What?" The dragon asked, as over the course of a single heartbeat the ground it had just landed on liquified underneath it and then abruptly solidified and therefore detained its movements. I wasn''t about to let up for a second then and using even more elemental overlord powers I snatched the air right out of its lungs, pulling it out of the beast''s open maw and dissipating it. I watched as the beast''s eyes widened, and it suddenly began to panic and hyperventilate, frantically needing to take in air.


    I controlled the air around the dragon''s head, and I quietly muttered a single word. "No." I swiftly prevented any air from actually entering its lungs and instead I commanded any and all oxygen around the huge creature to fade away and either move out of the dragon''s reach or cease existing. With the beast unable to move or breathe I took this moment to speak.


    "I am learning much from our combat. If you wish to live, continue to provide me with valuable training." I explained, before generating light and beginning to mold into the shape of a blade. A second after I began to work the light in my hands, the dragon gathered all of the force it could and managed to pull its claws and feet out of the ground and leap high enough to breathe in some oxygen.


    For a moment there was a smile on its face, but I lowered my empty hand and conjured a portal into being beneath it as well as a connected portal within range of my aura and directly in front of me. The dragon was only able to see the aura right in front of me, but the look of fear on its face was enough for me to tell it could tell what would happen next. When it fell it didn''t land on the ground where I had dissipated all of the oxygen but instead was neatly deposited right in front of me. I chuckled and pointed my sword at the dragon as I began to think about some of the skills I had acquired from the dwarves.


    The dragon gazes at me fearfully, and poison begins to seep into the open holes on the beast''s body. Nostrils, ears, and even the gill-like organs on the side of the creature''s throat are all entryways for the poison that now completely surrounds the creature.


    ________________________________________________


    [Assorted martial classes skill list:


    Berserker''s Rage: You can fly into a rage that makes you faster, stronger, and hardier. This skill lasts up to an hour since you are a god and a level 20 berserker as a result of your theft of class-levels. In your case this skill also allows your attacks to completely ignore any resistances or armor your enemies may have or wear. Your melee attacks are also far stronger than usual, all of which operate as if you were perpetually using your infinite strength.


    This ability causes you to become singularly focused on causing devastation, though you can still think since you are a god and can end the effect early if you want. The more powerful a god you become over the sin of wrath, the emotion of anger, and the domains of war and destruction, the more powerful this ability becomes.


    Fighter''s Tenacity: This warrior ability allows you to recover health even in the heat of battle. It''s a useful ability that greatly increases even a god''s ability to survive the most pitched battles. With it you can recover even a quarter of your health at once, and as a god of healing and life, you have a particular variant of this power.


    Your version of this power allows you to recharge another warrior''s tenacity, completely disregarding the cooldown that such an ability would normally have, you can also supercharge their usage of the ability, allowing them to recover all of their health at once.


    Fists of Fury: As a brawler, your firsts and other unarmed strikes you perform are stronger than they would be otherwise. Your unarmed attacks are able to ignore resistances and the damage dulling effects of armor.


    Weapon expertise: As a 20th level warrior you gain the ability to wield any weapon without training first. This serve serves as a quiet corrector that ensures that a lack of training doesn''t obstruct your ability to understand how to wield weapons.]


    ________________________________________________


    The dragon, smartly trying to take advantage of the moment in which I appear lost in thought opens his mouth and begins to form another icy projectile. The beast even powers through the poison which floods into him even faster than it did before. As he does so, foolishly thinking I am distracted, blood begins to seep out of the other holes that line the creature''s body. None of this stops or even appears to concern the dragon who understands that my powers are considerable and that death is certain if I am not defeated.


    I open my eyes and study the thing. In an instant, I confirm that it has total immunity to frost damage, and I immediately snatch this away from it using my powers over alteration. The dragon isn''t alerted to this and attempts to lob a frosty projectile at me. The object never leaves its mouth, as I immediately grab it with an invisible, telekinetic hand and cause the glacial sphere to explode in the dragon''s mouth, showering the interior of its jaw in razor-sharp shards of mind-numbingly cold ice.


    The dragon''s head rears back and an explosive wail of pain fills the cavern. The sound is the single loudest noise I''ve ever heard, and is truly deafening. After allowing it to fill the cavern for a single moment I quietly target the beast with "Sound mastery" and silence the wail. I watch as blood begins to ooze out of the creature''s maw and I chuckle as I use a power I''ve never used before: "Hemokinesis", to manipulate the blood that is seeping out of the pained beast.


    I target the blood all over the beast and begin to animate it. The steady streams of the crimson liquid begin to feebly come to life, suddenly ceasing to flow freely and instead beginning to deliberately ooze out all over the dragon who I had decided to defeat. The second my power touches a bit of the dragon''s blood the life-giving fluid begins an unsettling imitation of life and it fills with the need to destroy the very creature from whom it came.


    That said the dragon''s tenacity is itself admirable. I feel magic well up within it even as it begins to feel the blood oozes I had created begin to act hostility. Its magic abruptly seeps into the ground below the two of us. The magic snakes towards me, grabbing and momentarily animating any roots and other plant life it comes across but it just isn''t fast enough. Because I possess one uniquely devastating and instantaneous ability.


    I point my blade at the dragon even as his magic nears me. And then I activate the most unique power given to me by my low level of influence over the alteration subdomain. I quietly create an anti-magic field exactly where the dragon is located, and the magic that was racing towards me immediately fades out of existence even as the roots and other plant life had begun to snake upwards in an attempt to strike me.


    The anti-magic field surrounds Glacial in a strange pink halo, as it strips the beast of its ability to use magic. I had other ways I could have achieved this, but this felt like the most dramatic way to do so. It''s also not quite as despair-inducing as one of my other magic-related abilities which is the power to just outright take away the ability to use magic from creatures I target for an entire day.


    "Hmm... I suppose that''s enough training for now. Or at least all the training you can provide me with." I explain, a cruel grin on my face. I have the perfect power to bring this encounter to an end, one that would strip away all the fake drama of this clash and forever demonstrate just how powerful I truly am, cementing my superiority over the defeated dragon in every way.


    It is at this point before Glacial can even fully realize what is going on that I target the dragon with my most powerful combat-related ability: "Death inducement". Utilizing this active power, I glance at the dragon and the beast instantly perishes. I am a few meters from the beast, close enough that I can hear its heart shut off and I watch the life leave the beast''s pained eyes, even as its head drops and crashes to the ground. By the time the dragon''s head is on the ground, its eyes are shut. But not forever.


    The fighting is over, but I am not done just yet. I reach out and target the beast with an array of abilities all at once.


    ________________________________________________


    The dragon''s death would normally release its soul to head to the afterlife the dragon merits based on its alignment and actions in life. That said, the creature was killed by a god, and the god snatches the soul out of the beast''s body even as the spirit of the creature attempted to escape from its body.


    Althos'' hand shot out and sucked the soul into his clutches instantly. He held the thing for not even a second, before mercilessly absorbing it and shivering as he pleasure wracked him and he absorbed a significant portion of the creature''s power. The blade in his other hand faded out of existence, and he pointed the now empty hand at the dragon''s corpse, even as his mind filled with words and alerts from absorbing the dragon''s soul.


    The god, with chilling casualness, created a soul suited for an ice dragon, and then targeted it with one of his more sinister powers: "False resurrection". Life energy and a dark spark of necromantic energies seeped into the dragon, even as Althos flung the soul at the body and watched as it faded through the dragon''s milk-colored scales and seeped into the beast.


    Glacial was in the process of being reborn, and as this happened, Althos opened another portal behind him and called Sombra through it, while also willing his physical form to step through. The god''s body and mind were abruptly reunited, the god''s body stepping into where his mind-form was located, and allowing Althos to regain his corporeality.


    The dragon''s eyes, closed in the throes of his death, began to slowly open once more. And the dragon would never be the same again, having forever lost his sinister soul and the soul that filled his body being one that was infinitely more evil, also being incredibly loyal to Althos, filled with the need to worship the dark god as the god of death, dragons, and fate.


    ________________________________________________


    [Death and Time Domains Passive Powers:


    Afterlife Denial: You can use your powers to deny recently deceased creatures access to the afterlife, even without snatching the soul out of their bodies. This power causes them to become terrifying creatures known as phantasms, who roam the cosmos and seek to be granted access to the afterlife by serving you and fulfilling quests you give them.


    Death Aura: Your attacks take on a new quality, rendering them impossible to heal from unless you are the one who heals them. You are also surrounded by an aura that fills foes with the fear of death.


    Death Visage: You can cause creatures who glance at you to see the exact moment they shall die. This power fills them with indescribable fear and despair, often paralyzing them.


    Death Strengthening: The more you yourself kill the stronger you become. This differs from the death empowerment power you possess as that power strengthens others, not you personally. The stronger your targets the greater the boost to your power you experience.


    Deadly Disease: You can turn any disease or illness into a lethal one. You can target the disease or illness itself, or you can cause specific creatures who have a disease or illness to die, at will.


    Rewind: You can target a creature or object and rewind time on them. This causes them to cease to be affected by anything that was affecting them before. If you use this on a dying creature whose imminent death is about to be caused by a recently acquired wound you can prevent them from acquiring that wound. Inversely, if someone was healed by a healer minutes ago you can undo that healing. You can also use this to fix things or to rebreak what was once fixed.


    Currently, this power only allows you to revert something or someone back to the state it was in two minutes ago. This power is great for removing the need to do resurrections since you can heal any sickness or wound anyway.


    Subjective Time Experience: You can subject targets, be they objects or creatures to a unique temporal field that causes them to experience time twice as quickly or half as quickly as other creatures. This means that they age twice as fast, or half as fast, and also that they lose energy twice as quickly or half as quickly as other creatures.


    Time sense: You have an innate clock that is always perfectly synced to wherever you wish for it to be synced in any universe you have worshipers in.


    Death And Time Domain Active Powers:


    Chronal Anchor: You can freeze a creature in time for up to a week. This twice a day power allows you to completely and totally freeze any sort of creature, aside from a vestige. They cannot do anything when they are trapped in this effect.


    Death Knowledge: This synergistic active power allows you to learn the easiest way to kill even entire civilizations. It is a once a month power, indicating just how powerful it is. It is not to be underestimated.]

 165 Dragons And Demons

    Moments after the dragon was falsely resurrected, the beast submissively bowed before me. As it did, Sombra walked until she was beside me and quietly grabbed my hand. I allowed this, as I was more fascinated with the dragon than I was with opposing the tiny affections of my demonic servant.


    Sombra and I walked up to the beast and she paid it little mind. She was far more fascinated with me than she could ever be with my new pet. I suppose that made sense, at the end of the day those who could tame dragons were often more interesting than the dragons they tamed. That said I had plans for this beast.


    I reached out a single hand, the one that Sombra wasn''t holding, and placed it on the dragon''s face. The dragon''s head was solid and frigid. I was touching ice-cold scales but it was still physical contact with a dragon, and I quietly activated one of my favorite powers that I hadn''t yet had a chance to make use of: "Magical disease infection". I infected the dragon with "Demonic Infection", the potent and arcane disease that allowed for demonic possession.


    The moment I infected the dragon with the disease the area that I was touching on his face momentarily glowed a sickly red color. It was pleasant to observe, and I enjoyed the pained sound that escaped Glacial''s toothy maw. The red color that the dragon''s face quietly glowed reminded me of dried blood but the glow faded almost instantly.


    Sombra, though not particularly interested in Glacial, appeared to sense that the dragon was infected with one of her favorite diseases. She was quiet at first, but after a moment began to speak.


    "Master... Do you plan for me to possess this dragon?" She asked, curiously. There was a note of annoyance in her voice, but I chuckled and ignored that. My response was one that I suspected she''d like.


    "No. I plan to summon more of your kin, more praereptors, and have them share this body. For now." I explained, cryptically. The truth was that I was largely winging this, but I could definitely have fun with the idea in my head. That said, my words caused the dragon to begin to stir, but I was faster and calmed it by placing a soft, incubus kiss on its cheek. The kiss was impossibly quick and the feelings it stirred, even in someone who wasn''t sexually attracted to me were impossible for a mortal to resist.


    The kiss calmed the beast and it ceased its stirrings. I felt some of the dragon''s strength and willpower flow out of the beast and into me, and I grinned at the thing. I rarely made use of this power, but my succubi and incubi powers were potent and they were ones I actually quite liked. I just only rarely sated the lusts I felt, mostly because there weren''t many creatures I was attracted too.


    ________________________________________________


    Towards the beginning of my life, I had acquired powers over shadows and creatures composed of shadows. I didn''t make use of this power particularly often, but one especially useful type of creature I had gained influence over as a result of this was the scout-type demon known as the praereptor. Sombra herself was in essence something new, perhaps an unofficial evolution of such demons, but originally she had been a bodiless praereptor.


    Praereptor demons were masters at possession, and the creatures were supremely useful for that. That was why they were often utilized as scouts by greater demons, and in the mythic past, by the long-extinct demon-lords. That said, I could do a lot more with them than just use them as scouts.


    As a god who could control shadows and creatures made of shadows, I could give the bodiless praereptors actual bodies and otherwise manipulate them. It was like I was a skilled artist and the shadowy souls and essences of praereptors were clay in my hands. This was how I had given Sombra a real body and not just the strange, shadowy form she once possessed.


    Over the course of my life I hadn''t really made contact with many praereptors, but I had made contact with enough that word was beginning to spread of me and my supreme powers over the race even in the Heart of Darkness. I had a fair number of praereptor worshipers in the darkened and chaotic realm, as most of the envious demons would do anything to acquire a body of their own and not have to live parasitically off of others.


    My powers over conjuration allowed the "call" I was making for praereptor demons to come to me to extend across the universe, reaching even into other dimensions like the Heart of Darkness. I was still aside from my lips curling in a cruel sneer as I felt countless demons begin to eagerly answer the call.


    In answering the call, the demons were instantly transported to my hand, and Sombra gasped in shock as the shadowy creatures began to materialize insofar as their immaterial forms could materialize. Physically this resembled my hand suddenly darkening as the eager and shadowy demons began to latch onto me. I was enjoying this for a moment when I received a notification that made me chuckle.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Demons Making Mistakes


    Though you possess powers over corruption, darkness, chaos, and evil, you don''t yet possess enough power over darkness and you possess no power over envy, so you don''t have total control over praereptors. Some of the eager demons were envious enough and ambitious enough to try and possess you.


    Obviously this hasn''t, and wouldn''t ever, work. You are incapable of being possessed and their attempts to possess you have actually had a... peculiar effect on them. Gods possess a number of formidable defenses against possession. These defenses are actually based on the things that a god has influence over and your defenses are particularly nasty.


    The praereptor demons who tried to possess you are now zealous, utterly insane worshippers of yours. The eldritch and faith domains utterly warped their minds, and have left them forever alerted as a result of that.


    Five demons tried to possess you. Their names are Asmodeus, Abraxas, Forcas, Kore, and Daeva. These demons are now utterly unlike their kin. They seek little more than to serve you and to spread your worship far and wide.]


    ________________________________________________


    I chuckled as I read through the notification, and I quietly selected one of the aforementioned demons, Asmodeus, and called the shadowy creature to materialize in my hand. The strange being did as I commanded, and a single line of darkness went from residing in my bicep to oozing its way across my arm. It stopped when it reached the center of my hand, and pooled into a single orb of darkness. I smiled at the obedient demon and began to act.


    I quietly expelled the thing from my body and the darkened orb detached itself from me like a mosquito that had just finished sucking my blood. I grabbed the orb and began to seep my disease-based powers into it. I quietly infected the demon with "Possession infection", and I felt it moan in delight as its powers greatly increased.


    "This little one is having fun." I muttered as I studied the demon. The orb of darkness was beginning to convulse in my hand and I chuckled. I connected our minds in the same way that I connected Sombra''s mind and mine, and then I tossed the orb at the dragon.


    The orb made contact with the dragon''s face and then, like the blood oozes I had created earlier began to spread across Glacial''s face. Unlike the oozes though, the demon was looking for a way into the dragon, and when it found one, in the form of the dragon''s nostrils, it immediately and eagerly oozed into them.


    It was at this point that I had a sinister idea that I well and truly liked. I targeted Asmodeus and granted the slavish demon the cleric class. Then I began to speak to Glacial.


    "Glacial, you are now possessed by a demonic worshiper of mine. If you seek my approval, you and this demon will work together to create a cult of half-demon dragons that spread across the glacial wastes and conquer it." I informed the dragon, before beginning to speak to Asmodeus.


    "Hello Asmodeus. Normally I suppose I would be annoyed by your actions, but you''ve given me a new toy to play with... You. I know you seek my approval. If you seek it, make use of the cleric class I gave you and create a successful cult. Cooperate with Glacial and create an army of draconic worshipers of mine." I told the demon, before hearing an annoyed sound escape from within Glacial. The sound of an annoyed demon.


    "I may bring you back to me, if you help create an army of demonic ice-dragons who worship me. Because that would prove your worth. That said, I have given you a powerful tool to help with that... Glacial himself. You are starting off inside of a dragon who is well-known and well-respected in the frozen wastes. If both of you are clever then you can find ways to cooperate. You both have the same goal." I reminded the demon and the dragon it was possessing.


    I quietly and forcibly expelled three of the remaining four unique praereptors and launched them at the dragon as well. I did this silently, but my actions were visible and visually striking. The dragon itself didn''t have time to react, not that it could have dodged the strikes since I was close to it as I was. I kept one of them, Daeva, on my person for now. I then began to speak once more, even as I connected all of the ambitious demons together.


    "Demons... Dragon... Your goals are the same. That said, I have a plan for the other demons. Only Asmodeus is to stay inside of Glacial, long-term. The rest of you are to possess other dragons throughout the frozen wastes Glacial calls home. And you are to go to distant corners of the icy region and find more dragons to infect and incorporate into our plot. Take over the dragons that Glacial mates with, and twist their minds to our dark purpose. And then use them to breed demonic dragons." I commanded the demons, taking advantage of knowledge given to me by Sombra, the domains of knowledge, biology, life, and evil.


    "Inhabit Glacial, for now, the dragon is my worshiper and this is my will, and use him to spread our dark influence far and wide. It is like we are a disease, and he is our patient zero. Let this moment mark the coming of a new and evil pandemic." I told the demons. This provoked peals of evil laughter, the sounds varied and distinct yet all coming from deep within Glacial himself.


    "In time I shall reveal secrets to you. Not the least of which is how to conjure other demons, though a few of you already know how to do that. I shall use you to create an invading force capable of bringing entire worlds to their knees. Do not fail me, demons." I commanded, speaking like a true and wicked overlord for one of the first times in my life. I allowed silence to fill the air for a moment, before I opened up a portal in front of Glacial. It led back to where the dragon was from. I then spoke directly to the dragon once more.


    "Glacial... I am glad you are my worshipper. Obey me and be blessed. Aid Asmodeus and you too shall be uplifted. Enact my will and you shall see the ascension of ice dragons everywhere. Serve me and I shall grant you ever greater power and influence than you ever dared to dream you''d possess. Serve me and become a general in and father of this great army of ice dragons we shall build together." I told the dragon.


    The thought of an army of ice dragons who zealously worshiped me was a delightful one. I quite liked the idea of having a force of living beings with that level of power who in a very literal sense owed even their very lives to me. With enough numbers, such a force could easily conquer entire planets, and I had the ability to instantly transport even the largest armies across galaxies if I wanted.


    "Go... Go through the portal and spread my demons. Go through the portal and forget the life you once had. Build a new one." I told the dragon, a wicked smile on my face as I spoke. The dragon didn''t know it, but I had powers over life and I could ensure that the next three female ice dragons he mated with became pregnant, as well as became possessed by my shadowy worshipers. In hours one of the demonic worshipers of mine would spread from Glacial to the first of the ice dragons Glacial mated with, like a truly malevolent sexually transmitted disease.


    Glacial proudly sauntered through the portal, now a wicked Althonian and an altogether different person. When the dragon stepped through the portal, I closed it behind him and smiled. The final creatures in the cavern were Daeva, Sombra, the multitude of normal praereptor demons within me who hadn''t tried to possess me, and myself.


    "Now... What to do next?" I asked aloud, my voice heard by the many people besides and within me.


    "I suppose we should start by visiting the giants, shouldn''t we?" I asked, asking a rhetorical question. I opened up a portal leading us back to the icy village and quietly stepped through it.


    ________________________________________________


    The next few hours would be spent conversing with the people of the frost giant village. I appeared to them in my physical form this time and they would quickly and quietly thank me for saving them and their home from a rather watery fate and probably a liquid grave. I didn''t tell them about the ice dragon I had just saved them from.


    I rewarded the frost giant who spoke earlier by infecting her with "Demonic Infection" and allowing another praereptor demon, a normal one this time that I had granted the cleric class, to possess her. Unlike many other giants, this particular member of her tribe had a good alignment, and I had lied and told her that the creature that possessed her was an angel of faith of mine and not a demon.


    I granted some of the men in the village the templar class, and I commanded that they extract ice from the glacier and use it to build a temple to me. Building this monument to me, and to worship me as the frost giant priestess commanded were the prices I demanded for my earlier actions of stepping in and saving their home. They readily agreed to those terms and I would watch as the first of them set about mining ice from the glacier to make into a wonderful temple dedicated to my glory.


    The giants were a simple civilization, but their faith was real. My reappearance was enough for many of them to convert to my worship. And thanks to them I felt stronger than ever, and through my actions gained access to the initial quests for a new domain and a new subdomain.


    It was only after this that I would return to my tower. This would be the first time I returned to my tower since I left it prior to Ava''s death. When I opened up the portal to my strange home, I began to ponder and reflect on the events of the past day and a half.


    However as I opened the portal, I saw an unexpected face waiting for me on the other side. Staring back at me from my portal was the face of my enemy, the vestige of the dwarven creator god, Morehammer.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: New Quests Available


    Domain of emotions: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the domain of emotions inspire in a follower of yours a significant emotion and have that follower of yours devote their life to that emotion, be it anger, fear, love, sorrow, or any other significant emotion. Keep in mind that this is one of the domains where you pick what sort of powers you gain when you first gain access to a tier of influence over the domain.


    Subdomain of art: Have five followers of yours create artistic depictions of you. These can be paintings, statues, sculptures, or even magical displays of you.]

 166 A Conversation With The Enemy

    Morehammer stood on the other side of the portal. He had an impassive expression on his face. He didn''t move towards the portal, or attempt to move through it, not that it would have worked if he had. The portal I created would only work in one direction.


    This gave me a chance to study him up close. The dwarf had jade-colored eyes and long brown hair that spilled out of his crown-like helm. He had a handsome face, and a thick, well-kempt beard the color of rust. He also radiated an almost blinding aura of prismatic magical energy, unlike anything I had ever seen before. The two of us observed each other, coldly and without words.


    In looking at him I got to see the creature that killed Ava. As that memory came to mind I felt a cold surge of rage swell up within me but I easily suppressed it, thanks to my own powers over patience. Internally I was grateful for that. I didn''t want to try fighting Morehammer again, just yet.


    He wore the same armor he had been wearing almost two days ago. He carried the same utterly gigantic Warhammer that he used to kill Ava. And he had the same tower shield he had had before when I first met him.


    As I laid my eyes on his equipment I quickly began to see that at least some of the magic I initially thought he had been radiating was actually coming from his warhammer and his shield. I didn''t doubt that each of the items he possessed were incredibly powerful.


    After perhaps a moment had passed since we began to study each other, he took a step back and then nodded at me as if giving me permission to pass through a portal I myself had created. I studied him for a moment and then spoke.


    "What do you want, vestige?" I asked, my eyes narrowing as I spoke. I wasn''t a fool. I wasn''t about to go where he was for no reason. He looked at me silently, for a moment, before opening his mouth to speak.


    "I wish to converse with you, godling. Nothing less... And nothing more." He responded, his eyes also narrowing as he spoke. I studied him for a moment, and was both unsurprised and also a bit relieved when I received the domain-sense notification that he was being honest. I was still for a moment longer, a moment that for me and probably for him felt like an eternity, while I considered whenever or not to enter the portal.


    As he waited for me to make my decision he quietly sighed. I sighed back at him, and then stepped through the portal, and Sombra stepped through it behind me. As we did I closed the portal behind me and found myself standing in front of the vestige, within my tower. I towered over him, standing nearly a meter taller than he did and I glowered at him.


    We were standing in an empty chamber, in an empty floor, of my tower. Angels and other extraplanar beings lurked in the floors above us and below us. The chamber we were in was a simple one, about halfway up the tower.


    "Hello, godling." He said, his voice calm and low. Up close I studied his face and noticed that he had physically aged, his skin beginning to sag and thin, giving him a less regal but more wise appearance. He and I were both silent for a few moments before he opted to begin truly begin the conversation.


    "Althos... Allow me to begin this conversation by apologizing to you." The god said to me, his words catching me off guard and causing my eyes to narrow in suspicion.


    "I am truly sorry I had to kill a dwarf, even a dark one. And judging from your reaction to the death of that creature, Ava, it appears that you possessed strong feelings towards her. I am not happy to have had to slay her." The creature told me. I felt my eyes begin to change and I felt the rage I felt earlier return to the forefront of my mind.


    "You... ''had'' to kill her?" I asked, rage audible in my voice. The dwarf looked at me, curiously, but I sensed something in his gaze. Morehammer nodded at me.


    "Yes... To prevent my people from going down a dark path, one that would divide them like elves and assorted other species have been divided." The vestige replied, revealing his desire to tyrannically control dwarves.


    "If Ava had succeeded in killing Aoife, or even Aoife''s ''clone'', dwarves would have commenced walking down a dark path. I will prevent that." The echo of the dwarven creator god told me. There was a steely look in his gaze as he spoke. For a moment I allowed the rage I felt to come to the surface as I replied to the vestige.


    "So all of this was due to your perception of good and evil? And due to your desire to control dwarves?" I asked, my voice quaking with rage. Morehammer''s eyes narrowed as he considered my words.


    "Listen, young one. I created dwarves so incredibly long ago that it would boggle your mind. Dwarves are older than devils and almost as old as demons. They were one of the first humanoid races created. I have guided their collective destiny and done things you couldn''t even imagine to keep them safe. If anyone has the right to control them, it is I." The ancient creator of dwarves told me, his voice containing within it faint memories of his incredibly ancient life. Or rather the incredibly ancient life that the true god lived, and that this creature only remembers.


    The sheer arrogance of the god''s words caught me off guard. I knew pride was its vice, but to think that it''d be so direct about it surprised me.


    "That you are their creator doesn''t give you the right to suppress their freedom!" I countered, the passion in my voice surprising even Morehammer. I was legitimately angry about this asshole''s arrogance. Morehammer was silent for a moment, before chuckling and beginning to speak.


    "That is so easy for a young member of our species to say... You know next to nothing little one. Mortals are mercurial and in need of guidance and protection." The vestige told me, replying to me as though it were some saintly protection and not a murderous tyrant. I felt another flash of anger, but I took a deep breath and I quickly reasserted my control over my emotions.


    "Morehammer... What is it exactly that you want?" I asked the creature, opting to make an attempt to gain more insight into the mind of my foe. Morehammer''s eyes flashed with an eerie joy.


    "What I want? I want to continue to protect my children. And I want to ensure that you and your ilk forever leave this world." The dwarven vestige revealed the joy his eyes radiated sharply increased, as he chuckled at my expense. I studied him and then replied to him a few moments after the big reveal of his plans.


    "What makes you think that I will do that?" I asked him, my eyes beginning to blaze as I silently drew upon my powers over flames and plasma. As I did I heard the vestige''s muscles twitch and tighten around his weapon, as he instinctively readied himself for... whatever came next.


    "Because I am stronger than you, Althos." The vestige arrogantly replied.


    "Are you? Just because I didn''t attack right away doesn''t mean that you''re stronger than me." I told the god, power seeping into my voice. He smiled at me, haughtily, as if he had just learned some dark secret.


    "So do you want to fight me?" The vestige asked, smiling at me. I smiled back, as I activated a single power of mine. It wasn''t a fire-based power either, it was a death-domain ability. The instant the vestige was done talking, I activated "Death Visage", and for a single instant, Morehammer froze as his eyes widened. His mind was now being assailed by visions of the moment when he''ll die.


    ________________________________________________


    The instant that the young god activated his power to force creatures to see the moment they die, something odd happened. The unexpected nature of the power and its sheer potency caught the ancient vestige the god was conversing with off-guard and did indeed trap the echo of an unbelievably ancient god in a strange vision.


    Morehammer''s vision no longer showed the vestige Althos in his tower. Instead, Morehammer''s vision was abruptly a third-person display that showed the creature an unbelievable sight. Morehammer saw himself, or rather a fallen version of himself, in Atlantis'' capital city, as the Emerald Palace slowly crumbled to the ground behind him.


    In front of Morehammer''s fallen form knelt Althos, wearing a golden suit of armor and carrying a pair of weapons in muscled hands. In one hand Althos held a scythe made of darkness, and in the other, he held a sword made of light. Althos was on his knees, roaring triumphantly, covered in both his own blood and that of the ancient vestige.


    What was the strangest thing of all though was that the emerald palace was illuminated by natural light, sunlight. The Emerald Palace was located impossibly deep beneath the ground. There was no way for sunlight to stream into it, barring an incredible display of mastery over the earth or amazing power over the domains of light and stars.


    ________________________________________________


    As Morehammer''s vestige was momentarily caught in the throes of my ability, I closed in on him and put my hand next to his head. And then I unleashed a single potent and unbelievably hot stream of blue flames. The flames were so powerful that as they exploded out of my hand they actually moved Morehammer and pushed the vestige right out of my palace and into the empty air that surrounded the upper floors of my residence.


    One instant Morehammer was next to me, and the next the vestige was dozens of meters away, before beginning to drop out of the sky like a heavily armored rock. It turned out that this was the instant he recovered the vision my power had shown him. I learned this because the vestige teleported to beside me again, and shouted his next few words.


    "What the fuck was that?" He roared, anger glowing in his eyes. I chuckled and replied to him with a few haughty words of my own.


    "That was for Ava, you prick." I told him, as I clenched my fist and readied another blow. Morehammer opened his mouth to respond to me, but he wasn''t fast enough. I turned around to face him in less than a nanosecond, using my true speed for once in my life and launched a single punch aimed squarely at his chest. As I did so, I recalled an aspect of my existence that I had never used before.


    I possessed infinite strength. I was once told that I had the physical power to punch through a star. If there was ever a time to test that... It was now.


    I rocketed my fist towards him, so fast that it triggered a sonic boom around us, as my fist slammed into his mythical armor. My fist collided hard against the armor and the blow was so solid that the force of it actually lifted the dwarf off his feet and sent him sailing through the air before he crashed into the floor of my palace a few meters away. As the dwarf sailed through the air I noticed something that brought a smile to my face. To his credit as a blacksmith, the blow was actually endured by the armor he wore, hinting at the sheer potency of his craftsmanship. But that didn''t mean it was left untouched.


    His armor now had a fist-shaped indention on it, square in the middle of the breastplate. I spoke as I watched him land a few meters away from where he had been located a second ago.


    "And that was for me. I owed you those two blows." I told him, speaking confidently. Morehammer looked to be in pain, his eyes flashing as he looked at the floor and brought a hand to the part of the armor I had struck. He placed a hand on his armor, or tried anyway since his hand went to where the indent was, and his eyes widened. He looked down and was visibly shocked to see that I had left a fist-shaped indent on his armor. I chuckled.


    "Last time you caught me off guard Morehammer. That does not mean that you are as strong as you believe." I explained, before raising one hand in front of me in a defensive position and positioning the other in a more offensive one at my waist, indicating my readiness to continue to fight.


    "You are not a god. You would be wise to remember that, you echo." I said, surrounding myself in a number of potent auras, even as I targeted Sombra with telekinesis and hurled her out of the battlefield. To my surprise, Morehammer didn''t immediately try to strike back at me. Instead, he studied me for a few moments. And then he rose his hand up in a gesture clearly meant to indicate that he wasn''t going to fight.


    "Althos! You''re... You''re correct. You did owe me those two blows. Now, are you done?" He asked, his words spoken with perfect clarity and eerie focus. There was a fire I recognized glowing in his eyes, the light of rage, but to his credit he didn''t try to attack. I didn''t lower my fists, but I did silently nod.


    "Good. I suppose fair''s fair. I couldn''t kill you in one fell swoop and you got away. It makes sense that that''d come back to get me somehow. Now... I''m willing to let bygones be bygones if you and your followers just leave this world." The god told me. But there was something different this time. A notification that brought a sinister smile to my face.


    [Domain sense:


    Morehammer has told a lie to Althos. He will not let ''Bygones be bygones'' if Althos and the Althonians leave the world of Torus.]


    Morehammer''s malevolence was detected by my powers over lies. And my sinister smile caused Morehammer to stiffen, as he tried to get a read on me. I closed my eyes for a moment, which a creature less knowledgable than Morehammer may have taken as a sign of weakness, but Morehammer knew better than to try and catch me off guard while my eyes were closed. It wouldn''t have worked on me, by anyone, even him.


    I targeted the vestige with a potent power I possessed entitled "Death Knowledge" and was annoyed with the result.


    [Death Knowledge: Morehammer


    Updating domain of knowledge. Update in progress...


    Update nearing completion.


    Update... Complete.


    Morehammer is the opposite of a god in that he can only be killed near his birthplace. Anywhere else he can be soundly defeated, but killing him is impossible unless one is near where he came to life: the Emerald Palace. That said, he does possess a glaring weakness: he cannot leave the world of his birth. The weaknesses of each vestige are unique.


    Killing Morehammer is a challenge. The vestige must be well and truly defeated in a battle within the sight of the Emerald Palace to truly die. Anything short of this will cause the defeated form of the vestige to reappear deep within the bowels of the Palace, where he speedily regenerate.]


    I sighed and looked at the vestige. I knew that his attempt to get me to leave Torus was a strange plan, one that I couldn''t understand given that he was evidently still determined to badger me. I examined him, and I knew that something was off here. I targeted the creature with yet another power of mine, ready to learn more information. This time I activated "Secret detection", a truth subdomain power of mine.


    [Secret Detection: Morehammer


    Morehammer does not seek to die. At first, he was willing to do so if it meant stopping you, but now... He isn''t. He seeks to have you leave this place and never return so that he may live eternally, free from one prison and trapped in another but at least this second prison is a larger one where he can be worshiped.


    He is keeping a secret the fact that each usage of his powers, even just teleportation, drains him. He can only recharge when he is near his home, the Emerald Palace. But that is also where he is the most at risk of being attacked. His home is a double-edged sword for him, as he can recharge his limited energy there but it''s also where he is the most at risk of perishing. So his scheme is to get rid of the one threat he faces: you.


    While you are gone, he will seek out something, anything, that may give him the strength to face you and defeat you. This is a last-minute scheme he has come up with after facing your blows directly. It is one he is still forming in his mind, even now.]


    "Heh... So that''s his game huh? I suppose I can work with that. For now." I thought, a dark scheme beginning to form in my mind. One that would test my patience, but one that would allow me to take vengeance on him one day.


    But first I would need to do something of my own. I would need to utilize a set of powers I wasn''t particularly experienced with: my powers over law. Powers he himself once possessed as a lawful god.

 167 Dastardly Deal Making

    In the wake of hearing the words of Morehammer, the very first thing I did was begin to search through my plethora of law domain powers. Something I immediately noticed as I searched through the domain''s abilities was that there were not only a considerable number of powers, these powers felt a step above the other powers I had acquired over the course of my life to date, particularly with regards to alignment abilities. It was impressive honestly, though the sheer number of mind-altering abilities was a bit disconcerting.


    [Law domain passive powers:


    Ascension: This is a synergistic power that utilizes the faith domain and the law domain as well as the truth subdomain. With it you can cause creatures who worship you to recognize you as the being they worship no matter which of your guises they worship you as, and you can also cause creatures to recognize you as a god even if they don''t already worship you.


    Authority Aura: You are capable of exuding an aura of supremacy that causes all creatures to recognize you as an authority figure of supreme power. This aura is especially powerful on lawful neutral or lawful evil extraplanar beings, where it is likely to cause them to submit to you and to vow to serve you outright unless they have extremely powerful wills. Submissive beings submit to your will. Among mortals members of noble families are most vulnerable to this power. Your aura also has other powerful effects.


    Magic cast near you from schools of magic you possess influence over fails unless you say otherwise. Creatures of any species that are attracted to males become incredibly attracted to you. Lawful creatures who submit to you as a consequence of this power gain a tattoo that isn''t unlike the brand you give witches, warlocks, and wards, that ties them to you and allows you to send sensations to them, as well as cast magic through them. This ability also upgrades over time.


    Advanced Contract Creation: You can create contracts with a wider assortment of beings, even other divinities, and higher beings. These contracts are binding and if you create a contract with a being more powerful than yourself you gain copies of some of their powers or domains, if they are gods.


    Neither you nor the other party in the contract can break the rules of the contract. This power is so powerful that even if the other party is stronger than you it cannot break the contract. The agreed-upon terms must be mutually agreeable, otherwise, they will not be in the final contract. Lie-based powers do not trick this power.


    Organization Creation: You can create organizations and induct lawful beings into them. These can be cults, armies, or even nations. You can also grant creatures various levels of authority over the organization in question though all will be subservient to you and ultimately recognize you, in some form, as the true leader of whatever you create using this power. This is a synergistic power that combines the law domain with a number of other domains most especially the civilization domain.


    Order Mastery: You gain mastery over the concept of order. If there is an underlying structure or purpose to something you can detect it. As an example, if on a massive battlefield enemy forces are launching probing strikes that may seem unorganized and opportunistic you can detect the underlying purpose behind the attacks. You can also cause these attacks to fail to achieve their purpose.


    This power instills you with great authority and causes you to be seen as the source of order when you use it, at least by mortals. Lawful creatures who are in your presence as you use this power actively may begin to worship you. You can also induce order, transforming a chaotic moment into an orderly one merely by wishing it to be so. How this manifests is context-sensitive.


    Seal Mastery: You can create and apply seals to both living creatures and inanimate objects. Seals can have various effects on people and things. One example that would fit you well is a lust seal, which is a secret tool that you can use to punish the chaste or empower the lustful.


    One way to use a seal would be to plant a lust seal on someone that makes them more charismatic if they indulge in lustful acts. Or to place an anti-violence seal on someone that eats at their life-force if they so much as raise a hand at someone.


    Subordinate Empowerment: You can now exert more direct and indirect control over creatures who worship and serve you. This synergistic power grants you greater influence over your minions and allows you to perform a number of acts, not the least of which include: creating quests for your subordinates, granting experience multipliers to minions that allow them to speed up their level-ups, and also speed up things like their natural health or stamina regeneration.


    The sort of powers I had acquired related to law, order, structure, and authority were... truly incredible. Domination and Organization Creation in particular were especially powerful. I looked at Morehammer and began to speak.]


    "So... You''re willing to leave me and my followers alone if we just leave?" I ask, beginning with a probing "clarifying question" to ensure that I understood his position. He chuckled at me, possibly believing me to be ignorant and not have listened to him but he nodded.


    "Yes. If you and your followers leave, then I shall in fact be willing to leave you alone. If you and your ilk perform a... dark exodus, then you would be free to live in another world, undisturbed by my followers and I." The vestige explained. He was lying again, and I didn''t doubt that he had some strange goal in mind. One that required time to fulfill. That said if I had to bet which of the two of us could grow in power faster I didn''t doubt that I had him beat.


    I studied him, curiously considering his words for a few moments. Perhaps five seconds of silence passed between the two of us before I finally spoke.


    "I possess a potent power that allows us to make a binding contract. If we are to actually do this I would require that a contract be made. Is that acceptable to you?" I asked the creature standing in front of me. He looked at me and was silent for a few moments before he began to smile.


    "Do you possess the ''Advanced Contract Creation'' power? At your age? You are perhaps less than half a year old, aren''t you? That is... an impressive feat unless you born a lawful god. And something tells me you weren''t." The god observed, a smile on his face as he spoke to me.


    ________________________________________________


    Internally I was mulling over a few of my never-before-used powers. I was in a precarious situation and a part of me wanted to try and build some distance between Morehammer and I. I knew of two powers that if used in conjunction would allow me to do that. The first of them was my power to make an avatar. This power would allow me to scout other solar systems thanks to the other power on my mind.


    The second power I was mulling over was one of my favorites. It was called "Stellar Awareness" and was a truly potent power. With it I had access to an older map of the cosmos, but if I wanted it to be truly powerful beyond my current solar system I needed to add other stars to my awareness. And to do so I needed to visit other stars. Which I could do with an avatar.


    In a moment of potent decisiveness, after thinking about my powers for perhaps half a minute, I quietly made a choice. For the first time in my life I created an avatar. And far from me, the eldritch and divine processes needed to construct one began for the first time in half a million years.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep in the heart of a volcano located far beneath the waves, something miraculous was occurring. Something... divine.


    The hottest part of the underwater volcano flared to life. Magma surged towards one point in particular and began to solidify and harden, forming an eerie shell in the vague shape of a man. This shell was still for a few moments as more and more magma hardened around it to form the outlines of all four of its humanoid limbs.


    This volcano was the holy site closest to the strange god who had exerted his will over Torus time and time again. It was here, from dried magma, that the dark god''s avatar would spring to life. The creature, an imitation, and servitor of the god it was molded after, would soon spring to life and dash to enact the god''s exploratory agenda.


    It spent well over two minutes being formed in the heart of the submarine volcano before it opened its eyes for the first time. And then it spent another thirty seconds luxuriating in the heat of its birthplace before looking upward and out of the undersea vent in which it was formed. It came to life with a fully formed mind, and an innate understanding of its purpose: to serve Althos and to act as a potent representative of his. And it already knew the first mission it was to fulfill: aid Althos by going out and exploring the cosmos, journeying from star to star, to allow Althos to better map the universe.


    The creature would reside in the magma for less than five minutes before closing its eyes and hurling itself out of the tiny vent in which it was born. Its body rocketed out of the sole opening the vent had and then looked directly upwards, its eyes quickly and quietly moving towards the faintest bits of light. The creature could see for entire kilometers and was able to notice the faintest bits of light way up above it. With a satisfied smile, the creature focused on the light and took off towards it, moving at a speed equal to the speed of light without breaking a sweat.


    It took the entity less than a few seconds to triumphantly escape from the ocean of its birth and speed off towards outer space. The minion was on a mission and it was sure it would bring joy to its master and creator, Althos.


    ________________________________________________


    In the ten minutes it took for my avatar to come to life and then rocket itself out of the ocean I had conversed with Morehammer. In that time he revealed something which actually excited me. He told me what I would gain if I formed an advanced contract with him.


    Morehammer was an innately lawful deity and he possessed powers over a number of domains even as a vestige. But the others that most resonated with his soul, even in his current state as a vestige, were the domains of creation, emotion, and the subdomains of blacksmithing and art.


    By signing a contract with him, I would gain powers over creation, emotion, and either the subdomain of blacksmithing or of art, in the form of the first tiers of influence over the aforementioned domains and subdomains. Without my powers over the subdomains of truth and lies I wouldn''t have believed this, but as soon as he spoke I received a notification alerting me that his words were the truth. This made me want to form a contract with the annoying vestige, as I suspected that I''d gain all sorts of handy powers if I gained influence over those domains and subdomains.


    I finished an unimportant sentence and then I fell silent. Morehammer studied me, his wise eyes filled with the wisdom he was privy too as the vestige of a greater god. He was quiet for a moment before beginning to speak.


    "Are you ready to negotiate our contract?" He asked, a smirk on his lips. I smiled back, and nodded, excitement visible on my face and alight in my eyes. He was the first to speak following my nod.


    "First and foremost I want you and your followers to leave this world. For as long as I live. There are a plethora of other worlds you can occupy, an infinite number of them really. I just want this world to belong to me and my followers. And I don''t want you to use your powers on this world anymore." He told me, speaking seriously.


    "Are those terms agreeable to you?" He asked, looking at me seriously. I nodded at him, accepting his conditions. But this was something I had a trick up my sleeve for. Every animal and virtually every plant was an Althonian or a Cosechian. This was a consequence of my widespread powers, and it was one of the ways in which I would punish him for doing what he did to Ava, and to me. After I nodded he waited for me to speak next.


    "I want for you and your minions to leave me and my worshippers in peace. That includes dark dwarves." I told the god, speaking seriously for a moment. He looked at me skeptically, and after a few moments began to grin at me.


    "How could I possibly accept those terms and conditions?" He asked me, and I could sense that he was working to suppress the urge to roll his eyes at me.


    "Althos... That''s the entire reason why I left what was in essence my tomb. We both know I cannot possibly accept those terms. At least if you include dark dwarves." The vestige told me. I sighed at him and began to speak to rebut his point.


    "How do you plan to harass dark dwarves in other worlds?" I asked him, curiously studying him. My words were spoken with the chilling certainty that I knew something that he hadn''t revealed, and I did. I knew he couldn''t leave this world, and that was not something he had told me, but nevertheless it was one of the things I knew about him.


    "Do you think that my power is contained to one world?" He asked me, looking at me ominously. I chuckled at him and spoke to him relaxedly.


    "I don''t. Not really. But we both know that this contract can''t bind us to terms that aren''t mutually agreeable and if I discover that you have followers on other worlds, or if you come to other worlds, then it won''t end well for them or for you." I tell him, my eyes flickering with fire.


    I hated Morehammer. And I suspected he hated me too. Neither of us intended to let the other live in peace. He was a tyrannical dictator who tried to justify his tyranny by being "benevolent", and I was a chaotic and evil god of freedom who was more than happy to free and be worshiped by dark dwarves.


    "So you won''t allow my worshipers on other worlds to live in peace?" He asked, and I could tell this was a critical question. I looked at him for a moment and considered what to say next. Eventually, after a few seconds, I opted to offer a trade.


    "If you allow dark dwarves to live in peace, even if it''s after banishing them to another world, I would be willing to allow your followers to live in peace on other worlds, so long as they aren''t plotting against me or being used as tools in some plot of yours." I offered, a sagely grin on my face as I spoke. He looked at me and asked a fair question.


    "Would you use dark dwarves in plots against me?" He asked me, studying me for a few moments. I shook my head at him.


    "No. I wouldn''t. I don''t really want to rely on others in the context of plots against you. I feel as though you are too strong for mortals to be effective tools against you." I told the vestige. I was speaking truthfully, but some of my words here were chosen carefully. It was true that mortals wouldn''t be effective tools against him, but I had more than mortals at my disposal, including creatures who weren''t worshippers of mine.


    I wanted to protect dark dwarves. I wasn''t a fan of other dark dwarves meeting a fate like Ava, and so I didn''t intend to use them against Morehammer. I knew of a number of unpleasant gifts I could leave behind for Morehammer that were more entertaining than using and endangering my own worshipers.


    ________________________________________________


    The next hour would be spent in an oftentimes frustrating negotiation. By the time it came to a close, a potent mystical contract had been signed, one that would forcibly enact in a new peace, and also begin a strange and dark exodus of billions of beings. But several important things happened in the moments before the contract was formally signed and the world''s most powerful beings created a new reality for those who would be left behind.

 168 Chaotic Surprises

    In the moments before the god and the echo of one of the ancient gods who perished at the end of the mythic era signed a historic contract, the god''s mind scattered to distant corners of the globe. This act resulted in many small and some not-so-small changes to the world, but they all served a single purpose: to forever alter the world.


    Scattered throughout the world were a number of potent secrets that the chaotic god Althos fully intended to use to leave Torus a changed place as he and his minions left the world behind. In the moments before he signed the contract he was negotiating with the mighty vestige of the dwarven god Morehammer, he activated his powers carefully and in targeted manners to unleash these significant surprises.


    The first of the surprises he unleashed on the world was one located beneath the city of Aronms. The dark-elven city had been the location of the grandest Morthian temple in the world and deep beneath it lurked a potent portal to the nightmarish dimension named "The Heart of Darkness", the hellscape from birthed vast demonic hordes. He intended to unleash the dangerous denizens of the cyclopean plane beyond the portal onto the world.


    That said he wasn''t without mercy and didn''t intend to unleash demons on his own worshipers. So he was cautious as he did this. First he transmitted a notification to the inhabitants of the city.


    [Alert: The Dark Exodus Begins


    Inhabitants of the city of Aronms: Althos has signed a dreadful contract with the revived demon lord of tyranny and falsehoods named Morehammer. One condition of this contract is that Althonians are to flee the world. Althos is preparing the way and in a matter of moments, portals will begin to appear throughout Aronms. When a portal appears in front of you, grab your most valuable possessions, and please walk through it. Homes have been prepared for you, you will be able to continue living as you have been for countless centuries.


    Althos and his followers might be leaving the world behind but he will not be leaving it unchanged. It is important that you obey these instructions, for the sake of your own continued sanity and your lives. This is not the time for pride, obey this notification or risk perishing at the hands of the followers of Morehammer, or the other things that will soon land in this world.]


    ________________________________________________


    Even as he crafted the notification, Althos carved out an amount of space within his own island home that was the same size as Aronms. He didn''t yet possess the powers to craft an exact match of the city of Aronms but he was able to make the roughest outline of the city possible.


    Moments after this notification went out to the inhabitants of Aronms, tens of thousands of portals appeared in front of dark elves throughout the city. Many of the dark elves hesitated, but when they glanced through the portal and saw a dark, distorted, and imperfect replica of what they were leaving behind, they shrugged and stepped through the portal. In a matter of moments, the city was nearly completely empty. And this allowed Althos the room to do what he wanted to do.


    The god''s mind turned to where the Morothian Manor had once been located. The Manor had once been Morthos'' most ornate temple in the world, and even now underneath its ruins lurked one potent toy with which Althos intended to unleash devastation on his Morehammian foes. Althos'' mind reached deep underground and "grabbed" what lurked beneath the ruined temple. A single fel-portal.


    The god lifted the vast portal through the ground that surrounded it, while mentally speaking to whatever creatures waited just beyond it. He yanked it out of the stones that prevented it from unleashing fell-hordes on the world. And as he did his words reached through the portal and to the denizens of the maddening realm that laid through the portal.


    ________________________________________________


    The portal that Althos was yanking out of the ground led to a part of the Heart of Darkness that was once thought to be civilized. Or at least as civilized as a portion of that plane could be. What was once true was no longer true, and the layer known as the "Spoken Scourge" was now a place of just as much openly murderous chaos as any other layer of the Heart of Darkness.


    The portal, as it was buried deep beneath the earth of Torus, and surrounded by stones on every side, was inactivate at the moment. But as the portal moved through the stones, thanks to the reality shifting powers of the god who was moving it, it began to stir to life. The portal, on the side of the Heart of Darkness, manifested in the middle of a massive and now ruined city on the layer. This place was coincidentally inhabited by a plethora of demons, who were able to hear the words of the god who was forcibly reopening the portal by placing it in a place where it would work. And his words stirred their dark hearts.


    "Demons... If any of you can hear this message, know this. I, the dark god of chaos and freedom, freely give you this gift with no expectations or special qualifiers. Dash through this portal and freely feed, corrupt, and destroy, whatever lies before you." The god commanded, his words being heard by every demon in entire kilometers.


    On the Torunian side of the portal, the dark god was smiling. He was gleefully dragging the portal closer and closer to now largely evacuated city, and as he did so he imagined the hordes on the other side of portal clashing with the dwarves throughout the world. But he wasn''t done speaking to the demons just yet.


    "Transform the world of Torus into a swirling nightmare of chaos and evil." He told the demons lurking on the other side of the portal. And as his words spread out across the layer more and more demons turned to face his voice.


    As they slowly realized the implications of what he was saying they began to cackle and fly towards where his voice was coming from, the ruined city at the heart of the planet-sized layer. In a matter of moments, a horde hundreds-strong was gathered around where the voice was spilling through into the dark plane.


    The demons gathered around the portal had a variety of forms. Some were recognizable as certain types of demons, such as the handsome yet violent looking incubi, and others were not and had nightmarish bodies made of constantly swirling slime or even an impossible number of limbs on visually disturbing bodies. They all gnashed their teeth together as they salivated around the slowly solidifying portal.


    Their half of the portal resembled a vast doorway, dozens of meters tall and equally wide, that was filled with swirling green energy. They could peer just past the portal and on the other side they saw rocks, endless numbers of rocks. Until they didn''t.


    When their view beyond the portal abruptly went from an endless number of rocks to an empty city they let out a collective cheer, though no mortal listener would have thought that the unholy chorus of noises they made was anything even remotely resembling cheering. Their cheers were an amalgamation of noises, some loud and awful, others sinisterly delightful and disarming. The portal abruptly solidified as the god responsible for uplifting it yanked it out of the earth.


    And at last, the demonic invasion of Torus began. Hundreds of demons slithered, walked, flew, and crawled through the portal and into the dark elven and abandoned city of Aronms. And distantly, thousands of kilometers away, Althos smiled.


    ________________________________________________


    Another secret weapon that Althos unleashed against the dwarves who worshiped Morehammer was in some ways a far more sinister one. Throughout the world existed tens of thousands of dragons who never worshiped Althos. A small part of the god had wanted to convert them one by one, but he hadn''t had the chance. That said, they were now neat tools in his covert war against Morehammer.


    The dark god targeted them with an especially nasty set of his powers. He inflicted all manner of cruel diseases on them, after awakening them with singular usages of his "mind blast" power, painfully snapping them out of their, in many cases centuries-long, naps. And he quietly took advantage of their existing hatred towards any number of creatures and turned it towards dwarves who worshipped Morehammer. He was priming them up to go to war with Morehammerians as soon as he and his worshipers were gone from this world.


    The god wouldn''t be able to leave Althonians in Torus, but he could turn the hearts of creatures who stayed here forever against the followers of the dwarven god. He also spawned literal tons of food for them to eat, which would cause them to fall under his influence. And it was at this point that the god felt a small pang of regret for not acquiring influence over the sins of gluttony or wrath, but only a small pang. He valued the sins he had influence over at the moment and he knew that in time he''d acquire more influence over more sins. He just had to be patient.


    ________________________________________________


    The final thing the dark god did in the moments before he signed the contract was to target all sources of food for all dwarves with what was, contextually, a wicked combination of powers. He targeted animals and plants alike throughout the entirety of the dwarven kingdoms, and he awoke them.


    Awakening something was an especially elaborate move in the context of the contract he was about to sign. By awakening things he instantly converted them into his worshipers, thereby preventing them from staying on Torus and being eaten by Torunian dwarves. It was also something that Morehammer hadn''t known Althos was capable of doing, as Morehammer did not know that Althos was more than just a god, that he was something quite unlike anything else that had ever lived.


    The moment the god began to sign the contract, his mind was assailed by notifications. And he transmitted one of his own, as he began to do something else as well. Something that was unthinkable to his old self.


    The god quietly began to create floating islands and even floating oceans the size of his own sanctuary. He did this effortlessly, displaying confidence with his powers as he constructed homes for his people and prepared for the days to come, days he knew would test him in ways he had never been tested and push him beyond what he believed himself to currently be capable of.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Althonian Exodus


    Althos has reached an accord with Morehammer. This accord stipulates that Morehammer and his followers acquire the world of Torus and that the Althonians must go elsewhere. Althos is preparing the way even as this notification is being transmitted and vows to protect his people.


    The god of freedom understands how hard this will be for many, but he also knows that this is the right choice. This allows him to protect his people from the machinations of an evil demon-lord, and also allows his people to spread beyond the world of Torus and engage with all manner of new civilizations.


    The universe is a vast place, and there is room in it for the Althonians who go with their god. All over the world, people of every race, every alignment, and every class will join Althos on this new adventure and together all of you shall see a new tomorrow. A tomorrow of freedom, hope, unity, and possibilities. Join your god on this glorious new adventure.]


    ________________________________________________


    Althos felt his followers go through a number of moods all at once. Disbelief in many cases. Sorrow in others. Anger in some. But he also felt them experience joy. He felt them experience love. He felt them experience relief. Their emotions washed over him more intensely than ever before, because in signing the contract he had acquired an incredible number of new powers including an unparalleled sense of empathy, one far keener than any creature alive currently possessed.


    Standing in front of Morehammer, Althos almost fell to his knees as the sheer intensity of the emotions of not only his followers on Torus but also all of the creatures he could sense washed over him at once. It was breathtaking and positively powerful to feel the true intensity of the emotions of the plethora of lifeforms that existed throughout the solar system. Even for a god it was a bit overwhelming.


    ________________________________________________


    Morehammer smiled at me as he saw me struggle to stay standing. The creator of the dwarves chuckled and asked me a question in a surprisingly jovial tone.


    "That absolute empathy is something else isn''t it?" The echo of the ancient god asked me. There was a warmth in his gaze, and a joy that I despised audible in his tone. But I couldn''t blame him. He wanted immortality and he had probably just acquired as close to it as he could possibly have. It made sense for him to be elated, this was a moment of triumph for him.


    "It''s one of the many abilities I once had that I lost when I died. I can''t say that I miss it if I''m being completely honest." He told me. He wasn''t done talking either.


    "Absolute empathy is a bit overwhelming. Believe it or not you actually have my sympathies for having to endure it for the first time." He said, speaking honestly. That said he was still having a bit too much fun at my expense. And it''s not like this "absolute empathy" power was the only power that was surging into me at the moment. Especially because one big notification hovered in the center of my vision.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Decision Making Time


    Althos, as a result of the contract you''ve signed with Morehammer you''ve acquired the first tiers of influence over the domains of emotion and creation. Since you signed a contract with Morehammer specifically, the emotion you''ve gained power over was chosen in advance for you. It was love. This is an especially potent emotion, and its powers are surging into you even as you read this notification. But now you face an important decision: do you want to acquire the first tier of influence over the subdomain of art or the subdomain of blacksmithing?


    Both of these subdomains are powerful ones governed by the domain of creation. Art meshes well with both domains you''ve just acquired power over, and blacksmithing is fantastic for gods who are creating new civilizations, which is what you''ll be doing quite soon. Either choice is a valid and respectable choice, but you must make the choice.


    Which will you pick?]


    ________________________________________________


    The choice wasn''t a difficult one. Not in the slightest. I picked the art subdomain.


    Weeks ago I first heard of the art subdomain as the subdomain that governed beauty. I then heard of it again in the context of one of my shapeshifting powers. And at last, I now possessed the power to acquire it. And with it I suspected I''d experience a further upgrade to my potent shapeshifting prowess. When I selected this power I felt it surge into me, and I felt... changes happen to my body.


    As my mind filled with my understanding of my new powers I felt stronger than I had ever felt, and it felt positively wonderful. A serene and truly rapturous smile alighted across my face as I felt the plethora of new powers I possessed seep into my soul.


    ________________________________________________


    All over the world, moments after the notification alerted the Althonians of their god''s agreement with Morehammer, all manner of creatures who worshiped Althos were instantly teleported from their homes to the new floating islands and floating oceans throughout the planet. Plants, fish, humans, elves, dwarves, and other, odder creatures were yanked from their homes and safely deposited throughout floating colonies hovering all over the world.


    Creatures deep underground were teleported from their underground homes to new homes deep beneath the surfaces of floating islands. Creatures who lurked within the flightless depths of the seas were teleported to floating oceans made specifically for them that were impenetrable to the light of the sun. And for a few moments, these new places floated in the air, before abruptly teleporting elsewhere and placed in a unique temporal stasis.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Divine Realms


    Your Torunian worshipers have been taken and placed in your divine realm. Your divine realm is a dimension you have total control over, where you are at your strongest, and where the souls of your worshipers go when they die. Until this moment your divine realm has been an empty place littered with the souls of those who died and were your faithful. But now it''s changing.


    At the moment your divine realm is becoming... A copy of Torus actually. At a later date this will become something you have more direct control over, but for now, what you need to know is simple: this world is like the Torus of yesterday, just with more abandoned kingdoms and fewer dwarves. Althonian dwarves still exist in this world, but that''s less than half of all dwarves throughout Torus at the moment.


    What will be really interesting is seeing how dead Althonians interact with living Althonians. That said, you too will be teleporting in a matter of moments. Not to your divine realm, but to a world of your choosing. If you wish you could basically do a complete restart, on another world even in another solar system or galaxy. Even Htrae is an option if you want it to be.]


    Htrae... Andrea''s homeworld... I thought, a cruel smile on my face as I mulled that over. I wasn''t sure what option I would pick just yet, but I did want to go far from here for now. Perhaps a restart would do me good, especially since I could still travel to and from the solar system at will.


    I wouldn''t decide what to do until the moment before I was teleported away from the world of Torus. A bigger notification loomed overhead and told me to pick a destination, forcing my hand.


    As I was teleported away from Torus I quietly and silently said goodbye, for now, to the world of my birth. As I did I directed my final thoughts at the dwarves who stayed behind. It was a hateful one, filled with rampant malice and a desire that the demons and dragons who were now arrayed against them had fun devouring them.


    My smile turned malicious as I was yanked an unknown distance to a destination far from my homeworld. And as I was taken from my homeworld, my very body began to change on a fundamental level and in permanent ways.


    [Emotion domain details:


    The domain of emotions is the domain that governs any and all emotions all manners of life and unlife can feel. These emotions include love, fear, happiness, sadness, anger, and more. You have acquired power over love through the contract you signed with Morehammer because Morehammer was absolutely loved by his creations.


    The domain of emotions is a potent domain that allows those who wield influence over it to nonviolently and dramatically alter the worlds they come too. It brings with it a number of potent powers that come in two sets: the generic, omni-applicable powers like "Absolute empathy", and then the specific powers that come from each emotion you can influence such as "Love inducement", one of the powers you''ve acquired as the god of love.


    To acquire greater power over this domain, build cults dedicated to emotions and use your powers over emotions.


    Emotion domain passive powers:


    Absolute empathy: The power to absolutely sense and understand emotions felt by creatures within your sensory range.


    Emotional aura: At will you can suppress emotions near you and cause creatures near you to experience only emotions you wish. For now you can make creatures near you experience despair, love, or desire.


    Empathetic conversion: You can convert feelings someone feels towards someone or something into other feelings. For example, if someone hates dragons but loves gnomes, you can make them love dragons like they love gnomes, or hate gnomes like they hate dragons. As you gain greater power over emotions this power also undergoes various upgrades.


    Emotion inducement: You can induce emotions you have power over, in your case, this means love, desire, and despair, in any target aside from a vestige.


    Emotion domain active power:


    Empathetic Inundation: Once per hour you can overwhelm up to fifteen targets with a flood of emotions you have power over. The exact effect this will have on targets depends on the emotion you target them with. This differs from your inducement ability as your inducement ability adjusts a victim''s mind to the power, rather than just overwhelming them. This power doesn''t do that.


    Emotion domain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with this domain you grant them a far lesser version of your own empathy. By cursing them with it you take away their ability to understand how others feel.


    Love details:


    The emotion of love is an incredibly powerful emotion that relates to how people see other people, other lifeforms, and even objects and ideas. As a god of love, you can alter how people see other people and even relate to the world around them. You now have access to a whole bevy of powers that alter relationships and can forever alter history. What''s worse in your particular case is that you are a god of beauty and desire as well. This means that you are now tremendously powerful.


    What''s more is that unlike other domains and subdomains where you pick what you gain influence over, this particular domain grants you true and near-absolute mastery of the emotions you pick. All of your powers from specific emotions are capable of affecting anything but higher beings until you get to the final tier of this domain and become its overgod, something which no god has ever done before. This power has also amplified all of your lust abilities and elevated them to new levels.


    Love passive powers:


    Absolute beauty: You have now become the embodiment of beauty, a creature whose attractiveness and innate charisma transcends alignment, sexuality, and species. The true power of this, it''s mind-altering and sanity sundering effects are innately turned off but even passively you are impossibly, almost painfully attractive.


    When fully turned on this power instantly causes those who are sexually, romantically, or aesthetically attracted to men to fall for you in any and all ways they can. It snatches their hearts and wills aways and causes them to become fixated on you. It doesn''t matter what species of creature you are interacting with, or even your own form at the time you use this power, you are seen as the most attractive creature imaginable to those who behold you. This synergistic power can also freely be applied to artistic depictions of you as well, allowing you to make incredibly dangerous statues, paintings, sculptures, or other pieces of art.


    Aura of desire: You innately sense all of the desires of any creature who is in the range of this aura when you activate it. If they are attracted to you in any sort of way they also become obsessively infatuated with you.


    Aura of love: Creatures who are capable of feeling some sort of love are incapable of harming you as long as this aura is being used. They also view you as the manifestation of whatever sort of love they are capable of feeling, which overwhelms their minds and in the case of mortals begins to lower their sanity. Mortal minds are not meant to withstand continued exposure to gods of emotion.


    Love negation: You can snatch the love out of someone''s heart, even love they feel towards things and ideas, not just the love they feel towards people. You can absorb, destroy, or redirect this love however you wish.


    Meta love and lust inducement: As a god of love and desire you can induce either in any targets you wish aside from vestiges. You can direct this love, or lust however you wish and it thoroughly penetrates anyone targeted by it, unstoppably transforming their emotions.


    Mesmerizing presence: Whenever you turn on this power your true, terrifying power as a god of love leaks out and infects the minds of those near you with your sublime presence. This power causes any mortals and non-greater extraplanars in your presence to be filled with awe for you and causes them to be enamored with you.


    Relationship modification: You can modify a target''s relationships. This power is a fierce one that allows you to make someone love people who hate them, or snatch away all of the feelings of love someone feels. For now you can only manipulate or induce love, and desire. You cannot yet cause someone to fear people, or to experience anger towards someone.


    True love''s kiss: This is the ultimate version of the succubi''s kiss power. With this power, anyone you kiss falls in love with you. This power is unlike your other powers here. It is unlimited from the start. It could also be considered an enslavement kiss depending on who you want to use it on and for what purpose you intend to use it. Only you, or another god, one of hate or anger, could undo the effects of this kiss.]


    ________________________________________________


    As I read through the powers granted to me by love and emotions I realized something: Love was a truly terrifying emotion. And with these powers, I felt far more insanity-inducing than I ever had before. And that brought a thin grin to my face.


    I was being forcibly teleported to a new world, with a whole new set of powers, and I intended to use these new powers to their maximum potential. Soon, I would be free to use all of these new powers on a whole new planet, one beyond the solar system of my birth.

 169 A Whole New World

    The instant after I was teleported out of the solar system of my birth and into another world, Htrae, I found myself staring at the inside of a barn larger than any other barns I had ever seen. It was a bright thing, even in the darkness of my surroundings, and my perfect vision allowed me to effortlessly see the bright red paint on the planks that made up the walls that surrounded me.


    I was the only living thing in the surprisingly spacious space that I had been teleported into. That said, the barn wasn''t empty. I was surrounded by large bits of technology I had only seen indirectly through my sensory powers. They were called "tractors". The hefty machines were intended to be used to haul large equipment from one part of a farm to another.


    I was quietly comforted by the sight of something I understood as my introduction to Htrae. I silently approached one of the looming machines and when I took a single step forward, a familiar power activated.


    The instant I took my first step on Htrae I was instantly attuned to the volcanoes throughout the world. I felt an awareness of them surge dramatically into my mind and I grinned warmly as I gained power over them. There were hundreds on the surface of the world and many more within this world''s oceans. This awareness was pleasant to me, and I was happy that this power so immediately took hold. A second later I refocused and finished approaching the tractor.


    I approached the tractor and gently placed a single hand on it. When I did, one of my powers titled "Historic touch" activated automatically, and my mind was filled with glimpses of the person who owned the machine, as well as the machine''s most recent usages, the most recent of which happened earlier today. Unsurprisingly he was a human man and a farmer. Surprisingly he was quite old and had a stern look on his face whenever he was riding the tractor.


    The machinery was both hard and cold, and I wasn''t fond of how it felt against my hand but I didn''t mind it enough to let go of it. Not immediately anyway.


    I was in a whole new world and in this world I was almost completely alone. Somewhere in this world was one of the very first non-Torian people whose dreams I ever infiltrated, Andrea Handsfall. She was a native of this world, a Htreaian human. For a moment she filled my thoughts, after all, she was the one person on this entire planet that I actually knew.


    But honestly, even with that caveat, I wasn''t exactly flying blind. I had my domain-sense and the information it gave me was something I was constantly aware of, and I had my own innately powerful senses. They informed me of everything going on for kilometers around me.


    I wordlessly conjured one of my phantom copies and watched as the thing walked towards one of the barn walls that surrounded me and then incorporeally phased past the obstacle. At this point I couldn''t see it anymore but I felt when the copy of me took off into the sky and began to fly towards this world''s sun. I wasn''t worried about being detected by any life forms. There were none near me that weren''t plants or animals, and I knew that this world was an unmagical one. I wasn''t at risk of an unplanned discovery here.


    I turned my full attention back towards the barn itself and I began to look around me. I was looking for something. A moment after I turned my full mind towards the barn I found it: a way out. I could have phased through the walls as my phantom did, but I preferred to either teleport places or to actually walk around and behave as a mortal might. I turned towards the door, it was behind one of the larger tractors and began to walk towards it.


    It was an imposing, sliding thing made of red-painted wood and when I reached it I recognized that it was probably heavy and tough to open for solitary mortals, especially humans. That said I easily put my hands on it and forcefully slid it open, thanks in part to my infinite strength. As the thing was beginning to open I used my powers over sounds to silence what would probably have been a considerable amount of noise if I hadn''t reacted in time.


    On the other side of the door was a recently tilled and fairly sizable field of attended soil, being bathed in moonlight. The soil was healthy and plenty of seeds had already been planted. I walked out of the barn and onto the area right in front of the field.


    The area I found myself in was quite clearly a farm of some sort. It was a pleasant sight and for a moment I relaxed as I visually studied the area around me. I had always liked farms and farmers and so this was a nice introduction to Htrae. I fully suspected that the intervention of the system was at least partially responsible for this and I didn''t mind that at all. After the world-shaping drama I was involved in it was nice to be reminded of my earliest days, just over five weeks ago.


    As I stood out in the field I felt my skin be bathed in lunar light. My phantom copy was already closing in on this world''s sun and even it was taking its sweet time. Right now everything managed to be both simple and more complex than anything in my life had ever been. I had an enemy that I wanted to take down, but right now all that laid in front of me was a world to conquer in that way that only gods could conquer. I allowed my skin to take in more lunar light, grateful for the powers granted to me by the domain of stars, before turning my full attention to the field in front of me.


    I studied the soil for a moment before raising a single hand towards it and beginning to use my powers over agriculture to speed the growth of these crops.


    I watched as roughly half of the seeds in the field abruptly reached the next stage of their lifecycles, and a grin crossed my face. I kept the power limited to a mere half of this several acre-large field, but I knew that I could easily use this power on all of their crops at once if I had wanted too. I felt the life-force present within the field increase in vitality and presence, and for a moment I swore I saw the soil in which the seeds had been planted begin to sparkle lightly, even if for just a moment.


    After I performed this small and miraculous act I turned my feet towards the ground. I scanned the dirt at my feet and I instantly noticed a set of footprints in the dirt beneath me. I studied them and followed them with my eyes, noting that they went off in the direction of the one house I could sense in a nearly six-kilometer radius around me. The house wasn''t empty either, when I focused on it I could hear heartbeats inside of it, some of which belonged to humans and others of which belonged to animals.


    "Well... I suppose I might as well walk in that direction." I muttered, a soft smirk on my face as I began to make decisions about what to do.


    I began to walk towards the distant house, the closest other building in this area. I did so silently while activating a few of my love powers. As I did I began to examine myself, curious to see if my form had changed at all after gaining one of my more impressive, newly gained powers: "Absolute beauty".


    ________________________________________________


    As the god ventured forth towards the house of the Htreaian farmer and his family, he visually examined himself. He could do this as a god, due to his perfected senses. And what he saw astounded him, not enough to stop him from walking, but definitely enough to leave him speechless for a few moments.


    The god had always been innately mildly attractive in the sense that just about all gods were. Gods exuded potent charisma, even if they tried to take on the most homely appearance possible. Even Althos'' first human form, one of his least attractive humanoid guises, was considered fairly attractive by most people who laid eyes on it for reasons beyond their ability to articulate. But now... Now his form was something else entirely. In a whole other dimension.


    Althos'' current human form was that of a lightly sun-kissed human male with visibly muscular arms, light blue eyes, a perfect smile, and flawless black hair. His hair was naturally coifed and managed to both look and be soft to the touch. There was innate confidence to this form, and a quiet simplicity about it that added to its raw attractiveness since it didn''t feel like it was trying too hard.


    He had a noticeable and flawless jawline, high cheekbones, and an evenly proportioned and symmetrical face, like one chiseled from stone to honor some ancient god. One of his art-based abilities granted him new outfits whenever he wanted as well, and another one granted him an encyclopedic knowledge of fashion that transcended planets, species, and even universes.


    He was wearing what he now knew were called jeans, light blue denim pants, and a simple black t-shirt. He had on what would absolutely be considered a casual outfit, but somehow he felt comfortable in the fashion and didn''t mind it at all.


    His muscles lightly pushed against his clothing, defining them in a noticeable yet not eye-grabbing way. He wouldn''t need his fashion to be eye-grabbing for him to captivate people. His powers would do that for him.


    He wasn''t attempting to stand out, but with his powers, he wouldn''t need to attempt to be noticed to absolutely mesmerizing. There was something innately artistic and classically handsome about him that he knew would make it hard for people to look away from him.


    To gaze upon him was to gaze upon something that subconsciously tugged at one''s heartstrings in the way that many found gazing upon an elaborate, artfully made, marble statue, or even watching a sunrise, pulled at the heartstrings. He exuded a sort of classical ruggedness now. And that was if he didn''t feel like rending minds or stealing sanity with the true power of his eerie beauty. If he felt like truly unleashing his powers, supernatural potency filled the air that surrounded him with considerable arcane energies and impossible to resist subliminal messaging that seeped into even the strongest minds.


    One of the strangest effects of his new powers was that he exuded an air of serenity. He could sense this when he began to look upon himself for the first time, and he had yet to see how this affected the world around him, but he sensed a strange new aura surrounding him that encircled him in a serene, nearly invisible mist. He was unsure of what it would do when exposed to lifeforms that weren''t plants, but a part of him was curious to watch whatever it did happen.


    After gawking at himself for a moment he took a second to read through his newly acquired artistic powers. The more he read the more fascinated he became, enough so that by the time he finished reading through them he was close enough to the house that had any of its inhabitants been awake and at a window they would have spotted him.


    ________________________________________________


    [Art subdomain details:


    The art subdomain governs things like music, fashion, painting, sculpting, theater, literature, and other art forms. This is a surprisingly powerful subdomain that gives those who influence it powers over all manners of expressions and a plethora of unique abilities. It becomes far more powerful when you have gained powers over other domains and subdomains, especially domains like emotion, life, and both souls and spirits.


    The art subdomain is in many ways a relational subdomain that impacts mortals and shapes how gods are worshiped. Because of this the process by which more power is gained over this subdomain isn''t just building cults that worship you as a god of the arts, but to gain more power over art you must inspire creatures to create artwork depicting you and your actions.


    Art subdomain passive powers:


    Artwork animation and imprisonment: You can animate some forms of art, such as statues and paintings bringing them to life. You can also trap souls in artwork if you claim them from bodies or steal them from the living.


    Artwork analysis: This synergistic power allows you to obtain a considerable amount of information from simply gazing at a piece of art. Among other things you can learn the name of the creator, the impact the artwork has had on the cultures and peoples who''ve seen it and other information that is artwork-type dependent such as the lines of a play or the words of another piece of literature or the materials used in the making of a statue. This power also grants you masterful knowledge of fashion.


    Artwork creation: You can create some types of art immediately merely by willing them into existence. Examples of the types of art you can create at will, at the moment, includes statues, sculptures, and paintings. As you gain more diverse powers you may gain the ability to create more types of art at will.


    Aura of beauty: You can generate an aura that increases or decreases the physical beauty of those who come around you depending on both your mood and your feelings towards the people being changed.


    Aura of colors: You can surround yourself in a colorful aura that disorients people who attempt to see you, while also charming non-hostile people.


    Aura of serenity: As a god of patience, peace, art, and love you can exude an aura that prevents mortals from engaging in hostile actions while around you. This aura is absolute, so long as it is only affecting mortals and even dragons cannot resist it. This can also be a permanent change, thanks to the fact that you have powers over peace, which means this aura can be used to end wars or lifelong conflicts, at will. It replaces feelings of hate with a desire for friendship and alters the minds of those it affects.


    Those in your aura are incapable of being hostile, even in their hearts, towards you, and this portion of the power affects extraplanars as well.


    Beauty manipulation: You can manipulate something''s or someone''s beauty. Beauty in this instance is described as physical attractiveness if related to people or aesthetic appeal if related to an object. You can make someone or something more or less beautiful. If used on a person you can make them beautiful or handsome, and if used on a garden or house it can make it tidy and aesthetically pleasing.


    Bookworm: You can infuse others with an encyclopedic knowledge of a book you know the contents of. This gives them total recall of the contents of the book, even if they''ve never read it.


    Clothing creation: You can create any type of clothing at will. You can also create the clothing around yourself or around others that will supernaturally fit anyone you allow them too, maintaining their exact appearance and never wrinkling.


    Clothing manipulation: You can manipulate clothing in virtually any way you can imagine, with some examples being that you could make even the softest clothing as impenetrable as the toughest armor or impervious to schools of magic you can influence at will, or even making the clothing impossible to put on or take off easily. You can also destroy clothing at will.


    Color manipulation: This synergistic power takes from the domain of light and the art subdomain. With it you gain the power to destroy, generate, and manipulate color. This power can allow you to transform the appearance of things, cause people to go blind, and can even permanently alter the way the world looks. This power is absolute if used on non-living things, but can be resisted by living things or even constructs if their creator was powerful enough.


    Muse: You gain a muse''s powers, the ability to both inspire creativity and take it away. The inspiration given this way allows for those it affects to be more artistically successful and also to love their art more wholly. However they use this inspiration is up to you, but if you wish you use this creatively to create potent cults of artists who inspire others to turn towards you.


    Music mastery: One of the first artforms you have gained power over is music. With this power, you have become a level one spellsinger, and you gain the power to both create musical instruments and utilize them as only a god can. You can use music to heal, destroy, alter minds, and even change personalities and souls.


    With this power, you can utilize holy, healing, destructive, demonic, corruptive, pure, and even insanity-inducing music as well as a number of other forms of music that affect the living in a number of ways.


    Symbol manipulation: You can manipulate and even create symbols. These symbols can be used in a number of ways with one of the most infamous examples of this power being an outer god who loved theater not only creating a play that turned those who performed, witnessed, or even read it insane, but also creating a sanity-draining symbol that converted those who looked at it into his servants.


    You can also use this power to create and manipulate glyphs and sigils, and therefore create a number of supernatural and magical effects such as creating traps that explode when someone walks by them, or areas of healing that can be manually triggered by someone walking over them.


    Thought manifestation: Synergistic power between the domain of the mind, and the art subdomain. With this power you can clearly and keenly physically manifest your thoughts.


    Art subdomain active powers:


    Imprisonment: This law-based synergistic power allows you to trap up to five creatures in a book for up to a week. During that time they are either trapped within the letters or stuck in the story in-progress until they are freed by you or at the end of the week-long period.


    Lexiconicy: You can use powers over art, creation, and life, to transform artistic depictions of something into real objects once every two days. With this power, you can draw a sword on a piece of paper and then manifest that exact sword into reality. Or you can come across a mention of a cellphone in a book, and after reading that book bring that cellphone into reality. This power is not yet strong enough to bring a fictional character from a story into reality.


    Art subdomain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with the art subdomain you grant them improved artistic talent and creativity. By cursing them with it, you do the opposite of that.]


    ________________________________________________


    I eventually reached the house, after admiring the new powers at my disposal and I walked right up to the front door. I allowed my senses to wash over it and in getting closer to it I gained a finer understanding of its interior design and the people who lived in it. The elderly farmer who used the tractor I had touched before, and his daughter and son lived in this house.


    I studied the new information at my disposal for a second before smiling and knocking on the door. I used my powers over sound to manipulate the noise so that only the farmer could hear it and then I kept on knocking until I heard him get up from his bed and begin to approach the door. At first his footfalls were distant, as the house was a two-story building, but when they began to close in on me I stopped knocking on the door and activated a number of my newer abilities.


    By the time the elderly man reached the door he was already being affected by a number of my powers. I needed information and I wasn''t intending to hurt the man so I didn''t feel bad about using my powers on him. It was at precisely the same moment when the elderly farmer opened the door and laid his eyes upon me for the first time that I received a massive update to my sensory powers. My phantom had just reached this solar system''s sun, after sailing towards it quite leisurely.

 170 The Face Of A God

    Geoffrey Finagan was a crotchety old man and when he awoke to the sound of someone knocking on his door loud enough to rouse him from his sleep it put in a foul mood. He quickly got up, checked the time on a digital clock on his nightstand, noticed the ungodly hour he was being roused at, and began to stomp towards the door, purposefully pounding on the floor beneath him.


    The noise he was making should have been loud enough to resound throughout the rest of the house. And had he been more focused he undoubtedly would have noticed how odd it was that it didn''t. It quickly tapered off and before it got too far was inaudible to the man. That said the strange effects taking place throughout the house were affecting, among other things, his mind and thus prevented him from realizing all of what was out of place.


    As he stomped off towards the stairwell, and then afterward towards the front door, a number of curious things happened. First, his children didn''t wake up. But this was lost on the grumpy old man, who was too self-absorbed to question why none of his children were awake if he could hear a remarkably loud banging at the door.


    The second thing, something he did notice, was that his hostile gradually decreased as he got closer and closer to the front door. This was mysterious and made no sense to the elderly human. The third thing that happened that was odd was that the knocking at the door came to a gradual end as if the person waiting for someone to open the door could hear him approaching, but this one was only a bit strange so it didn''t particularly weird him out. Unbeknownst to him, that was exactly what happened.


    As he approached the door he began to feel a strange yet undeniable wave of... happiness come over him. It was like he was expecting an old friend at the door. But he wasn''t. He was sure he wasn''t. And thus by the time he got to the front door, and before he actually opened it, he was filled with uncertainty.


    He spent a moment in front of the door, unsure of what to expect whenever he opened it. The door was a solid block of wood and it had no peepholes so the man couldn''t peer through the door. He purposefully lived far from any nearby people or settlements, so he didn''t really need a peephole. That said he knew someone was on the other side of the door. So after a few moments, he manned up and opened the door. And in doing so found himself face to face with a creature unlike any he had ever met.


    Geoffrey was shorter than Althos was, and he had been looking straight ahead, at face-level. So before he was exposed to the face of a god, he got a chance to study the chiseled form of the transcendentally attractive deity. He looked at Althos'' chest, and the stern expression that had covered his face before just melted away. His eyes began to lazily trail upwards so that the man could look at the face of the strange intruder who had come to his farm and then his home.


    His mind wasn''t entirely inactive, rather it was being suffused with so much new information that he was unable to physically do much aside from just stare, doe-eyed at the god in front of him. One of the key bits of new information that his mind was being suffused with was that the figure in front of him was a god and some of the things that that meant.


    ________________________________________________


    I silently observed the strange man who opened the door. Geoffrey Finigan. The very first human I had met in another world.


    He was an older man, with an emaciated frame. That said, he was stronger than he may have looked at a glance, and as I silently read over his stats I recognized how much endurance and energy he had despite his old age. He was a farmer but was also in his early 70s. He had an admirable work-ethic if nothing else.


    He had brown eyes and hair to match, but his hair was balding and I could see a cataract in one of his eyes which was straining his vision as well as gave his eye a strange, almost milky look. I could heal him, and I silently made the decision to do so. I had once healed an entire solar system. Healing one elderly man would be easy, especially since this health condition was brought on, in his case, by age.


    He was blissfully enraptured by my powers, a number of auras surrounding me all at once and seeping into his mind. But the two most powerful effects that were altering his mind were two of my newer abilities: "Mesmerizing presence" and "Ascension". Because of them, the mortal in front of me knew what I was and he was enraptured.


    After a few moments passed I folded my arms in front of me, and began to speak.


    "Hmm... I wonder what you looked like when you were younger." I mused, a curious smile on my face. The man''s mouth opened, but no words came out. After a few moments, he simply closed it again. I chuckled and I placed one of my hands on the man''s face.


    His skin was sagging and was rough to the touch. I made eye contact with the man and smiled sadly. Time had not been good to him. But I was about to be. He grinned at me, his face still slack. I could tell he was still mentally adjusting to the incredible power I exuded, especially in comparison to him. He was an aging human, a member of a short-lived species whose bodies and minds began to very slowly weaken over time as early as their third decade.


    With but a thought I began to undo the effects of age on his body. His skin grew thicker, more vibrant, and he even grew taller and more muscular before me. I felt the awe and reverence he felt towards me, a mysterious and divine stranger, grow as I watched age loosen its grip on his life and on his body.


    The man was 71, but by the time I stopped reversing his age he had the appearance he once had in his prime. I kept my hand on his face for perhaps five seconds, and in that time I undid about five decades worth of aging on his body, and by the time I lifted my hand from his face he was physically in his mid-twenties.


    His eyes were healed, his hair was back, and the simple sleeping outfit he had on went from fitting him perfectly to squeezing him tightly. I chuckled and studied him more.


    "Hmm... I suppose you''ll have to do." I said, aloud, after giving him a once-over. This visibly confused the elderly man. He looked at me and finally began to speak.


    "I''ll ''have to do''?" He asked, clearly confused. I laughed audibly at his confusion. I then nodded at him.


    "Yes. You''ll have to do. It''s okay, I''ll further enhance you." I said, understanding that he was confused. He looked at me, his confusion only further increasing with my vague words. He wasn''t distressed by my words, but he was mystified by them.


    He was a straight man, both romantically and sexually, and thus not capable of falling in love with me romantically or sexually. That didn''t bother me though. His love for me and my influence over him grew even from just spending time in my presence. I could feel him becoming more and more devoted to me the more seconds passed.


    "Althos... I don''t understand." He confessed, after a few seconds of silence. At this point the amount of my influence he was under had already exceeded 20%. I began to speak in response to his words. I was humored by his confusion and felt like indulging the man''s curiosity and desire to understand.


    "You are going to serve me, Geoffrey. Even now your heart and mind are slowly being turned over to me, as a natural consequence of standing in my presence and looking upon my face. You''ll be my first worshiper in this world." I told him, speaking with the confidence of someone who had done this before. Because I had. Though never with these powers. Geoffrey''s eyes widened in shock and alarm.


    "Serve you? I just... I just met you!" He exclaimed, in alarm. I chuckled at his shock and had to work to not laugh. I mulled his words over for a moment, before opting to try something new on a whim: behaving as a lawful god and establishing a cult of order, hierarchy, and authority, here on Htrae.


    "And? You know that I am a god. That alone is enough of a reason to worship me." I stated, telling him something that was quite frankly the truth while trying to project the pride that gods were capable of exuding naturally. Gods could help mortals in any way imaginable and so it only felt fair for a god to ask for worship and service in exchange for the things we did for mortals.


    Geoffrey began to try and formulate an objection to my words, but I could see that he was struggling with it. I smiled at him and began to speak once more.


    "Geoffrey, moments ago I touched your face and undid the effects of age on your body. I can do that freely. I am power incarnate, creation, destruction, nature, and more all rolled up into one and given a conscious form. You can''t even begin to think of the things I could do if I felt like it." I told him, speaking honestly and neutrally of the power at my disposal. His awed eyes widened as he realized what I did.


    "To worship and serve me is your fate. Do not be afraid of it." I told him, speaking comfortingly. I towered over him and I had to look down to make eye contact with the man. At this point, my influence over him was nearing 35%. He was still, and mentally I could sense that he was struggling with the idea of serving a god he had just met, but I could also feel the creeping, increasing power of my influence over him and how it was being to corrode his efforts to resist it.


    "Serve me. Worship me and never again shall you experience worry. Worship me and you can attain whatever you desire." I told him, speaking honestly. The more I spoke the faster my influence corroded what remained of his ability to resist me. I watched him close his eyes and I felt his heart begin to turn towards me, in the same way that I had felt so many billions of creatures turn to me in prayer and submission. After a few moments, he began to speak to me, speaking sincerely and from his heart.


    "Althos... I am just afraid. I know nothing about you." He confessed, having met me moments ago. There was a troubled look on his face as he spoke. He wasn''t wrong and I could see why, even for a short-lived mortal, this hesitation would cause him to resist my words.


    That said, with my newfound powers over emotions I could do something about that. Wordlessly, I rose a hand and placed it on his chest.


    "You will never have need of fear ever again." I told him, a smile on my lips. I then activated one of my newer powers, "Empathetic conversion", and transformed the feelings of fear he felt into feelings of love and devotion, all aimed at me. I watched as the troubled expression on his face melted into something new, something serene and accepting. He glanced at me and nodded, accepting his destiny with poise and grace.


    "Althos... Yes, I see it now. I can feel it now. And also... How rude of me, please come inside!" He said, his attitude transforming as a result of the powers I had used on him.


    ________________________________________________


    Over the course of the next three hours, Geoffrey would tell me about his life, his understanding of the world, and answer any question I had to the fullest of his abilities. He also willingly gave me his memories. By the time he was running out of things to tell me about himself the sun was starting to peek above the horizon.


    I didn''t have to let him talk, but he had wanted too. He seemed to like talking, and so I had opted to allow him to continue to speak. During that time I quietly inspected the final set of new powers I had just acquired, through the first tier of influence over the domain of creation. And by the time I was done reading through them I was quite fond of them.


    ________________________________________________


    [Creation Domain Details:


    The creation domain is both as simple and as intense as it sounds. It allows for gods to create all manner of things, and governs things related to creation like alchemy, technology, cooking, blacksmithing, art, and more. It is a critical domain for the most ambitious gods.


    With power over civilization and creation gods can create entire settlements and kingdoms over the course of a single day. With power over blacksmithing and creation a god can arm an army in an hour. All domains can be powerful depending on when and how they are used, but creation is an excellent all-around type domain with plenty of handy abilities and some awe-inspiringly powerful combinations that come from synergizing things.


    To gain greater power over the domain of creation, create creatively and use these powers to gain worshipers.


    Creation Domain Passive Powers:


    Material mastery: You can manipulate a wide variety of materials and use them to create an assortment of things. You can manipulate glass, ceramics, clay, plastic, oil, many kinds of metal such as gold and silver, wood, and all sorts of other things to create all manner of objects.


    Construct creation: You can create constructs, magically powered machines and robots, out of an assortment of materials and things you can manipulate. Constructs you create are loyal to you and follow your orders absolutely. You can grant them true free will and sentience if you opt to give them a soul.


    Duplication: You can duplicate things, creating perfect, flawless copies of even plants if you want too. So far you can''t use this power on things with souls, but that may change if you increase your influence over the right domains. That said, you can target areas and recreate them if you wish, making this power an incredibly versatile and potent. This power is perfect for say, feeding people.


    Instantaneous creation: You can create small objects, even things like daggers and knives, watches, and instantly.


    Furniture creation: You can create practically any type of furniture you want, even larger pieces of furniture such as beds, sofas, or tables, out of many sorts of materials.


    Currency creation: You can create inanimate currency at will, allowing you to elevate those you target out of poverty or destroy economies if you want too. This power is a useful one for gaining materially oriented worshipers and for showing people the perks of worshipping you. This is synergistic with the law domain, as the law domain governs business and economics.


    Creation Domain Blessing And Curse Details:


    You can bless creators, such as alchemists, blacksmiths, engineers, or others with similar careers, and improve their ability to create effectively as well as the qualities of the objects they create. Cursing them does the opposite. You can also bless individually created things and improve their quality as well as their longevity. Cursing them, unsurprisingly, does the opposite of that, damaging them, worsening their quality, and shortening their longevity.]


    ________________________________________________


    As the sun began to climb into the morning sky I silently conjured a glazed, ceramic coffee mug, using "Instantaneous creation" to test out my abilities. The thing phased into being in my hand, and Geoffrey smiled at me, delighted at the display of my powers.


    "Something from nothing... Nice." I muttered, smiling at the mug as I examined it. It was far from the most impressive thing I had ever conjured, but it was a nice display of the utility of my newfound powers.


    He and I were in a small but functional kitchen, seated at a nice table. I quite liked the arrangement of his house, and had enjoyed the few hours Geoffrey and I had spent chatting, though admittedly most of that time was him chatting, not me.


    It was at this moment that I heard the children of the man begin to stir from their sleep. Before another ten minutes had passed, the two children, who were actually adults who were around the same physical, apparent age as Geoffrey and myself, began to get dressed. It wouldn''t take them less than another ten minutes before they were on their way downstairs and towards us.


    They wouldn''t see me until both of them, distracted by their own conversation entered the kitchen from the hallway. When they stepped through the empty doorway that separated the hallway from the kitchen, they stopped their conversation and starred at me. I glanced at them and smiled, feeling far stronger than I had ever felt before.

 171 Learning About Htrae

    The two Htreaian humans who just entered Geoffrey''s kitchen were his children. Geoffrey turned to them and began to smile happily, before speaking while also motioning for them to sit down in front of me.


    "Good morning my children!" He said, sounding quite chipper. There was a brightness in his eyes that helped hide the bit of fanaticism in them that I could clearly see and feel radiating from him. My ability to detect emotions allowed me to detect the fanaticism he felt towards me which was a consequence of the powers I used on him moments after we met.


    I turned to Geoffrey''s children, smiled, and activated two potent powers of mine at once: "Ascension", and "Aura of Authority". Both of these powers were significantly powerful law-based abilities that cemented my authority. One of them, "Ascension" was, in essence, an empowered version of one of my faith-domain abilities, and the other "Authority Aura" was an auric power that informed creatures that I was an incredibly powerful creature of law and authority.


    I quietly performed a surface-level reading of their minds while their vision clouded over from the notification they received. Purely coincidentally I was able to read the notification as it filled their heads.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: In The Presence Of A God


    You are standing in front of a god, a supreme being who embodies power, creation, destruction, and more. You stand in front of Althos, a god of things as primordial as love, law, and nature.


    Althos himself is a god who leans more towards embodying the "power" aspect of his species, and as such is a powerful being of law and change. He is capable of healing entire planets and civilizations that recognize his power need not fear starvation or defeat. He understands his innate position as a creature that exists at the top of hierarchies, and many of his powers help mortals quickly begin to recognize that as well.


    He is also a primal entity and god of love and standing in his presence without feeling his powers tug at the mind and claim portions of the heart is impossible for mortals. Even now you can no doubt feel his proximity wearing away at you. Embrace it and surrender to the joy he can bring you.


    If you submit to him, worship him, and vow to obey him, he shall protect your whole family. All who serve are protected and join an interplanetary faith that ensures that they and their families will live long and prosperous lives.


    Submit.]


    ________________________________________________


    I turned to Geoffrey and asked if he could give me some water, as I gave him the mug I had created. He joyfully turned back to me, accepted the mug, and got up out of his seat. When he turned his back to me, I turned back towards his two children and activated my powers in full.


    I gazed at them as I turned on the full, unrestrained potential of a few of my abilities. But I had a plan in place. I intended to test the powers, but not permanently. And to do so in an impermanent way, I would need to test two of my other abilities, ones I had never used before.


    ________________________________________________


    The entity that calmly sat at the kitchen was a creature of many things. He was a creature of vast power, of considerable curiosity, and a being who was filled with many truly terrifying abilities. And the moment he turned his gaze back at the children of Geoffrey Finigan, it was clear that he was momentarily allowing his curiosity to be at the forefront of his mind.


    For a single brief instant, the young man and the young woman who gazed upon the god were subjected to the full and unrestrained effects of a few different abilities. The first was the potent ability known as "Absolute beauty", which was a passive power of Althos'' that was always in effect but was usually more than a bit muted. But the one second it wasn''t, it''s true and sinister effects took hold in the minds of the human mortals who happened to be looking at the young god.


    Saoirse Finagan, a bisexual woman, instantly felt her heart be snatched away from her and from her boyfriend. Althos'' potent powers washed over her and seeped into the deepest crevices of her soul. It was an irresistible, mind, and heart altering wave of divine force that didn''t care what relationships it destroyed. In some ways, it reflected Althos'' own cold attitudes towards mortals.


    Althos ultimately favored negotiating and gaining the worship of mortals of their own volition, but he was more than willing to destroy their minds and then remake them in a way that suited him. He had done it in the past with creatures like Ygaynth, Glacial, and Milene, and was quietly getting over his reluctance to do it to more creatures, as this act of curiosity demonstrated.


    That said, "Absolutely beauty" wasn''t the only power of his he freely unleashed here. Althos sensed Saoirse''s heart become his, and so he turned away from Geoffrey''s daughter and instead turned towards Geoffrey''s son, Seamus. His eyes coolly washed over the young man, and for a single moment, he wondered what to do with him. And then he began to smile cruelly.


    The god was a man on a mission, and that mission involved making a cult in this world. To do that he needed loyal and fanatical followers. And so he started with Seamus.


    As Geoffrey began to fill Althos'' mug with water, the god himself beckoned for Seamus to come forth. The mortal did so, happily. Althos placed one of his hands on the human''s chest and activated two of the new and dark powers he possessed: "Love negation" and "Relationship modification". By fusing those powers Althos got a chance to gaze at the relationships Seamus had built over the course of his life. He got a chance to see all of the people that Seamus loved, including his family.


    Althos didn''t modify how the man felt about his family, for he wanted the family to be the center of the cult, but he did modify the other relationships Geoffrey had made and his modifications weren''t subtle. Using "Love negation", Althos destroyed the other relationships Seamus had made with people outside of his family, and he had to work to suppress a grin as he did so.


    As Althos'' powers wrecked the relationships Seamus had made over the course of his life, he also activated a few particularly nasty abilities. He began to actively crush Seamus'' sanity using "Maddening touch" and began to turn the young man into a fanatic of his utilizing "Fanaticism Inducement".


    Seamus felt relief and gratitude surge into him even as the god''s touch actively corroded his sanity and bent his mind towards the god. The god coldly considered kissing the young man, but after a moment decided against it. It wasn''t necessary, and Althos knew that that was his ultimate power. He wanted to save it, even if it did have unlimited uses. That said, he did use one final power on Geoffrey: "Love inducement".


    He didn''t put another hand on him for this one. Instead, he just gazed into Seamus'' eyes. And then he activated the power and instilled in the human such an intense love for him that it made the love he felt towards his family feel like the passing fondness one had for a classmate who complimented them once.


    This power was another of the love powers that completely transformed souls and hearts indifferently, with the same level of passion that a human might treat stomping an insect who made it into their living room. The powers of the love domain were utterly horrifying, and their ability to totally transform a mortal''s life made them handy tools of the gods but also cruel powers to utilize on mortals. Not that a power being cruel had ever really stopped Althos before. Especially since the god had a plan in place.


    ________________________________________________


    Conducting my experiment took me a matter of seconds. Perhaps 10 seconds in total had passed since I first activated "Absolute beauty". I silently shut it off or rather returned it to its default, restrained state. And that gave me enough time to target Saoirse with one of my new and potent abilities.


    I turned my gaze towards her and studied her for a moment. She was a petite redhead, and was quite pretty. She wore an outfit not dissimilar to mine, jeans and a t-shirt. She had grass-colored eyes and was blushing at my gaze. I chuckled and targeted her with a single usage of "Rewind", and as it took effect she suddenly closed her eyes and sighed in relief.


    She was now as she before I unleashed "Absolute beauty" on her. I then immediately reapplied "Ascension" to her, since it was one of the effects that would have worn off when I used "Rewind".


    In the immediate aftermath of all of that, I sensed her sincere confusion, and even her slight fear, but more than anything else I sensed her relief. I chuckled as I watched her, and she began to blush again, but not to the same extent as before. I then turned my gaze back to Seamus and began to wonder what to do with him.


    I could easily reverse what I had done to him, but I also had the power to do so even without using "rewind" on him. I gazed at him, my hand still sapping his sanity, and then chuckled. I would keep him this way. After all, he still loved his family, and I hadn''t really hurt him, I just cut down on the amount of time it would take for him to begin to worship me of his own volition.


    Seamus himself was a muscular man with brown hair and dark eyes. He had an imperfect smile and a dimpled face, and of all of us, he looked the youngest. Which made sense since he was the second youngest one of us, after me, but I was a god with the ability to perfectly control my appearance and I favored my current appearance which was that of someone in his 20s.


    Like me, he had sun-kissed skin, and until I inspected him using my "Apprisal" ability I thought that he had had an outdoor job, but in actuality, he was a prison guard. Saoirse was a teacher at a nearby high school. They both had intriguing jobs, ones which I could see myself using as a way to expand the cult I was going to build here.


    At this point Geoffrey returned and the man didn''t question why I had a hand on his son''s chest. He quietly and easily accepted it, since when I had done it to him he got much younger and was also filled with love for me. He silently assumed I was doing something similar to his son, and was visibly pleased at the idea of that. And because of that I grew more fond of Geoffrey. At the same time I helped myself to copies of the family''s memories. None of them resisted, so I didn''t even need to drain their memories out of them. I appreciated that.


    I motioned for the two humans to join their father and I at the table. And then I began to scheme.


    ________________________________________________


    My powers over the mind and memories allowed me to instantly absorb memories. And as a consequence of that, coupled with the memories I had just gained from the Finagan family, I gained an intimate understanding of what it was like to grow up in Glendale, the community closest to this tiny farm.


    Saoirse and Seamus had grown up there, gone to school there, and they even lived there. They just spent the weekends with their father, as a way to stay close to him. Today was actually the first day of the work-week, as understood by the majority of the people of Htrae, and so normally in a half-hour Saoirse and Seamus would be on their way back home, beginning the trek back in objects called "cars", which were similar to pieces of technology found one world in my native solar system.


    Physically I spoke with them with the family for a few minutes, even though most of my focus was in my own mind, scheming about how to best transform this world.


    ________________________________________________


    "Htrea is an... interesting world." I mused, speaking to the domains and subdomains that lurked "within" me. In my own head I heard a chorus of sinister laughter. Interestingly, one of the loudest peals came from the domain of magic. It was also the first to speak back after the laughter died down.


    "Yes, it sure is. This world is a world that is fairly lacking in the supernatural." The domain told me, reiterating something that I knew already. Not only had the system told me about this, back when I first met Andrea, it was something I realized through the cultural and historic knowledge I acquired, courtesy of the Finigan family, and then again when I first began to analyze the knowledge I had acquired through "Stellar awareness".


    Htrea was made up mostly of oceans and other bodies of water. Over 70% of its surface was covered in water. It had a number of sizeable continents, and if one counted the poles on the planet as a single continent then there were seven separate continents, with five of them being on two super landmasses, and one of them being a solitary island-continent that was utterly gigantic in comparison to other continents.


    The nation I had been teleported too was named "New Sol", and was a sort of super-nation made up of sixteen, much smaller, nation-like governing bodies. Interestingly enough, though Andrea lived in the same continent "New Sol" was located within, she did not live in the same nation. She also spoke a different language than the Finigan family did, which was unsurprisingly different than the language of the humans of Puerto Rico. Not that that mattered, I could easily teach anyone any language so long as I had heard it first. I was being introspective for a moment when a new voice caught my mental ear.


    "This planet is very interesting. Its technology includes things like ''Cell-phones'' and ''Computers'', which allow for instantaneous, real-time communication across national or even continental borders!" Uttered a surprisingly robotic voice. It took me a moment to realize that the voice I had just heard was in all likeliness the voice of the domain of creation.


    "This world also has planes! These metal contraptions are capable of flight and can travel across continents in hours or even minutes in the cases of the fastest planes." The domain exclaimed, excitedly. The domain continued to babble on, for a moment before another domain spoke up. This one had a rigid, authoritarian voice.


    "But this nation... ''New Sol''... It is quite fond of bureaucracies and paperwork. There''s so much an adult needs. ''I.D. cards'', ''Birth registration forms'', ''Social Identification Codes'', ''Drivers licenses'', and more. I love this! Althos, you should learn from this for when you finally begin to interconnect your faith and form a distinctly unique empire of your own." The voice excited exclaimed. Despite the sternness of its voice, it was clearly overjoyed. This speaker was the domain of law.


    "Nations like this... Krawhaha, I love them. They are perfect for spreading infectious diseases. They have so many processes to go through before they can respond in full to a contagion that by the time they finally get to the place where they can ''legally'' respond to me, I have infected millions of their citizens." This voice was sickly sounding and had a laugh that was eerily like a cough. I immediately identified it as the voice of the domain of disease. Its words were intriguing to me, and a part of me made a mental note to put that to the test later on. As I did that, the domain continued to speak.


    "Diseases could easily become a potent weapon of yours in this world. You could ravage this world with disease, and then appear and heal everyone when they are filled with despair, dramatically demonstrating your powers and saving this world, becoming hailed as a hero and a god of hope." The disease domain whispered, its sickly voice infecting me with fun ideas. I mulled it over and had a fun idea of my own.


    "Though I could also create a stealth cult of the diseased, modifying sicknesses so that the sick become attuned to me and begin to delight in their illnesses. I could steadily transform the discomfort they feel from diseases into pleasure and use that to make them enjoy being sick and see being sick as, if not their default state than at least their preferred state." I whispered inwardly, delighting more than a few of the domains within me. The disease domain in particular was delighted at that suggestion and began to laugh loudly.


    While I was having this purely mental conversation, events were transpiring around me. Saoirse and Seamus had to go to their jobs, and asked me if I''d like to go with them in their "cars" to see the community they came from. I politely declined the offer, since I now had the ability to teleport anywhere within this world. Geoffrey and I did walk them to their cars though. When they left, I bid the man adieu and I told him that I''d be going ahead and spending today in Glendale. This surprised him, but when I told him that I''d probably be coming back tonight he was delighted.


    For now, I was going to do what I did when I first sprang to life: I was going to pretend to be a human, at least while I oriented myself. And I could have far more fun now than I could have when I was trapped in the tutorial, in a world with dangerous monsters and powerful entities. This world had humans, animals, plants, and a very small number of extraplanars. It was nowhere near as dangerous or as biologically diverse as Torus which was perfect for me.


    This place was a playground for someone with the sheer number of powers at my disposal. And I intended to acquire more power, and to make this world a perfect little playground for me to rule however I felt like ruling it. Moments after I saw Geoffrey smile, I teleported myself to an unoccupied road just outside of Glendale, and I began to walk.

 172 Killing Time

    I had a few advantages compared to mortals when I went on long-distance walks. The first was that my stamina was unlimited. The second was that I was capable of walking as fast or as slow as I wanted, due in part to my unlimited stamina. I had teleported from not far from Geoffrey''s house and teleported to a road that was surrounded by a dense forest.


    The road was poorly maintained and was one of the few that led in or out of Glendale. This gave me the impression that this was the sort of place that tended to trap those unfortunate enough to get stuck here. I liked the way it looked, and a part of me was tempted to further break it but I couldn''t. Seamus and Saoirse were on their way here and this was the road they were traveling on. So for now I ignored it and made my way towards civilization.


    I speedily walked, traveling far faster than cars could, and before a minute had passed I found myself closing in on the outskirts of Glendale. Soon enough I''d be close enough to people to be spotted by them so I began to quietly prepare for my first interactions with Htreaians I didn''t intend to immediately dominate.


    I began activating one of my newer powers: "Currency creation". I immediately felt the pockets of my jeans begin to be filled by papers, and I pulled one out and was delighted to get my first look at what was considered "currency" in this nation. In my hand was a thin blue piece of paper, adorned with symbols of various buildings on both the front and back of the paper. At each corner of the paper in my hand, also on both sides, was a small but visible number: 10.


    "How odd..." I mused, amused by the note''s design. I knew, from the memories I''d absorbed, that this money was called a "Solite". I used telekinesis to pull out all of my money while also using "Instantaneous creation" to create a wallet made of leather. I then used my mental powers to store the money within my wallet, and place the wallet within my right pocket.


    I entered the town''s outskirts with a smile on my face and I deactivated my "mesmerizing presence" power as I made my way towards a diner that Seamus was quite fond of. The diner was a small place, which made it the perfect spot for me to hide out until the government buildings I needed to visit were actually open. It was only six forty-five in the morning, and though the sun was out and visible in the sky, that didn''t mean that the places I actually needed to go too were open yet.


    ________________________________________________


    In a matter of moments, I reached the entrance to the diner and opened the glass door with ease. As I pushed it open I heard the soft sound of a bell from within the diner''s kitchen and the not-so-distant noise of various types of machinery. And from within the diner''s kitchen, a soft voice delicately spoke.


    He wasn''t the only person in the diner either, there were two other humans in the diner and assorted animal and plant life as well. The animals that most interested me in the restaurant were the spiders I could sense lurking in hidden corners and underneath machines. I really liked them, and I looked forward to awakening them.


    I walked towards the closest table, one which was stylized in a "retro" way, according to Seamus'' memories, and slid into one of the two long seats. As I did, I silently activated a particular power I was fond of: "Aura of normalcy", a handy ability which allows me to walk anywhere without raising alarm.


    I was doing this partially because I didn''t feel like dealing with any questions that may arise from any mistakes I may make. This was a new world for me, and if I wasn''t careful even I could make mistakes. "Aura of normalcy" gives me a level of security against that, without bending minds like "Absolute beauty" did.


    I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. As I did so I allowed my other senses to come to the forefront of my mind, and for the first time in a few days, my "vision" went from being purely physical to being more conceptual as my not-so-mini-map appeared in my field of view.


    At first my not-so-mini-map''s field of view was huge, showing me the entire planet, thanks to "stellar awareness". I silently chuckled, and "zoomed in" on the general area where I could see myself, thanks to the icons I recognized from so many usages of this power. As I zoomed in on myself, I got to see a view of the continent on which I currently resided and I even got to see Andrea, on the map at least. She was one of the few pink-colored circles on the map, pink being the color the system used to identify allies, worshippers, or servants of mine.


    I momentarily considered checking in on her, but then decided against it. For now anyway. I didn''t doubt that in time I''d visit her, but for now, I had more I wanted to do than toy with the life of someone I had made rich. I knew, sooner or later, she''d want more. So I instead turned my focus elsewhere, back to myself.


    I zoomed in on my current location until I was as zoomed in as I could be. I saw myself, the crew who were working in the dinner, the animals in the diner, and then the rest of Glendale. The place itself was pretty wide, though sparsely populated and so I had tons of room to mess around with.


    I began by selecting the spiders who dwelt within the diner and smiling as I awoke them. I sensed their power abruptly growing, and I felt their hearts turn towards me in worship and devotion and at the same time their shapes on the not-so-mini-map went from being the familiar blue of neutrality to the warmth of devoted pink. I felt their minds expanding, and their mental capacities increasing, and their first thoughts were ones devoted to me, who they recognized as their master and awakener.


    For a moment I considered making them evolve here and now, transforming them into driders and thus gaining even further worship and love from them. But then I remembered where we were, and just as importantly that there were humans here. So instead I did something else, something I liked far more. I began to alter them.


    ________________________________________________


    The spiders lurked and laired underneath the assorted machines that helped the staff of the diner keep it afloat. Until they had been awoken by Althos they were largely indifferent to humans, aside from when a human accidentally endangered them. That changed when Althos'' sinister machinations touched the minds of the creatures.


    His potent powers and corruptive influence washed over the arachnids and suffused them with intelligence, and malice. And that was only the first thing he infused the creatures with. Althos was feeling creative and inspired in his own way and so began to do other things to them as well, other, far more directly sinister things.


    Even as the spiders began to transmit thoughts of gratitude to their awakener, Althos was hard at work modifying them in his own way. One of the first things he did was grant them classes, a highly unusual thing to do to creatures who were merely awakened and not evolved beings.


    In all, eight spiders lurked within the diner''s kitchen. And all eight of them were granted either the rogue, or the assassin class, deadly and stealthy classes that were naturally suited to their vile needs. And those weren''t the only alterations he was making either.


    The god continued to target all eight of the little creatures and spent a few moments greatly enhancing their venom through altering them and blessing them with the arachnid subdomain and the poison subdomain, as well as blessing their dexterity. One especially nasty alteration he gave the creatures was that he gave them a mosquito-like proboscis, the nasty appendage that the tiny vermin used to drain the blood of those they bit, which incidentally were great for spreading all sorts of vile diseases.


    Althos, through the domains of knowledge and disease, knew that mosquitos were vectors, or agents, that carried and transmitted infectious pathogens. He also knew that whether the diseases were brought on by pathogens or parasites, many of them were transmitted when mosquitos used their proboscises on those they fed on.


    He also infected the spiders with a number of diseases, while turning the diseases within the spiders asymptomatic so that his worshipers wouldn''t be hurt by the diseases but could spread them.


    The god also genuinely liked spiders. For reasons even he didn''t understand, the odd deity had always felt a special fondness for the creatures, from the moment he first met Chizi, one of the very first creatures he ever reanimated. And that was before he met Imbrosa Ravenfist, the very first creature he had ever experienced any sort of attraction too, who was herself an evolved spider who had died and been reanimated, before eventually being truly resurrected by the god as one of the first creatures Althos ever fully revived.


    He impatiently wanted to cause the spiders to evolve and become driders, but he patiently refused to do so. That would happen tonight at the latest.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Congratulations!


    Althos, the god who awoke you, has bestowed you with a class level. You are now a level 1 rogue.


    Class information:


    Rogues are experts at stealth and survival. They are capable of hiding in plain view and are masters of placing traps and surviving through the usage of underhanded tactics.


    Class abilities:


    Stealth: Level 1 rogues can attempt to hide in plain sight and may well be able to escape detection by those who aren''t actively looking for them.


    Ambush: Even a level 1 rogue can launch dangerous attacks that deal extra damage to those who are caught off guard by the attack, and even more extra damage to those who are totally unaware of your presence.


    Move silently: This is a bonus given to you as a consequence of you gaining this class through bestowal by a god. With it, your steps are inaudible to creatures of your size and larger. This makes you harder to detect at will.]


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Congratulations!


    Althos, the god who awoke you, has bestowed you with a class level. You are now a level 1 assassin.


    Class information:


    Assassins are deadly killers who specialize in one or two hit kills. Each assassin is a bit unique, and many of them utilize tricks like venom, diseases, and even special weapons that leave wounds that are difficult or even impossible to naturally recover from. Some assassins make use of abilities that leave opponents sickened or permanently weakened.


    Class abilities:


    Stealth: Like rogues, assassins are capable of hiding in plain sight.


    Poison expertise: Assassins, even at level 1, are natural experts at the usage of venom and poison. The damage done by their poisoned or envenomed attacks is increased as a consequence of their class.


    Survivability: This is a bonus given to you as a consequence of you gaining this class through bestowal by a god. With this power, you survive any non-magical attack that would kill you by inflicting massive damage. You can survive one attack like this a day, which will probably be the difference between life and death for you at level 1.]


    ________________________________________________


    Over the course of the next hour I would order a simple omelet and chat with the same young boy who asked me all the questions I expected to be asked. He asked me my name, where I was from, and what I was doing in town. None of it caught me off guard, and it gave me a chance to hone the story I was going with.


    I told him that my name was Cian, and that I was from another town and was a relative of the reclusive old man who lived a few kilometers away. When I said that the boy began to nod, and chuckled at me. After my order was placed, the boy continued to speak to me, and I never felt like telling him to go away. The company was nice enough for the time being, and when I left the diner I left a generous tip to thank him for the time he spent with me, something the boy was fond of.


    ________________________________________________


    It didn''t take me long to walk from the diner to my real destination: the generic town hall which I knew housed the majority of the services I needed to make use of. In a matter of minutes, I was standing in front of the place I truly intended to go wild within.


    I arrived five minutes before the place opened but since I did so I quietly reached out with my mind and began to awaken assorted vermin throughout the area, from rats within the actual building, to mosquitoes which were up early and were floating about in search of prey. I intended to help the creatures since they were vermin. I smiled as awakened mosquitoes began to congregate above me and their thoughts and feelings flowed into me. It nourished me, and I felt energized by the energies they inadvertently transmitted. It gave me the confidence that I was grateful to receive in the moments before the building opened and I began to put my schemes into action.


    "A god of vermin indeed..." I muttered, under my breath as I took my first steps towards the building where I hoped to set in motions events that would culminate in me making an organized cult based around spreading diseases.

 173 Bureaucracies And Mischief

    By the time the needed five minutes had passed and the doors to the government building were seconds from opening I had made several dozen new worshipers. They were of course all vermin of some sort or another. The vast majority of them were mosquitoes and rats, the rats being creatures that lived and lurked in the government building.


    I quite enjoyed awakening the animals, and upon awakening them they lavished me with love and praise. I quite liked their adoration and their heartfelt worship. I was indiscriminate when it came to being loved, and with them, I had no qualms about using my powers to turn their love towards me. They were only sapient because of me after all, it wasn''t the same as an independently sapient creature''s will.


    I was a bit surprised when I heard a distinct clicking noise, as the doors to the government building electronically unlocked. I hadn''t realized that the lock to the building was electric. It had been many years since Saoirse, Seamus, and Geoffrey all visited this building and the last time they did the locks were not electric but instead were traditional and required keys.


    I walked towards the building and opened the door that would lead me inside effortlessly, a grin on my face.


    ________________________________________________


    The inside of the building that I stepped into was a cold, grey place. There was a long, fairly wide hallway in front of me, that ended in a number of doors and a cordoned pathway that led to a number of booths. All of these booths were manned by dour-looking people who were separated from those they engaged with by a thick glass screen. I could see cameras off in the distance and hidden in places that those who placed them probably thought would be undetectable and in fairness probably would have been impossible for a mortal to see. That said, I was not a mortal.


    As I took my first steps into the hallway, two things happened at once. The first was that I heard static crackle over an old public announcement system, an instant before a voice was transmitted over the same system. "Please step forward and come to one of the booths. Thank you." The voice said, sounding tired even though it was eight in the morning.


    The second thing was that I received a surprising notification out of the blue. I read the thing as I stepped towards the cordoned pathway and the booths behind it.


    [Alert: Technological Update


    You are in a moderately medium-tech world for the first time in your life. Had you not earned influence over the trinity of domains and subdomains that disliked truth and detection you wouldn''t have received this notification at all but since you have it''s worth noting that you can only be detected by cameras, or set off mundane alarms if you wish to. From here on out whenever a camera could detect you you''ll be subconsciously alerted and asked if you want to be detected.


    Gods of things like trickery and lies are much harder to detect and keep an eye on if they don''t want to be seen. Keep that in mind as you go about your daily activities.]


    ________________________________________________


    I read through the notification and was both delighted and surprised to learn what it told me. It was nice to be able to choose when I could be seen by technology in this technology-riddled world.


    I quietly made my way to the cordoned pathway and then through it. When I was done I found myself standing beside a seat and in front of a bookish-looking woman who was seated in front of a small computer. She was separated from me by the thick glass sheets that this place used to prevent people who come here from hurting the employees.


    The instant before she turned to face me, I activated one of my new love powers, turning on "Mesmerizing presence" and fully unleashed "Absolute beauty". I was a man on a mission and I was determined to be fully efficient with the time I spent here. I wasn''t going to allow my time to be wasted by unnecessary questions or overly thorough bureaucrats.


    The woman seated in front of me had long, unkempt, dark brown hair, fair skin, and was dressed in a way that screamed "college professor" to me, or at least in a manner very similar to the college professors at the university that Saoirse had attended had dressed. She wore an outfit made up of professional, khaki-pants, and a tweed vest. She had thick glasses on her face, glasses which hid grey eyes, and before her face had begun to slack like Geoffrey''s had when he first laid eyes on me she had been lightly frowning. Not that that frown persisted as her gaze fell upon my chest.


    By the time her gaze fell upon my face her cheeks were rosy from blushing, which was a charming look on such a pale woman. She must have spent nearly fifteen seconds just staring at me in awe before I chuckled and greeted her.


    ________________________________________________


    "Good morning, my name is Cian Finigan and I am here to file a request for some paperwork." I told her, smiling at the smart-looking woman. My words knocked her out of her silenced and awed state, and she began to speak a moment later, after lightly shaking her head.


    "Oh, good morning! My name is Ciara, Ciara O''Rourke and I am happy to help you. Please, sit down." She told me, which I did so after laughing softly.


    "Yes, you can do that here. What sort of paperwork are you going to need to request today?" She asked, speaking quickly and nervously. It was clear that she at least had what the humans of this world referred to as a light crush on me. I chuckled lightly, grinning as I prepared to tell her my "awkward" tale.


    "So my situation is a bit funny. As a resident of Glendale, I''m sure you at least know of my relative, Geoffrey, and his totally fair reputation as a hermit. Well, he and his children are positively social by the standards of our other relatives. Sadly, some of the least social of us include my mother and father and so I was a home-birth and I was raised ''off the grid'' so to speak." I explained.


    I bashfully placed my hands behind my neck and prepared to speak a bit sheepishly. I was weaving together a somewhat plausible lie given the culture of this part of "New Sol", where hermits weren''t exactly unknown and I was doing myself a favor by pretending to be related to one. That said I had powers I could use if I needed too, if my lies weren''t believable enough so I wasn''t hugely worried.


    "I need both my birth registration form, and my social identification code to be created." I "confessed" doing my best to look embarrassed about my situation. Ciara''s face lit up in sympathy and in understanding, and I could sense that she was eating up my lies, which was a relief. She waved her hand at me, and began to reassure me with both her eyes and her words.


    "Oh that''s no problem! So, I don''t want to assume but you''re new to all of this right?" She said, beaming at me as she realized that she had a potent means by which she could help me. I nodded back at her.


    "As new as I can be! My parents passed away a few days ago and I came to live with my uncle." I told her, which I felt was plausible enough. It made sense that someone who was raised in the remote countryside and who recently lost their parents would come to live with another relative, in a relatively rural area like Glendale. That said Ciara''s eyes widened in shock and sympathy when she heard my explanation.


    "Oh no! I''m so... sorry to hear that!" She exclaimed, truly distressed. I smiled sadly at her and reassured her that it was fine, before turning back to the topic at hand.


    "I''m still recovering, emotionally, but I will be fine. I appreciate you helping me as I enter this next stage in my life. It''s hard, but I''ve been surrounded by kindness and people who are ready to help uplift me. I''ve even opted to assist my uncle on his farm while I adjust to... I suppose a more social way of life." I explained.


    "But yes, I am completely new to this." I told her, speaking a bit nervously this time. My nervousness was a bit sincere, as I knew that I was about to be asked a few questions in rapid succession. And I wasn''t wrong.


    ________________________________________________


    Over the next ten minutes I''d be subjected to dozens of questions. I''d be asked about my date of birth, my "parents", where I lived before, where I was born, my education, and more. By the time it was done, Ciara grinned at me, knowing more about "me" than I had known when I first made up this identity for myself.


    "Well... That''s it!" She said, excitedly, after I answered the last question she had which she admitted was a personal curiosity of hers: she inquired about my ambitions, and I told her the truth. I told her I wanted to understand more about Glendale and the world at large. I was one of the first people she had ever met who was "raised by a true hermit" so I understood her curiosity.


    "Now that that''s done, you should just know that we''ll issue you temporary copies of the forms you requested and then in a few days a package will be delivered to the farm you live on that are your real documents." She explained, beaming at me. I gratefully smiled at her before she dove into a brief explanation of the nature of the temporary forms.


    "With these temporary forms, you can do most of the stuff you could do with your real forms. You can get a driver''s license, a bank account, a cellphone, and stuff like that. You can''t file to run for office with these forms, nor can you apply for social security programs. But most other stuff is on the table if you have these forms." She told me, speaking seriously for a moment. I could tell that she took her job seriously, even if she was infatuated with me.


    I politely thanked her for her time and she told me to wait a moment while she went and grabbed the forms, after typing a few more things onto her computer. It was while she was grabbing the forms that I began to have some fun.


    ________________________________________________


    While Ciara was off grabbing the forms I began to plant my "gifts" throughout the government building. I was going to stay in the building for a bit, but I wanted to go ahead and begin to inflict some chaos here. The first thing I did was set the stage so that I could infect many people aside from Ciara, with a number of diseases. To protect her I stealthily blessed her and granted her immunity to diseases.


    I targeted small objects throughout the area behind the glass-like water bottles and even staplers and infected them with a number of unpleasant diseases, ranging from mundane ones like the flu to more exotic ones like mumps. I also quietly infected a single person with demonic infection, but I didn''t go ahead and unleash a praereptor demon just yet.


    That said I intended to do so later today. The man I infected was one of the head administrators of the building and thus a relatively high-ranking government official within the town. He and whichever demon possessed him would be treated specially.


    I had special plans for anyone in this building who became diseased by my "gifts". The plans I had for them were plans I had begun to initially formed while on my way towards the diner, and then refined while I was waiting for this building to open. I would turn those who were diseased into people addicted to serving me, who sought the relief I bestowed anyone who obeyed me.


    Between "Subjugative illnesses", "Symptom manipulation", and the powers I wielded that allowed me to make people obsess over spreading their diseases, I had a number of ways to make even a single victim of an infectious disease become an incredibly potent spreader of the illness. And I found myself quite liking the idea of that.


    The more I thought about it, and the more I learned about this world, the more I realized that the domain of disease was correct when it sagely predicted that diseases could be a critical weapon of mine here. With them, I could stealthily take over this world, just by infecting the right people. And in gaining greater powers over disease I would be able to further manipulate the diseases I already controlled.


    ________________________________________________


    I would spend the next two hours doing miscellaneous things. I got a driver''s license after taking a test at a computer and then driving a car for a few minutes, and I got both a cellphone and a bank account. I didn''t really need to get any of these things, but the fact of the matter was that both Seamus and Saoirse had memories of applying for jobs and things and needing an array of forms so I wanted to be preemptive and have everything on hand. I also kept being mischievous and creating new fonts of disease for more people to become infected.


    In the minutes after I grabbed my driver''s license I left the building and as soon as I was out of sight I teleported myself deep into the forest that surrounded the town. I found myself surrounded by dense trees, in a shaded grove and breathing fresh air. I was delighted by scenery that surrounded me and so I began to think aloud.


    "I guess it''s time for me to begin to really experiment. And to finally make some valuable allies." I muttered, grinning as I thought about how to mix and match my powers over conjuration with my powers over love, which worked on even extraplanar beings. I turned and selected a dense tree at random, before pointing at it and activating one of my conjuration subdomain abilities: "Multidimensional portals".


    The dense tree I had targeted began to shudder and shake violently. It was like that for a few moments, before the part of the tree''s trunk that connected to the ground began to radiate a crimson mist. I detected the fel-energies that it radiated and shook slightly. It was pleasant to me, but chaotic and dark, truly sinister energy. The energy of the dreaded "Heart of Darkness". It was at this point that a door abruptly appeared in the tree, the result of my power taking hold.


    I had successfully created a portal to the nightmarish land known as the "Heart of Darkness".

 174 A Darkened Fores

    I silently approached the sinister door. It was the color of the bark of the tree. The closer I got to it the more I felt the sinister energy it was bleeding out into the forest that surrounded Glendale. When I was right in front of the door, it began to creak and groan, the noise filling the forest and sounding disturbingly like the wailing of a grieving parent.


    The tree began to vibrate once more. I watched and listened to the tree as it vibrated violently, and as the keening sound continued to fill the air. This lasted for a full five seconds before the door in front of me finally reacted to my presence. It reacted to me by spontaneously generating a doorknob where none had been before. I shook my head and chuckled, and then I placed my hand on the doorknob. As I did, I felt some of the domains within me react to that decision.


    I heard audible sighs, some in delight, and some in annoyance. I also heard peals of laughter and the sounds of an excited audience. I grinned, and then I spun the knob in my hand, opening the door towards me and gaining my first view of the Heart of Darkness with my own eyes and not through the memories of my demonic servants.


    The area on the other side of the door was a sinister and darkened reflection of the forest I was in. I took a deep breath and then I stepped through the door, taking my first steps into another dimension and into the land of chaotic evil, the dreaded and infamous Heart of Darkness.


    ________________________________________________


    When I stepped through the doorway I had created into the place of malignant chaos known as the Heart of Darkness, I stepped into a lightless forest. I pulled the door shut behind me, even though the actual portal I had created was one-way and even if I had left it open demons wouldn''t have been able to use it to escape into the mortal dimension.


    The forest stretched out before me was darkly beautiful, a true and primordial forest that lacked anything even vaguely resembling a path. Vast trees reached high above me with jet-black canopies and I knew that the only source of any true light that may shine in this place would be light I created.


    "So this is one of the layers that demons themselves come from huh?" I asked, speaking audibly but also directing my question internally. I quietly turned on my powers over love and beauty, as well as a plethora of anti-violence auras. I had come here to make allies, not to kill demons.


    I let go of the door behind me and took a few steps forward. As I did I heard the trees around me begin to shudder, and I grinned savagely. I looked at them and assessed them using the power of the knowledge domain.


    [Plant assessment underway...


    Plant assessment nearing completion...


    Plant assessment complete!


    Plant type: Ebon Oak


    ________________________________________________


    Upon learning this I gazed at the trees in awe, and I walked over to one of them. I gently placed a hand on it, and felt the tree. It was solid to the touch, but it was also cold and I could sense its great age. It had lived, in the sense that unawakened and unevolved plants live, for a long time.


    This forest stretched out as far as my senses, unaided by any potent powers like "Stellar awareness" could sense. A few dozen kilometers in every direction. I sat down in front of the tree I had just touched, and I summoned my aid and companion Sombra to my side.


    The shadowy demoness appeared next to me and was standing. She was immediately cowed by the power of my auras and my powers over love and desire, and I felt her heart turn further towards me. This was fitting, because I had plans for her, plans which would be all the easier if she were totally loyal to me.


    I motioned for her to move in front of me and then sit down. The witch did as she was told, eagerly obeying me and in less than three seconds we were eye to eye. I stared at her, and smiled for a moment, before I used my powers to pull her into my arms. As I did, I spoke.


    "Sombra... I suppose, in the end, there is only you and I." I told her, while I activated all of my loyalty and obsession based powers and without any hesitation further turned her mind towards me. The dark-elf-like demon blushed in my arms, turning her head bashfully away from me. I chuckled, and I then tilted her face back towards mine. We gazed into each other''s eyes for a moment, and then I pull her face towards mine deftly and gently, until our lips connected. I smiled as I felt her lips brush against mine.


    Sombra leaped forward the moment our lips were touching, closing the distance between us eagerly. I wrapped my arms around her and grinned even as she began to kiss me repeatedly. I felt my ultimate power, "True love''s kiss" wash over her, and I felt her gleeful, manic acceptance of it wash over me. Her feelings towards me only grew in intensity, becoming even more of a raging fire than they had been before.


    After a few moments, I stopped her from further kissing me. There was a grin on my face as I did this, and I chuckled, at the sight of the corporeal praereptor demoness. I still held her in my arms, I just prevented her from further closing in on me and peppering my face with her kisses. I wanted to begin to inform her of the plans I had for this place.


    "Sombra... I want you to listen to me now." I told her, speaking sternly and as the creature who she served, using her brand to emphasize my point. She hissed at me but did indeed quiet down, and I chuckled at her.


    "It is time that I slowly begin to stretch the tendrils of my power across the universe. I am going to begin to exert my power even here, in the ''Heart of Darkness'', and you are going to help me." I told her, speaking confidently. She gazed at me, nodding in response to my words as if it were that were the most obvious thing in the world. And for a moment I thought about how she could best help me. It didn''t take me any more than a second to come up with what I told her next.


    "And Sombra... I want you to become the queen of your kind." I told her, a confident smirk on my face as I spoke. This caught her off guard. She was silent for a moment, as she considered my words. I could see the gears turning in her mind, but I also sensed her ambition being appealed too. She was silent for a moment, before speaking.


    "Patron... If it is your wish that I become a queen, or even the queen, of my kind... I suppose I am in no position to refuse this long-term quest am I?" She asked, before beginning to smirk. There was a smug satisfaction radiating out of her, that I didn''t hate. But then her face darkened as she began to think a bit more deeply.


    "What are your goals in this dimension?" She asked, studying me curiously. I heard her question and I chuckled.


    ________________________________________________


    There were a number of different types of higher beings. I knew of some of them, and I even was some of them. At the moment I knew that I was a god and an elemental overlord. As far as I understood it, gods stood at the top of an old and now nonexistent hierarchy of power with regards to higher beings.


    Other sorts of higher beings I knew of, including demon-lords, arch-devils, and arch-fey. I possessed the capabilities to become other types of higher beings, without losing previously acquired powers. I had a few goals in mind here.


    I wanted to acquire more demonic servants, especially rarer types of demons, and I wanted to begin to gain power within this strange dimension. Even feeling the air ambiently here felt different from the air of the mortal world. For a creature like me, of an innately chaotic disposition, the air here was wonderfully disorderly.


    The way this place smelled and the way everything felt, was much better suited to me than the cleanliness and orderliness of the plane of mortals. I wanted to rule this place. I wanted to become the one who was acknowledged and served by all, the one who stood at the top.


    ________________________________________________


    I looked at the demon before me and chuckled.


    "Well Sombra... I want everything. I want power, and I want to be the one who stands at the top. I want to become the next and possibly the last demon lord." I told her, smirking at the shadowy demon. She considered my words for a moment, before beginning to laugh. She spoke a moment later.


    "I suppose it makes sense for a god to want power. And it definitely makes sense for a demon lord to want it." She told me, beaming at me.

 175 Demon Lords & Demon Armies

    Demon lords, the fel-princes and princesses of the nightmarish land known as the "Heart of Darkness". I knew of a few of the ancient and long-dead monsters, thanks in part to the memories I had poached from my demonic servants.


    Morthos, the ancient prince of the realm known as the "Spoken Scourge". He was in all likelihood an ancient spell-singer who was believed to have once been a mortal who died, became a demon, and eventually became a demon lord. He favored subtlety snd his brand of evil was just as destructive as other demon lords but he wasn''t fond of violence.


    Leviathan, thought to be the ruler of a layer that was an unspeakably vast and impossibly deep ocean. She was a demonic princess of the deeps and was worshiped by all sorts of creatures who depended on the ocean to live, be they fish or creatures who lived near and hunted in the ocean. Like Morthos she was skilled at non-violent evil.


    Apep, the demon lord of serpents, deserts, and flame. He once ruled a layer of the dimension that was a vast desert filled with enormous pyramids. His servants were snakes and their evolutions, as well as half-demon reptiles. He was an exceptionally violent demon-lord of wrath, though far from the only one. He was also the only demon lord who was served by one of my demonic servants, the asesinato demon I had conjured, weeks ago. He was the only demon lord who appeared in the memories I had absorbed to date and so I knew more about him than I did other demon lords.


    Each of these demon lords was probably a bit weaker than I am now, making them tremendously powerful entities. Through means that eluded my current knowledge, each of these entities had managed to seize control of a layer of the dimension I currently existed in, the Heart of Darkness. I had to assume that a part of becoming a demon lord involved taking control of a layer of this dimension, a surprisingly unchaotic thing for a demon lord to prioritize.


    There was a not small part of me wanted to ask the domain of knowledge about how to become a demon lord, but I also knew that there was some value in attempting to learn things on my own. I had a mechanism by which I could circumvent a lot of research if I wanted too, but it''s not like there was no value to doing my own research.


    I also had a theory that I hadn''t yet "qualified" to become a demon lord. I had gotten a quest to become an elemental overlord when I gained the proper sorts of powers needed to give me the means to act like one. I hadn''t gotten a quest to become a demon lord yet, which suggests that the powers associated with demon lords yet eluded me. But if demon lords were creatures who ruled over layers of this dimension than all I had to do was begin to conquer this place. And that was something I could do.


    ________________________________________________


    As the demons began to congregate in my arm I watched my skin begin to darken. She gazed at my arm curiously and darkly grinned. She knew that I had kept many praereptors in my arm, and I could tell she was excited to see what happened next. I looked at my arm and commanded the creatures within me to leave my arm.


    The demons quietly and meekly obeyed, knowing better than to try and disobey me. They left my arm and seeped onto the floor around me. To a mortal this would render the incorporeal beings nearly invisible, especially creatures like them who crawled on the floor, visible as shadowy silhouettes, but not to me. I could clearly both see and detect them using a number of my other senses.


    Dozens and then hundreds of the creatures exited me, performing a dark exodus of their own. They surrounded Sombra and I, crawling on the ground like beasts. It was an uncouth appearance for such creatures, and in response to it I arose, and I also took Sombra with me.


    I studied the demons before spreading my powers out over the area around me. As my powers spread out around me, a thin blue light surrounded me and breathed Sombra, her fellow praereptors, and myself, in unholy radiance. It was at this point that I began to speak.


    "Praereptors! Welcome to your new home. I have a number of gifts for you." I declared, speaking mysteriously but haughtily. There was a smile on my face as I spoke.


    I rose my hand and began to manipulate the darkness of the bodies of the praereptors, closing my eyes to focus as I did so. I heard a number of excited groans and moans in surprised pleasure as I granted the praereptor demons physical bodies by manipulating both the darkness of their incorporeal forms and the chaotic substances of their souls.


    I transformed some of them into various animals. The animals I transformed them into comprised a fair variety. Some of them were massive insects like enormous praying mantises, massive spiders, a few invertebrates like worms, and others were large but not supernaturally-so hounds and cats. A small number of them were transformed into birds, particularly ravens and also bats, which were mammals and not birds.


    I transformed another group of them into humanoids. For now I gave them all the forms of variously beautiful or handsome humans, which made sense since I had plans for them and I wasn''t about to unleash them on a variety of worlds but rather keep this legion close to me, and have them work as my direct servants.


    With regards to the demons who I gave human forms I split them up evenly, in terms of gender. I created some incredibly beautiful women, remarkably handsome men, and also some truly plain-looking women and fairly unremarkable men. I also mixed the ages a bit, creating bodies that were as young as early teens and bodies that were visibly ancient. I did both of these things mainly based on their existing statistics, making praereptors with higher charisma better looks, and ones with less remarkable stats more regular looking bodies. But I wasn''t without kindness.


    ________________________________________________


    I boosted the stats of all of my demonic servants. I would spend the next hour bestowing blessings to each of my demonic servants so that each of their individual stats was at least a thirty by the time I would finally finish with them. This was not a difficult process, but it was a laborious one since there were hundreds of demons for me to go through.


    Additionally, I would glance at the classes of each of the demons I had assembled before me. The demons had a wide array of classes between them. The most populous classes were berserkers and assassins. There was a cold logic there, as berserker praereptors got to unleash their wrath in a way that wouldn''t hurt them as the praereptors didn''t feel the pain inflicted on their victims, and assassin praereptors were able to adjust the bodies of their victims using their own stats and status modifiers as assassins.


    Another common class for the praereptors was the alchemist class which itself definitely made sense. Alchemists experimented frequently and sometimes had to test their potions and even poisons on themselves but with the power to possess someone, praereptors could find victims to test their brews on without endangering themselves, while also experiencing the full potency of their creations directly.


    In a handful of cases, I bestowed the demons with special and unique blessings, ranging from altering them directly to giving them special items like pens with distinctive alterations such as being poisonous or containing deadly diseases. By the time I was done with the process I had begun, I had also ensured that all of these demons were loyal to me through my eldritch, faith, and love based abilities. I wasn''t about to take a chance with the chaotic monsters I had transformed into my latest army.


    By the time I was done messing around with them, I turned to Sombra directly and gazed at her. I smiled at her softly and began to transform her form, giving her her own human appearance.


    ________________________________________________


    Sombra''s initial body was based on a drider named Imbrosa Ravenfist. I hadn''t given Sombra the spider half of Imbrosa''s body, but I had given her the spider-legged beauty''s humanoid appearance. This time I was doing something different. I wasn''t basing the body of Sombra on someone else.


    The first thing I did was target Sombra''s hair. I transformed it into a scarlet mane, making it a dark red with but a glance. The second thing I did was target Sombra''s skin-tone and alter it in such a way that she looked human and also very pale. She shivered as she felt my powers wash over her.


    I then targeted her scarlet eyes and transformed them into deep blue orbs, much like my own were. She shivered and audibly gasped as my powers washed over her vision. I kept her face otherwise unchanged, but the other changes were so dramatic that she looked like a different sort of unearthly beauty than she had once looked.


    "Althos..." She sighed, luxuriously, as my powers washed over her. When I finished, she smiled at me and wrapped her arms around me. She was delighted with my usage of power and I could sense that she just hoped that I found her new form attractive. It was, but I wasn''t about to act on the slight desire I felt towards her in this form. Not yet, not here.


    I got Sombra to release me, though she did sigh in annoyance as she did so. I then turned towards the demons I had permanently altered and once more began to speak.


    ________________________________________________


    "Demons! I am happy to have bestowed you with new, real, bodies. Now comes the part where I get what I want." I told them, grinning as I did so.


    "This layer of the Heart of Darkness is to be our new home. It is to be the first place in this dimension we conquer. The first of many!" I emphatically declared, speaking as a god of conquest for the first time. I knew that anything short of violent conquest wouldn''t work in this odd dimension and so while altering my minions I had quietly come to terms with that. This was a place of chaos and evil, and to take it over would require the usage of force. Accepting that reality would go a long way towards speeding up the process by which I became a greater god of war, chaos, evil, and eventually a demon lord.


    The demons who heard me cheered in delight. They were envious, murderous little assholes so I wasn''t surprised that they liked the idea of inflicting harm on other demons and becoming a more recognized and feared force as a species. I liked that they were receptive to the idea of going on a murderous war-rampage throughout the dimension. I bet I''d soon find other demons like them.


    "We will conquer this dimension, one layer at a time! And in the days, months, years, decades, and centuries to come, we shall become a feared and hated force throughout the dimension!" I said, shouting while also grinning at the creatures assembled before me. This only fostered and encouraged their wicked cheering.


    "Our first order of business is to begin to make this place a real home for us. We are to domesticate this land and build a settlement here!" I announced, which made the demons straighten up suddenly. They looked at me silently, and then at each other curiously. I could sense that this surprised them. I chuckled at this abrupt change.


    "This layer belongs to us. To ME. We shall do with it, what we wish." I told the demons, speaking confidently and self-assuredly. My words washed over them and for a moment they mulled them over. I could tell the creatures were thinking carefully about my words. I sensed them considering them, and debating them in their heads. It was kind of cute in a way.


    "I will transform this land as I have transformed you. And together we shall domesticate this darkened forest, turning it to our devices. Remember the feelings you felt as my powers washed over you, and think of how this land shall feel when my powers wash over it." I told the assembled creatures. And this struck a chord with them because they began to cheer.


    I knelt and I touched the ground at my feet. As I did so I felt the writhing chaos that suffused the very floor and air of this dimension react to me, I felt it itself sense my incredible powers and begin to... resonate with me. I shivered as my chaos and its chaos intertwined for a moment. I felt myself bonding with this place, with this layer at least.


    "That feels... good." I muttered, feeling its elemental instability begin to touch my own corporeal instability. I had total control over my body so it made sense that my own body was at least somewhat unstable. I chuckled as I felt our wavelengths of chaos and change begin to joyfully interact. And then I shouted at the demons.


    "Go and begin to transform this place!" I commanded, once again reminding them of my status as their master. I generated an axe made of light and then I hurled it at one of the trees close to me. It bit deep into the wood of the tree, probably partially because of the shadowy status of the trees here and I grinned as it did so.


    "Take my axes and get to work!" I ordered, planning to clear out at least some of the nearby trees and then using my powers over nature, civilization, and creation to make a few simple houses and things for us to live in.


    Over the course of the next three and a half hours the demons would steadily clear out enough of an area for me to begin to get to work to create homes. And while they were doing that my mind turned to good-based powers and domains for one of the first times in my life. I did like the idea of balance and I had heavily emphasized my darker side lately. Sooner or later I would need to change that. And while my demons were at work that was what I thought about.

 176 Civilization, Faith, And Darkness

    Time passed slowly while I was doing my part to aid in the construction of a new settlement. At some point along the way I had quietly come to a nice realization: when I was done here I could appoint a high priest or priestess and gain the second tiers of influence over the domains of civilization and faith. And that was pleasant to think about.


    Another thing that helped me kill some time was the appearance of an unusual praereptor demon. About forty-five minutes into the work I was approached by a single praereptor, who wished to aid me and to exalt in my presence. The creature was humble and merely wished to be of use to what it dubbed "The shadowy lord of the unseen", which was its obsequious way of referring to me. I didn''t mind it though, and the title it came up with on its own was useful because it made realize that this was the perfect place for me to begin to make a cult of darkness.


    One of the best parts of this was that this creature''s fixation with darkness made it an ideal high priest. Which made things far easier for me as I no longer had to try and figure out who to pick for that post. The little creature even asked me how I wanted to be worshipped. Each fawning question made me like it even more than I already had.


    ________________________________________________


    "Oh Shadowy One, what must your priests do to be viewed as deserving of your attention?" The little creature asked me, as we stepped towards one of the few buildings in the burgeoning settlement that wasn''t a house.


    The building in front of us was a large and square building, that I had designed to be a temple to my glory. It was made of the wood from an especially dark tree, even by the standards set by these extradimensional light-devourers. Every part of it was made of the darkest wood I had ever seen. Even the doors leading into the building were so dark as to be difficult for a non-darkness-blessed creature to detect.


    As I approached the door, I mulled over the question asked by my servant. I actually quite liked that question. In thinking about it, I began to think about what I wanted from the demon and the cult we''d be making here. And then the answer came to me. But before it could the demon and I reached the temple I had built.


    The creature itself was named Paimon, and I had given it the form of a fairly young and average looking man. It was standing next to me until a bit before I got to the doors of the temple. When I began to approach the temple the demon dashed in front of me and ran to the door, before grabbing and pulling it open meekly. It was at that point that I answered the question.


    "Priests, in the order you and I shall build anyway, who seek my approval must blind themselves." I told the demon, as I walked past it and into the temple. When I was clear of the door, the demon closed the door behind us and dashed back up to me. As it did it spoke again.


    "Yes. To worship a god of darkness, one must embrace darkness itself. To do so in the most direct way, one must blind themselves. It is not enough to live in the darkness, one must be willing to give themselves to it. To me." I told the demon. When I said that, the demon eagerly ate it up. I could sense his fanaticism shooting up even more as I spoke.


    "Of course! That makes perfect sense!" The demon declared. I smiled lightly, even as I studied the temple in front of me.


    Paimon and I found ourselves inside of a simple nave, an area where a congregation sat. I rose a hand and weaved together furniture, pews specifically, made of darkness. I made dozens of them and scattered them equally throughout the area in front of us. Paimon looked at the scene in awe, a fanatical grin on his face. He spoke as I did this, praising me and my powers over the very stuff that had once comprised his entire form. After a few moments, he delivered a remark of more substance, one worth listening too.


    "As praereptors darkness is... It''s everything to us. Normal praereptors are creatures made of animated shadow stuff. As a god of darkness, you are exceptionally appealing to us. Especially since you did something no demon lord ever did: you gave us bodies." The demon told me, explaining why Sombra had so easily become obsessed with me. In a sense it was only confirming what I had already suspected, but such confirmation was nice.


    "Shadowy One, I am eager to learn more of the faith you seek for me and for my fellow praereptors to build. Tell us more about how we might earn your approval." The demon asked. I was beginning to move towards the back of the nave, closer to where the altar would be when I constructed one. I listened to the demon and once more thought about its question for a few moments. After a bit I came up with an answer.


    "There are worlds out there where mortals no longer fear the dark. They feel they have conquered the night. I don''t like that." I told the demon. I was thinking of both Htrea and a few worlds in the solar system of my birth. In such places mortals were arrogant and through the usage of artificial lights, magic in some cases, and fire, felt like they had conquered darkness. The more I thought about that, the less I liked it.


    "Darkness should be frightening to mortals. I will use this cult to begin to strike fear of the dark back into the hearts of humans, elves, and dwarves. We shall spread darkness." I whispered to Paimon. And at this the thoroughly wicked creature began to cackle evilly.


    I wordlessly constructed an altar made of darkness to serve as the pulpit for this temple. I stared at its dark angles for a moment, before I grinned and began to construct something, in my mind anyway.


    ________________________________________________


    I was creating a cult based on darkness in this thus far unnamed settlement. It was time for me to begin to fully embrace that. And so I set to work creating something unlike anything I had ever created. A book.


    In the depths of my mind I envisioned a blank, heavy book. Mentally, I painstakingly created empty pages to fill the book with. I envisioned hundreds of pages for someone to flip through, in a futile effort to learn the book''s contents. I wanted the book to be useless to those who had sight and hadn''t given themselves over to the darkness I was the god of. This blank, heavy book would only be useful to those who had sacrificed to me, and given me their sense of sight.


    In the hands of a priest of mine who had sacrificed their sight this book wouldn''t be read. Instead this item would tether them to me and serve as a conditional way for them to hear my voice. This item would be a holy symbol to me, and with it a darkness-based cleric of mine would have a perpetual tether to me, and would be able to be guided through life by my whispers.


    I was creating a relic. And the more I worked on it, the more I liked it. Especially since the more I worked on it in my head the more ideas I had for it.


    In nearly half an hour, I had a potent tool in my mind, and by using my powers over things like art, creation, faith, and magic, I silently brought this book from the immaterial world of my mind, into the physical world and I quietly found myself holding the thick thing. As I did so, I created a unique alert to be given to Paimon, when I give him the tome I had just created.


    ________________________________________________


    [Book Of Shadows:


    This dark relic is a unique tool given by the god of darkness to his high-priest or priestess. This book is useless to those who lack faith in the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen, but in the hands of his high-priest or priestess, who would undoubtedly be the first to sacrifice their vision in the name of pleasing their divine master, it transforms into a potent tool.


    This unique relic bestows a high priest of the god of darkness with a number of potent powers. Chief among these powers is that it allows a high-priest to hear Althos'' whispers and to be guided through life by their god, truly a wonderful honor only those who seek to fulfill the will of the Lord of the Unseen deserve. It also vastly increases the perceptiveness of those who made the sacrifice to Althos, granting them alternatives to sight that allow them to perceive the world around them in unique and alarmingly perceptive ways.


    The book is also able to bestow worthy followers of Althos with the power to store items in their shadows, animate their shadows, and even the ability to make weapons out of darkness, like their god can. Service to Althos is rewarded.]


    ________________________________________________


    The book felt light in my hands, but after a moment I reached over to where my shadow was and dropped the book in it. My shadow was a sentient thing, and I chuckled when I watched the book I had just created vanish into the floor of the temple, or rather into the void-like maw of my shadow. Paimon did not notice, and I was grateful for that.


    It and I would spend the next hour discussing the dark cult it would raise. By the time we were done conversing I hadn''t told it that I planned for it to be my high-priest, but I would soon enough. By the time it was mid-afternoon on Htrea, Paimon and I found ourselves gathered in front of the rest of the demons and the mortals I had created in the center of the settlement. I felt satisfied and so I readied myself to make pronouncements.


    ________________________________________________


    I silently and temporarily lifted the floor beneath Paimon and I so that we stood taller than everyone else. The eyes of a few thousand creatures fell upon us and I grinned. I was silent for a moment, before I cleared my throat and began to speak.


    "Minions, creations, and worshipers, lend me your ears!" I said, using my powers over noise and sound to magnify my voice. I spoke authoritatively and powerfully, letting my voice explode across the area around me.


    "This settlement is now the holy city of Dunkelheit." I declared, my eyes gleaming darkly as I spoke. I was experiencing a moment of triumph and elation. I knew I was close to the end of the quest to gain greater influence over the faith and civilization domains and that excited me.


    I stretched out a single hand to my left and I mentally withdrew the book from the storage of my shadow. My shadow noisily spat the book back into my hand, and to the eyes of the creatures around and in front of me it probably looked like I generated a book from the ground somehow. I chuckled as I wrapped my hands around the book, and then began to speak again.


    "This city may not yet seem like a city, but it''ll become one in time." I predicted a cunning and savage grin on my face.


    "I will become a demon lord of darkness, shadows, and fear. To do that, I will first build a cult of darkness, evil, and fear. A cult that shall be led by Paimon." I said, turning to face the demon at my side as I said its name.


    The unremarkable-looking man''s eyes opened wide as I said its name. The demon''s body was male, but the demon, like how Sombra wasn''t really female, wasn''t really male. It turned to me, its eyes opened wide but a smile began to slowly and creepily stretch across its face.


    I moved the book in my hand from one hand to another, and then I stretched the hand that held the book to Paimon. I was clearly offering it to him. The demon didn''t hesitate, he took what was offered to him by his master eagerly. His eyes opened wider than they ever had, as I saw the familiar blue textbox fill them, due to him having been handed the book. For a moment the demon was still as its mind absorbed the information it had gained as a consequence of the notification, and then the demon began to speak.


    ________________________________________________


    Paimon''s mind was overwhelmed in an instant as it learned about the potency of the book, and of the nature of the gift its master had given it. But it was only overwhelmed for a moment. And when that moment passed, the creature knew what it needed to do, and what would please the dark god it served.


    "I am not worthy of this honor, oh Shadowy Lord of the Unseen... But with this, I hope to begin to become worthy!" The demon said, before abruptly jabbing its hand straight into its left eye socket, and beginning to rip out its own eye. Darkened blood began to ooze down the demon''s face, staining its untanned skin, as the creature''s muscles began to tense and it began to painfully complete tearing out its own eye.


    The demon began to laugh, though the laugh was pained sounding. It let its hand linger in its eye socket, before suddenly pulling the hand out and exposing everyone to its empty eye socket. Blood continued to drip down the demon''s hand, seeping into the floor at its feet.


    The demon dropped the eye and then violently stomped on it, destroying it utterly in a single powerful stomp. The creature shuddered, obviously in pain, but that didn''t stop its fanatical display. The creature swapped the hand holding the book, placing the empty thing in its bloody left hand, and then repeating the violent actions it had performed on its left eye, on its right eye.


    I watched this silently, before beginning to nod approvingly. As I did that, I quietly activated the book in the demon''s blood-stained left hand. It began to smile when it first heard the words I whispered to it, through the medium of the book.


    ________________________________________________


    "Paimon... You have done well." I whispered, channeling my voice through the relic. The demon relaxed as it heard my voice in its head.


    "Your devotion to me has pleased me. For that, have this." I whispered once more, before numbing the demon to the pain wracking its body. The demon''s smile widened as I did that small act of kindness. Paimon himself began to speak now, proud of himself.


    "I shall serve the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen however he wishes. I beseech you all to do the same thing. He has given some of us life, and others of us bodies with which to experience the worlds. Let us serve him as a way to repay him for the kindness he has shown us! Let us spread his darkness across the land, and let us fill the mortals with fear, and terror! Let us blind ourselves and them as well, shrouding the universe in darkness!" Paimon shouted, his devotion to me showing through his voice.


    "Today I announce the creation of the newest cult in service to the Shadowy Lord of the Unseen: the Harbingers of Darkness!" The demon announced, speaking proudly. Silence fell over the crowd for a moment, in response to Paimon''s actions and proclamations. And then cheers erupted, and I began to chuckle. I was feeling positively pleased with this development, and that was before I got the notifications I received.


    ________________________________________________


    [New title received: The Shadowy Lord of the Unseen


    Title explanation: This title was originally an invention by Paimon, but in the wake of its zealous display of devotion to you it left an impression on the inhabitants of Dunkelheit and that impression is strong enough that the title has become a real one. The system wants to reward Paimon''s devotion to you, as well as the devotion you inspire in Praereptor demons.


    The Shadowy Lord passive powers:


    Invisibility mastery: You can grant or take away invisibility at will.


    Shadow creation: You can create Praereptor demons.]


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    You have completed the quest to gain the second tiers of influence over the domains of faith and civilization. Congratulations!


    New Civilization Domain passive powers:


    Alter buildings: You can alter the properties of buildings, from the outside. This power allows you to more easily create custom buildings that forever change and shape how civilizations progress.


    Civilization assessment: This synergistic power allows you to perform an assessment aimed at a settlement or even an entire civilization. When you do you learn things like the population of the target, their alignment in percentages, their faiths, and even their classes and military sizes.


    Economy manipulation: You can now gain an understanding of a civilization''s or a settlement''s economics by looking at it. You can also manipulate it freely, editing things like what is used for the currency, changing the value of the currency and more.


    Furniture creation: This synergistic power allows you to create furniture using your powers, further improving your ability to create settlements.


    Government manipulation: You can subtly and unsubtly alter governments whether it''s by filling people with a need to elect new leadership or inciting riots, anarchy, rebellions, and revolutions. This power takes from both the law domain and the chaos domain.


    Civilization domain active powers:


    Civilization erasure: This once a year power allows you to target and destroy entire civilizations.


    Civilization advancement: This once a year power allows you to target and forcibly advance the technology and culture of an entire civilization.


    Civilization regression: This once a year power allows you to forcibly pull a civilization backward in terms of technology and culture.]


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Updates To Faith


    In the time between you unlocking your faith-based powers and now you have gained influence over a considerable number of domains and subdomains. Some of these are alignment domains, such as good and evil, and others are potent magic subdomains like the subdomain of healing. A few are powerful domains and subdomains on their own, such as the domains of life, death, and creation or the subdomain of fire. All of these have unique synergistic effects on faith.


    For instance, fusing the powers of the subdomains of healing, and art and the domains of faith and goodness gives you a powerful holy voice. Fusing the powers of the subdomain of fire, and the domains of evil, destruction, law, and faith, gives you mastery over hellfire. Fusing the domains of goodness, faith, and the subdomain of water, gives you power over holy water.


    The domain of faith and the domain of souls are two of the five domains, along with the domains of luck, reality, and fate, that are most closely tied to godhood. The upgrade you are currently undergoing as a result of gaining the second tier of influence over the domain of faith is a considerably powerful one. Treat it as such.]

 177 Holy

    [Faith Domain passive powers*:


    Alignment form \u0026 aura: You can take on forms that are unique to each alignment you can influence. This includes combination-alignments such as "Chaotic-good" or "Lawful-evil". You also gain an aura that amplifies the effects you have on creatures of the alignment your form is taken from. Those auras can only be activated when you have the right form on.


    Angelic aura: You can project an aura that renders angels unable to hurt you and forces them to acknowledge your divinity. This aura also prevents ranged attacks from hurting you.


    Angelic creation: You can freely create lesser to intermediate angels. This is an upgraded version of the active power you have through the spirit domain. You can create angels from any domain you have influence over. Angels are powerful tools, not to be created or used lightly.


    Angelic form: You can take on the form of a supreme angel, granting you a form becoming of a higher being by transforming you into a massive entity with six wings and a single vast blade and shield comprised of divine energy.


    Angelic physiology: You can take on the traits of an angel. This includes things like constructing your own halo and creating angelic weapons which do not harm those you chose but inflict lasting damage to anyone else, especially to extraplanar entities. This also includes little things like absorbing radiant divine energy and the ability to use artifacts created by and for other gods.


    Awe inducement: You can induce awe in mortals and lesser extraplanars. An awe-struck creature cannot willingly harm you and is likely to begin to pray to you or to merely submit to you. Awe can mean reverential adoration or even holy or unholy fear.


    Create food \u0026 drink: This power intersects the domains of agriculture, nature, and faith and allows you to create especially influential food and drink that is also incredibly delicious and addictive, freely.


    Create holidays: You can create holidays that your worshippers learn of through the system and are likely to observe. These holidays can be marked by services and sacrifices to you.


    Create holy/unholy object: You can create holy or unholy objects that radiated divine or unholy power. This can include buildings, but it can also be something as small as a holy pen or unholy pencil. The precise effects of these objects are up to you.


    Create rituals: This power allows you to create rituals that your followers can learn and can use to activate potent effects and gain significant boosts to their own power, temporarily.


    Divine element manipulation: This particular power is one of the greater ones that exist due to your unique status as both a deity and elemental overlord. With it, you can use holy fire, holy water, divine earth, sacred light, and other such divine things. These elements are good in nature and heal mortals and hurt evil extraplanar entities.


    Divine presence: This power is more primal than an aura. You can cause things in your presence to feel better, or to suffer as a result of the divinity you radiate, and you can cause a number of other effects related to the things you have influence over.


    Holy/Unholy voice: By synergizing a number of domains and subdomains you gain the power to ambiently channel both divine and unholy energy into your voice. This power allows you to do things such as heal or hurt just by speaking. You can purify or corrupt simply by speaking. Your voice can also induce emotions that you yourself can induce. You can also creatively affect extraplanar entities by using this power and speaking to them with the right voice.


    Revelry aura \u0026 manipulation: You can cause creatures to be filled with an urge to revel and be merry. This is especially potent if you do it on people in your presence and know that you are a god.


    *: Other powers exist, this is just a list of those that are primarily faith-based.]


    ________________________________________________


    "These powers are... incredible." I muttered to myself when I finished looking through them. I was truly awed by these powers, especially the element based ones. I could predict a number of ways that they could be tremendously useful.


    By the time I had finished looking through the powers I had acquired, I found myself exploring the dimension again. Dunkelheit wasn''t the only settlement in the region I could detect, and I had wanted to explore more and also practice my powers so I had ventured, alone, into the darkened wilderness.


    ________________________________________________


    As I stepped through the darkened woods I gazed at myself using my mind-form. My current form was still in the exact outfit I had worn shortly after I arrived at Htrae. It was a nice outfit for wandering through the world of humans and "modern technology", but it felt odd to wear such an outfit in a layer where the only constant was evil.


    As I stepped through a "clearing", where there were relatively few trees, I tapped my chest and transformed the clothes that I had on into an outfit that made sense in a place like this. My shirt disappeared altogether, exposing my muscular chest to the chilly forest air, and my pants vanished and were instantly replaced with chausses, armor for my legs. The main purpose of the leg armor wasn''t to protect my legs, but rather to give me a more fitting appearance as I wandered through the sinister forest.


    As I made my way through the darkened forest I began to think about a specific class. Or rather specific classes. My mind turned to thoughts of the fact the untested classes I had lurking within me.


    Among my untested classes were the paladin and dark knight classes. Paladins and dark knights were the good and evil-aligned warriors of the gods. Each was a powerful champion of a god and possessed a number of potent powers. With each step I took into the woods, further and further away from my home, the more fun I had at the thought of using this exploratory trip as a means to test the powers I had lurking within me.


    "I suppose I might as well have some fun here..." I told myself, a confident smirk on my face as I materialized a powerful longsword in my hand made from angelic energy by using my new "Angelic physiology" ability. The blade was made of solidified light and I could sense the potent, holy energies pouring out of it.


    The blade felt good in my hand, natural even. It appeared to weigh next to nothing and I took a few practice swings with it just to see how it felt in motion. Unsurprisingly it continued to feel weightless and I found it exhilarating to use. And soon enough I was close enough to the nearest demonic settlement that I could see a tiny watchtower and the low-ranking demons tasked with sitting in it and keeping an eye out for any visitors, or invaders. When I was close enough that I could see the demons, I closed my eyes and teleported to the tiny watchtower.


    ________________________________________________


    Three human-sized filth demons, ugly bastards who did grunt-work for more important and powerful demons, were standing at the top of the handmade watchtower. Their ugly construction was a nightmarish bit of architecture that was little more than two layers of scaffolding haphazardly pieced on top of each other. That said it was wide and tall enough to easily accommodate all three demons and Althos, who rudely teleported himself into the watchtower.


    Only one of the demons had been looking in the direction that Althos abruptly appeared in, and the deity wasted no time experimenting with his powers. The second his mighty form appeared in the watchtower he swung his angelic blade at one demon and sprayed another with a potent burst of holy water. One of the three demons, the single individual who had been looking in Althos'' direction, was immediately cut down by a single blow from Althos'' angelic blade.


    The other demon who was struck immediately, this one feeling the sizzle of holy-water sear his flesh, let out an agonized groan and was thrown to the floor by the force of the tide of water that struck him. His flesh began to smoke, as he let out grotesque sounding groans and wails of pain. Althos noticed the dying demon and immediately reached out, snatched the thing''s soul out of its barely living body, and proceeded to consume it.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself at the top of a rickety watchtower, my angelic blade dripping with demonic blood and two dying demons around me. The final grotesque, filth covered and eerily human-like demon turned around a second after I arrived and looked at me with wide eyes. The demon''s putrid orbs were filled with fear and shock at the sudden murder and mutilation of its peers.


    The demon and its deceased ally and dying allies were humanlike demons. They had the roughest outline of a human, but one that was covered in filth and toxic elements. Trash and waste clung to their hair-covered skin.


    The air around the two of us who were still standing was filled with the keen wails of a burning demon, and the slick noise of demonic blood oozing into the wooden floorboards of the watchtower. I took my first step towards the remaining demon, silently, and tossed the sword I had created from my right hand to my left hand, which brought it closer to the remaining demon. As I did I mentally activated my "Divine element manipulation" and wrapped my blade in holy-fire. I was doing this for theatrical effect.


    The creature in front of me began to quake with fear. I made my face a neutral mask, hiding my emotions as I silently stalked forward. I quietly activated "Awe inducement" and I watched as the demon in front of me fell to its knees, in unholy fear of me.


    "Ple... Please! Pl-uh-ease, stop!" The demon begged as I took another step towards the creature. It struggled to speak, and I chuckled as I approached it. Filth demons were among the least of the demons, representing one aspect of the sin of sloth, specifically the physical consequences of sloth. The creature in front of me reeked and smelled of a mixture of foul scents such as excrement and noxious sweat.


    I approached the creature until I was standing right in front of it. I then dematerialized the sword in my hand and placed the now empty hand on the creature''s head, shuddering as I felt its filth make contact with my skin. I immediately began to grin and channeled another usage of "Divine element manipulation". This time I used holy-fire.


    The filth demon''s unclean eyes began to flare up, as holy-fire filled its head. I felt the creature''s skin begin to heat up as fire from within the creature began to melt and consume it. Before my eyes, even the creature''s eyes began to melt away and become a liquid sludge, as the creature''s corpse fell to the side. I teleported out of the watchtower, and I began to perform a more dramatic display of my power.


    ________________________________________________


    The god teleported away from the watchtower and into the air. He boldly made the choice to teleport into the air above the encampment, exposing himself to dozens of demons. Demons ranging from incubi, to filth demons, to murder demons, and even a few gluttony demons, watched as Althos dynamically conjured a gigantic fireball of holy fire.


    He was silent as he weaved together this fireball, using his own powers over both fire and holy energy to construct a gigantic orb of radiant fire. Demons shouted at him, and launched attacks but he ignored them, using his newfound angelic aura to ensure he could focus on the fireball he was making, their attacks fading away as they closed in on the god. The fireball was a quarter as big as the watchtower itself, and when Althos finally released it, it was radiating a glorious glow that made it impossible for demons to look at.


    The fireball sailed towards the watchtower, and when it reached it the thing exploded in a burst of holy and fiery light. Althos watched, and chuckled as the watchtower caught fire and as the holy, anti-demonic fire spread he turned to acknowledge the demons who had gathered to try and repel them. He began to descend to the ground beneath him, utterly unafraid of the demons. As he did, they began to move towards where he''d land, until he rose a single hand and wreathed himself in a pillar of sacred light, a blinding aura that burned demons as surely and painfully as holy-fire did.


    "Enough." He said, speaking dramatically. Even though he said that, there was a confident smirk on his face. He activated another of his more potent powers as he descended to the ground beneath him: "Holy voice".


    "Surrender." The god commanded, speaking authoritatively. Divine energy poured out of him and hammered into the skulls of the demons that had tried to surround him. Many of them fell to their knees as the pure and unmitigated energy seeped into them, wracking them with the worst sort of pain for a demon; pain caused by holy energy.


    The god''s feet touched the floor of the settlement, as he opened his mouth to speak once more. As he did so his eyes became dynamic orbs of searing and holy fire.


    "Serve." He ordered, once more wracking the demons with pain. At this point, nearly all of the demons were on their knees, as even the simplest words he spoke could wrack the demons with agonizing pain.


    "Serve." He repeated, his words filled with arcane and divine might. Demons around him wailed in agony, their very souls struggling to react to his presence and unable to tolerate even the simplest words he uttered in their presence. He was leaving a horrifying impression on them, and making subversive usage of his holy abilities as he was conquering demons instead of murdering them.


    He would spend the first half of the next forty-five minutes conquering the demons, using simple words and his holy powers to force them to serve him. The second half of the next forty-five minutes would be filled with the god making use of his powers to connect this tiny encampment with the community of Dunkelheit.


    ________________________________________________


    It was after that, that I would finally return to the newest mortal world I had set out to conquer: Htrae. I did this by stepping through the door I had created, taking no one with me but planning to build more connections throughout Glendale and beyond that tied the Heart of Darkness and Htrea together.


    I stepped through the door I had created, altering my portal for a single instant, and found myself back in the forest I had been in before I entered the Heart of Darkness. As I stepped through the portal I closed the door behind me, and then turned to face the tree I had placed the door in. I stood still in front of it for a moment, a smile on my face as I did so.


    I then rose my hand and began to alter the tree just a little bit. I quietly caused a fair amount of the bark the door had displaced to regrow so as to allow the tree to look normal enough to fool humans. It was when I was done with that that I chuckled and quietly activated a set of abilities I was growing increasingly familiar with related to trickery. A second later I teleported myself to a hospital in the city of Ireland, the capital of the region of New Sol I was in. Hospitals were fun for a creature like me, and I intended to have a great time.

 178 A God Of Disease Enters A Hospital

    I teleported myself to the entrance of the hospital. I found myself standing between two sets of electric, sliding glass doors. Both of them abruptly opened, confused by my sudden appearance. I chuckled and stepped through the door that led into the hospital. As I did so, I activated my "Divine presence" power, and I was surprised to receive an abrupt notification.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Divine Presence


    Divine presence is a potent passive power that allows you to use a wealth of powerful area of effect abilities. Whenever you use this power you need to select which of the abilities you''d like to use. You can exempt creatures as you wish from these effects. Here are a few that might be handy based on a contextual analysis of your circumstances.


    Positive Effects:


    Art \u0026 Creation effect: Everything around you becomes more beautiful. This includes but isn''t limited to people. Colors become more vibrant, and even the drabbest of decorations become more festive and lively. People are inspired to create things, life, and objects alike. This effect also causes people who are in its area to hear pleasant and soothing music that is unique to each of them. This music relaxes them and helps them stay calm.


    Bliss \u0026 Patience effect: Everything around you becomes joyful in your presence. This a purer and less addictive version of a peace-domain power you have. This power also prevents conflicts from breaking out and may indeed cause conflicting parties to begin to inch towards peace if exposed to this effect long enough.


    Healing effect: Everything around you begins to heal. The longer you''re around something or someone the more it begins to heal. Pain vanishes in your presence and even if it''s supposedly chronic pain those who were soothed by this effect won''t feel it for at least a month. Broken objects become mended, or if the worst possible states become easier to fix.


    Life effect: Life blossoms around you. Depending on your surroundings this may take on different effects but in a hospital, it means that no miscarriages happen, no one dies, and those who very recently died may come back from the dead.


    Love effect: Relationships heal in your presence, and if those in your presence love someone the love they feel for those they love is amplified. All manners of love are affected by this power.


    Nature effect: Plants grow in your presence, and even the wildest and most savage animals become peaceful and well-behaved while near you. Animals and plants flock towards you, and even technology itself begins to strain nature less as a result of this effect.


    Negative effects:


    Death effect: Life around you begins to die at an accelerated rate. Even small, superficial wounds become worse and diseases become fatal if left untreated.


    Disease effect: Diseases, infections, illnesses, and disorders are bolstered by your presence and become more contagious, and more long-lasting. Diseases and other sorts of negative conditions in this effect also cause those infected by them to begin to fall under your influence. Diseases and other negative conditions unfamiliar to you that are affected by this effect are added to the repertoire of diseases you can use and have mastered.


    Pain effect: Your proximity induces pain so intense it would normally cause creatures to fall unconscious but instead keeps them conscious and unaware of the source of their horrific pain.


    Reanimation effect: This effect causes dead things in the effect to reanimate as undead under your control.]


    ________________________________________________


    I chuckled as I read through the potent effects at my disposal. Each of them was pretty spectacular in their own way, and I sensed the potent potential radiating out of each. That said, for now I was keeping it simple. I selected the "Art \u0026 Creation effect", the "Life effect", and the "Disease effect". When I did so I shivered as I felt the power truly begin to activate and I realized how wide the power''s reach was.


    This power stretched all the way around me, affecting an area perhaps a kilometer in width. I could sense hundreds of people abruptly fall under its effects, and in doing so I felt hundreds of diseases and illnesses begin to become "mine" in so far as diseases could be "mine". And what''s more, all of the diseases and other negative conditions that fell under my control were automatically added to the diseases I could unleash at will. That simplified me completing my mission: acquiring more diseases with which I could affect the world.


    I released a pleased sigh as my eyes filled with the notifications alerting me to the diseases, illnesses, viruses and other things now under my control. Some of the ones that stuck out to me included things like "Chlamydia", "Staph infections", and "Pneumonia".


    I stepped out into a large entry-area filled with overworked workers, including doctors, dashing back and forth, which was coupled with a reception area for patients who had filled out the necessary paperwork but hadn''t yet met with doctors or nurses. I had a basic understanding of how the process worked, thanks to the memories I had absorbed from the Finigan family, and their admittedly lacking understanding of how fancy hospitals operated, and I also knew that no one would stop me thanks to my "Aura of normalcy" power.


    I began to take my time wandering around the place, ignoring the doctors, nurses, workers, and even patients around me. I was mostly in this place to look about and to gather diseases through my powers. Thanks to my detection-based abilities I knew that most patients weren''t on the first floor, as a means to prevent them from spreading their diseases to people on the first floor who by and large were people who had been hurt and were seeking treatments for things like cuts, broken bones, and in some cases seeking help to not die from being stabbed by a bladed weapon or shot with bullets.


    I was also largely ignored by the people around me, despite my apparently supernatural and absolute beauty. I suspected this was a consequence of the "Aura of normalcy", which I was using to have freedom of movement throughout the hospital. I had a number of abilities that I could use to move freely, but I had to admit: I did like "Aura of normalcy", it was nice to have freedom of movement without going to the trouble of being invisible. It was also nice to be able to move undisturbed independent of whichever form I was in at the time I used my powers.


    I was in a human form at the moment, one completely free of any supernatural adornments, but so far I could tell that under normal circumstances my forms were plenty attractive, more than enough to draw unwanted attention my way. So I was happy to not at all be bothered by anyway around me. Especially after my interactions in the government office that I had spent part of today in. I had been noticed plenty while I was there, and it had been inconvenient.


    ________________________________________________


    As I walked through the hospital''s first floor, I dipped my head into various rooms where injured people were awaiting treatment or being treated. My power worked brilliantly and I was able to observe various people undergoing assorted treatments. People were hooked to "I.V." machines, fluids, often anesthetic fluids, being transmitted directly to their veins.


    I also got to watch doctors and nurses stitch up wounds. They skillfully worked together to numb the areas near the wounds that were being stitched and then used a number of different materials to begin to close open wounds and to aid the process by which humans recovered from the sort of nasty injuries that left their bodies opened and exposed to bacteria, as well as had them with their life-fluids seeping out of them.


    That said I wasn''t just a passive viewer of the events at the hospital today.


    ________________________________________________


    About halfway through my visit to the hospital, I came across a room near the back of the hospital. There was a team of doctors and nurses who were performing surgery on a brutally injured man who had survived, technically anyway, a gunshot to the head. The man was deeply anesthetized, and a surgical staff of three doctors and two nurses were frantically working to stabilize him.


    I had silently snuck into the surgical suite and I allowed myself to watch them for about ten minutes before I began to intervene. What I did, for me anyway, was comically simple. I merely rose my hand and channeled potent, pure, healing energy into the man. The doctors who were performing the surgery were dumbfounded as they felt the healing energy seep past them and then enter the wounded man.


    Before their very eyes, the man''s damaged brain began to heal. Hematomas vanished, damaged brain tissue began to repair itself, and even the part of the skull that had been damaged began to repair itself.


    ________________________________________________


    "What... What is this?" One of the nurses asked. In her hands was a sterilized scalpel, one she had been in the process of handing to the lead surgeon. Her eyes were glued to the rapidly healing skull and exposed brain of the man they had been given the unenviable task of performing a thorough surgery on.


    The entire surgical staff watched in wonder as the man''s head was healed. It was a slow process, taking a few minutes, but by the time it was done the figure responsible for it was long gone. When it was finished, the healed man remained unconscious, still thoroughly anesthetized, but a quick examination of him revealed that he was well and truly healed. It turned out that that would be only the first clearly supernatural thing to happen in the hospital that day, but it was nothing short of an utter miracle.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes after I intervened in the surgery I found myself on the second floor of the hospital. The second floor of the hospital was much busier, and also far noisier. My divine senses enabled me to perfectly hear every conversation within the hospital anyway, but the fact of the matter was that the majority of the ambient noise I heard on the first floor came from the second.


    This place was an assault on the senses. I could smell all manners of medicine, of nauseous bodily fluids and substances, and of cleaning agents. I could hear the wails of the sick, crying coming from the newly bereaved, and those who were accepting that they were going to die.


    The first part of it that I explored was where patients sat. Upon entering the second floor there was a check-in and reception area much like there was for the people on the first floor. Many people, all human, sat here and waited to be called upon by any of the various nurses flitting about the assorted rooms throughout the main area of the second floor.


    Some humans looked at me, but as they did their eyes glazed over and they quickly looked away, distracted by whatever else surrounded me. I was technically detectable, but it was quite difficult to look at me and actually keep one''s eye on me.


    It was the second part of the second floor that I explored that actually truly mattered. Because it was in the second part of the second floor where I was actually active. And in the second part of the second floor, when I was active I changed lives, simply by doing the one sort of kind thing I actually liked to do: heal people. And on the second floor I opted to dramatically change tactics. Just for the fun of it.


    ________________________________________________


    During his eventful trip to the second floor of the Saint Rose hospital, the dynamic and maybe even a bit whimsical god opted to have fun by being as braggadocious as possible. The first time he entered a room containing a sickly person, he coincidentally entered one that had the patient''s entire family within it. As he slipped inside he closed the door leading in and out of the room behind him. It had been open when he entered, and closing it hid him from the view of anyone not in the room.


    As soon as the door was shut the whimsical god opted to deactivate his "aura of normalcy". After all he wanted worshipers and using his full suite of powers allowed him to make many different sorts of people become his worshipers, especially since as he deactivated his "aura of normalcy" power he fully activated "Absolute beauty" and "Mesmerizing presence". He also struck members of the family with a chilling usage of "paralysis", keeping them glued to their seats as they watched him, a total strange, walk towards their unconscious son, boyfriend, and brother.


    The family of the patient who was presently occupying the room were seated in various chairs scattered throughout the room and they, almost as one, turned to face the intruder. The moment they did that they were instantly transfixed by the god''s sublime and sanity-searing beauty and didn''t even notice that the god had, in a literal sense, paralyzed them.


    The person who was assigned to the room at the moment was sleeping in a high-tech hospital bed. He was an auburn-haired television personality who was fairly well-liked and was suffering from an aggressive and cancerous brain tumor, something his family had only just been made aware of minutes ago.


    His family, consisting of his kind boyfriend, the patient''s mother, and his older brother, were all gathered in the room and made the understandable mistake of turning to see whoever had just entered their private room. They had been expecting a nurse, a doctor, or some sort of hospital worker, not a god of both healing and disease.


    The god felt his beauty sear their minds and he grinned even as he wordlessly sauntered over to the unconscious man in the hospital bed. As he did he assessed the man, using his powers to learn a great deal about him. One of the things he learned though was that brain cancer wasn''t contagious and that knowledge was responsible for him sighing in annoyance. It was the only sound the mysterious and alienly handsome entity made as he almost glided towards the hospital bed and the patient sleeping atop it.


    As he reached the bed that safely cradled the television personality, James Buchanan, Althos reached out and took the man''s hand. The unconscious hand was warm and reacted, even while still unconscious, to the god by squeezing the deity''s fingers. This caused the god to smile even more brightly than before. And then he opened his mouth and spoke.


    "James Buchanan... You shouldn''t be here. Be healed." He said, commanding the unconscious mortal''s body to fight this off. That wasn''t how mortals treated cancer patients, but Althos himself didn''t care about that and neither did his powers. The god''s potent "Holy voice" washed over the mortal and his sleeping form began to radiate a bright, golden aura as a consequence of being told to fight off the sickness.


    It was shortly after the man''s sleeping form began to glow rather gloriously that the mortal''s body did as the god commanded, beginning to successfully battle the malignant tumor that was growing on the man''s brain. No one knew it yet, as the man himself was asleep, and his family had no immediate way of discerning the status of his health, but this miracle was every bit as miraculous as what Althos had done downstairs. Althos silently watched as James'' eyes abruptly began to open, until the man was looking at him, eye to eye and man to man.

 179 Rosebuds & Spells

    James, the very same human I had just saved from a brain tumor, sat up straight and studied me. His eyes started off at my muscular chest, before quietly and quickly ascending until they arrived at my face.


    James had dark brown eyes. Impressively, he managed to look at my face. I stared right back at him, gazing unflinchingly at the man. He had a serious and confused look on his face, while I had a curious one on mine. We silently stared at each other for close to a minute before he spoke.


    "Who... Who are you?" He asked, his voice trembling as he spoke. He didn''t understand why I was here, which made sense. And that wasn''t the only thing that threw him off either. He was pain-free at the moment and a simple surface-level reading of his mind allowed me to be sure he was confused by that as well. I smiled but I didn''t speak. Instead, I silently continued to gaze at him.


    James had a ruggedly handsome face, despite his relative youth. He was in his late twenties, still below middle age even for a human. He had heavy, thick eyebrows, and a strong jawline. He was also obviously muscular, something which no doubt helped him appeal both to many human women and also some human men, including his boyfriend.


    I considered whether or not to induct him into a cult, but after a few moments of silently studying him I chuckled and instead I decided to make him a guinea pig for some of my powers. I rose my hand towards James, and I began to strike him with one of my newer desire powers, one I only acquired as a result of my powers over love mixed with my powers over lust.


    James, who until this point had made continuous eye contact with me, visibly shuddered and broke eye contact as he felt pleasure begin to make contact with his lower body. I allowed it to be small at first, but it was still enough for it to be noticeable, as though a hand was gently cupping him through layers of clothing.


    The man had to work to stifle a sigh, especially because though I allowed the pleasure to start off small I didn''t allow it to remain small. Seconds after I began to cause him to feel pleasure, I allowed it to increase in intensity until it took everything he had to not audibly react to the pleasure assailing him.


    James'' dignity was saved due to the fact that he was underneath a set of hospital blankets. This allowed his arousal to not be immediately noticeable by his family, though they did glance at him whenever a sigh managed to audibly escape his lips. They had confused and scared looks on their faces, clearly worried about whatever pain they felt sure he must be enduring. After a while though, I chuckled and released James from the pleasurable grip of my power.


    He visibly relaxed as he felt the alien and invisible pleasure stop wracking his lower body, falling back on the bed. There was a scared and scarred look on his face as he shut his eyes to avoid making eye contact with me.


    James'' older brother was a man just reaching the lower halves of the 40s. He was awed, but he did his best to hide it. This was only an option for him because he wasn''t underneath the influence of my ability to induce awe, but it was impressive none the less. I studied him, examining him and what my quick appraisal of the man told me, for a moment. I opened my mouth and uttered a single word.


    "Interesting." I said, speaking about him quietly. This caused his eyes to widen, but I quickly turned my back on him as well. There was one person I was a bit more interested in than James'' brother or boyfriend. James'' mother.


    I turned to her and appraised more substantially than any of the men in the family. She had aged gracefully and was only in mid-fifties. She had the look of a kindly woman, one who felt happy to have her family and to be a part of a community she loved. She was the physical manifestation of her alignment: "Lawful good".


    ________________________________________________


    Agatha Buchanan was a kindly woman who was dressed in a stylized summer dress. Her outfit was adorned with a healthy number of sunflower drawings, and the dress itself was a sky-blue. She held a tiny purse in her lap, one that was filled with a number of home remedies for headaches and pain. She was fair-skinned and had dimples from smiling often.


    She was a doting mother, one who was filled with a deep love for her family and their own families. And when she laid eyes on Althos, his alien, divine, and terrifying powers reached deep into her heart and siphoned away at least some of her love from them to him. He didn''t care to take away more than the bare minimum demanded by his powers, so the overwhelming majority of Agatha''s heart was her own, but the god''s theft did matter and it did seep into her soul almost immediately.


    He was like a thief, but one who stole that which mattered most, the heart. That said the god himself did not understand love, and more importantly, he did not care to understand it. He did not care for love, and he had no interest in the depths of the emotion as felt by those with lives as short-lived as humans. All he knew and all he needed to know, was that love brought with it a certain amount of loyalty. Althos liked that, to an extent anyway.


    The young god approached the kind-hearted woman with a disarming smile on his face. And she did, indeed, find herself disarmed by it. As he approached her he silently activated a number of potent peace-making and peace-keeping auras, ones designed to subdue the tempestuous natures of human hearts, and they worked immediately and effectively. Agatha found himself positively serene in his presence. In a number of steps and a number of seconds, he found himself right in front of her, his eyes staring into hers. As he did so he asked her a simple question.


    "Are you happy?" He asked, his eyes peering deeply into hers. She looked at him, curiously, and considered his question for a moment. She was still as she did so, the question causing her to pause for a moment and seriously consider the life she had led until now.


    She thought about her family, her home, and the life she led when she wasn''t in the hospital.


    ________________________________________________


    The human woman enjoyed her life. She liked her home, her family, and the ways she spent her days. But was she happy? That was a harder question. The fact that she had to think about it was a strong sign that she wasn''t happy. At least not to the level she knew the deity was asking.


    For a moment she considered lying. She wanted the man in front of her to think she was happy. She suspected, naively, that that was what he wanted. But she mulled that thought over in her mind, and then she quietly went against it. She never experienced the strange sensation of when a mortal tried to lie to Althos because she opted for honesty instead.


    "I... I don''t think I am happy." She confessed, trusting in this odd stranger, and not just because he had healed her son. She knew, on an instinctual, subconscious level, that Althos had done what he had said he had done. She knew and was indeed the first person to know, that the creature in front of the Buchanan family was capable of doing impossible things.


    Althos looked at her, studying her for a moment. His gaze was calm and being in his presence prevented Agatha from feeling anything other than serenity at this moment, even as his eyes lingered. For a moment the god considered making her younger and empowering her but after a moment of contemplation, he instead did something. He created something.


    ________________________________________________


    Agatha''s true words were intriguing to me and so I decided to reward her for choosing honesty without making an attempt at deception. I slowly moved one of my hands towards her, while also creating something. A relic.


    As my hands moved towards Agatha I swiftly used my powers over creation to create a glass, pink rosebud. The pretty thing was quite eye-catching and Agatha''s eyes widened when she saw the thing abruptly appear in my hand. Her eyes followed it until it wasn''t moving anymore and was instead being offered to her.


    "What... What is this?" She asked, looking at it curiously. I gestured for her to take it, and after a moment''s hesitation, she did so. She held it in both of her hands, studying the thing carefully. It was quite a cute display, and there was a look of curiosity on her face.


    The object I created was quite a fun one. It served as a battery of sorts, one that when charged allowed those who possessed it to use magic as it provided them with the spiritual energy they''d need to cast spells and even a few spells for them to cast. Agatha, after a few moments of consciously studying the item, placed it in her hair and winced as the item clasped onto her hair and her eyes suddenly radiated blue light as the all too familiar textbox I was used too filled her vision.


    ________________________________________________


    [The Glass Rosebud:


    This relic is a barely sentient tool used to test non-magical mortals. It was created to act as a medium that provides those who have it with the tools needed to use magic, both the spells themselves and the actual spiritual energy they''d need to cast them. The rosebud gains the spiritual energy it uses when it casts spells through exposure to the sun and through consuming water, much like an actual rose would.


    The item "knows" a few spells and serves as a tool with which its creator can learn about the magic used by whoever possesses it and can decide how to treat that individual. Those who behave in ways that the relic''s creator likes may well gain real access to magic, instead of this "baby''s first wand" type of access to magic.


    The item''s creator is a mysterious god of knowledge, creation, magic, and nature named Althos. This is a replicable relic, and thus it''s possible that elsewhere in the universe there are others or will be others who also possess glass rosebuds.]


    ________________________________________________


    As she finished reading the notification I watched Agatha''s lips curl upwards in a smile. There was an excited look in her eyes, even though they were radiating blue light.


    "Althos..." She whispered, being just one of the two beings in the room who knew my name. James also knew it. There was a quiet reverence in Agatha''s voice as she uttered my name. As soon as she was done reading the first notification, another flooded her vision. This one was written by the system, and I performed a surface level reading of her mind to see what it said out of curiosity.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Explaining Magic


    Congratulations! You''ve gained access to magic, a somewhat orderly and supernatural way of influencing the world and the universe around you through the usage of your spiritual energy, which is consumed to cause a number of supernatural events to happen, in precise and ordered formulas known as "spells". Or at least that''s normally how it works, for now you''ll instead use the rosebud''s spiritual energy to cast spells.


    Magic comes in twenty schools, 10 basic, 2 intermediate, 3 advanced, and 2 expert schools. For now, you have access to the 10 basic schools of magic though at an extremely limited level. Evocation, conjuration, alteration, healing, necromancy, enchantment, environmental, spiritual, divination, and contractual magic.


    The rosebud in your possession is linked to its creator. He will know each of the spells you cast, and at some point in the future will decide what to do with his rosebud and whether or not to give you real access to magic.


    Htraeian humans do not possess sufficient spiritual energy to use magic on their own, normally. Althos is capable of changing that, and can also grant even this world''s humans access to real magic.]


    ________________________________________________


    For not the first time in my life I wondered about the mysterious anomaly in the system''s explanation of magic. It listed 17 total schools, not 20. During the few weeks I spent in my tower I had asked about that and been told that there was no information on the total schools of magic aside from what I had already been told: there were 20 schools of magic, and 17 expert or lesser schools of magic.


    In all honesty at some point I had just quietly come to the conclusion that there must be three "lost" or perhaps "supreme" schools of magic that were just beyond my awareness.


    The rest of the notification that was scrolling through Agatha''s vision was about spells and how to care for the rosebud though I think it was pretty easy to figure out. So long as whoever had it in their possession gave it water and regularly exposed it to the sun the thing would be fine.


    Stylistically the thing was supposed to tie me to nature in the minds of whoever possessed it. I quite liked it, and I thought it went well with Agatha''s apparent style. She was still gazing at me, awe in her eyes as she did so. She realized who and what I was now, and I found that amusing.


    I turned to leave, even as she continued to read through the notification, but not before sending her a quiet mental message that we''d meet again. I grinned as I left, and as I opened the door I made eye contact with both her and James, smiling wildly at them. The second I closed the door behind me I teleported out of the hospital and back to the farm-home of Geoffrey Finigan.


    ________________________________________________


    As I appeared near where I had first been teleported too when I arrived in this world, I had a new goal in mind: I was going to go ahead and acquire the second tier of influence over magic. And I knew that to do so I needed to acquire influence over the basic schools that I hadn''t yet gained the ability to influence.


    I needed to go ahead and acquire influence over the contractual, environmental, divination, and spiritual schools of magic. It was only by doing that that I could gain access to the quest needed to gain the second tier of influence over magic. As I set my heart on that goal, I heard a joyous peal of laughter fill my mind. It was a radiantly beautiful sound, and it was immediately followed by words flowing into my head.


    "Finally! Now the fun begins..." The voice told me. It was a curious, almost chaotic voice that radiated power.


    "With this newfound determination of yours, I can go ahead and give you the quests you need to complete to finish acquiring the first tier of influence over the basic schools. Now go and have fun, so that together we may influence the entire multiverse!" The voice commanded, sounding both authoritative and also innately chaotic.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: New Quest(s) Acquisition and New Spell Granting


    Divination: To acquire the first tier of influence over this school of magic, use some of your new spells to view a world you''ve never been in a place beyond the reach of your sensory abilities.


    Spiritual: To acquire the first tier of influence over this school of magic, use magic to strike a deal with a spirit.


    Contractual: To acquire the first tier of influence over this school of magic, strike a contract with a mortal that grants them magic.


    Enviromental: To acquire the first tier of influence over this school of magic, completely transform an area using magic. Not your divine or elemental powers, but spells and sorcery.


    You have acquired spells in each of the respective schools you seek to gain influence over. You will gain more spells when you complete the respective quests you''ve been tasked with completing, as well as the powers over the subdomain, as usual.]


    ________________________________________________


    One of the quests was the easiest quest I''ve gotten so far. It was so easy in fact that the moment after I got it, I rose into the air and began to use one of the spells I had just acquired to alter the environment.


    I rose into the air just above the barn I had teleported into when I was first brought to this world. I then conjured a fireball, using one of the environmental spells, and I lobbed it at the barn. The building quickly caught fire, and I chuckled as I watched it begin to burn up. A moment later I received the notification that I had completed the quest.


    It was at that moment that I targeted the barn and immediately rewound time to when the thing wasn''t on fire. That was when I began to grin, thankful for unexpected synergies, even as I began to read the notification altering me to the powers I had just gained.

 180 Fantastic Fungal Powers

    [Environmental Magic subdomain details:


    The school of environmental magic is a potent school of magic that alters the very world itself. This is similar to evocation magic but much larger in scale and far more varied. A god who possesses power over this school can cause all sorts of significant mystical effects and can affect far more than they could if they were only limited to evocation magic.


    As you gain more and more powers over and within this subdomain you''ll be able to do more dramatic things with it itself. For now, you can''t create environments using this power, in time you''ll be able too though, but you can manipulate them using this subdomain. You can create environments through brute-force with constant spell-casting and through other powers, just not automatically through the subdomain itself.


    Environmental magic is, at least at the lowest levels of magic, the most dramatic magic. With it raising even entire cities in an instant is possible. It is also known as ecomancy. To gain further influence over it, build a cult that revolves around ecomancy, and that seeks to shape the entire universe using ecomancy.


    Environmental Magic passive powers*:


    Ecological sentience: This unusual power allows you to grant sentience to weather, such as storms. It is in essence performing an awakening on a type of natural phenomena such as a tornado or hurricane. As when you awaken a truly living thing you are worshiped and served by the entity you awakened. Most awakened natural phenomena behave similarly to how elementals behave.


    Subterranean lordship: You gain near-total power over places within the surface of a world. This is due to your powerful ties to the worlds underneath worlds, underground regions where your followers tend to be the most populous. This power is immensely powerful and grants you even greater control over subterranean followers of yours like the swarm and dark elves.


    This power''s most potent ability is the power to transform subterranean regions and also carve out new ones. This is a highly potent power that ought to be used carefully but when unleashed allows you to swiftly conquer the underground portions of entire continents. Additionally, when you''re in an environment you''re a lord of you can use your active powers twice as often before having to wait for the cooldown period to start.


    Weather magic: You can manipulate the weather through magic, and you can enhance or disrupt the efforts of others to manipulate the weather through magic or technology. Your efforts will always triumph over those of mortals and even lesser or intermediate extraplanar entities. A greater extraplanar might be able to overpower you with this, depending on their powers.


    Territory: With this power, you can select areas and manipulate them using your other powers. This is an ecomantic power solely because for right now you can only manipulate them in environmental ways, such as by turning stone into ice or putting a road somewhere.


    Volcanic lordship: You have total power over volcanoes and can activate them at will. Additionally you can create creatures out of magma and lava at will, and they can take on a number of forms. In or around volcanoes you''re empowered and can utilize any sort of active power of yours twice as many times before suffering from a drawback.


    *Other powers exist, but these are those that are primarily ecomantic in nature.


    Ecomancy blessing \u0026 curse details:


    This provides a flexible blessing or curse. With it you can bless or curse someone to have the ability to endure and adapt to any sort of non-supernatural environmental condition. Or you can curse them and make them unable to tolerate a wealth of environmental conditions.]


    ________________________________________________


    I shivered as I felt the power wash over me. It brought a smile to my face and I especially enjoyed learning about "Subterranean lordship". That power had an especially dramatic and theatrical name and it was one that I felt spoke to me on a grandiose level. With it I felt even more powerful than I had before. It was grand enough that even though the other powers felt disappointing I wasn''t disappointed.


    After I read over the powers, I closed my eyes and grinned. My powers were ever-expanding, and I was quite fond of that. I enjoyed the gradual growth of my powers and the ever-expanding list of things that I could do. I was quite ambitious and I had come to this world already equipped with a healthy list of powers at my disposal.


    It was while my eyes were closed that Geoffrey, now in the body of his youth, approached the part of his extensive property that was suited for farming. I sensed him approaching and chuckled softly. I silently took steps until I was near an empty patch of tilled soil and then I got started doing something unusual: using my powers over spores.


    I wanted to help the farmer, and I had one specific set of abilities that''d make helping him very easy: my power over spores and fungi.


    ________________________________________________


    Althos was a potent lord of a plethora of things. Not the least of the things that he lorded over were spores and fungi. His abilities over spores and fungi came in the form of an abundance of abilities that he hadn''t really used yet, but he began to change that as Geoffrey approached him, the man approaching the god from the same path that the god approached the man, last night.


    Althos stood over an empty patch of tilled soil and chuckled. There was a crude smile on his face as he rose an arm over the soil and silently allowed some of the spores he had generated internally to seep out of his hand and drift lazily towards the soil at his feet. These spores were created using his "Spore production" power and they were ordinary, reproductive spores that would rapidly grow into a diversity of fungal lifeforms if left alone.


    The young god was silent as the spores detached themselves from his body and as the first of them reached the ground quickly and quietly. He smiled as they planted themselves into the dirt at his feet. As they did so he effortlessly targeted them and activated his power to age lifeforms, and watched as the spores began to grow quickly.


    Before his very eyes, the spores advanced through the first of the stages in their life-cycles. The ones he found the most fascinating to look at were the spores that ultimately grew into mushrooms. Those spores invaded the soil, created hyphae that went on to find other, similar hyphae by digging into the ground, connected with them, and then began to form pinheads that ultimately grew into full-on fruit-bodied mushrooms.


    Some of the spores that left his body seeped into the ground and swiftly became eerie patches of mold that swiftly spread through the tilled dirt, discoloring it and causing it to begin to exude an unpleasant smell into the air. That said the god was fascinated by this, and enjoyed displaying his own powers to an audience that consisted solely of himself.


    The god carefully targeted a handful of the mushrooms that grew from the spores he produced and silently activated one of his more potent abilities: "Lesser fungal manipulation". This power caused those mushrooms to begin to radiate an incredible and eerie light as he caused the fungi to evolve into a wholly new stage of their lives.


    ________________________________________________


    My eyes were glued to the mushrooms as they evolved. I watched them undergo an intense and alien transformation as they took on an assortment of new characteristics. The most immediate of the changes they abruptly underwent happened underneath the tilled dirt I had planted them in.


    I had targeted five of the mushrooms that had come from me and caused them to transform into wholly separate and far more powerful lifeforms. Underneath the dirt the hyphae network the mushrooms had created before entering the mushroom phases of their lives rapidly expanded for a moment, before solidifying and becoming the humanoid-like bodies of the evolved form of the mushrooms: fungal folk.


    The hyphae transformed into every body part a humanoid needed to survive and thrive. I could sense the intense transformation occurring underneath my feet and the incredibly bright light the mushrooms were exuding continued for another moment before the transformation from mushrooms into fungal folk was completed with the fungal folks developing organs like eyes to assist them in navigating the surface world.


    This wasn''t the only transformation I was causing. Another one, one near the diner I had visited earlier, was also taking place.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the tasks I had done earlier in the day was aid the spiders I had awoken out of the diner. I did this early on in the day, while I was in the government building and gaining vital documents that''d make it possible for me to live as a human in this world if I had wanted too. Currently, the spiders were out of the diner and in the forest that surrounded the town.


    The spiders were wandering around the forest, familiarizing themselves with it. While I was creating helpers for Geoffrey I was also rewarding the spiders I had befriended for being spiders. I had always had a soft spot for spiders and these ones were no exception to that rule. One by one I targeted them and forcibly evolved them into driders, causing them to transform from creatures smaller than a fingernail into utterly massive and terrifying spider-elf hybrids.


    The spiders had huddled together in a nondescript part of the forest and then over the course of about seven seconds they began to undergo a truly mystifying transformation. The once unremarkable creatures grew to hundreds of times their original sizes as they gained elven upper-bodies and the lower bodies of truly terrifying, nearly horse-sized spiders.


    There was an even number of male and female spiders present among the group of newly transformed Althonians. The male driders became surprisingly handsome, and impressively fierce-looking male-elf-spider-hybrids. The female driders became beautiful and savage spider-elf-human-hybrids. Their transformations only took about five seconds each, as the powerful and divine energy that transformed them seeped into their souls and rapidly corrupted and transformed them nearly instantly.


    The driders, feeling the potent energies of their god surging into them, became even more fanatically devoted to their divine master. And even though he was far from them he felt their emotions surge into him, for a moment causing his eyes to flash predatorily.


    ________________________________________________


    Before my very eyes the transformations the mushrooms had been undergoing was completed. As soon as it was, I heard a number of hands begin to dig at the tilled soil the creatures had come to life in. The creatures were trying to dig themselves out of the dirt! I chuckled and with a single flick of my hands the entities were freed from the earthy confines of their birthplace.


    Five fungal folks stared at me in awe and curiosity. The creatures were vaguely humanoid in shape, but not at all humanoid in appearance. They had milk-white "skin", the color of the stipes and stems of many mushrooms, but even at a glance the texture of their "skin" was too thick to be human. Their skin was also blotchy and covered in a number of nasty looking spots, which were actually modified gills from which they could exude spores at will.


    Their heads were enormous fungal caps, truly gigantic ones that protruded from the tops of their faces and constantly gave their actual faces shade. Rows upon rows of gills were visible underneath these caps. The tops of the caps were covered in scales as well.


    The creatures had no mouths on their faces, but they did have more gills where their mouths would have been. The gills allowed them to have a number of places from which they could spray spores at their enemies, or at fertile places where mushrooms would be able to grow. As I studied them, I felt their adoration and servility towards me begin to seep into me. It brought a vain smile to my face, and so I began to give them their orders.


    ________________________________________________


    The wide-eyed fungal entities stared at their creator, the entity the system told them to refer too as "The fungal father", with nothing but awe, adoration, and love. Their eyes were ill-accustomed to light, but they quickly adjusted and as they did their only focus was their god and the orders they received from him.


    "Your first order is to serve me. That is indeed the one order that supersedes all others." I told them. They began to nod, understanding me instinctually. I was physically speaking, but it had been a bit of a test since the creatures didn''t have ears.


    "Your second order is to spread. Within you, there are millions of spores with which you can be parents to the next generation of fungi. When you find places from which your own children can grow, either plant them or come back later and plant them." I told the creatures, an evil grin on my face as I did so.


    I liked the feelings of adoration these creatures provided me with. Their worship was etched into their very beings since they owed every aspect of their existence to me. I''d like to see how it felt to be worshiped by more of them.


    I was also keenly aware of a new development. I felt a new mental-tether tie me to the fungal folk I had created. I could ambiently hear their reverential thoughts. Internally this brought a smile to my face. I knew what this was: this was the fungal supermind that the subdomain had told me about when I first gained the lowest tier of influence over it.


    With it I could tie together the minds of all fungi, and a part of me wanted to experiment with that but before I had the chance to do so Geoffrey finally arrived in front of me and the fungal servants he had just gained. I turned to face him and smiled, even as he looked at the bizarre fungal creatures I had created.


    "Hello Geoffrey. I have a gift for you." I told him, smiling as I gestured towards my fungal creations.

 181 Fungal Friendship & Decisions

    The sight of the creatures caught my human companion and worshipper off-guard and he slowed to a stop as he first saw them. There was a flabbergasted expression on his face as he quizzically studied them for a few moments, his mind and senses far sharper than they had been before, and thus allowing him a chance to study things in detail more easily. Eventually, he spoke.


    "Althos... What are those things?" He asked, curiosity and a bit of fear audible in his voice. He had never seen anything like them before and it was clear by his facial expression that he found the tiny fungal entities more than a bit unsettling. I chuckled and motioned for one of the little creatures to come close to me. The thing began to stumble towards me on tiny legs. As it did I began to speak.


    "These are fungal folks. They are evolved creatures. They arose from simple, immobile, and often unintelligent fungus." I told Geoffrey, speaking truthfully. There was a smile on my face as I spoke. The one I gestured towards make it to me as I spoke.


    "I quite like them if I''m being honest. They are simple creatures, but they are so much more than the ordinary fungus they arose from." I told Geoffrey. I reached out and touched the one that had approached me. As I did I transmitted feelings of love and joy to the thing, and it began to shiver excitedly.


    A few spores left the fungal cap of its head and drifted down to the dirt beside us. I turned to face the thing, smiled at it, and altered it slightly.


    Altering the entity took a split second and when I was done altering it, a thin mouth appeared on its face. The creature could now speak, using magically created vocal cords and the thin mouth which appeared over where a gill had once been. The creature opened its mouth to speak, and as it did I taught it the language Geoffrey spoke using my "Tactile teaching" power.


    "Cr...eat...or." It rattled out, speaking like someone who was unfamiliar with a language and was just waking up spoke. I happily gazed at the entity, delighted to hear its voice. Geoffrey watched this and I could sense, through my empathetic powers, that he found it odd. I chuckled without turning to face him. I began to speak to Geoffrey again, though I didn''t turn to face him. Instead I repeated the alteration I made to the fungal folk near me to the ones further away.


    "These little creatures are your new friends. They are going to help you on the farm." I told the man, having made them for that specific purpose. Without motioning for the other creatures to approach me I continued to alter them though not in so literal a sense. Even as I spoke I quietly infused the other fungal folks with knowledge of farming and agriculture, mixing in both my own knowledge of agricultural processes with the knowledge given to me by the system and informed by Geoffrey''s own memories.


    ________________________________________________


    I reached out and touched the minds of my fungal children. I did so gently, touching their thoughts with warmness and kindness, purely adding to their incredibly limited knowledge of the world. As I did so I sensed the love and awe they felt towards me, even more keenly than I had before.


    Their emotions were pure and intense, undistracted by more complex thoughts. I enjoyed that, and a part of me, the part that carved the love of mortals and of other entities, desired more of it. I luxuriated in it for a moment, the way a human might luxuriate in a bath, before refocusing.


    Without hesitation, I granted the fungal folks access to the druid class. Doing so increased their stores of spiritual energy and also allowed them access to magic that would help them help other, less evolved, creatures like basic plants and fungi.


    I felt them shiver as the powers and abilities at their fingertips expanded greatly thanks to the powers I infused them with. I chuckled as I sensed their excitement.


    ________________________________________________


    Outside of their minds, I was still active. I quietly activated a number of potent "Divine presence" powers, choosing to activate the art \u0026 creation effect, and the life and nature effects, causing the area around me to explode with plant life, as well as naturally bolstering all sorts of life around me independent of the type of life it happened to be.


    Activating this power made me shiver as I felt my powers expand over an area roughly a kilometer in length. It felt nice to expand my powers once more. My powers washed over the area, including Geoffrey''s farmland, and caused plants to blossom to life almost immediately. Beside me, both Geoffrey and my fungoid creations sighed as they felt the potent powers waft over them and their eyes widened as they took in the enhanced beauty of the farmland around us. I closed my eyes and began to speak, a serene smile visible on my face as I did so.


    "I am a god of life. Being a god of life means being able to do this much quite easily." I said, speaking arrogantly even as plants began to creep and spread towards me, flowers blossoming beside my feet and grass twisting towards me. As I watched the plants around me grow in my direction and make their way towards me, at least in the limited capacity that they could, I relaxed and continued to speak.


    "This is a beautiful world. I shall fill it with life, of all sorts." I proclaimed, speaking boldly.


    ________________________________________________


    The god stood at the edge of a tilled field and relaxed, speaking boldly but also honestly.


    "I seek to turn this world into a verdant paradise. And I shall be acknowledged as the one who made this paradise possible." He declared, finally settling on an alignment to behave as, in this new world. He opened his eyes and the grin that was on his lips was visible on his face.


    "I shall behave in ways that aid people and work to move governments towards hope, forgiveness, and peace." He explained. In his heart, he knew what this meant: in the world of Htrae, he planned to behave as though he were a lawful good deity. One who valued order, tradition, governments, and systems, while seeking to guide societies in directions that uplifted all lives and helped as many people as possible.


    Behaving in good ways, and in lawful ways, was difficult for the god. He was not familiar with true kindness or good intentions. Ultimately the deity had spent much of his life behaving in ways that advanced no agenda but his own, and he had committed incredibly evil acts in the past. And what''s more, he wasn''t repentant for the evil he had done. To call Althos malicious wouldn''t exactly have been a fair characterization of most of his actions, but he certainly wasn''t kind.


    Even now the god was doing this to advance his own power. He sought to gain greater powers over goodness, life, and law, and doing so would ultimately require that he built cults that worshiped him as a god of those things. He would need to be worshiped as a life-bringer, paradise creating, god of order, and structure. He recognized that. He was willing to become those things, in the eyes of some of his worshipers. The god was nothing if not ambitious. He wanted to be worshiped in every single way he could be worshiped.


    "I am a god of goodness, joy, love, and life." He stated, smiling at his worshipers as he did so. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotions, and yet his followers didn''t notice, as they were too enthralled by him to be able to realize that their master felt very little as he put on this performance.


    "I shall spread goodness, joy, love, and life, wherever I go." He told them, his face hardening as he spoke. This was an act he wasn''t used to performing and thus it was challenging for him to maintain it.


    As he spoke his mind turned inwards so that he could begin to think of how to advance this goal of his.


    ________________________________________________


    "How can I do this?" I wondered, to no one in particular. I had a few ideas in mind, ways that I could go ahead and take a short-cut to more quickly become acknowledged as the god of this world.


    My healthy abundance of abilities left me with a number of tools at my disposal through which I could manipulate the world around me. I wondered if repeating what I did in Torus would serve as a handy shortcut since on Torus it resulted in me gaining billions of worshipers at once. But even as I considered it, I realized I didn''t need to rush things.


    I didn''t gain anything by rushing. I had all the time I wanted and needed to take over this world, so I ought to be patient instead of making brash decisions out of a wrong-headed desire to try and be quick.

 182 A God Of Change

    I found myself facing Geoffrey and my fungoid children. I had a neutral expression on my face, and after a moment of introspective thinking reverted my face back to a smile. I gazed at the creatures in front of me, and did my best to appear happy. Not that it was necessary to try particularly hard to deceive them, through "Absolute empathy" I knew they believed me whole-heartedly.


    They were all simple-minded creatures, which made them handy for me and my purposes. I wasn''t unhappy that they were unintelligent, in a sense they reminded me of "training wheels", objects that humans put on bikes to help children become able to use them effectively before they have the coordination needed to take them off and steer and use bikes properly. By using them intelligently I''d become better at pretending to be a god of goodness and law, and thus be able to fool more intelligent people more easily in the future. And I planned to fool this entire world.


    After a while, they recovered from their awe at my false revelations and opted to begin to work on their fields. Geoffrey quietly accepted my gift, and as I watched him supervise the work done by the creatures I watched him begin to relax. The fungal folks knew what they were doing and were able to effectively help him in simple tasks without any instructions aside from him telling them what things he needed done. It was nice to see that they were that intelligent, at least.


    While I watched them I began to focus on my own powers. Specifically, my elemental abilities, all of which were second-tier thanks to the fact that I was an elemental overlord. The moment I had become an elemental overlord I essentially received a free upgrade to my elemental powers, but I hadn''t really focused on the powers themselves aside from the ones I had gained power over specifically due to the fact that I was an elemental overlord. Now I was truly correcting that.


    ________________________________________________


    [Earth subdomain passive powers:


    Absorption: You can absorb things like sand, metals, crystals, and even the very earth itself. Doing so allows you to heal yourself, empower your attacks, or even store things and then expel them elsewhere.


    Adaptation: You can alter living creatures so that they can survive in any earthly environment.


    Auras: You gain auras of earth, crystals, and metals. These auras cause their respective things to form spontaneously around you, and to make you harder to approach.


    Crystallization: You can transform something, or someone, into crystals. Crystals are homogeneous solid substances that have a natural geometrically regular form with symmetrically arranged plane faces. If you want this effect to kill them, it can and will, but if you want them to be made into statues or even into living creatures composed of crystals that could work too.


    Crystal form: You can take on a crystal form. An example of this is that this form allows you to make a diamond-form for yourself, diamonds being considered highly valuable to humans and to other sapient species who value artwork and crystals.


    Destruction: This synergistic power takes from the domain of destruction and mixes it with the earth subdomain. Allows you to break earth, metal, and other earthen things without fail unless they are divinely protected. This also allows your destruction powers to work on entities comprised of the earth, such as different types of earth elementals. Using destruction powers on them kills them.


    Earth embodiment: Grant yourself a form made entirely of earth. Useful for creating personas.


    Earth healing: You can heal things that are made up of earth or things like metal, crystals, sand, and other earthen things without fail.


    Erosion: This power mixes destruction, water, chaos, time, air, and earth to allow you to manipulate the processes of both erosion and weathering. This allows you to erode things and cause them to break apart more easily.


    Exoskeleton: You can form exoskeletons from the earthen things you can manipulate.


    Metal generation: You can generate metals, both in ore-form or pre-extracted such as generating copper instead of generating sulfide ore.


    Metal manipulation: You can alter and transform metals however you wish. You can also transform living creatures made of flesh, skin, and bone, into loyal and metallic construct-like entities that serve you however you wish.


    Metal form: You can gift yourself a metallic form at will. This allows you to give yourself a body made of gold or titanium if you ever want one.


    Solidification: You can solidify unsolid things and even creatures. This means that you can make incorporeal creatures corporeal, and also that you can solidify gases, plasmas, and liquids.]


    ________________________________________________


    As I finished reading through the entry on earth I felt... more solid than ever. Reading through it took a few minutes, but in doing so I gained a much better understanding of my powers over the earth itself and I felt more appreciative of them than I ever had. They were nicely diverse, and with them I could do a number of things.


    If I wanted too I could effectively create forcefields by solidifying oxygen and other gases, forming impenetrable walls that could stop bullets and even tanks. I could create sinkholes by skillfully eroding certain areas until they weren''t able to support buildings, statues, or even people. I could also petrify people and turn them into statues made of gold or diamonds.


    As I thought about that, I quietly tried to alter my own form. I envision my arm becoming a solid object, one made of brilliant gold. And before my very eyes, it did. I watched as my sun-kissed skin became a gleaming metallic object that felt more solid than I had ever felt before. I grinned, wide-eyed, as this power overtook my limb, and I felt delighted that it did so.


    With my current powers, I could create golems made of things like diamonds and use them to serve my creations or to act as enforcers of my will. These new powers afforded me considerable creativity in doing any sort of creation, and I positively loved that.


    I reverted my arm back to its usual, fleshed-out state and chuckled as I did so. I continued to watch the work done by my servants for a little while, before finally allowing my mind to wander. It took me perhaps an hour to come up with the next phase of my scheme. And when I did I finally left the farm, as the sun was starting a slow descent back below the horizon.


    As I left the farm of my first Htraeian servant I reached into my mind and learned more about the other elemental powers at my disposal. All of them brought different kinds of smiles to my face.


    ________________________________________________


    The next phase of my scheme was simple. I would create my own little settlement, in the forest, and fill it with Althonians. When I was younger this would have been a more painful and longer-term process than it was today. It would have taken hours, even for the first part of it: building houses. Today it did not.


    I wasted no time when I arrived where I felt like establishing my first community. I immediately caused an enormous whirlwind that felled dozens of trees, while using my powers over sound to prevent the numerous crashing sounds from being heard by distant settlements. This cleared out the area I intended to plant the trees in, and gave me ample room with which to get to work.


    The next thing I did was immediately build the seven buildings I intended to make the centerpiece of the place. By using powers over creation and civilization this process took me roughly a minute, not a minute for each of the buildings, but a minute in total. I constructed the buildings, and then I set to work to establish boundaries for the little settlement I was creating. That wasn''t very hard, as creating walls was something that wasn''t challenging. I quietly created twenty-foot walls that surrounded the houses in every direction, with four equally spaced openings that would allow people in or out of the settlement but in an orderly way.


    I made the walls thick, but I also outfitted them with windows so that those inside the settlement could see the outside world. I knew how I''d staff these entryways: with constructs. By using constructs I''d be able to police the settlement without utilizing corruptable manpower, or having to worry about things like "shifts", "hunger", or "forgetfulness".


    It was at this point that I began to have fun. Now that I had made the basic settlement, I needed to make people. This was a process I was a bit familiar with at this point, I had made living creatures, including humans, in the past. But this time I opted to be creative.


    I went into the center of the settlement, an area a few hundred feet wide and long, and began to get creative.


    ________________________________________________


    I created fifty humans over about ten minutes. One every twelve seconds. These humans were all beautiful or handsome, but they weren''t anything truly special. Not yet anyway.


    When I was done with the first set of people, they were all either looking at me or conversing with each other. They wore an assortment of clothes, and each had souls. They were true, living humans. And they were about to become something so much more than true, living humans. I targeted each of them and then allowed my powers over metal to wash over them and make them something new.


    All at once the creatures before me began to harden. They lost the softest, most malleable, and corruptable parts of themselves. They also didn''t react to this until they were fully metallic entities, made of an array of metals. Some were made of iron, others were made of steel or bronze. When the last bits of themselves were fully metallic, they stopped talking and slowly turned to face me before kneeling in front of me.


    Their metallic bodies were dense and beautiful, devoid of any blemish or any imperfections. They were living art, and I was quite proud of them. I admired them for a full minute, before I began to command them.


    "Metallic ones! Disperse! Give me room to create your... weaker cousins." I commanded, speaking authoritatively. The metallic entities obeyed me, not mindlessly, but they nevertheless didn''t disobey my orders. They spread out to the edges of the space they had been created in. It was at this point that I began to create humans again.


    This was a human world and in order to blend in, even a little, I''d need to use humans as my servants and creations. I''d spend another ten minutes creating even more humans. And these ones would stay human.


    I spent time carefully crafting each human, utilizing some of my newer powers to modify the people I was making customized from the start. I gave them martial classes, ones like "warrior", "ranger", "brawler", "monk", and even a few like "rogue", and "assassin". They were all handmade, each carefully and singularly chosen to be a good compliment to two other people. The first person they were to be a compliment too was one of the metalized humans, and the second person they were to be a compliment too was another of the newly made, organic humans.


    I was creating families. Sort of. I made the metalized humans to be my direct servants and to be a guardian of one individual non-metalized human. I gave each organic human their own organic partner and their own metallic partner. This was my way of not doing what I had done to Raiz, where she was all alone for a long time. I also bonded all of the humans to each other, through the usage of my ability to manipulate relationships.


    I had fun doing this and found it to be a creative way to kill some time. By the time I was done darkness was fast descending on us, thanks in part to the fact that we were in a forest. I quietly encouraged my creations to go into the houses I had built for them, houses that already had the appropriate number of rooms and beds for each of the families I had made. I was excited for the days to come, and the next week would pass in a blur.


    ________________________________________________


    [Air subdomain passive abilities:


    Aerokinetic combat mastery: You can now more ferociously manipulate air currents and air-based natural phenomena in combat. This means you can utilize things like whirlwinds, tornados, and hurricanes in combat far more easily than before.


    Aero-aura: With this power, you can utilize a number of nasty effects in your aura. You can deoxygenate the area immediately around you, rendering you unapproachable. You can transform the area around you into a raging windstorm, buffeting anyone who gets too close with hurricane-force winds.


    Aero-destruction \u0026 negation: You can destroy, absorb, or negate, air, wind, and gases.


    Air embodiment: You can become a cyclonic entity comprised entirely of the wind.


    Air pressure manipulation: You can manipulate air molecules and cause an array of effects. This allows you to do things like burst something, or even crush someone.


    Cloud creation: You can create and manipulate clouds and storms however you wish. Synergistic with nature, water, and a few other domains and subdomains.


    Disincorporealization: You can cause objects and even living creatures to lose their corporeality. This means that they become ethereal and incorporeal, which comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages.


    Evaporation: You can evaporate objects and even people. Once something has been evaporated you could resolidify it, or you could destroy it by scattering the atoms and molecules that make it up. This includes people, though it''d probably be better worded to say that you vaporize them, not evaporate them.


    Gaseous aura: You can wreathe yourself in an aura of gas that can be manipulated in a number of ways. This gas can be poisonous, it can be paralytic, or even flammable.


    Smoke mastery: You can generate, embody, and manipulate smoke. This is a handy form of air manipulation that is synergistic with the subdomain of fire.]

 183 Day Two

    Over the course of the next seven days I would steadily build up the community I had created. As night fell on the community, the very day I had created it, I acted in my role as a god of caverns and other subterranean places.


    I went beneath the earth of the community and set about doing a number of things. The first thing I did was create ways into the earth within each of the houses I had built. I created small caverns by carefully hollowing out the earth beneath the houses and O also built tunnels that connected them to each other, while also building stairwells in each of the seven houses I had built so that humans could go underground and so that the things living underground could go aboveground.


    I was fond of building things underground, and frankly, even on my first day of constructing things in the at that point unnamed community, I built far more underground than I did aboveground. Under the houses and in the caverns I built a number of golems, making use of perhaps the most powerful ability I had gained from the domain of creation. My first golems were simple things made of stone and their whole purpose was to serve as living decoration and protect the underground world from unwanted intrusion. I would later build more complex and beautiful golems than that.


    On the first day the only cavern of any real importance I created was a gigantic one that was actually not underneath any of the houses but was a distance away from them. In this cavern I built a tremendous garden, using powers over flowers, life, and light, and I also built an enormous hive before filling it with bees and wasps. At the heart of the cavern was a deep lake, which was where I''d build an underwater temple to myself. In the moments when I wasn''t doing anything, I''d come to this temple and rest.


    I evolved a number of both types of insects, and thus finally began to expand the swarm again. The garden cavern was the only place I illuminated beneath the earth. I preferred the darkness myself, but I didn''t feel like modifying the flowers to be able to survive in the dark. That was a bit too much, even for me.


    I also went ahead and carved out a single tunnel connecting the garden to the other caverns, but I also built powerful stone golems to ward off anyone, even humans I built, from the place. This cavern was mine and it was where I liked to rest and lurk. I didn''t want any humans coming here and disturbing that.


    While idly in my temple I silently observed the dreams of many humans throughout Htrae. I didn''t intervene, and the only way in which I made my presence known was by being visible in the dreams as a silent, unearthly observer. I wasn''t hostile, or benevolent, I was merely there. I investigated the dreams of children, adults, businessmen, homeless people, and even presidents and doctors.


    I learned much from that and had fun conjuring nightmarish forms to visit the dreams in. In some, I was a moon with an evil face. In others, I was a gigantic entity, a true horror that stood menacingly off in the distance. In others, I was a massive serpent who audibly hissed whenever I couldn''t be seen but was silent when I was in view. It was fun.


    ________________________________________________


    As my second day in Htrae began I left my submerged temple as soon as it was five in the morning in the lands above me. As I did I saw my insect-worshipers and their evolved and more zealous cousins, hard at work. I saw hundreds of them as I made my way out of the tunnel. I ignored them, but I still felt their reverence pour into me as I left my home, and it brought a smile to my face.


    I made myself incorporeal and flew through the earth until I was back on the surface of Htrae again. Doing so took less than a second since I was capable of traveling at the speed of light. When I was back above the surface I set about going to work once more.


    The first thing I did was make a phantom copy of myself and teleport it to Glendale. The copy had simple instructions: it was to learn about technology and in doing so give me new toys with which to play. I had a number of powers that were useful for this, especially from the knowledge domain. I had also instructed the creature to be stealthy, which both it and I, and therefore both of me, knew it could be. Even as I teleported the thing it turned invisible and activated a suite of powers designed to ensure it went undetected. I didn''t doubt that it''d soon give me lots of knowledge with which to play.


    The second thing I did was expand the town I had created. I expanded it several meters, and then immediately created a simple temple to myself in the now empty space. I did this before any of the humans I had created were awake, and it was done silently.


    This temple was a small one. It wasn''t supposed to be a huge or ornate place of worship, it was meant to be humble and welcoming. I didn''t even enter the temple to decorate it, and instead I filled it with the things a temple needed like pews, an altar, and even a simple text that instructed worshipers to breed and to worship me as a fertility and life god.


    This text contained the teachings involved in my worship, including that I was the source of their lives and thus was the figure responsible for their pleasure. I instructed them to devote each pleasurable sensation they experienced, be it for procreation or not, to me. I planned to teach this temple''s faithful that lust was good and should be indulged in.


    I created a new human specifically to serve as a priestess here. I didn''t leave her as an organic human though. I immediately bestowed her with a diamond form, and I afflicted her with lust. Her whole purpose was to be this temple''s guardian and the preacher who spoke here daily. Her beautiful, diamond-form, was appealing even to me but I didn''t dally here. I had other temples I needed to create and populate, some of which would be filled with more than one person.


    I went to another portion of the wall, one far from the one I had just modified and repeated the process I had done when building the first temple. I expanded the wall, I built the temple, and I decorated it. This temple''s text was all about the importance of patience and kindness. I used this temple to finally begin to build a cult that worshipped me as a god of purity and the seven virtues.


    This time I made the cleric in the temple a male, and I also bestowed him with a non-organic form. His skin was soon replaced by gold, giving him an ornate and gleaming appearance. I made him a kind and saintly fellow whose alignment was lawful good, and I instructed him to be kind above all things, even though I never set foot in the temple.


    I had two more temples to build and so this time I made both of them at once. I first expanded the wall once more, just in both places at once, and used my powers to immediately construct the temples in a matter of seconds. Doing so was easy and fun, and I enjoyed it. Both temples were useful to me, and served different purposes.


    The first temple I focused on was a simple one. It was a temple that was devoted to me as a god of goodness, a thought which still amused me greatly. I decorated it humbly, filling it with the usual items I had filled the other temples with, including its own unique text that emphasized goodness in all things. The priestess here was a woman whose skin was soon made into beautiful, gleaming copper.


    The second temple was the only temple I''d build that wasn''t simple. This temple was devoted to me as god of law and order. It was also considerably larger than the other temples, including having a real courtyard and even a backyard. This temple was different and I needed it to serve multiple purposes.


    ________________________________________________


    I was a god. In so far as I was interested in building governments and organizations, I intended everything to be theocratic. Which wasn''t how things worked in this world. In this world there was an antiquated and mostly forgotten concept called the "Separation of Church and State", which was once used to describe keeping religion and politics separate from each other. It was antiquated and mostly forgotten because religion itself had died in this world, with the last known faithful dying off well over a century ago.


    Centuries ago there had still been religions in this world. Judging from what I had gleaned in the dreams of individuals who were knowledgable about history and sociology, these ancient religions hadn''t worshipped anything real and survived so long because of their emphasis on blind faith. That said those religions were still mighty and for a long time tried to interfere with politics.


    Over the course of Htraeian history more and more people became secular and rejected these religions, and as they did they came up with concepts that served to separate government and religion. As a god, I wasn''t a fan of that. This society wouldn''t be like that.


    The temple of law that I built was above and beyond the largest temple I had built to date. It was an enormous thing that would serve a number of critical functions. First and foremost it would serve as the sole government building in this community. Eventually, Htraean humans would discover this town. When they did they''d find this building to be our government building, our town hall.


    The second critical function that it would serve is it that would be where we''d store any lawbreakers and where our law-enforcers would work. I built a portion of the massive temple underground, specifically, the place where law-enforcement, who''d all be non-organic humans, constructs, and eventually maybe even extraplanars, would work. And I also built a prison there too. It was a perfect place to build one since not only was it underground it also led up to where our finest combatants lived and worked.


    The third critical function of this place was that it was where people would come to learn valuable skills. This primarily came in the form of the numerous unique metalized humans I''d create here. I created humans who were paladins, monks, warriors, and a number of other classes, and I gave them inorganic bodies as well as rooms within the temple to cement their unique status.


    I instilled in them a powerful sense of loyalty to their community and to their peers, as well as fanatical loyalty to me. Their purpose was to oversee the defense of the community, and to train both organic and non-organic humans self-defense, and to test their piety and knowledge.


    I created a high priest of law here, and I gave him a text that was filled with lessons and sermons about the importance of the law, and one "simple truth" that was actually a lie: I was the law. The priest accepted this text eagerly, and tearfully, happy to have been chosen by his creator to serve a role as important as the one I was giving him. This priest served as the head of the town, since he was effectively my messenger within the community.


    I was the source of all laws that the town would follow. And my laws were simple. "Work hard and you will be able to thrive", "Treat others with kindness and obey the teachings of the town''s priests and priestesses", "Do all things to honor your creator". If I needed too I''d happily make other laws, but for now those were the laws I felt we needed to keep in mind, nothing too complex.


    ________________________________________________


    By the time I was done outfitting the final temple, I was mostly done with the second day of my new life in Htrae. I had actually entered the temple and explored it in person rather than doing what I usually did and outfitting it from the outside. When I was done in the temple I teleported myself back to my submerged home.


    I was fond of the temple, and within it I took a look around and smiled. The whole thing was underwater and water suffused even the tiniest and most remote corners of the building. I liked that, and I wallowed in the depths of the river for a time before beginning to do two things at once.


    I began to investigate more dreams, and to expand the lake I was in at the same time. I wanted to expand it enough to build a few settlements here, just enough that I''d have zealous company.


    ________________________________________________


    [Liquid subdomain synergistic abilities:


    Aquatic creation: You can create bodies of water. This could be oceans, rivers, lakes, or streams.


    Aquatic destruction: You can destroy bodies of water, in such a way that the water is permanently erased. This doesn''t evaporate the water, it deletes it.


    Aquatic life creation: By mixing the animal and plant subdomains you have, the subdomain of liquid, and the life domain, you have earned this incredible power. It allows you to create all manner of fish and other aquatic life, so long as you are trying to create simple, unevolved lifeforms. You can also evolve aquatic creatures into beings like were-sharks and merfolk, or other, odder entities depending on what you create.


    Aquatic life manipulation: You can command all sorts of lifeforms within bodies of water. You can also evolve such creatures.


    Boundary creation: You can create and manipulate boundaries within water. The simplest application of this is that you can create areas of water wherein on one side the water is fresh, and on the other side the water is salty. You can also create lifeless areas of deoxygenated water and then create life-filled zones, using this power.


    River, lake, and stream lordship: Your fondness for bodies of water and your aquatic worshipers have given you great power over rivers, lakes, and streams. They have now become your holy places in much the same way as volcanoes and caverns are. This potent power means you can manifest in or around rivers, lakes, and streams, as well as gain an instant awareness of them, whenever you walk on a planet for the first time. Until now this power has been turned off, but now it will be turned on. This power is synergistic between the domains of nature, faith, and the subdomain of liquid.


    Resource creation: You can create things like pearls, and other valuable resources usually found in or around water. This is synergistic with the creation domain.


    Pollute: This synergistic power takes from a number of subdomains, most notably the subdomain of corruption, though it is aided by things like the radiation subdomain and the domain of disease. With it you can pollute rivers, lakes, and streams flawlessly and you can pollute even portions of oceans at will. Polluted areas sicken those who swim in them.


    Zone creation: You can create things like whirlpools, hydrothermal vents, and other natural phenomena found within bodies of water.]

 184 Dreams And Nightmares

    I would spend my second night within the depths of Htrae by visiting dreams and expanding my underwater kingdom. I had had so much fun on my first night visiting dreams in various forms that I continued that habit.


    I visited countless dreams, all of which were of humans far from New Sol, in an array of forms. I enjoyed evoking terror in the hearts and minds of humans, and I could tell that portions of the domains within me, specifically the domains of dreams, evil, and emotions, as well as the subdomain of corruption, all enjoyed my malignant actions. The more I acted the more I enjoyed the ability to terrorize people through their dreams.


    Throughout the whole night I persisted in the habit I established the night before. I did not engage with the creatures I was terrorizing. I was instead an inescapable part of their dreams, only moving or acting whenever the dreamer was in a place where they might not be able to see me, such as inside of a building or underground. In those rare moments I would roar, or cause the earth underneath me to quake menacingly. To be visited by me in a dream was a sad fate, as I tormented thousands of dreamers that night.


    Some of the forms I took during my nightmarish visits to mortal dreams included that of utterly massive serpents, gigantic and amphibious octopi, and other, more nightmarish entities such as a giant man with no face and chalk-white skin. In a few cases I took on the form of a seemingly normal human whose only quirk was perpetually following the dreamer and staring at them unblinkingly. In those dreams I was actually pretty close to the dreamer, as I sought to always be visible to them.


    The people whose dreams I tormented were a diverse crowd. I tormented people of all ages, selecting targets as young as toddlers and ones almost a century old. I was never particularly aggressive, especially if someone stayed where they could see me at all times they were dreaming, but I was persistent. I occupied thousands of dreams that night, and I didn''t give anyone whose dreams I was visiting a moment''s rest.


    ________________________________________________


    The other thing I did was something that was much more physical. I expanded my submerged home, though not the temple itself. I expanded the actual lake, making it larger and larger.


    I did this for a few hours, greatly expanding my submerged home. That said at the same that I was doing that I was carefully populating my strange home. I filled the waters around my lair with an assortment of beasts and other creatures. For the first time in my life I created true elementals.


    The first servants I staffed the wall with were water elementals, creatures that were composed of water and were formed through my power over both liquids and spirits. When building them I had the option to shape them, and I modeled the ones I staffed the wall with after giants. They were enormous, vaguely humanoid-shaped entities made of water, and I quietly unified our minds through the creation of my first true hive-mind.


    They were given simple orders. They were to ensure that no one aside from Deep-Ones were allowed entry into my temple.


    The second group I staffed the settlement around my home was a large tribe of the abominations known as "Deep-Ones". These aquatic, vaguely human-like entities, were made from humans who I stole the sanity of and converted into abominations one by one. The process by which I created them was a simple one. I created amphibious humans and then stole their sanity so that I could convert them.


    Deep-Ones, like me, were aquatic and selfish creatures. I killed some time in the night by taking them and using them as experiments for my pleasure-based powers. They were incredibly willing to be used in this way, enjoying the fact that their creator saw fit to drown them in pleasure and cause them to experience mind-bending lust and unearthly satisfaction.


    I had my way with both men and women, and I did so without directly touching them. The only ways in which I made contact with them in any sort of physical sense was by using my powers over the cephalopod subdomain, one of the countless animal subdomains I had acquired influence over when I fed and healed the world of Torus, near the beginning of my life. Those powers included the ability to remotely generate and control tentacles as though they were limbs attached to my own body.


    ________________________________________________


    [Cephalopod Subdomain details:


    The cephalopod subdomain is an animal subdomain that governs animals like squids, octopi, cuttlefish, and nautili. This subdomain is useful for controlling some of the most impressive undersea animals, creatures like gigantic krakens and humanoid-cephalopod fusions like Scyllas and Cecaelia.


    This is one of the handier undersea subdomains, alongside the Cnidaria subdomain that grants those who influence it power over creatures like jellyfish, box-jellies, and sea anemones. By having power over these subdomains you gain power over countless types of water-breathing and water-dwelling creatures of various levels of intelligence.


    To gain power over this subdomain, use it to build the influence of cephalopods all over assorted worlds. Use its powers to build viable cephalopod civilizations and spread your worship far and wide, beneath the seas of various worlds.


    Cephalopod Subdomain passive powers*:


    Alteration: You can grant your followers the features of unevolved cephalopods. This includes things like the shells of nautiluses, bonelessness, camouflage, tentacles, jet propulsion, bioluminescence, and even ink generation. You can also grant your cephalopod followers alterations from other animals. You, of course, also gain these features yourself.


    Divine evolution: As a consequence of gaining power over the domain of spirits and the second tier of influence over the domain of faith, you can now transform your animal followers into their divine evolutionary forms. How this manifests differs from animal subdomain to animal subdomain, but in the case of cephalopods, this means you can transform cephalopods into krakens and akkorokamui. Equivalent versions of this power exist for all of your animal and many of your plant subdomains.


    Divine animals are not quite unique beings, but they are tremendously powerful creatures who possess immense spiritual energy. It is possible, over the course of a particularly long life, for a creature that began its life as an unevolved, lesser animal, to eventually become a divine animal but such feats are incredibly rare.


    Divine animals almost invariably owe their existence to a god, or even a group of gods, who transformed them into mythical entities. Divine animals are usually super-versions of lesser entities who commonly possess magic and are invariably awakened and capable of speech. When created by gods they serve as incredibly pious creatures who often serve as either immense destroyers or are themselves leaders of civilizations.


    Tentacle creation: You can create and manipulate tentacles. These tentacles need not be attached to you, and can indeed be created remotely while still serving you as well as any limb attached to your body. You can subject creatures wrapped in your tentacles to be subjected to an array of status effects, and can even cause your tentacles to exude parasitic spores or use them for powers like mesmerizing presence. These tentacles can also be of any length, and can be created anywhere you can detect.


    *This includes other powers common throughout the animal subdomains, including but not limited to you gaining a monstrous form and you gaining the ability to awaken animals that fall under the purview of this subdomain, as well as the ability to force them to evolve into their next forms, which are Cecaelia (Humanoid cephalopods) and dire-variants of their current forms.


    Cephalopod Subdomain active power:


    Transformation: You can transform a creature into a cephalopod of their current size. This power can also snatch away their free-will and can be permanent or as part of a punishment that lasts for a set period of time. You decide if they retain their intelligence. This a once-per-day power that can affect as many as 100 people at once.


    Cephalopod Subdomain blessing and curse details:


    This is a usual subdomain in that it confers typical blessings and curses. Blessing a cephalopod with it grants them increased power, intelligence, agility, and endurance. Cursing a cephalopod with it does the opposite. Blessing a non-cephalopod with it grants them enhanced charisma with regards to cephalopods and resistance to their abilities, and cursing a non-cephalopod with it does the opposite.]


    ________________________________________________


    One of my more fun pastimes my second night in Htrae had been using my tentacles to ensnare my servants. I created writhing tentacle pits, which deep-ones willingly moved into and then inadvertently spent hours in, being toyed with and sensually touched. For a time my temple was filled with all manner of lewd mewling and I found the scenery and background noise quite relaxing.


    This was one of the first moments in my life in which I actually felt like an entity of lust. I didn''t often indulge in my pleasure-based powers, but from time to time throughout my life I had felt the impulse to lazily toy with someone in sadistic, often sexual ways. Previously I had ignored and fought back against this impulse. But I didn''t want to do that anymore, even if to many surface dwellers I was doing my best to become a seemingly good and benevolent god.


    The truth was that I wasn''t sure how I felt about doing that to someone I hadn''t created myself, but these creatures were direct creations of mine so I felt more confident in subjecting them to my powers. That, coupled with the fact that I hadn''t used any mind-bending powers on the deep-ones, aside from what I did to make them deep-ones in the first place, made me feel fine doing this to them.


    The final thing I did before I left on the dawn of my third day was that I partially petrified a few of the deep-ones I had brought into my lair. I did this so that I could continue to play with them when I returned. I only partially paralyzed them so that they were helpless while I allowed the pits I had made of my newest sort of limbs continue to caress them and wrack their minds with pleasure.


    ________________________________________________


    The rest of the week consisted of me expanding the village ever outward. I built a number of facilities throughout the village, expanding it a few dozen meters in each direction each day. My phantom-self explored Glendale and allowed me to study an assortment of technology ranging from cars to guns, to even the simplest and cheapest drones.


    I built a "hospital" consisting of a number of healers who used alchemy to mix healing potions together, I built an armory that contained a number of light and darkness based melee weapons as well as actual, working guns and ordinary bullets made through me utilizing the creation domain to create each individual part of a gun before properly putting them together.


    I also built a school, but for now it would go unoccupied. For the first time in my life I intended to allow followers of mine to have children and for those children to actually be children instead of me intervening and using my powers to speed their growth.


    My phantom self spent almost a quarter of a day in Glendale''s public library, just touching books and allowing my knowledge of this world to expand infinitely. It spent a particularly long time in the history section of the place, allowing me to well and truly familiarize myself with the scholarly understanding of the world''s past. I was never more grateful for my unusual literary power than I was when my phantom-self explored the library. By the time it was done exploring the library I had a truly encyclopedic knowledge of an array of largely but not entirely Htrae-specific set of topics.


    ________________________________________________


    Each night I returned to my temple and I experimented with different abilities. I continued my habit of tormenting dreamers, but in different ways.


    I began to take on a more actively malicious role in dreams. In dreams I allowed more of my old, or rather my true, self to shine through. I tormented some dreamers with nightmarish visions of their loved ones rising as zombies and ghouls and chasing after them, intending to devour them. Other dreamers had nightmarish visions of a world where humanity is defeated by my swarm, a post-apocalyptic reality wherein humanity is at best enslaved by an array of insects and where humanity is rendered extinct at worst.


    In the rare moments when I detected people who were innately vulnerable to eldritch abilities, people who were already stepping perilously close to insanity, I was extra insidious. Those truly unlucky people saw a whole different kind of nightmare. They saw a world overrun by abominations, where gugs, wendigos, star-vampires, mi-gos, deep-ones, and other insanity-inducing monstrosities were winning a global conflict against a theoretically unified Htraeian population.


    In a sense, these dreams depicted the world of Salifinos, a planet in the same solar system as Torus wherein abominations were committing a global genocide against mortals. And more than that, I plagued them with visions wherein they became abominations themselves and turned on those they loved, with a fierce and joyish zeal.


    Over the next few nights, many of the people who experienced those truly insidious dreams began to fear their dreams even more than they already had. On the other hand, though, a few of the dreamers who experienced the worst dreams began to relish them. They delighted in dreams wherein they were empowered to wage war on their fellow humans, and in dreams where they felt the dark power and sadistic love of a brutal god of death, warfare, and evil, as well as the comradery of their fellow abominations.


    In some dreams, especially for those who lived on coasts, I placed dreamers in an unbelievable vast and impossibly deep ocean teeming with life. The only thing was that the life the oceans teemed with were creatures under my control, sharks, jellyfish, and cephalopods. Towards the end of those dreams, I myself made an appearance in the form of a kraken the size of a continent, who extended a single tentacle the size of a skyscraper towards them. This tentacle would never fail to wrap around their legs and begin to slowly drag them down towards me.


    I experimented with this format, and tested variants of it. In some, I made my kraken form impossibly beautiful and made the dreamer fall in love with it and begin to swim towards it themselves. They would smile when my tentacle wrapped around them and began to drag them closer to me. In others I made my kraken form a chthonic, repellent beast who was omnipresent and unstoppable. The results were unsurprising but fun to see anyway.


    In the case of those who fell in love with my dream-form, they would invariably visit the beach and go swimming the next day. In the case of those who saw my more repellant dream-form, they would go out of their way to spend the day out of the sight of the ocean, and would even avoid eating squid and octopi, even if they lived in places where such foods were common.


    In my temple, I was much more experimental with those I had kept as deeply sexual decorations. I unpetrified them each night, and I tried out various things with my powers on them. One of the first things I did was make my tentacles see-through so that they could see through the appendages that were writhing about on top and inside of them. This delighted them, and in some cases naturally awoke a voyeuristic side to my followers.


    In some cases I did things like affix the tentacle-covered individuals to walls, leaving them helplessly bound. In other cases I submerged their bodies into the temple floor until only their heads were showing, and continued to toy with them using my limbs. The whole temple was a sensual and grotesque display to the sin of lust, which as an entity of lust made a small and sadistic part of me deeply happy.


    I also made them immortal, and removed from them the need for sleep, food, or drink. This served as a way to turn them from true people, into something more akin to toys with which I could play whenever I wished.


    ________________________________________________


    Outside of my temple, in the physical world I was also hard at work even at night. Using the incredible and limitless range of many of my powers I began to be a mischievous god.


    On my fifth night I awoke a number of cephalods, and in the vast depths of one of the deepest ocean trenches in the world, one that was several thousand meters deep, I silently transformed a single deep-dwelling octopus into an akkorokamui and a number of its family members into cecaelias, eerie fusions of cephalods and humans.


    As the transformation from deep-dwelling octopus to gargantuan akkorokamui occurred, I spoke to the creature and its family and awoke them. I gave them a single task: capture humans for me to experiment on.


    I also altered them and gave them powerful poisons, the ability to allow others to breathe underwater, the ability to endure a range of water pressure and share that resistance with others, considerable beauty, and even a lesser version of my ability to speak too and understand anyone and use any language. The awakened creatures worshiped me innately but as they felt my powers wash over them to gift them new abilities and traits their worship became fanatical and zealous. That knowledge brought a smile to my face.


    I intended to transform a number of cephalopods into akkorokamui, krakens, and cecaelias, and dire-versions of themselves but seeing that this one transformation had worked so well excited me. I was fond of water and I liked my temples being submerged, so seeing my first time utilizing an undersea animal subdomain and gaining undersea, animalistic followers working so well excited me. I could influence and awaken any undersea animal on this particular planet, but only a few undersea subdomains were especially interesting to me aside from the one belonging to cephalopods.


    Other especially interesting subdomains that involved undersea animals were the Cnidarian subdomain, which included animals like jellyfish and box-jellies, and the Elasmobranchii subdomain which included but wasn''t limited to sharks, and rays. I was grateful that this world and Torus had the same sorts of sea-life, though Torus'' sealife was admittedly much more magical than Htrae''s was.


    By the time I had spent a full eight days in Htrae, I was finally beginning to feel at home and I was beginning to gain more followers. It was an exciting time, and one that I quite enjoyed. And so on the dawn of my eighth day I began to become more active once more.

 185 A God At Work

    The world of Htrae fascinated Althos. He was from a world that didn''t have space travel, instantaneous communication outside of magic or exceptionally rare psychic abilities, or even germ theory, and Htrae, despite its lack of magic, had all of these things. Htrae was a world of technology, where planes flew across continents, and where instantaneous communication could be achieved quite easily with "cellphones", technology so small it could fit in one''s pant pocket.


    During the god''s first week in Htrae, he focused on building a base of followers and a stable home. He had carefully constructed his underwater temple, and painstakingly staffed it with fine, fanatical servants and worshipers. He had also carefully built his community, modeling it a bit off of military bases in the world but above all else working to ensure that it was safe. During this time he didn''t think all that hard about the actual world. It was only on the dawn of his eighth day that he finally truly turned his mind to the world he found himself in.


    ________________________________________________


    This world is... so much fun! I thought, in the safety of the impenetrable fortress that was my mind. From here I was safe to plot and scheme all I wanted.


    I was currently standing in the subterranean cavern which I had taken to calling "The Garden". This cavern was perpetually illuminated by what amounted to sunlight though it was actually light created and maintained by me and not illuminated by sunlight. All around me flowers of every sort grew in supernatural amounts. That was one consequence of being an area I frequented, and whenever I was here even if I was underwater I had a plethora of "Divine presence" effects on at once, all of them pleasant.


    The cavern was only a few kilometers wide, and while it was utterly gigantic given the relatively few non-plant lifeforms that lived here, I was quite satisfied with the spacious chamber. I liked having big spaces like these to run however I wished, that was perhaps a consequence of my first true home being my floating island, and my tower before that.


    At one end of the cavern existed an enormous, castle-sized hive inhabited by fierce bees and even fiercer hornets. This was the one settlement in this cavern that was above-water. Everything else of interest, aside from the enormous garden of perhaps millions of flowers, was underwater.


    In my hand rested my cellphone. Normally the thing wouldn''t work underground, which was something I had discovered the first time I had taken time out of my day to try and operate it. That said, that was something I fixed quite easily. Being a god, I could alter devices and I had freely done so with the phone in my hand, days ago. That said, as I spent a fair amount of time underwater I typically stored the thing in my inventory, an ability that I was only truly beginning to appreciate here, in Htrae.


    Without meaning too I had given myself a super cell-phone, one that perfectly did its job and could be used anywhere. I quite liked that, especially since I had lifetimes of memories within me from people who were raised in the age before cellphones, and judging from their memories that wasn''t the most fun time to be around.


    The cellphone in my hand was a simple one, I hadn''t splurged on anything fancy. It was a simple, green, rectangular piece of technology that allowed me to communicate with people in a rather mundane way. I knew that normal cellphones were only designed to work for calls made to people in the same country as the cellphone making the call, though there were a number of ways around that particular design flaw.


    That said I didn''t particularly need anything anymore fancy than that. And I would never need such technology since I possessed a far more handy means of communicating with people that worked across the universe. My cellphone was a device I possessed exclusively for the sake of maintaining appearances and for the sake of looking normal. I knew from the memories I had locked away within me that such a device was essential for life within New Sol, and living without one would be odd even for hermits like Geoffrey.


    I began to toy with the device as I began to experiment with some of my powers, and as I questioned the domains and subdomains lurking within me.


    ________________________________________________


    "So I have a question, and I am posing it to everyone." I told the countless entities that dwelled within me. And as I did, my mind fell silent which was highly unusual.


    My mind was the "home" of countless domains and subdomains. Idly, even if I was being silent and wasn''t thinking about anything, in particular, I heard countless voices and the fragments of all sorts of conversations going on deep within my mind. For there to be a silence was incredibly rare, and even during my exchange with Morehammer, one of the tensest moments of my entire life, I could still hear them chattering away in my head. I was quietly grateful for the silence.


    "I am interested in experimenting with some of my powers. One of the powers I am the most fascinated by is ''Symbol manipulation'' power I''ve gained through the subdomain of art. With it can I create symbols for cults?" I asked the countless voices in my head.


    At first I was met with silence. And then the silence was shattered, by someone laughing. The sound of the laughter was musical, and it was one of the first bits of music that I had ever heard that I actually enjoyed. It took a moment before the source of the laughter stopped laughing and began to speak.


    "Is that all you want with that power? Of course! That''s totally possible!" The voice confirmed, speaking happily. It took me a moment to realize that the speaker was almost certainly the very subdomain whose power I was referring too, the subdomain of art.


    "With ''Symbol manipulation'', ''Thought manifestation'', and ''Artwork creation'' you can create all manners of symbols. And what''s more is that you can engrave them in the minds of mortals, through telepathy. This ensures that they are never forgotten, and depending on the effects you attach to the actual symbols they may feel their effects each time they think of you." The subdomain explained.


    "If you want to use this to create specialized types of cults... as an example let''s touch on the eldritch cults of the ''Yellow Sign'' created by the ancient god Hastur, you can create a sign that inspires hedonism. ensures the fervent loyalty of those who see it, and also snatches away their sanity as his dreaded ''Yellow Sign'' did. Or, for example, you can create a ''Silver sphere'' that fills those who think of with an insatiable need to fornicate and a fervent desire to praise you. A sign could also cause those who think of it to feel incredibly sleepy and to want to go to sleep, wherein you could dominate their dreams." The subdomain suggested. I could hear the smile on its "lips" as it spoke.


    "I mention silver specifically because godly powers invariably leave behind distinct glows and shades on areas they strongly impact. Your powers have always left behind a silver radiance over the areas they have most strongly impacted. That said, you are also a god of trickery and can easily change whatever colors you leave behind as a sign of your actions." The subdomain explained, speaking in a rather sing-songy sort of way. It was at this point that I began to speak again.


    "So with this power, I could inspire someone to create artistic works that incorporate the symbol while making the very sight of the symbol fill someone with the need to reproduce it, and an urge to worship me." I muttered, realizing the sheer potential this power held for creating cults, especially in a world as interconnected as this world was. This power could easily be used to create potent feedback loops that left entire civilizations ensorcelled and as fervent worshippers of mine. I heard a chuckle from the art subdomain before it spoke again.


    "Yes! This power is exceptional for that very purpose. The old gods had rules that kept this power from being used to its utmost potential, but those are rules you don''t need to follow. Those are rules you can ignore. Rules you should ignore! Use this power... Use it and build all sorts of wonderful cults! Create artwork that depicts your glorious symbols and spread artwork far and wide!" The subdomain excitedly proclaimed. There was a fanatical edge in its voice that caught me off guard. But after a moment I began to smile too.


    I knew the subdomains had goals and motives of their own. They had goals and motives that at times put them at cross positions from each other. It was now obvious that the spread of artwork of all forms was one of the objectives of the subdomain of art, which was something I was assuming was the case from the start but I was happy to have confirmation of it. With this newfound knowledge, I was quite ready to begin to get to work devising a few things that were quite fun.


    And to test out the new things I created, I immediately activated a number of my powers, not the least of which were my "Aura of serenity", "Absolute beauty", "Maddening aura", and "Mesmerizing presence". As I did so I quietly targeted and teleported to a single location not incredibly far from where I was currently located, a simple and quaint art commune.


    ________________________________________________


    The quiet god teleported into the interior of a simple art commune in a city not far from the community he had built. Upon teleporting there the god found himself within a simple lodge on the outskirts of a populous city. His perfect vision allowed him to silently study the array of sights that greeted him in this place.


    He was in the center of a large living and display room. A number of sofas were arrayed in front of him, in the shape of a large circle, and a number of humans were sleeping soundly in those sofas. They were all variously clothed and had a number of fashions and aesthetics on display. They were also humans of various skin colors, some were quite pale, and others were astonishingly dark-skinned, with skin-tones comparable to black ink and even chocolate.


    None of them were awake, indeed none of the humans within the lounge, not just the ones on the sofa, were awake at all. He knew this coming in, and had come here anyway. He quietly and smoothly moved the dangling legs of one of the human men, and he sat at the seat of the sofa on which he was sprawled out.


    The "display" portion of the combined living and display room was filled with an assortment of pieces of art. Many of them were small statues, but more than a few were wall-mounted paintings and drawings. The god casually stared at them for a moment, activating his "Artwork analysis" power. He learned a lot about them and began to grin. His new powers over art were slowly filling him with an appreciation for artwork that he lacked earlier in his life.


    After a few moments of studying the artwork, the god began to idly experiment with his artistic abilities. He rose a single hand and began to manifest an assortment of symbols using his ability to instantly create artwork and mixing it with his powers to instantly solidify and display his thoughts.


    In the air above his hands, he manifested a number of colorful shapes and odd images. Some of the shapes he manifested were a three-dimensional cube with a scarlet eye in the middle of it, a silver sphere, a golden four-pointed star with each point representing a different basic element, and an aqua blue triangle with an octopus eye in its heart. The god was having fun with this power, and he quietly chuckled as he repeatedly used it.


    These symbols were each intentionally created, and each symbol was a unique one that the god hoped to inspire his followers with. He was visibly quite excited by these powers, and the more he displayed them the more fun he could tell he would have with them.


    The god wasn''t going to hurt any of the artists here, indeed he was going to do the opposite, but he wasn''t a kind deity. He was positively inspired by the mysterious "Hastur", who had created a symbol that stole the sanity of those who beheld it and was working on something a bit like it of his own. The god was fond of the ideas that were ruminating in his mind, ideas that included the creation of a number of sanity stealing symbols, eldritch icons that would allow him to gain the service of a number of zealous worshippers who sought to either convert or slaughter those who didn''t worship him.


    He was also fond of icons that promoted alignments, symbols that filled those who beheld them with urges to act chaotically, lawfully, benevolently, or cruelly. He was enormously excited to try out his new abilities, and he would soon have an opportunity to test out those new powers, as after about fifteen minutes the first of the humans to awaken sleepily opened his eyes and laid them on Althos'' relaxed, impossibly beautiful, human-like form. And the instant he did so, his heart was stolen away by the god''s supernatural, sanity-straining beauty.


    Althos looked at the human and winked, even as he continued to manifest a number of different symbols using his creative powers. There was an angelic expression on his face, and his doe-like eyes effortlessly burned their way into Anthony''s memory, forever searing and changing the man''s life with as little as a grin and a wink.

 186 A God Among Humans

    [Flame Subdomain passive powers:


    Absorption and Nullification: You can absorb and/or nullify flames at will. Absorbing flames can speed up the rate at which you regenerate health and regain lost strength. Nullifying flames can render them unable to harm lifeforms of all sorts.


    Auras: You gain an assortment of auras that you can utilize at will. Some of these are simple auras, like an aura of plasma that surrounds you with ionized gas, an aura of immense heat, or an aura that shrouds you in a fire. Others are not so simple like an aura of holy fire that purifies people and things, or an aura of demonic fire that burns everything to ash and corrupts what it can''t burn. These new auras include auras of passion, auras that inflame love and lust.


    Blast/Combat: This is a standard power, but in acquiring the second tier of influence over the subdomain of flames it is now far more enhanced than it was before. With this power you can fire bolts, balls, bullets, optic blasts, breath attacks, walls, vortexes, and other forms of attacks using flames, heat, and plasma. This power has also transferred over to other energy based domains and subdomains. This freakishly powerful ability grants you mastery of energy and element-based projectiles. You can also inflict burns on creatures at will.


    Detection: You can detect and warp to fires anywhere in the universe.


    Empathetic flames: This power is being granted to you solely because of your chaotic nature and the sin you came into being influencing: lust. With this power, you can generate empathetic flames that either burn away emotions or cause them to burn more brightly. Your flames can amplify love, lust, anger, and passion and can burn away all emotions, leaving someone extra susceptible to your powers.


    Flame embodiment: You can take on a form made entirely of flames.


    Incineration: This potent and destructive power allows you to melt things and also people using your mastery over fire and heat. It is synergistic with the destruction domain and is enormously powerful.


    Inflammation: You can cause targets to experience burning pain. This burning pain can be as "real" as you want it to be, since you are a deity with power over enchantments, pain, minds, and fire.


    Heat/Temperature manipulation: You can manipulate heat. This power allows you to fire beams of heat that increase the kinetic energy of atoms thereby causing the heat they experience to increase. Inversely you can also fire beams of energy that decrease the kinetic energy of atoms, which causes things to slow down.


    Plasma Generation and Manipulation: You can manipulate and generate plasma, highly ionized gas.]


    ________________________________________________


    The god had layered himself with powers, old and new alike, that made him the center of attention, activating them all, including an old favorite of his "Religious fervor". He was wearing an unbuttoned button-up shirt that exposed his perfectly molded chest, and a pair of loose jeans that weren''t yet stretchy enough to hide one of the original tools with which he could bestow pleasure. He had a charming and utterly relaxed smile on his face. He knew he was in control here.


    Anthony hadn''t yet recovered enough from the god''s singular moment in which he acknowledged the human to be able to do anything but stare, and so far that human was the only member of humanity awake in the lounge. After a few moments of casually playing with his powers some more, the god turned to face Anthony again and chuckled.


    ________________________________________________


    Anthony Pendragon was the very first human to wake up in the lounge. He was an impressive artist, and like me not someone whose sexuality was limited to people of one gender. I could accurately be described as "Omnisexual", though I rarely acted on such impulses, Anthony could be described as "Pansexual", which made him similar to but not quite exactly like me. He was also much more sexually active than I was, and I could smell him on and in many of the other artists here. He was apparently impressive in bed judging from the number of encounters he''s had, recently, in the lounge.


    Anthony was one of the humans in the lounge with a chocolate-like complexion. He was also quite tall for a human, standing close to 1.8 meters in height. He wasn''t as tall as I was, but I quite liked being the tallest person in a room when I could be, and I could always be taller than someone else so I usually defaulted to standing a few dozen centimeters than others did. Today I was closer to 2.5 meters tall and thus towered over him and everyone else in the quirky colony of interconnected sofas.


    I studied him for a moment before the others began to slowly stir to consciousness. The next person to awaken was a woman named Lyla, an almost unhealthily pale woman in her mid-twenties with a fascinating with statues and a surprising skill at sculpting. She groggily opened her eyes and the first thing she saw was Anthony staring at me, awe-struck by the array of powers I had activated at once. She turned slowly, first noticing my long legs, and then finally looking at me, and immediately falling victim to the same effects as Anthony.


    Over the course of the next few minutes, the rest of the seven artists scattered about the sofas would awaken. Of them all, only two straight men and one lesbian would prove even a bit resistant to the numerous auras I had wrapped around myself, and even they weren''t completely resistant to my auric prowess, they could only manage to resist falling in love with me immediately, which their peers weren''t able to do successfully.


    I considered targeting the mortals who resisted me with "Bliss inducement", or with another of my mind-warping abilities but I ultimately decided not to do that. I knew that I wouldn''t need to. My symbols were enough.


    ________________________________________________


    The mortals gazed upon the deity and felt his powers wash over them like a tidal wave. To merely be in his presence was enough to feel waves of a variety of sensations wash over them, with the most notable one being a considerable amount of physical pleasure, as though they were being skillfully fondled by someone who knew exactly where and how to touch them.


    The god was powerfully channeling a number of his powers, especially ones related to both sex and to pleasure. To be in his presence at this moment was to experience considerable pleasure and to feel a strange, inexplicable joy so long as someone was looking at his face. The god hadn''t used any of his truly mind-shattering abilities such as his ability to induce bliss, dominate someone, or his parasitic spores, but those abilities weren''t the only ways which he could break minds and erode wills.


    One of his newer powers that was on display here was his aura of heat. This distinct aura was powerful even on its own, but in conjunction with his other powers it was truly memorable. At the moment the heat was fixated on a few specific body parts of those in its range. It was focused on the most sensitive body parts of those who were in its range and caused them to experience a truly pleasing warmth that prevented them from fully focusing and questioning the oddity of their new circumstances.


    The god paused for a moment and studied the mortals around him. After he did so for a brief instant he smiled at them and finally began to summon symbols once more. But all he did was summon a single symbol. A silver sphere. The artists collectively turned to face the sphere and were shocked as it burned its way into their minds the second they gazed upon it, instantly washing over them and forever altering their minds.


    ________________________________________________


    [The Silver Sphere symbol description:


    The Silver Sphere is an Althonian symbol that physically is exactly what it sounds like: a silver sphere. To gaze upon it is to open one''s mind to Althos'' eerie powers and corruptive influence.


    An alternative version exists that hypercharges its lust aspects and forfeits the artistic aspect. This version of the Silver Sphere has an infinite symbol within it.


    The Silver Sphere effects:


    The Silver Sphere fills those who behold it with both considerable lust and also with an immense burst of creative energy. Artistically inclined people will be filled with an immense desire to create artwork that depicts the Silver Sphere and thus spreads its influence. Even gazing at it through some sort of medium, like a photo or a video doesn''t render it powerless though to stare at the symbol through such a thing does make it easier to resist than being in the same space as the symbol.


    People who are not artistically inclined will be filled with a supercharged urge to indulge in their lusts, one far more potent than they would have been otherwise. If they don''t have sex before they next go to sleep, their dreams will be lavicious things that haunt their memories for days until they finally have sex. These dreams will heavily focus on the most secretive and darkest sexual desires the person has and may inspire them to act on them if they are plagued by the dreams long enough.


    At will, Althos has the power to cause the Silver Sphere to penetrate targets with a life-creating lust, a need to breed. This useful option is handy for creating cults of lust and life, but by default the Silver Sphere doesn''t make targets feel this. Normally the lust the Silver Sphere plagues with them is for sex they are comfortable with, be it protected or unsafe.


    The object is also sanity draining, and addictive to gaze at. Those who behold it will want to stare at it again and again. It can be branded onto someone as a tattoo through a considerable number of fire abilities and it''ll retain all of its effects, including its addictive quality, even for the person on whom it is tattooed. If it steals away all of someone''s sanity, they will be filled with an urge to make others stare at it and thus further spread the symbol.]


    ________________________________________________


    The three-dimensional sphere that was conjured just over my hand was a potent symbol. It was quite simple in its effects, but it was also quite powerful. It was so powerful that as one of the artists gazed upon it I felt her mind begin to break and she got off of the sofa she was on and crawled towards me.


    She was the pale-skinned statue maker I had noticed earlier. There was a nearly blank gaze in her eyes as she crawled speedily towards me until she was between my spread legs. Her eyes were still affixed to the symbol, and her mouth began to open absentmindedly. She was thoroughly ensnared and ensorcelled by the symbol, and I chuckled at her.


    "Hello Lyla..." I said, speaking softly. My voice washed over her and over her companions, and I felt them tremble in fear and confusion. They hadn''t know that I knew their names. Lyla herself was thoroughly in the grip of the symbol. I suspected of all of them she either had the weakest will or for whatever reason had been the one with the lowest sanity.


    On her knees in front of me, she was quite cute in a rather meek way. I considered having fun with her for a moment, and it was a tempting idea. I ultimately decided against it, for now, but I did move the symbol so that it was right in front of her. In doing so, from behind, it looked like Lyla was staring at my lower body, even though she wasn''t. I then turned to the rest of the artists and began to act.


    The first thing I did was strike every artist in front of me with an "Ascenion", informing them of a simple truth: I was a god, through a customized message. Lyla began to giggle upon learning this, and for a moment her sounds were the only noise that filled the combination living/display room.


    The second thing I did was utilize a number of my healing powers on each of the humans around me. I watched them each become shrouded in a silvery air that conformed to the shape of their bodies, illuminating them as they felt every ache and every pain they felt at the moment wash away.


    All of them, including Lyla, smiled and shivered as they felt even the pains they had long ignored vanish in an instant.


    ________________________________________________


    [Ascension:


    The strange man sitting among you has kindly allowed you to recognize him for what he is: a god. The entity sitting in front of you is the god of art, life, law, and goodness, named Althos.


    Althos is a simple god. He seeks worshipers, and to spread his message of art, life, and goodness. He has chosen to transform you into some of his first worshipers on this world and he has arrived to reveal himself to you and to educate you. Listen and obey, for he is goodness, order, life, and art embodied, to serve him is to be good.]

 187 Burgeoning Religions

    The artists around me made me laugh when I saw their eyes widen. I wasn''t shocked that they were surprised to learn I was a god, after all, gods were very nearly forgotten even in other worlds and this magic-less world had even less of a reason than other worlds did to remember gods. Gods were the embodiment of power, creation, destruction, and magic.


    I looked at them, including Lyla, and grinned. I didn''t say anything, at least not physically, but I did prepare words of a sort. I compiled a notification and then transmitted it directly into their minds. These humans would at least understand the system since Htraeians were capable of using the system as well as any other sapient race, even if they weren''t naturally capable of using magic.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Chosen by the God Of Life


    Althos is a newcomer to this world. He is capable of teleporting from one end of the world to another, and he is creating a cult of righteous do-gooders who worship and serve him. He has chosen you all for this honor, after scanning through the contents of your souls and learning all there is to know about you.


    He is the font of goodness, life, laws, and art. His teachings are simple.


    1: Strive to create life. This includes both having children of your own, and also encouraging the growth and spread of nature. Creating life ought to be a pleasurable, joyous act that brings a smile to everyone involved.


    2: Protect the weak and advocate for those who are voiceless. Use your power, time, and energy, to create a better world for those who come after you and also for those who have less than you do.


    3: Work to change laws and societies that oppress the powerless. Do so through legal means, such as via voting or by getting involved in politics yourself.


    4: Create artwork that spreads his glorious symbols to as many people as possible. His symbols are divine and can affect those who behold them. Some of his symbols increase fertility, while others encourage kindness, patience, and a few are even transformational. He can inspire those who create artwork to create even more creative and innovative artwork, and as a god of art can himself create truly wondrous pieces of art. Pray to him and ask him for help, to be blessed, and even helped by his mighty powers in various ways.]


    ________________________________________________


    I watched as the blue textboxes filled their eyes. I could see them read through the notifications they had just received, and as they did their actual eyes widened in shock. As they did I quietly reached out and touched Lyla''s face.


    Before my very eyes, the young woman''s lips expanded in size. They didn''t balloon or anything, but they grew noticeably bigger than before. Her eyelashes extended, and her cheekbones rose higher than before. She grew taller, and her chest expanded outward. She also grew proportionately longer limbs, her arms and legs lengthening to match her new height. I considered changing her hair color, but after looking at it for a bit I decided that I liked it the way it was.


    I studied her for a moment and then smiled. At that point I created a handheld mirror for her to use and I placed it in her hand. When she was done reading the notification I watched the textbox vanish from her eyes and I saw her gaze into the mirror for the first time. She immediately began to blush, and I smiled at her. For the not first time, I contemplated using my most dreadful power on a mortal: "True Love''s Kiss", which would permanently ensnare their heart. I resisted the dark urge, for now, and instead quietly bestowed Lyla with the "Cleric" class.


    ________________________________________________


    The first time in my life someone had become a cleric of mine it was through their own devotion. That was the optimum way for people to become clerics, and I had clerics of that type all over my native solar system, but many of my clerics were individuals I had chosen and invested my power in.


    One of the reasons why clerics had become a lost class in the wake of the demise of the gods appears to have been that they relied on the power of the gods to actually use their abilities. Not to mention that gods possessed the power to cause people to become clerics.


    I felt a portion of my power imprint itself on her soul, and before my very eyes she began to momentarily radiate a splendid and incredible holy energy. It was quite pleasant and reflected her lawful good alignment. It was also a sort of energy that seeped out of her and infected others with a faint fragment of the pleasure and joy she was feeling at the moment.


    ________________________________________________


    In the eyes of demonkind Althos was a dreadful god of shadows and lust. This idiosyncratic and considerable intense belief in him was the cause of one particularly eerie phenomenon in the shadowy community he was the dark lord of.


    In the week since the dreaded lord of darkness created a residence deep within the first layer of the Heart of Darkness which he had ever entered, his forces were hard at work. The settlement they created had come alive even in his absence, and in small ways they had come to know the signs of his approval. One such way involved one of the buildings they had constructed since their nightmarish lord of shadows had left.


    The building stood at the outskirts of the tiny town his forces had created. It wasn''t especially big on the surface, but underground it extended throughout the entirety of the town. It was a sinister place, and had the demons who unknowingly lived over it knew what laid underneath their homes, who knows how they might have reacted? Many would have been likely to willingly offer themselves as tributes to the cruel god that they worshiped, even though this wasn''t directly his doing.


    Beneath the small building stretched a number of tunnels, which formed what would have been seen by mortals as prison cells. In actuality the strange cells that stretched out underneath the tiny community the Althonian demons had built were more like confessional booths from the churches of the mythic age, private spaces for worshipers of gods of law and order to confess their sins. But these booths served an altogether different purpose.


    The moment someone, demon or not, walked into a booth it would close behind them and lock automatically. And then the floor at the feet of the person in the booth would begin to darken and a variety of unholy objects would begin to appear. These objects served to test and tempt those who dared enter this place.


    The building above the entrance to this strange and unholy site was the home of the Althonian priests and priestesses who worshiped their god as a demonic lord of lust and darkness. And Althos'' unholy power had begun to mutate the area right around and underneath the town he had built, thanks to the morphic and flexible nature of the Heart of Darkness.


    Each time someone entered a booth, they would be presented with objects made from shadow-stuff that represented the seven deadly sins. Surprisingly, someone wasn''t punished for choosing a sin other than lust. Instead, so long as they were honest and chose the sin that most represented how they felt at that moment they would be able to experience something new and darkly pleasant.


    Those who chose the sin of pride were swallowed by darkness and subjected to a vision in which they served a grand demon and were its most vicious pet. The most proud demons were able to experience the joys of leading a successful coup against whatever demon they served, while less proud demons delighted in their service to their greater masters.


    Those who chose the sin of lust were swallowed by darkness and then subjected to a vision in which they spent days slavoring over a specific object, lusting for an artifact of great power. The most lustful demons were able to acquire the artifacts, and the demons whose lusts were shallow weren''t able to do so. In the cases of the strongest lustful feelings, the desires for the items were also often tied to specific sexual desires and needs as well.


    Those who feeling rather slothful were leisurely swallowed by darkness and subjected to unusual visions. In some cases they witnessed visions that felt centuries-long and in those visions they were perpetually surrounded by darkness, laying in it like a mortal might lay in a bed. In these visions, they were effectively in a coma, and other demons used them for a plethora of resources such as demonic blood, or even amputed and then regenerated their limbs for use in proesthetics and to corrupt mortals by grafting demonic skin onto mortal bodies.


    The demons who underwent these visions would awaken from them moments later, no matter which sin they chose, feeling refreshed and extra devoted to their dreaded lord of sin. Thus far this had universally been clergy who had sacrificed their vision to their evil god as a part of a test to prove their devotion to their supremely wicked lord. But some Althonian priests sought to capture sacrifices to offer to their sinful deity. They would soon have a chance to act out and to attempt to make their sinful desires a reality, though not in the ways they were after.


    Demons, ones opposed to Althos, were on their way to the community Althos had founded.

 188 Demons & Dragons

    The darkened forest was home to a number of the fearsome creatures known as "demons". "Demons" were embodiments of chaos and evil, disruptive malice given both consciousness and a physical form. A number of demons were slowly making their way towards the newest settlement in the strange dimension known as the "Heart of Darkness".


    The demonic horde was slowly flying, walking, slithering, oozing, and otherwise ambling towards the tiny settlement Althos had created just days ago. This horde included monsters familiar to Althos such as succubi and incubi, and also ones unfamiliar to him such as slime-like pollution demons and animalistic demons of envy known as "ladrones". They, under the orders of a mysterious master, moved with purpose.


    Their eyes were alight with pride and viciousness. Even the least intelligent of them had a wicked smile on their faces, if their faces allowed such expressions. Their objective was simple: cause enough destruction to lure out the mysterious master of this new settlement. They had no way of knowing that the master of this new community was none other than the god of shadows and lust, Althos.


    At precisely the same time that the demonic horde began to close in on the settlement Althos and his followers had created, the god was back in the settlement. It was purely coincidental that the deity had made his way back there in the hours following the creation of his artistic, good-natured cult back on Htrae.


    The god had merely tired of pretending to be a good-natured and kind-hearted creature and so he had returned to where he was known for being an evil entity of chaos and darkness, his home in the Heart of Darkness.


    ________________________________________________


    Back in the mysterious and mulit-layered dimension known as the Heart of Darkness, I silently explored the village I had created. I did so in a mighty new form, that of a gigantic dragon.


    My current form was that of a mighty, quadripedal beast covered from head-to-tail in mighty, armor-like silver scales. I had the face of a noble dragon, one with radiant handsomeness that exceeded even the nobility of the dragons who worshiped me back on Torus.


    I had a sharp face with a prominent nose and a tooth filled mouth. I also had four titantic legs, and one massive torso. I had a pair of regal silverly wings that were currently closed and kept close to my torso. I was far bigger than the tiny houses my followers had built for themselves.


    As far weapons went I had a plethora of tools with which I could defend myself. I had claws sharper than masterfully crafted swords, teeth harder than fortresses, wings with which I could generate hurricane force winds, and of course my divine abilities as well as the breath weapons dragons on Torus and elsewhere were famous for.


    I absentmindedly wandered throughout the perimeter of the village. The demons didn''t bother me, as they knew I was a god even in my dragon form. Even the tallest of my demonic servants were nowhere near as tall as I was, and not even the dimmest witted demons who served me dared to question my draconic countance. They knew that I was a formless entity, capable of taking on any appearance I desired at any time I desired.


    I had come here mere minutes after dealing with the newfound cult of the silver sphere, my newest Htraeian cult. It was composed of the artists I had interacted with, who had quickly and quietly begun to worship me after meeting me and seeing my powers on full display. They were humans, overwhelming their minds wasn''t truly a challenge to me.


    As I wandered through the perimeter of the village, I turned my mind towards a handful of the powers granted to me by one of the more infamous domains I had gained powers over: the draconic domain.


    ________________________________________________


    [Draconic Domain synergistic powers:


    Draconization: You can turn mortals into dragons or dragon-like creatures. This power transforms creatures of appropriate sizes into ragons, while converting creatures too small into dragon-like versions of themselves. At this level of influence over the draconic subdomain you don''t automatically gain the loyalty of the creatures you converted into dragons, but if they turn into dragonkin they are loyal to you.


    Draconic egg creation: By syngerizing the domains of life, souls, and the draconic domain you can create eggs of lesser dragonkin. This means that you can create dragon-turtles, wyverns, drakes, kobolds, and devolved dragonkin.


    Dragon blood: By fusing the liquid subdomain and the draconic domain you can create dragon blood. Dragon blood is a powerful mystical and alchemical substance that if imbided in a properly mixed potion levels up the drinker, but is also quite addictive.


    Dragon-item creation: By fusing draconic properties into an item you can create dragon-type items. These potent items don''t break as they get older and instead grow stronger with age.]


    ________________________________________________


    I idly pawed at the floor before me and conjured a few eggs, specifically kobold and wyvern eggs. They would come in handy at a later date, and I wanted to see if it was true that mortal lifeforms born in the Heart of Darkness came out... altered, compared to mortals born in the dimension of mortalkind.


    The dragon eggs pointed into existence right in front of my paws, and were multihued. I looked at them and smiled for a moment, before I detected beings at the very edge of my sensory range, entire kilometers away from here. I sensed them the moment they stepped, slithered, oozed, and flew into my range, due in part to the number of creatures I detected all at once.


    Demons were steadily approaching the village I had created. And it was a sizeable number of them, all at once. I sensed their emotions, which were mostly a mixture of bloodlust and impatience. I could also effortlessly tell who they served: a number of demons who resided in a settlement on another layer of this nightmarish world. Evidently they were looking to lure me out and to gather information on me by observing me after destroying my community. In a way they''d be able to gather information on me, just not in the way they had hoped.


    I turned my head and examined my surroundings for a moment. All around me demons and the few mortals I had created to serve demons in this community milled about and went about their business. I sighed, and rose a single one of my enormous paws over the clutch of dragon eggs I had created. I quietly teleported the objects away and into the area underneath the home I had ordered the demons to build for the priests in the community. The eggs were now in a place where they wouldn''t be disturbed, and with that I looked up and in the direction of the demonic horde.


    I smiled and teleported towards where they were. In an instant I left behind my tiny village and I found myself towering over a barely organized demonic horde.


    ________________________________________________


    The demons in the horde had been moving slowly towards the village created by Althos and the Althonians. They had been doing so quite lazily and lackisdiscally. One instant the space in front of the ones who had been at the front of the horde, leading the pack, had been clear, and then the next instant Althos was abruptly there.


    The formless-god''s abrupt appearance shocked the demons who came to a rapid halt as they looked up at the entity who stood over 30 meters in height. He was a truly enormous dragon, one who towered even over many other dragons. His silvery scales stood out in the lightless forest, and his eyes blazed with a holy rage.


    The god''s scaled and regal face was still for a moment before his reptilian lips curled upwards in a cruel smile. His eyes blazed with a glow the same color as his scales, as he wordlessly channeled holy and sacred energies within himself, taking advantage of the divine nature of his powers.


    The god was normally the sort to converse with his foes, especially ones who didn''t pose a threat to him but he treated demons a bit differently. This was due to his knowledge of demons and of creatures infused with the chaotic malice of the dimension known as the "Heart of Darkness". He acquired this knowledge over the course of the past week, due to his existing demonic worshipers and his ability to hear prayers mentally muttered to him by the very same demons he had previously dominated.


    Creatures here in this place of evil and capriciousness tended to obey anyone who met two qualifications: the first was possessing sufficient power to command them and the second was possessing the proper disposition needed to rule over demons, a wicked heart and a flexible attitude. This made Althos a perfect fit for commanding demons, as he was more than powerful enough to command demons and he absolutely embodied their preferences in a leader.


    The god himself knew this now and in encountering a new demonic horde saw a perfect opportunity. He would forcibly acquire even more demonic worshipers and begin to inch closer and closer to becoming a true demon lord, in the same way as he was an elemental overlord and a god.


    The dark god opened his mouth and a sinister light began to gather within it. There was a cruel glimmer in his gaze as he charged up one of his more potent anti-evil attacks. The demons were quick to notice and piece together what he was doing, and began to try and flee from him but they weren''t quick enough.


    ________________________________________________


    I possessed a number of potent abilities at my disposal. One of the most powerful of my abilities was the power to manipulate advanced and sosphicated elements. I knew from my last battle that I had the power to infuse holiness into what I could manipulate, and that was what I was doing right now.


    My mouth was open and I was preparing a powerful attack that I suspected would defeat my opponents in one holy explosion. It was while I was preparing the attack that I realized something important. Something that required me to converse with the system before I unleashed the attack. I turned inward and badgered the system before I unleashed my attack.


    "I''m launching a holy attack right now. If I use it on demons, will it kill them outright?" I asked the system, curiously. I was hoping to keep the demons alive and to prove to them that I was stronger than they could have ever imagined. I was met with silence for a few moments, before the system finally replied to me.


    "Well you can make it so that your attacks only kill if you want them too. That would ensure that demons survive this attack, and don''t die from any lingering injuries unless you allow them too. This would allow you to safely interact with lesser beings, while showing off your powers and not risking any accidental injuries. This is a consequence of you having influence over the subdomain of pain." The system informed me, sounding perfectly neutral but so perfectly neutral that I could tell that my words had stirred some sort of emotion within it.


    I considered how to reply to that for a moment, a smile on my mental face as I took in that new, incredibly handy knowledge.


    "That''s perfect." I eventually said, the attack having been ready to go but still not unleashed just yet.


    "That means that I can go wild here, without risking the loss of even a single demonic servant." I realized, speaking inwardly.


    "Go ahead and turn on that... setting, or whatever the proper word would be. WIth that I can have some fun here." I told the system, excited as this meant that I had more leeway to actually enjoy combat. A few seconds later I heard a soft "ding" sound, and the system muttered something to me about me having the ability to unload on these demons.


    I glanced at the horde in front of me, and finally unleashed my attack. I chuckled as the light I had gathered in my mouth, light I had created internally, was unleashed on the forest floor in front of me. For the first time, perhaps ever, this umbral forest was abruptly illuminated as holy light exploded out of my maw and spread out across the forest floor, before touching and beginning to burn the dozens-strong horde of nightmarish, inhuman abominations that had come to my home attempting to harm my worshipers.


    The holy light illuminated them, and I got to see their terrifying forms in truly exquisite detail. Before my eyes they began to burn, tendrils of smoke wafting off of their unholy bodies, and wails of pain escaping their lips. I studied the various forms they took, seeing all manner of demonic life before me and having a rare opportunity to study the chaotic creatures.


    The creatures were trapped in the radiant light, it stabilizing them to prevent them from escaping and also immolating them in such a way that even the most chaotic of them could not resist the beautiful light. They were trapped in my attack, forced to endure it for as long as I saw fit. I chuckled as I studied them, eagerly taking mental notes on their forms.


    It was while they were engulfed in the searing, radiant light I had unleashed upon them that I received a fascinating alert. One that brought a truly wild smile to my face.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    By defeating the demonic horde outside of your home you have unlocked the quest to become a minor demon lord. To do so you must gain demonic worshipers, which you have already done. The next step you must do to become a demon lord is to defeat a powerful demon who slowly approaches that status themself: Agustino, the Soluto demon who sought to absorb the world of your birth into the Heart of Darkness.


    The final step you must complete to become a minor demon lord is to become the indisputed lord of a layer of the Heart of the Darkness. There are countless layers of this nightmarish and disorderly land, including the one you are in which is named "The Blackened Boscage". How you do that depends on the layer in question.


    Upon becoming a demon lord, even a minor one, you gain incredible powers over evil, chaos, and the ability to forcibly transform demons from one form to another. Not the smallest prize you acquired as a demon lord is a personal connection to this very dimension itself.


    Inch closer to mastery over chaos and evil. Do what you must to acquire greater powers over chaos, and become powerful enough that even Morehammer himself cannot touch you.]

 189 Demonic Pain

    After reading through the notification I gazed upon the victims of my devastating attack. They were still trapped in the light I had created and unleashed in their direction. The light wouldn''t vanish unless I willed it too, and in this demonic forest it would absolutely trap anything short of a greater demon that was likely to come into or walk around here.


    Dozens of demons were trapped in it, and their faces were contorted in terror and pain. Even the most aesethically pleasing demons, succubi and incubi, had positively monstrous looks on their faces as they attempted to grow used to the pain they were presently enduring, or at least cling to some sense of self in the wake of agonizing pain. It was an impossible challenge for them.


    I allowed them all to endure the pain for a second longer, before I finally freed them from it. When I did all I did was banish the light I had created, something as simple as merely telling the light to vanish. Darkness swiftly crept back into the forest floor, eagerly reclaiming what space I had taken in using my powers as freely as I had. As it did I began to speak.


    "What a pathetic little horde you all are..." I told the gathered, defeated, demons. I gazed out at the assorted and vastly diverse creatures before me. They all differed greatly from one type of demon to the next.


    Gathered before me was the biggest group of demons I had seen in my entire life to date. I saw creatures of living filth and pollution oozing atop the forest floor. I could see flying demons that resembled flying shark-men. I could see murder-demons like the one I had attempted to use to create a cult of crazed murders. I saw gigantic, bull-like demons, and some more humanoid-looking demons who appeared to serve as footsoldiers amidst this rambling horde. And now they were all mine.


    "Though you are all pathetic, you are also mine now." I told the horde, speaking confidently. I felt my voice wash over them, and I immediately detected the most simple-minded of them accept this.


    They had felt the pain I could induce in them and knew better than to make an effort to resist me. But I also felt the pride of some of them flare up in resistance to my words. I turned to one of them and smiled. He was one of the more humanoid-looking creatures, and I lifted him into the air through telekenesis.


    "Hello. I see you are determined to resist me." I told the creature, sensing its determination. I morphed into a humanoid form, becoming much smaller but also more distinctly myself. As I did so I pulled the creature towards me, a grin on my face as the creature was brought before me.


    The demon had distinctly humanoid features. He had a grim face, brown eyes, scars all across his body, and even humanoid or at least humanoid-like gentalia. It amused me greatly to study him. Hatred blazed in his eyes, but there were also glimmers of other emotions, such as fear.


    ________________________________________________


    The god in the darkened forest was an unimaginably powerful entity and he possessed a number of cruel abilities. Among those abilities was one that could be mistakenly thought of as benign: "True Love''s Kiss", a powerful and mind-shattering ability possessed by gods of love. It was perhaps the cruelest of all the powers he possessed.


    This malicious power burned souls with ecstasy, shattering minds and crushing wills through the sheer, unimaginable power and pleasures of love. It caused anyone who fell victim to it to be filled with an obsessive, life-altering love for the deity who kissed them, and to long for and pin after the deity whose lips pressed against theirs.


    Althos unleashed it on the demon, shattering the creature''s mind and overwhelming the being''s very soul. The god didn''t like the thought of using such a power on a mortal, but on a demon, he didn''t hesitate. Demons were the embodiment of merciless maliciousness, so he had no particular desires to treat them kindly.


    The second the god''s lips touched the demon''s lips, the demon was forever altered. This power was so potent that even the briefest peck of the lips could cause it to take hold and ensnare a victim.


    Pleasure flooded the brain of the demon, and Althos used his powers to manipulate relationships on the demon even as the creature''s mind was being rewired to pine-after Althos.


    At the same time, other demons were watching the two. Althos released the demon he had kissed, and turned to the demonic crowd just as the brightest were about to attempt to flee from his presence. He chuckled and used telekenesis to grab onto the crowd.


    "No no no... No one shall escape." He said, his voice a low growl but a playful one.


    "I''m going to take my time... Breaking you." He muttered, his voice cold but his eyes alight with cruel satisfaction. He reached out into the horde with his mind and unleashed a potent barrage of "Mental-blasts", one of his mental abilities that caused those who were subjected to it to experience intense, immaterial pain. He unleashed this barrage indiscriminately, firing at each of the demons who had dared to approach his home with cruel intentions.


    He watched, a grim grin on his face, while the demons who had once set out to attack his worshipers fell to their knees in agony. Their brains were being assassiled by sensations comparable to if they were being stabbed over and over again by holy instruments.


    ________________________________________________


    As a god my mind was probably my strongest weapon. I had known that for a while now but I hadn''t really seen direct evidence of it until here and now. Before me was a horde of demons, all but one of whom were on their knees, as I wracked their minds with pain to punish them for their mistakes.


    I studied them, standing still until I decided to approach one of them. The one I approached was a succubus with blazing red hair. She had a lovely face, with full-lips, high-cheekbones, and green eyes. She wore a simple hunting outfit, and on the ground next to her was a loaded crossbow. I chuckled at her and her weaponry. No simple ranged attack could ever hurt me.


    She was moaning, but not pleasurable moans. Ones caused by considerable pain. Ones that were music to a god like me''s ears.


    After a few moments I turned to study the other demons. I would spend time studying various demons. And in doing so the part of me that delighted in pain, that relished the opportunity to be cruel, was reawakened for the first time in a while. The part of that me that had been worshipped by "The Order of the Heated Blade". And that meant cruel, and painful things for the demonic horde who had set out to infuriate and then study me.


    And then, eventually, I''d grow bored of studying the demons. When I did, I began to utilize my powers once more. I had an idea.


    I began by further hollowing out the earth beneath the village I had created. This added yet another layer to the twisted labyrinth of tunnels beneath the first community I had ever made in another dimension. But this layer wouldn''t be used for prayers. Or at least not demonic prayers. Instead it''d be used for the study of demonic bodies.


    I created a considerable number of research areas beneath my tiny home-community. Creating them took around twenty-five minutes I planned to staff this research-area with some of the best and brightest researchers I knew, Mi-Gos. I was already worshiped by a healthy number of Mi-Gos, many of which were in my divine-realm.


    When I was done creating the research areas, and strapping the demons into a number of custom-made tables using holy instruments once more, I turned my thoughts inward. Towards the system. But not before knocking the demons I had captured fully unconscious using my powers over sloth.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself inside one of my little research areas, the ones I had just created. It was a laboratory and medical center of sorts. It was barebones at the moment, but I didn''t need to give it a lot of mortal technology. I was interested in utilizing my abomination-worshipers, not my mortal ones. Mortal technology would only hold back my servants. I intended to allow the creatures I brought over to outfit these places as they saw fit.


    "System... I would like to travel to my divine realm. I can do that right?" I asked the strange voice that was always just a question away and appeared to live not only in me but in all lifeforms. I was met with silence at first. It took the system a few moments to reply to me.


    "Yes... Yes you can. Apologizes, we, the domains and I, were just checking things out to ensure your realm was ready for you to visit. We never anticipated that you''d be interested in visiting it until you ranked up. But you can, if you want." The system told me, speaking in a rather surprised tone. It wasn''t a pleasantly surprised or unpleasantly surprised tone, just a neutrally surprised one.


    Upon hearing this I didn''t hesitate. I rose a hand and conjured a portal, conjuring one to a destination I identified as "My divine realm". On the other side of the portal that appeared in front of me was a beautiful island, with sandy beaches and a thick forest. I knew this place at a glance. It was a colony controlled by the dreaded fungal scientists I was about to confer with. One of the places where they studied and experimented on mortal lifeforms.


    The place was frozen in time. No waves lapped the shore. No sounds could be heard coming from the other side of the portal. It was all a bit unsettling.


    "They have been placed in stasis. They won''t move... Until you enter the portal. When you do, they''ll be able to go about their lives once more. Your divine realm is now filled with over 98% of the life that once inhabited Torus. The effect it has had on Torus is significant, but as of yet unnoticed by Morehammer and his dwarven loyalists, since they live underground." The system informed me.


    "We, the domains and I, needed to freeze time on your divine realm to work to adjust it. When you enter through the portal the temporal stasis your worshipers are in fades away. And in your realm... You are even stronger than you are outside of it." The system informed me, saying things that quite excited me.


    I took a deep breath, and then stepped through the portal and into my divine realm. I stepped from an underground laboratory, onto an island paradise inhabited by eldritch terrors who worshiped me and the mortals they experimented on.


    As I stepped through the portal, time resumed on the island. Waves began to lap against the beach, wind began to rustle through the island, and I began to hear the distant noises of footfalls, technology, and alien wings beating deep underground, beneath where I stood. The sounds of Mi-gos. The sounds of my eldritch scientists, hard at work.

 190 Divine Realms

    I took in the paradisiacal sights before me, and stood still on the beach. As I did so I quietly mulled over what I knew about divine realms. Truthfully... I didn''t know a lot about divine realms.


    What I did know was simple. Divine realms were where gods were at our strongest. I could infer that each god had a personalized divine realm, essentially a blank canvas with which we could do whatever we willed and warp reality however we wished.


    Divine realms were the mysterious destinations where the souls of those who worshiped gods went. From time to time I badgered the system with questions about the mechanics that seemed to underpin reality, and one question I had asked the system was the fate of souls who didn''t worship gods.


    ________________________________________________


    "For half a million years... gods have been gone. I don''t know what happens to their ''divine realms'' when they die, but I''m assuming that mortals who worship a dead god aren''t sent to their divine realms. What happens to faithless mortals and those who worship dead gods?" I asked the system.


    "For thousands of years mortal souls went to the dimensions that matched their alignments. Each possible alignment combination corresponds to a specific dimension and the souls of deceased mortals were one of the things that helped those dimensions operate as they do now. Back in the mythical age the old gods often sent souls to dimensions that matched their alignments, but the other dimensions didn''t get nearly as many souls." It informed me.


    "So now these other dimensions, places like ''The Heart of Darkness'' are filled with souls? And am I right to assume that these souls become extraplanar entities? I have a law-domain power that does that for devils." I wondered.


    "Yes! That''s actually exactly what happens. Some types of extraplanar entities can get pregnant and give birth to extraplanar entities, but as it is that''s not the case with most extraplanar entities. That said, extraplanar entities can impregnate mortals and thus create new kinds of creatures." The system eagerly informed me.


    ________________________________________________


    I stood right where water and sand met. Waves lapped at my feet. Ahead of me was a dense forest, so thick that only my vision was powerful enough to see through it entire kilometers away from me. The island was impressively wide, and inhabited by a variety of lifeforms. I took a pair of gentle steps forward and I stepped out of the area where water lapped at my feet. As I did my senses continued to acclimate to this strange new place.


    I quietly began to take steps towards the forest. I knew where I was going, but I had all the time in the world to get there. There was no point in rushing things. I began to leisurely walk towards the heart of the island. Which housed the sole entrance to the area underneath the island, the heart of the Mi-Go colony.


    ________________________________________________


    As I slowly walked towards the terrible colony, my senses adapted to this strange dimension. As they did I felt each step I took infuse me with pure power. Exploring my dimension, my apparent true home, was filling me with an exciting sense of my own powers.


    The very air in this place, when it entered my lungs, felt like it filled me with power. The ground under my feet felt good, and I felt solid whenever I stepped on it. These sensations were not like the sensations I felt on Torus, which this version of my divine realm was based on. I could reasonably conclude that it was like this entirely due to the true nature of this world.


    I entered the forest and as trees surrounded me I momentarily considered animating some of them. They were thick things, standing several meters tall, and topped with beautiful leaves of all colors.


    "It wouldn''t be a bad idea to make some company..." I muttered, chuckling as I stepped into the forest. I lifted a single hand and began to craft some company to escort me. A procession fit for a god.


    ________________________________________________


    The god silently took steps through the forest as he focused on the potent powers he was about to use. He thoughtfully created and shaped something from nothing, creating silver using his own powers over earth, metals, creation, and art, and began to shape the raw material he had divinely created.


    The god was walking even as he did this, a smile on his face as he inched closer and closer to the destination he intended to step into. He effortlessly created four massive, floating clumps of unshaped silver, defying the common process by which silver was found in many worlds in the universe of his birth. He then turned his gaze towards the clumps, even as he stepped deeper and deeper into the forest. They formed a floating square that surrounded him and followed him as he tinkered with their shapes.


    The god, using nothing more than the potent strength of his mind, began to forcefully shape the clumps around him. He gave the four of them assorted sizes but they all had large, humanoid frames, though ones that lacked hands, instead where their hands would have been they possessed a single weapon and a single shield and they were closer in size to young giants than humans. He leisurely took his time beating the clumps of metal into the proper shapes, sculpting them by bashing them with telekinesis.


    Though he shaped them simultaneously, he didn''t bring them to life at the same time. Instead he took a moment to admire them. He found them quite handsome, having given them hulking frames and powerfully built "bodies" insofar as a sculpture could have a body. Without saying a word he prepared himself to bring the creations to the mockery of life that lesser constructs, those without souls, possessed. He had a neutral expression on his face as he prepared to do this.


    He smiled at them, right before beginning to bring them to life, or at least a golem''s version of life.


    ________________________________________________


    I reached out with my mind and tapped the first golem I had created. As I did so, I infused the thing with the golem-version of life. The thing, a giant-sized sculpture made of silver with an arm that ended in a shield and an arm that ended in a spear, ceased floating and fell to the floor beneath it. It had been floating perhaps a meter off the ground so the fall didn''t harm it.


    The several meter tall piece of living artwork took position in front of me and I mentally commanded it to accompany me to the heart of the forest. It was silent in response to my command, but I knew that it''d obey me. My other constructs, both ones that possessed souls and ones that didn''t, also obeyed me silently. I turned to one of its siblings and repeated the process, this time on a golem that had a scythe for a hand. It also fell to the ground and took position in front of me.


    The two that floated a bit behind me were golems with ranged weapons for hands. One of them had an apparatus that served as a portable cannon for a hand, and was filled with cannonballs, and the other had a crossbow for a hand, as well as having a significant supply of ammunition. I brought them to life at the same instant, and ordered them to stand behind me and guard me from attacks from the rear. Not that any were ever going to come but this wasn''t about actually being protected, it was about sending a message to anyone who''d see me.


    This was for dramatic purposes. To reinforce the reality that I am a god, capable of doing things beyond mortal or even eldritch imagining.


    Together, the five of us walked through the forest until at last we made it to where guards were posted. Human guards, dressed in modern, for Torus anyway, armor stood watch outside of it. They surrounded a deep hole, a strange cavity in the earth that allowed those brave enough to enter it to enter into a strange world of terrifying science and alien entities. I approached them and as their muscles twitched in response to the sight of me I targeted them and activated "Ascension", causing them to suddenly learn who I was.


    When the guards realized my identity they leaped back and fell to their knees before me and my entourage. I heard them begin to mutter reverential greetings to me and to my creations, in one of the human languages one could hear on Torus.


    They were human guards, ones who had been thoroughly beaten into submission by the Mi-Gos and who had quickly learn to accept the Mi-Gos as superior creatures who deserved to be served by humans in the days before I spontaneously came to life. My Mi-Go worshipers had told me about them in prayers.


    I nodded at them as I walked past them and came to a stop right in front of the dreadful hole that would lead me into the maddening laboratories and colony of the Mi-Go. The pair of golems I had created to be my servants and guards who stood in front of me also halted right in front of the hole. I reached out with both of my hands and planted them on the shoulders of the creatures, before I gave them the ability to alter their own gravity, in essence giving them the ability to float, or lift-off, though not flight as a humanoid might understand it. I swiftly repeated the motion for the golems behind me.


    And then I stepped off the ground and onto the empty air right above the mouth of the hole. My golems followed me, forming a tight square centered around me. When all of us were in formation I began my descent, allowing it to be quite slow, and was followed by my silent servants a second later.


    The hole was impossibly black. And the ground at its bottom, perhaps a few dozen meters below sea-level, was also impossibly black. I could tell at a glance that no ordinary mortal would be able to see through the darkness that surrounded and waited for my entourage and I. Not that such a thing bothered me in any particular way. I could see through any darkness, thanks to my powers over truth, light, and darkness.


    It took my creations and I a full five minutes of descent to reach the bottom of the hole. And when we did we found ourselves at the most visible part of a large chamber-like area beneath the surface of the island. Here the noises of the eldritch creatures that secretly controlled this island were louder than ever. At the bottom of the hole, it was possible that a particularly perceptive mortal might have been able to hear the distant screams, and the otherworldly machinery if they listened and were able to silence any closer sounds. To me, the sounds were incredibly clear, and if I had had a mortal''s sensibilities they might have been frightening.


    I was not as sensitive as a mortal was so the sounds didn''t bother me. I wasn''t especially fond of pain, but I knew that was going on here was science and the accruement of knowledge. The Mi-Gos were scientists who like me were unfettered by any particular sense of morality. I could relate to being interested in knowledge without any attachment to any sort of moral code.


    They wanted to understand their enemies, the mortals, and their fellow abominations. They were willing to go to any length to do so. I could admire that about them. It made me grateful that many of them, a few thousand at least, had begun to worship me as a Great Old One, one of the titles given to gods worshiped by such otherworldly entities.


    Deep beneath the earth, I turned and my entourage turned as well. As one we stared at an opening that would lead us deeper into the underground part of the island, and allow us to come face to face with the Mi-Gos who controlled this colony. Which was exactly what I wanted. I grinned, knowing that I was close to my goal and I began to walk towards the scientists and their underground homes.

 191 Dreams Of Death & Walls Of Flesh

    My golems and I wordlessly and silently crept through the network of tunnels that existed underneath the surprisingly large island. Each step took us deeper and deeper into a subterranean maze in which the odd, otherworldly scientists known as the Mi-Go called their home.


    The first few minutes we explored the tunnels, led by me, we were in natural caverns. The walls around us were made of natural stone, and unaltered aside from the ones that had been moved or mined to make the passageway. They were black, but not all the same shade of black, and my eyes were keen enough to allow me to notice the different shades that were present.


    I placed a gentle hand on them and smiled as I felt their complicated history flow into me. I felt a plethora of only somewhat true information flood my consciousness and chuckled as I stored it away. The stones were real enough, the problem is that they were copies of truly natural stone that existed on the actual world of Torus. This place was a cop[y of that place. My divine realm was a real place but ultimately as it existed right now it was almost entirely a copy of Torus.


    My powers over knowledge were growing ever stronger and I delighted in knowing that. My ability to learn things through touch was strong enough that I recently learned that I could touch plants and learn about their lives. They were the first living creatures over which I had such strong powers, and though I had only used it a few times, it was truly extraordinary to be able to do so.


    I allowed my hand to glide along the stone as my creations and I wandered deeper and deeper into the maze of tunnels that existed under the island. As I did so I allowed my mind to wander and I turned my most active thoughts to two separate but interconnected areas: the galaxy in which I had begun my life, and the dreams of mortals.


    ________________________________________________


    While I was active on Htrae and in the Heart of Darkness, my avatar had been busy. The entity I had created a few weeks ago and tasked with mapping the universe had been doing just that. Every few hours my mind would expand and I''d gain greater and greater awareness of the cosmos. That said, even though I was making the slightest bit of progress in mapping the universe it was almost inconceivably grand in scale.


    My avatar had traveled to hundreds of stars by now and I was enjoying the feeling of my awareness of even a fraction of my birth-galaxy increasing over the course of the last few days. The lesser version of myself had done nothing but travel from solar system to solar system, having no particularly note-worthy adventures of its own. I was still grateful to the creature though, as now I was just now beginning to grasp the unbelievable scale of the universe I called my home.


    I had even encountered interplanetary empires, and also entire solar systems plagued by war. Both of these things were of some slight interest to me, though thus far I had been content to allow events to play out in even the fiercest wars without influencing the results. A part of me was quietly ready to begin to change things, but I tempered that part of myself. I wanted to change things slowly and through deliberate manipulation, not through overt and cataclysmic displays of power. I wanted to test myself.


    ________________________________________________


    I allowed the most active part of my mind to begin to explore the solar systems I had never been too yet but in an indirect way. As I did when I first came here to Htrae, I quietly and insidiously crept into the minds of those who were fast asleep.


    I swiftly began to plague the dreams of those visited. I snuck into hundreds of dreams in several different solar systems but in all of them I began my insidious work. I started things off with a simple vision.


    In the very first vision I would plague hundreds of dreamers with I quietly showed them a number of nightmarish worlds. Some worlds were lorded over by the Swarm, entire planets conquered by my massive Hymenopteric worshipers. Some planets were entirely dead. Others were entirely undead.


    In a few I allowed demons to drag the world of the dreamer into the Heart of Darkness. In others I took over the world of the dreamer by utilizing devils. In a number of especially creative cases, usually ones that actually involved dragons, I created an entirely non-existent empire of dragons and it was them who conquered the world of the dreamer.


    To my surprise, while I was leading my entourage towards the actual homes of the Mi-Gos who ruled the strange, subterranean settlement, I had fun with one specific type of vision. In the visions in which I showed dreamers dead or undead worlds I would occasionally manifest as a handsome yet frightening god of death.


    I would make myself incredibly tall and powerful looking, usually with a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, with eyes as black as a starless night. Oftentimes those who witnessed me in that form found me attractive, which the smartest of them instantly recognized as odd but they couldn''t help it nor could they keep secret their feelings.


    In a few cases, I pulled those who found me attractive into my arms and, thanks to the physical contact with them I was able to quicken the rate at which I stole their sanity from them. Not to mention I begin to exert influence over their fragile minds. It was a delightful way to kill time.


    Eventually though, it came time for me to focus. My physical form had finally reached the true entrance to the Mi-Go colony.


    ________________________________________________


    It took my minions and I a few minutes to traverse from the hole''s entrance all the way to the actual entrance to the colony. When we did we found ourselves facing a strange wall at the end of the tunnel. The wall appeared to be made from flesh, human flesh. It was the color of long rotted human skin, but thanks to my sensory abilities I knew what laid beyond the wall: my destination.


    As my minions and I drew closer and closer to the door I considered how best to handle it. I mentally mulled over which of my abilities would be the best to utilize here, before realizing that the answer was simple. "Dermal manipulation", one of my biology domain powers, was the best one to use to open the wall in front of me.


    When my entourage and I found ourselves a few steps away from the wall, I manifest my soul-staff in one hand and rose my other. My empty hand began to radiate a fel-green energy before I pointed it at the wall and activated my power. I felt my power wash over the flesh-wall and I chuckled as the wall became commendable.


    "Open." I commanded the obstacle, speaking aloud for the first time in several minutes. The wall of flesh obeyed me instantly, seeming to seep into the stone that surrounded it. I grinned and wasn''t surprised when beyond the wall the air took on a distinctly red tint and an incredibly loud sound began to emanate from it. I had set off an alarm. This didn''t bother or surprise me. Nor did it bother or surprise my obedient constructs.


    We kept on walking until we stepped past the place where the wall I had turned into a door was located. As we did I gazed over at the walls that surrounded us. I was unsurprised to see that the walls were also made of flesh. What was a bit surprising was that the walls managed to be odorless, despite being made of long rotted flesh. It didn''t take us long to walk from beyond the wall of skin to the end of the tunnel. As we did the red light grew harsher and the alarm that now surrounded me grew louder still.


    ________________________________________________


    At the end of the tunnel, there was an abrupt twenty-meter drop. At the bottom of it though was a single building made from flesh as well. Standing on top of it was a single Mi-Go, who gazed at me and my entourage. It had one of their electrical guns pointed at me, which caused me to laugh. As I laughed I targeted the creature with a single usage of "Ascension". The creature''s clawed hands on the gun suddenly slackened and the creature''s eyes, if they could be called that, changed color from a frightened red, to a pious green, quite swiftly.


    The Mi-Go resembled a cross between a shellless crab and a hornet. It had the stinger and wings of a hornet but the actual frame of something oddly crustacean-like. It lacked skin, instead, the creature possessed a pink exoskeleton, and its bulbous head was covered in both multicolored eyes and antennae. It had two hands which were perhaps its most humanlike feature, though the hands had claws, not humanlike nails, and both were wrapped around an alien gun. On its chest sat a strange-looking emblem, which I suspected was a form of technology in and of itself.


    The gun itself looked to be made of a material that resembled gold and was a solid-looking object. I could sense the electricity flowing through the object, which I knew the object would fire if someone holding the thing activated it. The object was large, heavy, and rather unwieldy, at least at a glance. It wasn''t like the tiny guns humans on Htrae had built. It was clearly the sort of weapon guards would use to at least detain someone, if not kill them outright.


    I and my entourage began another descent, stepping out of the tunnel and into the open air without hesitation. We each controlled our descents skillfully and leisurely floated down the open air. It was while we were gliding down to the surface that the Mi-Go regained its senses, and entered the building it had been standing on top of. While it was in there the alarm was suddenly shut off, and the red-tint that had painted the area around me in a somewhat grisly way vanished. Seconds later the creature raced out of the building but on the ground-level this time, not the building''s roof.


    The creature dashed from just out of the building, to just in front of where I was about to land and then knelt. It was a speedy thing, owed no doubt in part to both the fact that it had an array of centipede-like legs and also an assortment of biological augmentations it wielded.


    "Oh great and mighty Althos, healer of the Mi-Go people, forgive my impertinence! I had no idea you were going to visit us, or else I would have never aimed my electro-cannon at you!" The creature proclaimed as I landed. My ability to understand all languages came in handy by immediately divining the meaning of the sounds that escaped its head. The creature had no mouth, but the sounds seemed to come out of holes on the side of its head.


    I looked at the thing and activated a few of my mental powers. One of them was my ability to establish mind-links. I tethered our minds together and began to speak to it that way.


    "Rise." I commanded the creature, my voice seeping into its very mind. I didn''t feel like speaking to it, at least not in a physical sense, so I opted to think to it instead. I approached it, as it rose, and I allowed it to enjoy a burst of pleasurable healing as if to signal that I was pleased with it. I wasn''t, not particularly, but as I watched the thing shiver I sensed that its loyalty and piety to me had just increased. I also reached out and blessed the thing with the fungal subdomain, which caused the creature to grow stronger before my very eyes. I sensed a wave of euphoric happiness emanate from the being.


    The creature slowly began to stand again, after feeling my powers wash over it. As it did I commanded it once more.


    "Take me to your leader." I commanded, speaking into its mind. The creature couldn''t resist me, not that it wanted it too. The strange monster turned to face the interior of the colony and began to walk into it. I took off behind it, accompanied by my servants.


    As we made our way into the true colony, I began to grin. This place was a laboratory, and it housed humans, dwarves, elves, and Mi-Gos, with Mi-Gos being the most populous group, and elves being the least populous. And here I was worshiped as an eldritch god of biology, life, knowledge, and pain.


    I was excited to meet more Mi-Gos and to begin to tie my divine realm with the rest of the universe. Each and every step I took led me closer and closer to the grand scientists who lorded over this strange colony.


    Off in the distance, I heard the torturous wails of mortals who were being experimented on, and the beating of wasp-like wings as scientists floated over their test subjects. I also heard the loud noises of an assortment of technology in and around the colony.

 192 Foul Fungi & Sinister Scientists

    Deep underground, at least as deep underground as we could be in my divine realm, my entourage and I silently wandered around the dark colony. With each step, the number of things my prodigious senses picked up grew clearer and also stranger.


    This underground colony housed a number of oddities. Not just the Mi-Gos and their lab-rats, but all manner of strange devices, devices which helped the foul fungi create this colony in the first place. I could sense the fel-technologies which the fantastical fungi used in both daily lives here, and a number of machines that the alien civilization had long since stored away in case the day came they would need to use them again.


    I heard some of the devices they used regularly hard at work. To learn about them I scanned the mind of the Mi-Go who was escorting us while also remotely inspecting the devices myself.


    Some of the machines included oxygen modifiers that allowed the Mi-Gos to breathe comfortably while also limiting the amount of oxygen that the mortals received, and a device that dampened magic which had the effects of increasing the magical energy cost of spells and weakening them. These devices didn''t bother me, but I could get why they''d pose a challenge to mere mortals. This was an environment hand, or rather claw-built for Mi-Gos and designed to be inescapable.


    Other devices were far more interesting to me. Some of them were handy vessels for interstellar travel, including autonomous drones and even a number of armed transport vessels capable of both worldwide and interplanetary travel. Others were more defensive machines and a few exosuits for missions that required Mi-Go supervision to ensure successful completion.


    That said, as soon as we began to encounter other Mi-Gos, I turned my attention towards them.


    ________________________________________________


    By the time we encountered more of the maddeningly advanced fungi I had come here to truly recruit we were in front of other flesh-formed buildings. These buildings were both homes and private laboratories. My enhanced senses, including my mini-map, allowed me to detect and appreciate the diversity of lifeforms present in the colonies without us ever even needing to enter one of the no-doubt frightening laboratories.


    We stood on what was in essence an empty street, though in actuality it wasn''t a specifically carved or maintained pathway but rather the naturally eroded pathway on which humanoids and occasionally Mi-Gos walked on when exploring the colony or going about their day to day business. In front and above us floated a number of the eerie fungi which I intended to use as my personal researchers. They stared at me, and completely ignore my entourage.


    The creatures were telepathically conversing with each other and I could pick up the overall gist of the conversation with my ability to read surface-level thoughts. They didn''t know who I was, and I didn''t feel like revealing myself to them. They were merely ordinary members of the colony and not the elite scientists I was looking for.


    ________________________________________________


    The further into the colony we got the stranger the architecture became. At first, at least from a distance, many of the buildings in the colony looked like buildings. Being made of humanoid flesh made them obviously incomparable to most buildings made by mortals but nevertheless, they resembled buildings and had clearly defined doors and such useful things. That changed as we went deeper and deeper into the colony.


    Buildings stopped being clearly definable to those used to mortal architecture a few kilometers into the colony. "Buildings" became holes in walls that allowed those with the appropriate body-types, almost exclusively Mi-Gos, to flit in and out of the buildings with ease.


    What''s more is that the holes tended to be situated hundreds of meters in the air so even if a mortal managed to bend themselves in such a way that fitting in and out of such holes was possible, they''d be faced with the prospect of falling a vast distance and probably dying upon impact with the ground below them. That said, for some people here that may be preferable to staying here, alive. The further into the colony we went the louder the wails of pain became. I quite liked it.


    Though I didn''t always show it, I actually quite liked being a god of many diverse things. I enjoyed the notifications I perpetually received about the diverse tapestry of things I held some sway over. I like both healing people and inflicting pain. I didn''t doubt that if I truly put my mind to it I could become a god who seemed to be truly benevolent or despair-inducingly malicious. In truth, I was neither. I was a god who first and foremost liked being a god and wanted to become a god of all things, the multiverse''s first truly omnipotent and omniscient entity.


    I wanted to gain the power to do anything, without difficulty and without failure. I wanted to be a god who could alter an entire species with but a thought, and even purify or corrupt an entire dimension just to see what would happen if the dimension were altered on a truly cosmic scale. Eventually, I wanted to conquer entire universes, both in the sense that in some I was the undisputed ruler of them and in others in the sense that I was all there was, that I was all beings and all beings were me. And to do that I needed to accrue more power.


    After a few minutes of seemingly mindless wandering, our escort guided us to a wall. Without hesitation, the strange creature took off into the air, and I followed behind it. My escorts followed behind me, endlessly and nearly mindlessly loyal to their creator.


    ________________________________________________


    We flew upwards for no more than a minute before reaching a hole in the wall in front of us. My Mi-Go escort effortlessly fit into it and flew through the thing without any hesitation. I followed after it, making myself incorporeal to do so without having to use my liquid, or gaseous abilities. As I passed through the hole I pointed a single hand at my companions and altered their shapes.


    I turned the four guards into four heavy orbs of solidified silver, and telekinetically pulled them into my hands. For the time being I''d keep them like that. Ahead of me, the Mi-Go silently kept walking. It was determined to lead me to the grandest of the scientists this colony possessed, and I was quite excited to meet them. It didn''t take us long to get far enough into the wall to reach the first of the experiments the Mi-Gos were conducting, and as I did I began to play around with my powers for a bit.


    ________________________________________________


    The area my Mi-Go escort and I had been exploring had initially been a single, wide tunnel. It had been like that for almost a quarter of a kilometer. That changed when we reached the laboratory section of the wall.


    The area around us abruptly widened and allowed any passersby to visually examine the countless experiments the Mi-Gos were conducting on their captives. The labs themselves were cavities in the wall that abruptly appeared in countless corners and provided adequate space for a number of things, creatures, and devices to be on the same relative elevation.


    One lab contained a human who was strapped to a plain stone table and who was being monitored by a number of technological devices that weren''t hugely dissimilar to the ones I had seen humans strapped too on Htrae. He was struggling against the strange technology and I could see rage building in his gaze. I chuckled and opted to have fun at his expense. I turned and entered the laboratory, leaping from up above the strange space to down into it and landing on the ground silently thanks to my powers over noise. That didn''t stop the man from seeing me though.


    "Hey! You there! Help me!" He screamed, desperation audible in his voice. He couldn''t move his head Desperation wasn''t the only thing audible in his voice either. I could hear rage, sadness, and pain in it as well. It was a pleasant cocktail of mind-breakingly powerful emotions. I walked over to the side of the man, and I heard him begin to squirm, trying to turn to face me.


    "Hey! You''re not like them. Or... Gods, I hope you''re not like them. If you''re not, free me! Please, I''m begging you, they''re torturing me!" He said, practically wailing at me. He was quite slim, but I could tell at a glance that once the man had been powerfully built and muscular.


    I slowly walked to the side of the man and as I do, I glide a finger along his bare chest. For a moment I consider inflicting pain on him, but then I decide against needless and random pain. I gaze at him and quietly utilize my powers over sloth to order him to sleep. My powers wash over him effortlessly. I sense him feel a sudden and unnatural burst of exhaustion, and I watch as his face contorts in confusion.


    "What...?" The man mutters, clearly trying to ask something before his eyes close and I hear his breathing relax. A second later, he is fully asleep. I smile at him and return to where my escort was patiently waiting for me.


    ________________________________________________


    The rest of the trip to where the elder scientist was located took less than ten minutes. Along the way, we passed by dozens of people, examples of alien technology, and other, odder things. I utilized my empathy power to glean information from my escort, despite the silence of the being. It liked when we passed by mortal experiments, was neutral towards alien technology, and was often unnerved by the stranger things we walked by.


    The most intriguing of the strange things we walked by were things that melded technology and magic. In some cases, this was as simple as a Mi-Go in an artificial exosuit who held an arcane staff and was silently practicing hurling fireballs at targets in one of the little nooks which housed the experiments the scientists were working on. Others were stranger still, including a fully autonomous robot speaking arcane words and attempting to cast magic. It wasn''t working, and as I examined the thing I realized why. It lacked the spiritual energy needed to cast spells. I could have changed that, but I didn''t. I might, later, but I didn''t as I walked by the thing.


    I was fascinated by the blending of technology and magic. I had seen all sorts of examples of advanced technology, but most of them didn''t blend science and magic. The space-faring vessels that the Mi-Go possessed were useful pieces of technology but weren''t among the things that were being experimented on, only smaller, presumably more replicable pieces of technology were located within this particular laboratory.


    When we reached the elder scientist I had come here seeking, we found it located in a vast, personal chamber. The room we were in was a large and sparsely decorated one. The room was oval-shaped, and the walls were a sleet white color, filling the room with light in stark contrast to the other rooms throughout the colony and laboratory that I had seen to date. It smelled of fungus and decomposing corpses, which to a mortal probably would have been thoroughly unpleasant but didn''t particularly phase me.


    There was a table-like slab in the middle of the room, on which the Mi-Go itself rested, and there were loose bits of bio-technical equipment scattered throughout the room, some of which was turned on and warmed fungus in quiet corners of the room. The Mi-Go itself was impressively large for a member of its race, and at a glance, I could assume that it probably stood around 4 meters tall if it stretched out its long body. It wore an exosuit that covered its body in a black film-like substance which I suspected granted it marvelous resilience.


    The creature was not facing my escort or I, and yet I heard buzzing begin to emanate from it, buzzing which was automatically translated in my head. I smiled as I understood its words.


    "Hello. Welcome to my humble colony, lord-god Althos." The creature said, in the odd buzzing language of the eldritch race.


    "I hope you have enjoyed the portions of the colony you have seen. We are, of course, all at your disposal and eager to prove our worth to you." The creature told me, showing me the respect I suppose I was innately owed as a god. It was a pleasant change, from the usual first-times I met living creatures. I was silent for a moment, and then I began to speak. It was time for me to finish recruiting this colony. In all honesty, I think what I wanted them to do would be something they''d like to do anyway. I was smiling as I began to speak.

 193 Whispers And Greed

    "Myzriel." I said, in response to the refreshingly humble Mi-Go''s warm, for their kind anyway, introduction. I knew its name, and much more about it, thanks to my powers. The creature turned as I spoke, and I was able to gaze into its many eyes.


    "I am heartened by the fact that here I am treated with the respect I deserve. It is a welcome change." I told the odd, alien entity. The creature''s head bowed in delight in response to my words. My empathetic abilities allowed me to easily interpret even the tiniest and oddest gesture it made, and I could sense its genuine delight at my words. It began to buzz again and an instant later my ability to understand any language kicked in once more.


    "Of course, lord-god. You are a god, and more than that you are a... Well, perhaps not quite a Great Old One, but something akin to that." The creature said, in the eerie, buzzing language of the Mi-Gos. There was a momentary hesitation it felt, which was reasonable enough. It was unsure of how to classify me, and that was a sign of intelligence. It was also a fair statement.


    The Great Old Ones were nightmarish lesser gods with potent power over the eldritch domain, a domain of madness, abominations, and energies that could warp reality. In the distant past, they had once waged war on mortals and the gods of mortals. Apparently they, and their outer god allies, greater gods with even more influence over the eldritch domain, were defeated in the distant past.


    It wasn''t fair to call me a Great Old One, especially since I likely wouldn''t have sided with the abominations against the mortals had I lived during the war. That said I had made the choice to heal abominations as well as mortals when I began performing my world-spanning miracles, an act which caused countless abominations to flock to me and to begin to worship me. I chuckled at Myzriel''s remarks and began to speak once more.


    "I have long admired your kind''s thirst for knowledge. Which is why I have come here, today." I told the creature, which intrigued it. I saw slight twitches of its head as it processed my words.


    "Your kind''s unrelenting thirst for knowledge, coupled with my powers gives us... many opportunities. I have recently acquired a group of demons, demons who I conquered in battle. I intend for some of your researchers to come with me, into the Heart of Darkness, and to study demons." I tell the creature, a dark grin on my face as I speak.


    Within me, a number of domains were quietly delighted.


    ________________________________________________


    "So, at last... your thirst for knowledge is finally rearing its pretty, little head." Whispered one of the domains, rather fittingly was the domain of knowledge. It sounded quite excited.


    "I, for one love this. It''s so delightfully dark!" Another domain exclaimed, unsurprisingly the domain of evil.


    "Studying the bodies of demons? I must admit, I am quite intrigued by what you all will find." The domain of biology quietly said, its voice more subdued than others.


    "Please, for the love of pain, tell me you''re planning to study them while they''re alive? And, preferably, conscious?" The subdomain of pain softly asked, working to hide the excitement in its voice. It wasn''t working. I was planning to keep the demons alive. Though that could easily change, if circumstances demanded it. After all, I had a number of abilities at my disposal that allowed me the freedom to kill and then resurrect creatures.


    ________________________________________________


    "A chance to study demons... How exciting!" The creature declared, hesitation clearing its head as it spoke, or rather, buzzed.


    "This is truly extraordinary! Knocking demons unconscious, without killing them, is quite a feat. It is definitely within the capabilities of even a weaker god, but for us lesser beings it would require incredibly controlled circumstances." The creature explained, revealing a bit of why it was so excited. Having encountered demons myself, I could understand that. I was infinitely more powerful than they were, but even weaker demons were extremely dangerous to lesser beings like abominations. I knew enough to know that.


    "It is good to know that this excites you and will in all likelihood excite your kin. I am quite eager to learn what can be unearthed from the bodies, living and dead alike, of the demons. What... secrets lie, buried within some of the foulest entities native to this universe." I told the creature, a grin on my face as I spoke. It studied me as I spoke, its eyes filled with admiration even as they glittered, in all sorts of colors.


    "Your thirst for knowledge intrigues me. As does your dedication to learning, at all costs. Consider this... a test. I want to learn what your kind is capable of. These demons give you a marvelous opportunity. I have long needed servants who are dedicated to knowledge almost as much as they are dedicated to me." I told the fungoid creature. This, even more so than the opportunity to study demons surprised and delighted the creature.


    It was sincere in its devotion to me. It was an earnest feeling lodged deep within its soul. And me arriving, with an immediate chance for it to prove itself and to prove the worth of its people in my eyes heartened it.


    "Lord-god... We shall not fail you! Please, allow us to learn and to share what we can learn, with you!" The creature asked, buzzing, excitedly. I grinned and motioned for it to calm down.


    "Yes, yes Myzriel. Your chance is already yours. You need not rush it. Researching demons... I can only imagine that such an act would be quite difficult." I told the abomination, urging it to relax and be patient. I had all the time in the universe, and what I wanted to do here was merely set things in motion. I didn''t come here expecting to achieve results tomorrow. My words reassured the creature and it both internally and visibly relaxed. After a few moments, the thing looked back at me and began to buzz once again.


    "Lord-god, may I boldly inquire something?" The creature asked. I gazed at it, curiously. I didn''t reply, but after a few moments, it took my silence as tacit acceptance.


    "What do you desire?" The creature asked. I chuckled and closed my eyes in response to its question.


    "I desire everything. I want to know everything, and I want to rule everything." I told the creature. This answer shocked the creature into silence. It lowered its head and faced the floor while it considered my words.


    "My ultimate goal is nothing less than to be worshipped by the entire multiverse. And an equally important goal of mine is to eventually know everything. I desire omnipotence and omniscience. I know that is a lofty goal, but for gods... Well for gods nothing that isn''t lofty is even considering." I told the creature, speaking freely for a moment. In a moment of unusual honesty, I had allowed a silver of my godly pride and ambition to leak out of me, in the form of my honest declaration. After a few moments of silence, the Mi-Go began to buzz again, its words becoming intelligible to me a heartbeat later.


    "Truly a goal worthy of a god. The sort of goal that only a being who could live forever and who embodies power could dare to dream of." The creature said, speaking obsequiously. I chuckled again. That said, the creature wasn''t lying to me. It hadn''t wanted too, and even if it had tried it wouldn''t have worked. My powers over the subdomains of lies, truths, and the eldritch domain all quietly collaborated and prevented creatures from lying to me. It was just, to me anyway, a servile creature.


    I looked at the being and fell silent. I had said what I really wanted to say to the thing. That said, I knew that non-divine-beings needed more than what I had given the creature, insofar as directions went. I sighed and spoke more.


    "I will create a portal in this room that leads to the Heart of Darkness, and to the laboratories I have prepared for your scientists to use to store and study the demons I captured. Once you have selected the scientists who shall lead this effort, welcome them here and take them through the portal. When you do, order them to begin to research the demons." I commanded, speaking authoritatively. The abomination nodded at my commands, accepting them and filling with a determination to see them fulfilled.


    I kept my eyes locked on the entity, and a pair of quiet voices began to whisper to me. Voices from deep within me. Insidious voices. The voices of two particularly hostile, but in distinct ways, subdomains.


    ________________________________________________


    "This creature... It worships you. Why not make it a friend of ours?" One of the sly voices asked. It''s voice was the quieter of the two. It cloaked its intentions in friendly language.


    "Think of what you could learn, if you used your powers on this creature. Think of what you could take from it. And you could do it harmlessly!" The other subdomain whispered. It didn''t try to cloak its intentions or whitewash them.


    "I think this being would willingly become our friend. It is so intelligent! And it would use its wisdom to make us make even more friends!


    The other subdomain whispered, gleefully continuing to use that violence-free language to hide what it was really suggesting I do. And within me, I felt spores begin to circulate throughout me.


    "Think of it this way... This morally unbound creature seeks knowledge as aggressively as you do. Don''t you think if your position and its position were reversed it wouldn''t do the same thing? Do you honestly believe it wouldn''t freely use ''Drain'' on you? On anyone who possessed even a bit of knowledge it desired? What is it''s vice?" The other subdomain asked me. That last question was an interesting one, because the subdomain didn''t know what it''s vice was, but it had evidently come to the conclusion that the creature had a vice which would make it ferocious in what it was willing to do to acquire new knowledge. And the truth was, the subdomain was correct. The Mi-Go''s vice was greed. I didn''t doubt that the Mi-Go would kill for knowledge if it was dangled in front of it.


    "There''s an easy way to make Myzriel our friend... Just use my spores on it! It''s already a fungus, this would just tie it to you!" One of the two subdomains whispered, a malicious edge sneaking into its voice. I chuckled, internally at this suggestion. The subdomain of fungus was actively pushing for me to use my spores on the Mi-Go, and in all honesty a part of me wanted to do so.


    "Listen... You don''t have to subjugate the creature if you just listen to my suggestion. You''ve already used ''Drain'' on creatures before. It''s a harmless ability. Just think of what sort of eldritch secrets and mysterious wisdom you could acquire just by snatching the memories, thoughts, and secrets of this one scientist?" Whispered the subdomain of vermin, one of my original subdomains. And the truth was, the subdomain wasn''t wrong. The truth was, the suggestions of both subdomains appealed to me.


    ________________________________________________


    I often did a physical gesture to indicate that I was aiming a power. These gestures were purely theatrical and entirely unnecessary. I mentally took aim at the Mi-Go who led the colony and put the creature to an abrupt sleep. My powers, honed by a slowly increasing amount of experience, radiated out of me and washed over the creature. In a matter of seconds the being slumped over, unconscious.


    I gazed at the entity, silently, and then without a moment of hesitation began to parasitize the creature. My parasitic ability, "Drain", effortlessly struck the still entity, and I grinned as I fed on the thing''s ideas, thoughts, memories, and secrets. Its mind was a delicious buffet to me, one replete with tantalizing discoveries, amazing memories, and all manner of ideas.


    I felt my powers steal all manner of things from the Mi-Go leader of the colony, and the more I stole from it the wider my grin grew. I had never before truly appreciated my dreadful powers over vermin, but now as I stood in the middle of a colony filled with incredible scientists and all manner of forbidden knowledge I was incredibly excited by the frightening powers over vermin and parasites that were an essential part of me.


    I felt my knowledge of the universe, as well as my knowledge of Myzriel, growing as my powers continued to rake the body of the fungoid entity that I had made my target. I closed my eyes and began to quietly keep track of time. My powers over time gave me an incredibly handy tool with which I could restore what I had taken from the Mi-Go without undoing my parasitic power, but I had an annoying restriction: I could only do it if I did it before two minutes had passed.


    Seconds passed as my "Drain" power continued to assail the head scientist of the Mi-Go colony. Seconds turned into a minute, and then a minute and a half before my powers finally sucked the last of the knowledge, emotions, thoughts, memories, and secrets from the creature in front of me. When I was done taking from it, I mentally activated another of my powers, one called "Rewind". As I did I kept my eyes locked on Myzriel.


    A faint, silvery air fell on the abomination. As it did I was able to feel the creature''s mind begin to fill again. It was a slow process, at first anyway, but after a few seconds it began to rapidly speed up. In less than three minutes the creature''s mind was fully restored and all of its contents restored.


    Now, unknown to it, we shared all of the knowledge it had accrued over the course of its life. I knew Myzriel better than the thing knew itself now, and thanks to the frightening potency of my power I had acquired this knowledge in less than two minutes. The creature was still unconscious, but I sensed it beginning to awaken for a moment before putting it back to sleep, utilizing my powers over sloth to ensure the creature stayed unconscious. It was only when I was sure that my worshiper would stay asleep that I turned around and effortlessly created a portal to the laboratories I had created for the sake of studying demons. As I did that, I began to mull over the knowledge I had acquired through abrupt, though ultimately victimless, theft.


    That said, for now I wouldn''t sick my parasitic spores on the creature. If I wanted to do that I''d need to safely experiment on lesser creatures first to see how they reacted to the spores, before I tested them on something like as maddening as a Mi-Go. I was ambitious, but not foolish. And I had all the time in the world.


    ________________________________________________


    "Robots, spaceships, biology and anatomy lessons, and foul technologies no sane mind would ever dream of... What a pleasant and worthwhile haul! This knowledge will serve me well in the days to come. I will need a place with which I could fiddle with this knowledge in unbothered safety. In the Heart of Darkness perhaps? Or in an uninhabited corner of my dimension? Otherwise, this knowledge will merely sit in my mind, unused and useless. And that would be an unmitigated tragedy." I thought, a quiet, perpetually scheming part of my mind beginning to mull over where best to begin to act on the knowledge I had just acquired.


    Meanwhile, I quietly returned to the Heart of Darkness. It was time for me to steal even more memories, and more thoroughly evil knowledge than what I had taken to date. It was time for me to extract knowledge from the demons I had captured. After all I had the power to do so. It wouldn''t even be a challenge for someone like me.

 194 God Of Memories And Destruction

    Upon returning to his "home", insofar as he had one in the Heart of Darkness, the god immediately entered his laboratory and began to busy himself. He wasted no time going out and absorbing the memories of the demons he captured.


    While he did this he made himself incorporeal and was basically a dreadful phantom. He incorporeally flitted from room to room in the subterranean area he had created, sapping the captured prisoners of everything that made all them distinct individuals. The god''s dark parasitic powers were effectively reverting the demons he had captured into blank slates, canvasses which he could mold. And he also did one other thing to them.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself standing over a succubus. She was not the same succubus I had stood over earlier, before I went and recruited the Mi-Gos. She was so thin that she was almost sickly looking. She had long blonde hair and bodily proportions that would appeal to many heterosexual men, as well as bisexual or gay women who were attracted to voluptuous women.


    She was unconscious and she was strapped to a stone slab. I had captured over fifty demons and she was the last I investigated and while doing so had drained her to what was effectively "blank slate" status. "Blank slate" status referred to a condition in which she possessed no memories of her own, and was in essence something for me to mold however I wished. All of the members of her horde were reduced to this status as a punishment for daring to attack my village.


    One of the things I did to her, that I also did to the other demons I had captured was drain her strength to its lowest possible number: 1. I had discovered, in part thanks to this, that I couldn''t drain a stat past 1. Whenever I tried I''d get a notification alerting me that it wasn''t possible for me to do that just yet.


    Over the course of the last half-hour, I had drained all of the other demons and I had quietly accepted my inability to leave a stat at 0. I was still quite fond of my ability to absorb such a wide variety of things from my foes. In draining her strength to 1, I was sure that she''d be unable to escape from the laboratory when it was time for the Mi-Go biologists to awaken her.


    The succubus was currently trapped in a dream of my own design. In it she was also trapped in a laboratory but her circumstances weren''t quite the same as they were here. In the dream-laboratory, she was trapped in she had been captured by mortal scientists and was both fodder for them to study and a toy for their collective use.


    Succubi and incubi were lust demons, and many of both species of demons tended to specialize in sexual lust. I had trapped all of the succubi and incubi in highly sexual dreams, mostly because that felt fitting. After all succubi and incubi were dream and desire demons, so trapping one of them in such a dream made sense.


    ________________________________________________


    "It is time that I begin to build a cult of dreamers." I told myself, in the depths of my mind. One of the only innate domains that I had yet to build even a single cult around was the domain of dreams.


    That didn''t mean I didn''t have worshipers who worshiped me as a god of dreamers, I did. My dream-based worshipers were mostly Gugs, terrifying and gigantic abominations who dwelled all over the cosmos and worshiped me as a potent god of violence, pain, and dreams. And now, having gained more succubi and incubi I could begin to slowly give myself more primarily dream-based worshipers. And to make that even easier for me I had a clever idea.


    Wordlessly I opened up the menu I navigated whenever I created new abilities myself. It was time that I begin to become a true god of something quite potent: memories. I spent a few moments requesting the system devise two truly potent abilities for me, ones that I knew would immediately give me the ability to change a considerable amount at once.


    [Alert: You can now use two new synergistic abilities: "Memory creation and editing" and "Memory destruction".


    Memory creation and editing: This passive, synergistic power takes from the domains of knowledge, minds, trickery, creation, and the subdomains of falsehoods and lies. With it you can create as many memories as you would like too. Importantly, this ability also allows you to edit memories, through which you can insert yourself into a creature''s existing memories, or remove someone else from them with ease.


    This ability allows you to effectively rewrite history, especially since this power isn''t limited to mortals. That said, there are still counters to this power. For now you can''t remotely edit videos, books, or other more permanent and immutable fonts of knowledge. If you want to change that gain more influence over the relevant domains and subdomains.


    Memory destruction: This passive, synergistic power takes from the domains of knowledge, minds, trickery, destruction, and the subdomains of falsehoods and lies. Through this ability you can destroy memories. It is a simple power with a frightening number of applications.]


    This power has the potential to be utterly devastating in a number of contexts if used creatively. It also synergizes well with things like sloth, and with building cults in general.


    When I finished reading the notification, I grinned. The smile on my face was a savage and immoral one that suited me, as a creature capable of great cruelty and who often tormented my victims in ways that weren''t physical. These two powers gave me incredible toys with which I very easily and, if I so chose anyway, permanently alter the world around me. Perhaps most importantly, these abilities gave me a mean tool with which to spend a healthy chunk of the next two months.


    ________________________________________________


    Over the course of the next two months a few different things would happen. The first thing that would happen was that the Mi-Go researchers who Myzriel told me would come would indeed come. The team consisted of three dozen fanatical scientists, who''d quickly begin to inhabit the area beneath my demonic village. They were among the first beings whose understanding of history I''d manipulate. I planned to become an artist when it came to memory manipulation.


    At first I was subtle, deleting people from their memories one by one. Eventually though I grew more bold, and I completely absorbed their memories. When I did, I destroyed the earliest memories the eerie creatures had and I quietly rewrote their understanding of their personal origins. I edited their "earliest" memories and changed them so that in their minds they were creations of mine and not naturally born beings descended from inter-universal travelers. They were far from the only creatures whose memories I''d manipulate.


    With my new powers I swiftly set out creating new cults. In the Heart of Darkness I began to summon all sorts of evil beings, summoning demons, devils, and other foul creatures. In each case I would absorb the memories of the creatures in question, and proceed to put them to sleep while I edited their memories and permanently changed their allegiances. I wiped them of their abilities to recall their old masters, be they Agustino, or other high-ranking evil extraplanar entities.


    While raiding the minds of my victims I learned much about other dimensions. I learned more about the nine-layered hellscape that was Infernius, the home of devilkind, and about the mysterious dimension that to conquer I''d need to be an overgod of necromancy and darkness alike. ________________________________________________


    I created foul and complex cults devoted to all manner of wickedness through my newest servants which I was only able to do thanks to my new abilities over memories giving me the ability to make even extraplanars believe I''ve lived a longer life than I had and had been their dark master for many decades or even centuries. Some of these cults were devoted to the apocalypse quadrangle, with the two most common components being war-cults and death-cults.


    I was especially fond of targeting two groups: firstly devils, who had an incredibly complex society and a rigid hierarchy. I transformed conjured devils into pious worshipers of mine who worshiped me as a god of tyranny and war. The second group I was fond of targeting was humans, who I''d warp into cultists of mine devoted to death and necromancy. In no less than one hundred worlds I had tiny human cults who worshiped me as a god of death, and necromancy.


    That said, I didn''t needlessly restrict myself. During the next two months I''d travel freely between my divine realm, Htrae, and the Heart of Darkness. I''d use my newfound knowledge and power over memories to effortlessly acquire influence over contractual magic, spiritual magic, and divination.


    To gain power over contractual magic I''d make a contract with one of my human cultists who worshiped me as a god of death, while pretending to be a devil in my service. To gain power over spiritual magic, I''d use my memory editing powers and my powers over magic to trick a spirit into thinking it lost its magic, and I''d "give" it its powers in exchange for its service.


    I gained power over divination by using scrying spells to spy on Infernius'' first layer: the surface of a hellish world, which was an abandoned wasteland that was "inhabited" exclusively by infernal machines. In doing this I gained an unexpected reward; the quest to gain the first tier of influence over the technology subdomain, and at last the ability the quest I needed to complete to earn second tier of influence over the magic domain. WIth that I inched ever closer to the next tier of godly might: intermediate godhood.


    During my time on Htrae I mostly stuck to behaving mundanely, at least on a physical level. Whenever I spent a day on Htrae, I joined Geoffrey and my fungal creations and I actually helped out on the farm. I tended to animals, and I utilized my powers to help speed the growth of crops, giving my first servant in this world a chance to reap a larger harvest than ever before.


    The one physical thing I did on Htrea that wasn''t related to farms was earn influence over the subdomain of blacksmithing. This was a simple enough task that I completed by visiting the city of Ireland and gaining access to a forge where I proceeded to forge all of the items I needed to forge to take my first step''s onto Morehammer''s most powerful subdomain.


    I would turn my mind towards the few cults I had built throughout Htrae and I would help them grow. I would also build new cults, such as in the city of Ireland where I invaded the dreams of those I had healed and those who had gazed at me while I was in the Saint Rose hospital and introduced myself to them as a god of goodness, healing, and law. Convincing them to worship me was easy, they had already been touched by my powers and their hearts snatched away by my fel-powers over love.


    Perhaps the most significant thing I did on Htrae itself was build three distinct cults of law. These cults were made up of high-ranking government officials throughout the few hundred governments that existed on Htrae. I made a cult that was distinctly good, one that was distinctly evil, and one that was neutral. Each of them was led by a member of the odd group of races known collectively as the "Leyes", lawful extraplanar beings who obeyed and served gods of law, and ones who were connected to each other and myself.


    Elsewhere, in other worlds, I built a grander number of cults. I built cults of dreams, of vermin and parasites, of agriculture, and of every other domain and subdomain I had influence over. I built cult after cult of dreams, at least one on each world I could detect that had life.


    Eventually, as a consequence of my incredible work, I began to steadily acquire quest, after quest, after quest. It didn''t take me long to earn the right to complete all of the quests I''d need to finally be able to become an intermediate god. Along the way I even acquired quests for other, unrelated domains and subdomains.


    It was at the end of the second month after I acquired powers over memories that I finally earned the right to complete the quest to gain the second tier of influence over the mind domain, which was the last quest I needed access too. When I earned that quest, in the aftermath of establishing my third psychic cult, I began to ready myself. It was finally time for me to grow in power.


    ________________________________________________


    [Quest Tracker:


    Here are the quests you need to complete to become an intermediate god.


    Agriculture/Famine: A cult of yours devoted to agriculture must feed a community of 100,000 people for a week, or a famine cult of yours must destroy the food of a community of 50,000 people.


    Chaos: A chaotic cult of yours must plunge a community of at least 25,000 people into anarchy.


    Dreams/Stars: This is a dual-domain quest. You must establish meaningful ties between cults of dreams devoted to you that exist in different galaxies.


    Magic: To acquire the second tier of influence over the domain of magic, you must create a true artifact you intend to use yourself, and also you must create an organization that is devoted to your worship and to educating mortals in how to use magic properly.


    Mind: You must tie together three psychic cults in three distinct star-systems.


    Nature/Destruction: To acquire the third tier of influence over the domain of nature and the second tier of influence over the domain of destruction you must use your powers over nature, in all of its forms, the elements, and destruction, to destroy a civilization. This quest also turns you into a true elemental overlord, significantly enhancing all of your powers over the elemental subdomains.


    Purity/Law: To acquire the second tier of influence over the subdomain of purity, and thus power over another virtue, and the domain of law, a worshiper of yours who worships you as a god of purity must become the rightfully elected leader of a community.


    Vermin/Parasite: To acquire this subdomain''s second tier of influence, a community of humanoids must fall apart due to the actions of vermin or parasites.]


    "Multiple quests... But nothing I can''t handle. And I suppose I should start things off by tackling the easiest one first. All I''ve got to do is utilize my powers over nature, the elements, and destruction to destroy a civilization. That''ll take me a few days at most, and maybe even a few minutes if I am lucky." I chuckled, as I read over the quests I had just acquired.


    I thought for a few seconds, before silently activating one of the powers that the subdomain of divination gave me. In an instant I went from sitting in my home in Htrae, to flying high above the cloudline over a bustling city in a world in a galaxy that wasn''t the galaxy of my birth or the galaxy Htrae was located in.


    I found myself at the center of a seemingly endless blue expanse. I had arrived in this new world during mid-day, and high in the sky above me floated a single gigantic star that radiated a vibrant red light.


    I gazed downward, my eyes effortlessly seeing through the clouds, and I readied myself for the destruction to come.


    ________________________________________________


    [Divination subdomain details:


    Divination is one of the subdomains that is affiliated with the greater domains of time and fate. It itself is a fairly ordinary subdomain in terms of power, but its usages are incredibly interesting to information and knowledge oriented gods like yourself.


    Divination is a school of magic that allows those who utilize it to gain information and knowledge about events billions, trillions, or even quadrillions of kilometers away, or even events taking place in other dimensions. The whole purpose of this school of magic is to gain supernatural insights into the world, worlds, and dimensions around you.


    To acquire more influence over this subdomain, utilize its powers.


    Divination subdomain passive powers:


    Clairovoyance: With this you can leave behind sensors that allow you to be able to continue to sense events at a location, even if it''d normally be beyond your capabilities to be able to sense. You can also grant your followers the ability to use this as a spell.


    Scrying: You can use a number of substances, materials, and objects to perform divinations. This includes things like mirrors, the elements, the stars, and other materials, and objects. When you scry, you can remotely use these objects to magically observe events or even to teleport from place to place. For example, you can step into one mirror and step out of another mirror, in another galaxy. You can also take others with you when you do this.


    Mediumship: Synergistic power that allows you to call upon spirits, temporarily imbue corpses with sentience, and otherwise speak with the dead beyond reanimating them to serve as undead lifeforms. You can ask these corpses or spirits questions and they will answer you truthfully. You can also grant your followers spells that replicate these abilities.


    Remote viewing: With this power you can view any area your divine senses can sense at will. This makes it possible for you to aim things precisely and for you to watch events happening trillions of kilometers away at will, without astral projecting.


    Divination subdomain active power:


    System teleportation: Once per every three hours you can choose to teleport to an area near where a notification comes from. With this power you can instantly go from one end of the cosmos to another and if you become strong enough to receive notifications from other universes you can teleport from one universe to another instantly.


    Divination subdomain blessing and curse details:


    This blessing and curse affects perception. A creature blessed by this subdomain would be able to perceive twice as much as they''d otherwise be able too, and a creature cursed by it would only be able to perceive half as much as they''d otherwise be able too.]


    I quietly activated powers over life, minds, and fungi, as I prepared my first wave of attacks on the random human civilization below me. As I did, I thought about the quests for new domains I had earned access too that weren''t related to becoming an intermediate god. And they brought a smile to my face. But they weren''t what I was going to focus on.


    I gazed at the star above me, the sun that was illuminating the sky around me, and teleported to it. I only needed to be close to it for an instant before I gained a masterful awareness of the world I had teleported too in the first place. With that knowledge I teleported back to where I had been standing, and I unleashed a devastating malestrom of chaotic attacks.


    I effortlessly initiated an attack on this world''s sole civilization, and my potent attack was one that was made up of multiple natural and unnatural disasters. As a plethora of notifications began to appear in my mind''s eye, I chuckled. To this world''s people I would be a truly terrifying god of destruction, one whose power over nature ruined them. And one they wouldn''t even see as he decimated their homes and showed them the true might of nature.

 195 A Natural State

    A lone office worker sat in a solitary chair at the top of his office building. In front of him was a small table for one, and on that table was a simple yet healthy lunch. It consisted of a sandwich which the man had taken a bite out of, an energy drink designed to give him the strength and energy needed to get through a boring meeting he had in half an hour, and an apple that he had yet to bite into.


    The office worker stared blankly at the sandwich in front of him. The truth was that he had no real desire to bite into it. Nor did he have any particular desire to finish the rest of his lunch. And that was indicative of how he felt towards office life in general. He was sick and tired of working at his cubicle. A small part of him wanted to claim to feel unwell and leave the office early. He wouldn''t, he was far too timid to do such a rebellious thing, but he wanted too and that feeling would nag and distract him.


    Had he been focused, he might have heard the first curious murmurs from others who were enjoying their lunches atop their place of employment and who happened to be closer to the edge of the building''s rooftop seating area. One of them murmured words of concern and the other murmured words of awe, as they stared at something unusual happening on the city''s streets. Or rather something happening to the city''s streets.


    "Should we... go down there?" One of them asked, looking at the woman who sat across from him. Her eyes were filled with awe at the sight, having never seen anything quite like it. It took her a second but she managed to turn her gaze towards him and asked a simple question.


    "Why? Do you want to see the sinkhole up close?" She asked. Her question stupified her coworker who stared at her blankly for a second. He was from the countryside, where sinkholes could easily swallow up buildings and roads. She was from the city, this city specifically, and wasn''t afraid of sinkholes but rather quite fond of them.


    She liked infrastructure and an open sinkhole gave her a chance to look at sewers with a clarity, level of detail, and rarity that kept her happy to see them. Plus, no sinkhole had hurt anyone in this city in fifty years. She had no way of knowing the true cause of this particular sinkhole, nor did she know how much grief it would cause.


    It was because she was so high above the sinkhole that she couldn''t notice something odd about it. This sinkhole didn''t show anyone who peered into its umbral depths a sewer, but rather a deep and seemingly bottomless hole.


    It was at that moment that the gases trapped within the sinkhole would explode. The explosion was a powerful one, sending flames from near the bottom of the sinkhole up and out of it, lighting up the buildings that surrounded the sinkhole, dramatically heating up the air around the pit, and shattering windows of every building for almost half a kilometer around the cavernous pit.


    Their third coworker, the solitary individual who had been eating by himself was nearer the center of the roof and had been blown clean off of the building. He was currently falling to what would be his death, his mind filled with regrets about how little charge he took of his life before it ended, and questions about whatever the hells was going on.


    None of the three of them knew the true cause of the destruction that was about to be wrought on their planet and of them the two men had had the least terrible fates. They either had died, or would die, and quickly. Of them only the lone female would survive today, but not unchanged.


    The planet was under attack. It was under attack by a strange, alien entity with goals that would have made no sense to its victims. And it didn''t care at all that these humans didn''t understand its goals. It was here for one purpose and one purpose alone: to complete a quest that demanded that it destroy the lone humanoid civilization that had arisen on this planet.


    ________________________________________________


    [Blacksmithing subdomain details:


    The subdomain of blacksmithing is a creation subdomain that governs the forge. It is a potent subdomain that comes with the power to artificially and instantly create armor, weapons, and other things made of metal with ease.


    This subdomain is the one that historically most true artifact creators used in the creation of their true artifacts. It is a potent subdomain that is tied to civilization, war, life, death, art, fate, and other impressive subdomains and domains. If it''s used well it can easily create weapons that can cut through islands and armor that can withstand nuclear bombs. Being a god of the forge is no small feat, and to gain more power over this subdomain utilize its powers.


    Blacksmithing subdomain passive abilities:


    Alteration application: With this power you can apply alterations to items even as you create them! This handy ability allows you to create all manner of enhanced weaponry and armor with ease.


    Aura: With this subdomain''s aura you become immune to attacks made from non-magical metal. Be it a bullet, a sword, a spear, an arrow, so long as this aura is active you are immune to attacks that rely on metals. You also generate an aura that inspires creativity in forging and causes every item forged in your presence to be forged as expertly as possible by the forger. This allows apprentice blacksmiths to forge expert weaponry and armor and allows masters to smith noteworthy weapons and armor.


    Automatic creation: Thanks to the influence you have over the subdomain of alchemy, and the creation domain, as well as this subdomain, you''ve gained the power to automatically craft items anywhere you wish, even without a forge. These items, due to your current low influence over the blacksmithing subdomain, cannot be artifacts but they can be true and real weapons and armor. You can automatically create armor made of adamantine, and swords made from gold, and an unlimited number of them. With this you can outfit armies with ease!


    Improve: You can take a forged item, be it a piece of armor or a blade, and improve it to its optimum state. This ability also allows you to repair a damaged item, such as a shattered blade or a piece of armor that has a dent in it from a particularly forceful blow.


    Magnetism mastery: This is a synergistic power that owes itself to the intersections of the domain of physics, the subdomain of earth, and the blacksmithing subdomain. With it you gain the power to attract or repulse things that have magnetic materials inside of them and manipulate them in other ways as well.


    Metal manipulation: You can manipulate metals, both to aid in the creation of new items through forging and also in a number of other ways. With this power you can use metal to attack enemies, and even unmake objects made of metal. You can also, of course, take on forms made of metal.


    Blacksmithing subdomain active powers:


    There are none at this level of influence.


    Blacksmithing blessing and curse details:


    By blessing a person with this subdomain you can greatly improve their smithing abilities. By cursing someone with it you do the opposite. By blessing an object with it you can greatly improve the object''s quality and longetivity. And by cursing an object with it you can greatly reduce the object''s quality and longetivity, even breaking something on the verge of breaking outright.]


    ________________________________________________


    The planet named Ryths, the world Althos had decided to target to complete one of the quests he had acquired, was a small planet in a galaxy far from the galaxy that housed Htrae. It was further still from the galaxy that Torus a part of. It stood was one of three planets in its solar system, and Althos, for the time being anyway, was uniquely focused on it.


    To date the god''s odd sense of morality, specifically his disdain for meaningless violence and destruction, had tended to keep him reined in. This was perhaps the one constant when it came to his morality, which aside from this was wildly fluid. It was because of this that the god hadn''t been fully aware of just how destructive his powers could be. On the day that he attacked Ryths, that changed forever.


    High above the clouds, only his ability to peer past things which was itself one of the few powers he had constructed and requested himself, allowed him to study the state of the world he found himself floating above. He had activated his powers minutes ago, and in doing so had begun a truly savage assault on the world below.


    He studied the world below him with intense interest. And what he saw was quite chaotic.


    Beneath him, nature in all of its forms rejected the piddling civilization that the humans who inhabited this world had built. He watched with a curious fascination as the planet itself abruptly seemed to turn against the civilization of the planet''s most humanoid inhabitants. He wanted to unleash his true powers over nature without defaulting to unleashing volcanic eruptions, and as he studied the scene below him he realized that was absolutely a wise decision.


    ________________________________________________


    Over the course of but a few minutes, entire cities built on plains collapsed into the planet, as the world itself opened up to shallow them. And that was only one possible fate that befell cities inhabited by this world''s particular form of humanity.


    Other cities were flooded by oceans or even nearby lakes and rivers. In some cases the sizes of the rivers and lakes appeared to have increased exponentially just before the flooding happened, and swept away entire houses.


    Some cities were destroyed by gigantic pillars of flame. These towers of fire came from either underground, the planet splitting open to expel these gouts of flames like some sort of impossibly gigantic dragon, or seemingly from somewhere above the clouds, descending on the tallest buildings and illuminating the sky for dozens of kilometers.


    A few cities were buffeted by winds so powerful and so impossibly fast that they lifted entire houses as if they were balloons. Tornadoes over twenty kilometers in length and hurricanes with winds capable of moving over seven hundred kilometers per hour flattened entire cities, or redistributed the contents of cities across hundreds of kilometers, spreading chunks of buildings into forests and oceans or even mountains and deserts.


    Some cities were destroyed by vast thunderstorms, where each burst of lightning was so powerful that they melted holes into the buildings they struck. This was the first time the god had ever seen his powers create thunderclouds and thunder and lightning, but this was just one example of his power growing.


    All of this was just the fate of cities, and all of the cities were lucky. Cities were destroyed in moments, towns were not.


    ________________________________________________


    A quiet miner flashed the lights of his helmet on the second after he swore he noticed a cloud of spores begin to gather in front of him, seemingly out of nowhere in the darkened cavern. He was quick and dexterous as he flicked the lights on, and was shocked when he confirmed that deep in the cave there was a mist-like cloud of spores the likes of which he had never seen in front of him.


    The poor miner made the mistake of audibly gasping the second the lights illuminated the cave enough for him to fully make out the spores. And that mistake allowed a few dozen of the spores, which were beginning to surround him, to seep into his throat and seal his fate.


    The spores were coming from fungi that, unbeknownst to him, were growing abnormally fast on the ceiling of the cave. Aside from the part of the cave that was visible from the outside, the cave, which was hundreds of meters long and entire kilometers deep, was filled with these fungi, especially deeper in the cave. And each spore these fungi released was a dangerous, mind, and body-altering menace to any sort of existing humanoid civilization.


    For the first time ever Althos was unleashing his full fungal powers. He had quietly contented himself with destroying this world when he chose it, and so he didn''t feel bad finally allowing the fungal subdomain to "make some friends" as it often said it wanted too. These spores were the sort of spores that transformed those they infested into "friends" of the fungal subdomain.


    The miner immediately began to feel the potent effects of the spores as they slid down his throat and began to cover and clog his lungs. The reason they did that was to block oxygen intake and to force the man to take deeper breaths and begin to hyperventilate, which would in turn cause him to swallow more spores.


    In a matter of moments, the man''s insides were riddled with spores. At this point, he collapsed and began to undergo a startling transformation as the spores began to aggressively grow within him. He violently convulsed as his body fought a failing battle against the foreign, fungal invaders. Hyphae and mycelium began to feast on his unnecessary organs and spread through the human-being in minutes, swiftly transforming him into a fungal-entity who was in essence a colony of mycelium in the shambling, unsettling, guise of a human.


    As the mycelium crept through the man''s body the man himself felt horrifying pain and the last conscious action he''d ever take of his own volition was to close his eyes. Within him the invasive mycelium fused with the man''s muscles, wrapped around bones, and crushed organs. The man desperately wished for the blissfulness of unconsciousness or even death, but a consequence of the true nature and source of the fungi being Althos was that the spores deprived their victims of reprieve from pain. Instead they forcibly kept their victims conscious as they took over their bodies.


    Eventually, after perhaps ten minutes, the body of the miner stopped convulsing. The body was eerily still for a moment. And then his eyes abruptly opened, each and every motion controlled by the sentient and vicious mycelium that now piloted his body. His eyes were bloodshot and his eyeballs themselves moved around frantically, under the control of the mycelium that now possessed the rest of his body as well but utterly unnecessarily to the odd fungi. He was but one victim of the god''s thousands of patches of fungi throughout the planet. He got up and began to slowly walk towards the exit of the cave he had been mining in.


    Throughout the planet thousands of creatures, human and animal alike fell victim to the spores. The god mutated each and every mushroom and spore-dispensing lifeform on the planet''s surface or in its depths to spray his parasitic spores and due to that was able to convert countless individuals into his fungoid servants.


    Victims of this vile plot were transformed into one of the more aggressive victims of his spores that he could create, the monstrous and physically powerful fungal-zombies. These creatures were physically enhanced by the spores and they were cursed with an impossibly powerful urge to bite anyone who wasn''t Althos and who wasn''t infested with his parasitic spores. They were members of a carrier-class of parasitically-infested creatures.


    ________________________________________________


    Thousands of small towns were swiftly plunged into anarchy due to the powers of the god''s dark spores. Those who fell victim to the dark powers of the spores were immediately turned into what were essentially vectors for a horrifying infection, and they immediately turned on any organic, non-plant or non-fungal lifeforms and attempted to bite them. And what''s worse is that for all of the simplicity of these terrifying creatures they were efficient.


    For a few minutes, Althos turned his mind away from the annihilation of a few major cities and turned his head to look at a small town. This small town was especially unlucky, and not because Althos turned to look at it. Surprisingly, the quiet god was a neutral observer. He didn''t intervene to speed the destruction of the town, or step in to save it.


    The reason for the town''s misfortune was that the town was built next to a small cave that housed a colony of bats. This cave, like many others, was one that swiftly became a home for thousands of spore-releasing fungi, and the bats were the first but not the last victims of that. After being transformed into fungoid terrors, the bats fled the cave in search of victims and descended upon the town in a frenzy.


    Althos watched, an amused grin on his face, as his servants flew through streets and then into buildings in search of humans to spread their spores into. Whenever they came across humans or across other animals, they stopped for a single second and bit them just once, before resuming their wicked flight in search of more victims. The person or animal who was bit underwent the exact same transformation they had, just a more slow one. A single spore was enough, but those who only got bit by a single spore underwent a much more slow transformation.


    The bat swarm swept over the town in minutes and the once tiny example of civilization was brought to a devastating and terrifying end as the last of its seven hundred and fifty human inhabitants were caught and bitten by one of the bats. Some of the bats died, the humans were initially slow to react but when they learned what the bats were after they stopped hesitating, but the number in the swarm had been in the tens of thousands. It was while the last human, a girl no older than seven, was being bitten that the very first humans arose as fungal terrors, unified in their purpose of serving the lord of fungi by spreading his spores into as many non-fungal lifeforms as possible.


    ________________________________________________


    The spores had powerful effects on the mind. They swiftly took over the brains and minds of any and all lifeforms they infected, and connected them to other spores, other victims of spores, and to the fungal subdomain, as well as the quiet god of fungi himself.


    The spores, once in a brain and controlling a body, sought to serve their lord. And at first they would do that by seeking out others to infect and to convert into creatures like themselves. This mission drove them, but each of them was constantly listening, constantly waiting, for an order from their god.


    One of the worst aspects of the fungoid monsters was that they were intelligent. Once the monsters had finished spreading through and infecting each animal and person in the town, the humans who were infested didn''t stay still and they didn''t try and physically run to the next town like zombies might. Instead, some of them would calmly go to the cars they had once used in their old lives. They would enter and then start those vehicles, and they would silently wait for their cars to fill up with people. Once their vehicles were filled up they would drive out of the town and spread out in search of new victims to offer to their lord.


    Others, were even more clever and were commanded by the subdomain of fungi to walk to the local graveyard. Upon arriving those ones were ordered to go and begin to dig up graves. This was because parasitic spores were potent enough that through Althos'' affinity with the dead, they could infest corpses of all sorts.


    The zombie-like creatures in the graveyard would begin to dig up coffins, either with tools like shovels or by hand. And when they succeeded in retrieving the object of their desires they would greedily and wrathfully smash into the coffins until they burst open and the creatures could infect the corpses laying within them. The victims of the fungal spores would then spit onto and bite the corpses they had retrieved, and in doing so cause the corpse to begin to undergo a transformation that was eerily similar to the ones they themselves had just finished undergoing.


    The more Althos watched these creatures, the more he liked them. The one mutation he bestowed upon them was one that both made them capable of photosynthesis and also freed them from thirst. He didn''t intend to let them die of natural causes. And he gave the bat swarm a special reward, in the form of transforming them into dire bats, their roughly bear-sized evolved forms. Unsurprisingly they retained their fungoid status, but were now terrifyingly massive and capable of sustaining far more damage they could have before.


    It wasn''t long before the god received a single, longer notification that caused him to grin wildly after receiving hundreds of thousands of lesser, domain-based ones that were focused on the planet of Rthys. The longer notification was one that well and truly made him happy.


    As he received it, he felt more power than he had ever felt before in his entire life surge into him. He felt the elements themselves further bend to his will, and he gained even greater awareness of the world around him. Power poured into each and every one of the pores on his face and he immediately began to cackle wildly as his pure, destructive might began to increase and reach ever greater heights.


    ________________________________________________


    [Spiritual magic subdomain details:


    Spiritual magic is an unusual school of magic that revolves around the usage of or interactions with spirits. This magic can be used to exorcise spirits, and is often thought of solely in that light yet in all honesty is used more often to produce a number of supernatural phenomena that mortal casters are incapable of doing on their own.


    Your control over this subdomain is strengthened by using its odd powers. Use them cleverly and you may quickly advance in power over this subdomain.


    It''s worth noting that this subdomain and the domain of spirits more generally are both necessary parts of becoming a spirit king, one of the types of higher beings that once existed.


    Spiritual magic subdomain passive powers:


    Absolute exorcism: With this power you can forcibly end any and all attempts by spirits to possess someone. This power comes in handy when dealing with certain types of incorporeal extraplanar entities who prefer to possess creatures over manifesting physically.


    Class granting: You can now grant the classes of Shaman. As you''ve been gradually gaining power over the course of your life you no longer start off at level 1 for all of your classes, but rather level 10. The Shaman class is a class for spiritualists, individuals who interact with spirits in a number of ways. Most shaman commune and collaborate with spirits, using them to help in spellcasting, serving them, and mediating between them and humanoids or other non-spirit lifeforms.


    Commune: You can commune with the spirits of nature, spirits who are largely too small and too weak to interact individually with larger, more powerful creatures, as well as other, lesser spirits. With this ability you can become a mediator between artificial communities and natural ones.


    Limited barrier: This is a weaker version of a power you''ll gain through abjuration but with spirit magic''s barrier powers you can create barriers that keep out spirits. This is useful for protecting people from possession and places from inflitration by spirits.


    Magic granting and negation: This is the easiest school of magic to grant or negate. Very few spells in this school are reliant on the user, beyond exorcism magic. As such granting someone the power to use this school of magic is extremely easy. As is taking away their ability to use it.


    Paper charm magic: You can inscribe spells on paper charms and cause them to activate remotely.


    Specific spirit creation: You can freely create tiny spirits like the spirits of trees and even of houses and use them to accomplish various tasks. With this power you can create duendes, shikigamis, aluxs, and other tiny, lesser spirits of homes, caves, trees, and other local places. These spirits are adept at completing chores and fulfilling small errands that angels are far too majestic to complete, and can even cast weak spells.


    Tailsman creation: You can create tailsmans, magical charms that protect people using spiritual magic. Tailsmans are capable of allowing their wearers to survive blows that would otherwise kill them, give their wearers resistance to possession, and also improve the quality of their armor, natural or otherwise.


    Spiritual magic subdomain active powers:


    There are none at this level of influence.


    Spiritual magic subdomain blessing and curse details:


    By blessing someone with this domain you improve their ability to utilize this magic. By cursing someone with it you reduce their ability to utilize this magic.]


    ________________________________________________


    [Evolutionary Alert:


    You have completed the quest needed to ascend to the third tier of influence over the nature domain, and the elemental subdomains. As a result of this, you have also gained the second tiers of influence over animal subdomains and the assorted plant subdomains have fused into one, unified plant subdomain, which you have the second tier of influence over.


    In addition to this you have evolved from being a lesser elemental overlord, into a true elemental overlord. This grants you the sort of power that can be used to shatter and destroy entire planets, or to remake them however you wish.


    The last thing of note, but by no means the least significant is that you''ve acquired the second tier of influence over the domain of destruction. That is in and of itself a significant achievement, and it brings with it an immense upgrade to your destructive potential.]

 196 Interlude: A Cult Of Life

    On a planet in the same galaxy but not the same solar system as Torus and Salifinos, a quiet but not tiny temple devoted to Althos stood in the heart of a fertile valley. This temple was the heart of a small community that was populated by members of a number of species, human, dwarf, elf, and even minotaurs and a few odder species as well.


    Unlike many Althonian communities throughout the galaxy, this particular community had existed before Althos made himself known to its inhabitants. The temple however, unlike the rest of the community, was fairly new and its clergypeople were all youthful men and women of various species.


    The sun had just risen over the mountain to the east of the mountain, and it was roughly 6:30 in the morning as its sunlight began to race across the valley and towards the temple. Within its depths lived a number of clergypeople, and those of them that awoke the earliest had just woken up.


    ________________________________________________


    [Special Notification:


    Congratulations on acquiring the third tier of influence over the nature domain. Normally for creatures who are only gods, as in the overwhelming majority of gods that have existed until you came into existence, one needs to reach the third tier of influence over nature before one would begin to gain lordships. Obviously, that is not the case with you, being as you are an elemental overlord as well as a god.


    The purpose of this notification is to alert you to the uniqueness of your versions of the third tiers of the nature domain, and the elemental subdomains, coupled with your being a true elemental overlord. It is now fair to call you a fire, liquid, earth, air, and nature god. You have not reached the final tiers of influence over that domain and those subdomains, but you are as close to them as you can be without becoming a greater god.


    Enjoy the considerable powers over nature and the elements you now possess, as well as the added reward of becoming a true elemental overlord.]


    ________________________________________________


    In a darkened room that sat at the far end of the tiny temple, a single human priest was conducting the first of the daily rituals he had assigned to himself. He was on his knees right in front of his bed and his eyes were closed. He was muttering a reverential prayer that he hoped his god heard, the first of many that he would utter throughout the day.


    "Lord-god Althos, please grant me the wisdom and patience needed to be a successful and pious servant of yours today. Please allow me to know your will and the skills needed to fulfill your designs. Please bless the people of Golden-Gate and guide us through your chosen servants so that we may please you." The pious man quietly uttered.


    The man''s body began to radiate an aura of potent, and harsh white light. The light spread from him and banished the darkness that perpetually invaded his room whenever night fell on the tiny community he had long lived in.


    The man''s eyes relaxed as the harsh and truth-seeking light seeped out into the room and fell over the room''s sparse decorations and furniture. The light fell first over the unmade bed that sat in one corner of the room. The priest frowned at the sight but he knew that one of his master''s creations, strange entities made of metal that only attacked people out of self-defense and attended to menial tasks throughout the temple, would attend to it and the bed would be made when he retired to the room at the end of the night.


    The man sighed and he turned his back on his bed, an object which even by itself dominated a desolate corner of the room. Upon turning he was able to see other furniture throughout the room. The most prominent bit of furniture in the room aside from the bed was a single vanity next to a small closet. Aside from it, other bits of furniture included a tiny table and a quaint desk.


    The priest was already dressed and so he ignored the vanity and the other bits of furniture. Instead, he quietly walked towards the door that''d lead him out of his room and into the temple''s inner sanctum, a common area for the Althonian clergy.


    ________________________________________________


    [True Nature Deity Details:


    As a true nature deity, your powers over and ties to nature are far stronger than they''ve ever been. You also possess far more potent and precise powers over the elements now, as well as the ability to tie elements and their properties into your other powers.


    The new plant subdomain is a potent subdomain that unifies and empowers all plants. With it you can grant permanent sentience and sapience to plants, have an innate empathetic connection to them, and can utilize a number of significant powers, including the ability to create plants from nothing.


    To gain further influence over this subdomain, use its powers freely and regularly.


    True Nature Deity Prestigious Passive Powers:


    Absolute weather manipulation: You are strong enough to have total control over weather. And now for the first time you can control and create thunderstorms which are advanced phenomena that required influence over subdomains and domains. No force, even divine artifacts, can undo the weather you handcreate.


    Agro-Aura: You can wreathe yourself in plants as an aura which immbolizes your enemies, uses enchanted pollen to charm neutral characters, and heal allies through restorative pollen and fruits.


    Agrogenesis: You can create plants from nothing. As a result of control over the agriculture subdomain, you can now create crops from nothing. This is a wonderfully meaningful power and by using it you can do all sorts of things.


    Agrokinesis: You can command and manipulate plants. This is also the power that allows you to grant plants sapience and sentience but even without doing so you can still hear them and communicate with them. This power intersects with the domains of souls and death and with it you can create souls for plants and you can command them to die.


    Forest and Jungle Lordship: You gain total power over forests and jungles. This is due to your powers over nature, plants, and the earth itself. Forests and jungles become holy spots and your faithful are far stronger in them. When you step on a planet for the first time you automatically gain an awareness of forests and jungles located on or even in them.


    Recognition: Druids, shamans, rangers, spirits of nature, and sapient animals and plants recognize you as a god of nature unless you wish to conceal your identity from them. This power causes them to refuse to harm you, though they may still oppose you or try to change your mind.


    Water Lordship: This power is far more intense than it sounds. With it you gain lordship over oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, and other bodies of water. This power is significant as it turns oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, and other bodies of water into holy spots.


    Werebeast lordship: All werebeasts instinctively recognize you as their lord. Even if you wish to hide the true extent of your strength from werebeasts you come across, they still recognize you as a werebeast whose strength is infinitely superior to their own. Only alphas can muster the will needed to not be servile towards you, and even among them this is only true for the very strongest alphas.


    Plant subdomain active power:


    Agro-transformation: You can transform a non-plant into a plant. This can be done up to one hundred times per day.


    Blessing and Curse details:


    Utilizing this subdomain to curse or bless someone who isn''t a plant affects how well they interact with powers. Utilizing it to bless or curse a plant empowers or weakens a plant respectively.]


    ________________________________________________


    Unbeknownst to the gentle priest in service to Althos, the moment the man stepped out of his room was the same moment that Althos acquired greater power over nature than he had over anything else. And nature itself reacted to this moment of godly triumph.


    In temples devoted to Althos all over the universe, even across dimensional boundaries, plants sprung to life. Flowers, trees, and crops sprung into being in and around temples all over the cosmos. The pious priest had just left his room, and stepped out into the common area that all priests and priestesses that his world''s version of the faith mandated be built into all temples as the universe reacted to the emergence of a new nature god.


    Ivy sprung into being beneath the temple, becoming visible in areas where the tiled floor had cracks and holes. Massive and stunningly beautiful flowers spontaneously emerged out of the walls throughout the temple. Shrubs grew out of the ground and immediately began to bear fruits for consumption. And that was just in the common area. The sounds of the plants growing and invading the temple were audible throughout it, which awakened every single one of its inhabitants who had been sleeping, be they weary travelers from other communities or the man''s fellow clergy.


    The man ignored the sounds as the sight alone astounded the priest, who began to smile excitedly at the scene in front of him. And then he began to excitedly speak to himself!


    "Yes! Thank you lord-god Althos! Thank you for blessing us this way!" The man said excitedly. He worshiped his god as a deity of life, healing, arts, nature, peace, and lust and in his eyes this was a miracle that proved that the temple was especially blessed by the god they worshipped.


    He excitedly walked over to the closest shrub and plucked a single blueberry from it. He flicked the thing into his mouth and his tongue explored it for a moment before he bit into it. He was unsurprised but still delighted to find that the juices that exploded out of it invigorated him and were indeed perfectly healthy to drink.


    This only confirmed, in his mind anyway, that his god had personally blessed them and was indeed rewarding their service. It was at this point, perhaps two or three minutes after this happened, that other clergy began to open their doors and lay their eyes on what the pious man viewed as a reward from their divine master. Upon seeing them he began to speak yet again.


    "Good morning! Come, lay your eyes on our latest blessing. Do you see how our god rewards us for keeping the faith and for sheparding those who wisely choose to follow him? He gives us these wonderful gifts and demands so little from us!" The man evangelized, speaking piously even to his fellow clergypeople. One of the priestesses, an elf young enough to be seen as young even by humans, looked at him in confusion.


    "You know that everyone got this blessing right?" She asked, speaking frankly. She was unlike many of her kind due to her inelegant speech, but it was something that made her well-liked by humans and by children of all races. The priest looked at her in confusion in response to her remarks. She sleepily looked back at him, before realizing that he didn''t know that. And then she began to smile before speaking once more.


    "Arthur... I looked out the window before I came out here. The fields next to the temple, and even the temple courtyard are covered in crops. Even at a glance this is comparable to the harvest of the entire town. And also, we all got individual plants growing in our rooms too." She said, speaking in her usual frank and dry tone. Her remarks caused the pious priests'' eyes to open wide in further delight. He began to speak again, this time even more enthused than he had been before.


    "That is joyous news! The entire town shall share in our delight and we shall collectively praise our magniamous lord!" The zealot said. There was a look of pious lunancy in his eyes as he spoke, one that even his fellow priests found eerie. A distinct unhingedness that was visible in the eyes of those who lived in the town''s aslyum, some of whom were also Althonians but another kind of Althonian altogether. They were darker, more violent kind zealots than Arthur was, even if his pious madness made him a bit unsettling from time to time. And their vision of the mysterious god was altogether more sinister than the envisionment of those who lived in the temple.


    It was at this point that Arthur calmed down for a moment due to a strange sensation. Or rather because of a distinct lack of a sensation. The priest wasn''t hungry and all he had had to eat was the single blueberry he ate earlier. This realization took a moment to sink in, but when it did he smiled calmly at his fellow priests, and began to grab some of the blueberries from the shrub. They watched him silently, until he finished and began to approach them, blueberries in hand. At that point one of them, a pregnant human druidess who lived in the temple, looked at him and began to speak.


    "Arthur? What are you doing?" She asked, curiously. He looked at her and grinned.


    "Why Sister Daphne, I am giving you all breakfast." He said engimatically. He approached her first, and she was odded out by his remarks, but still put out her hands. He dropped a single berry in them, but then paused and dropped another.


    "I''ll be giving everyone but you a single berry. You''re eating for two after all." He told her specifically. He then turned to everyone else and began to speak.


    "These berries are a gift from our god! I ate one and it invigorated me. I suspect that eating even a single berry gives one enough sustenance to last for at least an entire meal. If you doubt my words, merely eat one of the berries and find out for yourself." The haughty priest commanded.


    His vice was pride. And his piety had caused him to be rewarded by his god, which in turn had caused his pride to increase. Althos had long grown used to the machinations of the proud and knew how to treat them to turn them into pious servants of his. It was rather easy to do so.


    When the priest was done handing out berries, he returned to the shrub and grabbed three more. While he was doing this, his fellow priests ate their berries and felt the power of their god flowing through them, and realized that as proud as Arthur, or "Brother Arthur" as he liked to be called, was, he was indeed correct. The berries would at least last them a single meal, if not more. Arthur turned back to them and grinned.


    "Someone ought to deliver these berries to Brother Dani and Sister Elva." He told his fellow clergy. He was silent for a moment, before grabbing a few more berries. His fellow clergypeople looked at him oddly for a moment and after realizing the cause of the confusion, he spoke again.


    "Just in case our high-priest and his wife are having... guests." He explained, which caused his fellow clergypeople to uncomfortably shudder as they realized the implications of his words. He laughed, unsurprised that they were somewhat discriminatory against the special guests who sometimes visited the temple''s high priest and his wife.


    After all they were only lesser clergypeople, they weren''t privy to the knowledge that he had as a high-ranking priest. They didn''t know why it was that Brother Dani and his wife were so unusual and only rarely showed their faces to the rest of the temple''s divinely blessed spiritual leaders. The priest waited a second to see if anyone volunteered to support their fellow clergypeople, and when no one did the priest sighed and set off towards the high-priest''s quarters.


    ________________________________________________


    The priest''s journey was a quick one. This wasn''t an especially lavish temple and so it wasn''t particularly big. In fact many of its services were provided underneath the actual temple.


    The Althonian temple offered a number of services such as midwifery, alchemy, assistance with crop management and farming, and even had services for men or women who wanted children but either lacked partners or for whatever reason had partners but couldn''t have children. Many of those services were provided to visitors underground, through a side-entrance to the temple.


    It only took the priest a few minutes to reach the door that led into the quarters claimed by the high-priest. Arthur approached the door and as the man was lost in thought as he wandered closer and closer to the door he only subconsciously heard the noises that emanated from beyond it.


    Loud grunts of pleasure and surprisingly deep sighs, sighs far too deep to be coming from any elven woman, were audible even though they were dulled thanks to the thick door of solid oak that stood between Arthur and his high-priest. No feminine voice could be heard through the door, despite the fact that there was a female elf in the room.


    Arthur didn''t consciously hear any of the sounds coming from just beyond the door even as he knocked on it. When he knocked on the door though he did begin to hear sounds, but the sexual noises immediately ceased when the door was knocked on. Instead the sounds Arthur heard were the sounds of panicked whispers too quiet for him to accurately make out and of someone frantically putting on clothes. The man found it curious that he only heard the sounds of one person frantically putting on clothes. Perhaps a minute later, he heard the noises of someone stepping towards the door, and then finally the door opened.


    A frazzled looking elf greeted him, his eyes wide and still unfocused as he opened his mouth. The elf uttered something that wasn''t quite actual words but were close enough for the human priest to make out that it was a dazed attempt at a greeting. Arthur chuckled and studied his friend.


    The normally-put-together elf wasn''t at all put-together today. Instead he looked like a panicked, dazed, mess, and even though elves were naturally elegant, haughty entities, he had an air of slovenliness around him. The elf was a tall creature, standing over two meters tall, and he was dressed in regal green robes. He had messy hair and bright white eyes with no irises or other features human eyes had. His eyes were thick, milky orbs.


    Arthur held up his hands, which contained some of the berries the temple had been blessed with. As he did that he also took a stealthy glance beyond the high-priest and into the room.


    Brother Dani''s chambers were elegantly decorated with an assortment of nature-oriented furniture. Perhaps the most striking feature of the chambers were the two beds. One bed was a noble-looking piece of furniture, complete with silk-curtains that hid the sole inhabitant of the bed from view. The sole inhabitant was the elven high-priestess known either as "Sister Elva" or simply as "Elva".


    She sat still atop the bed, facing the human and her husband. That said the curtains made making out distinct features of hers, such as her face or the color of her outfit impossible. The only things Arthur could tell by looking at her was that she was there, that she wore the antler-headdress her particular tribe was known for wearing, and that she was visibly pregnant. Her silhouette was large enough for it to be obvious to anyone who had seen her lilthe pre-pregnancy frame.


    The other bed was a far more exposed affair. In it sat a confident looking and darkly handsome human-looking entity. He was smirking at Arthur and winked suggestively at the inquisitive human. He was naked, though his manhood was hidden underneath the blankets on the top of the bed and he appeared to be chiseled from stone.


    His skin was a stone-like grey color, and his eyes were an unholy shade of scarlet. To anyone less pious than Arthur the sight of a studdly devil like him in the bed of a high-priest would be alarming, but even though the lustful devil was a creature of sinister evil, Arthur saw all he needed to see emblazoned on the devil''s shoulder.


    On the devil''s shoulder was a bright tattoo of a golden apple. That was the holy symbol of the particular branch of Althonian beliefs that Arthur and the others in the temple were adherents of. That symbol was sufficient to clear the odd devil of any suspicion in Arthur''s eyes. It signalled that the devil was a likeminded believer and servant of the mysterious god who protected Golden-Gate. Arthur didn''t question Althos, and thus, for now, Arthur didn''t question the devil.


    Dani accepted the berries, and even as he accepted them he was able to identify what they were. He muttered something else that wasn''t quite words and moved to close the door in Arthur''s face. Arthur''s face grimanced in annoyance, but he didn''t say anything. Dani was the high-priest of the temple, and until Althos himself said otherwise Arthur would obey him.


    ________________________________________________


    The elven warlock turned back towards the pleasure-devil and the devil''s eyes immediately enraptured his own. The devil immediately and thoroughly enthralled the elf, easily dominating the weak-minded elf.


    "Come... Feed me." The devil whispered, his silk-like voice effortlessly compelling the elf to submissively obey him. The elf slowly began to walk back towards the devil. As he did so, the symbol on the devil''s shoulder transformed from a golden apple to an image of a whip, the symbol that belonged to a faction of Althonians known as the "Tyrant''s Hand", a deceptive branch comprised of actual tyrants, would-be dictators, devils, and other lawful-evil entities.


    The male-pleasure devil was one of many devils who worshiped Althos as a god of dominance, tyranny, lust, pride, pain, and order. Althos himself was only vaguely aware of this specific devil, but in the past two months he had grown fond of utilizing the cult''s devilish members to humiliate prideful mortals already in his service. Dani and his wife were two such mortals, a pair of elven cultists who had turned to their god due to his powers to facilitate pregnancy and their inability to conceive on their own.


    Weeks ago they had made an oath to give Althos their souls, and their second-born child, if he''d bless them with a large family. He made Dani a warlock and Elva a witch, and constructed a temple right beside the mixed-species settlement of Golden-Gate, which was where he commanded them to go and build a cult in his name. He made them into a cult of nature, arts, agriculture, and life, and filled their minds with the teachings they''d need to teach people.


    The elves were actually highly charismatic, and that coupled with their actual magical powers as well as Althos'' indirect support was enough for the cult to take off. In return, Althos effortlessly made Dani fertile, and only days after the cult began to convert people Elva was pregnant with her first child.


    That said, the cult was quietly inflitrated by the male-pleasure devil, Brachnos, who charmed both Elva and Dani and learned of the deal they made with Althos. Brachnos soon became a regular in their beds, and especially enjoys enthralling Dani. Althos, distantly, doesn''t particularly care about all of this. He finds the escapades of the devil amusing, as the earnestly pious servant of tyrants regularly reports to his infernal master, and sees both Elva and Dani as successful in their mission. He fully intends to collect on their debt, but is far too busy to actively command them.


    For now anyway, Branchos was allowed to his fun at the expense of elves. The pleasure devil, as was typical of his kind, excelled at the usage of the pleasures of the flesh and the promises of such pleasures to ensnare mortals and to tempt into evil. They were the orderly and lawful cousins of succubi and incubi and were far more hypnotic than their chaotic, dream-wandering and shape-shifting cousins could ever be. Branchos himself was a switch, capable of being meek and submissive if attempting to enthrall a dominant person, or being dominant if faced with a submissive individual he needed to lead to evil.


    The devil would surely obey Althos if the dark god ever gave him a real command, such as ordering him to lure someone specific into lawful evil acts, but for now the god hadn''t spoken to the devil. That said, the god of tyrants hadn''t spoken to many specific devils at all. And this was something that Branchos knew, as he knew some of the pain-devils who worshiped Althos as members of the Order of the Heated Blade, and who even now were in Infernius, spreading the god''s unholy words related to pain where they had been ever since they were defeated by Morehammer, months ago.


    Killing a devil, even for a vestige, wasn''t a simple act. And those devils, much like their dark lord, hated the ghost-like remnant of the creator-god of the dwarves. Not just for defeating them, but for separating them from their twisted, sadistic god. In time though, the god and his pain-loving worshipers would be reunited.

 197 Categorizing

    Floating in the air above the planet of Ryths, I closed my eyes and allowed the power I had just acquired to flow through me. My mind was firing on all cylinders as I floated in the skies high above the still-burning ruins of the civilization I had just toppled. In fairness to them, it had been perhaps a minute since I finished the quest.


    Behind closed eyes, I could see, in a very literal sense, countless notifications speeding through my mind at a speed that made the speed of light seem slow. Now that I had drained mortals and extraplanars, and in doing so gained an unparalleled understanding of their minds, I strongly suspected that this sort of information overflow would drive lesser creatures insane or render them comatose. And it didn''t bother me in the slightest.


    I was receiving notifications from events taking place in other dimensions. I was alerted to the activity of turtles on the other end of the universe. Every little thing in the universe that incorporated nature, truly a mind-boggling amount of activities, was communicated to me by the system. And what''s more, is that now as a "true deity of nature" I was vastly more in tune to nature than I was before.


    I had long since grown used to the constant deluge of notifications that plagued a compartmentalized fragment of mind. I had been getting notifications for the domains I could influence for months. Now I was getting something new. Sensations.


    It started off slowly at first. A small tingle in my arm when someone, somewhere planted a seed in fertile soil. A gentle sensation on my back when a fire reached its crescendo. But over the course of a minute, it grew stronger.


    Each passing second I grew more and more attuned to the domain of nature and the elemental subdomains. In a distant world, on a galaxy near the center of the universe an earthquake that would help create the vibrations needed for a tsunami to arise naturally caused me to exhale a breathy sigh, one of enjoyment and relaxation as if I was receiving a massage.


    Somewhere, in a rocky world which consisted of plains and deserts, a tornado lifted a house off of the ground, and I felt a pleasant numbness in my chest, compared to the weightlessness one feels when they first enter a place with zero gravity.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Gradual Acclimation


    You are entering a state of gradual acclimation. Your statuses as a true elemental overlord as well as a lesser god are mixing in unusual ways and the system is intervening on your behalf to help you get used to the immense power now flowing through you.


    You possessed the power to decimate planets, but only one at a time. Now... Now your power is capable of affecting entire solar systems at once. It is a considerable leap in power.]


    ________________________________________________


    Before I could see for entire kilometers if I focused. Now I could see for hundreds of thousands of kilometers, and thanks to the power I had created during my time building up cults I could see through objects with ease. Before I could see color in ways comparable to a mantis shrimp, creatures whose eyes possessed up to 16 color receptors. But now the world exploded in color, showing perhaps millions of different colors, hues, and shades.


    Colors, both indescribably beautiful and some that were quite terrible filled my vision. Combinations of color I never imagined, even when I gained power over the art subdomain, appeared and filled my vision. The entire world around me took on qualities both wonderful and alien. For a moment tears filled my eyes and began to stream down my face.


    And that wasn''t all either. I discovered, over the course of the next few minutes through trial and error that I could also "zoom in" on a spot using my vision and see it even more acutely than before I gained the third tier of influence over nature.


    My other senses received comparable upgrades as well. My hearing was now capable of acutely detecting even faint noises from hundreds of kilometers away, and I could now hear parabolically, in the sense that I could "zoom in" on an area using only my hearing and filter out background noise.


    I could smell distinct odors too, ones unimaginable to me before. And the distance through which I could smell things had exponentially increased. I was tens of thousands of meters high in the air, yet if I paused and took a whiff of the air I could effortlessly smell things below the surface of the planet beneath me and accurately identify them.


    ________________________________________________


    I was floating high in the sky, suspended solely by my own power. At the moment I didn''t have any wings and the truth was that I didn''t need any. A long time ago, if I were being generous, I gained the power to fly under any circumstances. It was one of the powers granted to me by the air subdomain. One of the subdomains which I could be considered a "true god" of.


    Below me was a thick sheet of clouds, which I knew I could command if I desired. Clouds were but one natural aerosol I held sway over. I studied the clouds beneath me, utilizing my potent physical senses so that I could glance at the clouds without turning. I studied the objects for a few moments, before beginning a quiet descent. As I descended, I considered instantaneously teleporting, but then I decided against it. I could have some fun here and be dramatic, for the heck of it. This was a planet I had already subdued. I was in no danger here, even before I had acquired more power.


    I rapidly descended, and as I did I mentally commanded the clouds directly beneath me to part. The objects obeyed me and parted creating a clearing in the sky which I passed through a few moments later on my silent descent. The opening the parting created was perfectly circular and perfect for me, being a nice, wide space that allowed me to continue to bask in the sun''s light.


    I was rapidly descending, falling towards the planet''s surface at a speed that was quite excessive but was, for me anyway, dreadfully slow. I was used to an instantaneous form of movement as I was fast enough and to teleporting even across entire planets or dimensions. The one advantage of this comparatively slow form of movement was that it gave me space to think.


    "Since I''ve begun to extend my powers across entire solar systems I suppose it''s time I begin to take a more organized approach to my grander ambition of becoming omnipotent." I muttered, mentally. I could see the surface of the planet, a surface I was quickly approaching, as I muttered in my mind.


    "Maybe... Maybe I should begin to categorize planets by what I want to use them for? Since I can singlehandedly conquer or ruin planets on my own now, I can effortlessly add entire worlds to the unorganized empire I''m creating." I realized as I began to turn my mind towards order and structure, something which wasn''t always easy for me as an innately chaotic entity.


    For a few moments I was silent, internally, and externally. I was approaching the planet''s surface now. In seconds I''d make my first contact with the surface of the world. I was considering how good my idea was but without words. More with feelings and intuition. It took me a moment to begin to nod, my head subtly bobbing up and down for a moment.


    "Yes... I think that''s a good approach, for now. By creating categories for me to place planets into I can focus on key worlds, perhaps ones with high populations and existing technologies or other things that I actively desired. In some worlds I and my more vicious servants could have fun. In others I could champion goodness and justice, allowing cults devoted to those things to flourish and prosper. In others I could have fun, creating miscellaneous cults of whatever domains I wish, or fulfilling the requirements for more bloodthirsty quests and domains." I thought, deep within myself.


    It was while I was finishing that thought that I touched the surface of the planet for the first time. As I did so, my lordship abilities instantly took hold of the world. I acquired a number of new holy sites, and I quietly chuckled. I found myself in a city, or rather the ruins of one, and all around me I could see the consequences of my actions.


    I stood on a street in the middle of the wreckage of a once-bustling city. The area directly around me was silent but it wasn''t lifeless. Or rather the area underneath the surface wasn''t lifeless.


    Beneath the city a teeming ecosystem thrived. The subterranean ecosystem included all manner of creatures, some of which were animals I was fond of: worms, rats, snakes, and other such unsettling animals all lived within the depths of the city''s sewers and otherwise underneath the city.


    I began to take my first steps in a random direction, walking deeper into the ruined city, all while taking advantage of my new powers over animals and a few of my existing powers. I was going to help nature reclaim this area, one animal at a time.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep beneath the city there existed sewers but that wasn''t all that hid underneath the old streets of the city. Under the city''s streets old patches of dirt could be found, dirt and long-dead plant material. And in that buried earth and plant material a number of hardy animals worked to survive, etching out an unenviable life far from prying eyes. Or rather, far from prying eyes that belonged to mortals. Gods were not so easy to hide from.


    Althos'' ability to detect life wasn''t something simple lifeforms could hide from. He effortlessly detected the creatures that lurked even hundreds of meters below the city, far beneath even the deepest sewers. And if he could detect them, he could manipulate them.


    The god had a number of interesting animals to chose from for the goal he had in mind. That said, he silently chose a number of animals he had long liked: worms. The simple-minded and disgusting creatures were despised by many humans, especially city-dwelling humans, and that was part of why he chose them for this task.


    Upon selecting the worms the god quietly targeted them and began to transform them. Simple earthworms and other dirt-dwelling worms were abruptly inundated with potent divine power supplied to them by their new god, and they were immediately transformed.


    The earthworms, previously centimeters in length, dramatically and dynamically grew in size in seconds, their widths, lengths, and heights, exponentially increasing as their minds were also changed and warped by a god of nature and destruction. The creatures, still deep underground, were too busy basking in their new intelligence and power to care as they crushed their fellow, lesser worms and other dirt-dwelling creatures. They were filled with a cruel awareness of their new and strikingly diverse powers, intense servility towards the one responsible for their transformation, and a mission: destroy the buildings that still stood.


    As the creatures continued their transformation into wholly different kinds of worms, they universally opened their mouths and began to roar. The sounds didn''t travel far before dirt muffled and eventually silenced them, but the gesture was understood by the destructive entity responsible for empowering them, who himself began to smile. In every case, he was utilizing his ability to elevate lesser lifeforms into mythic entities, but he didn''t transform the worms into one kind of mythic entity.


    The god had selected two distinct kinds of mythic animals to transform the worms into. One of them, the minhocao worm, was simply an unbelievably massive worm that was dozens of meters in length. Normally such creatures were solely potent entities of physical destruction, incredibly rare titans whose destructive rampages left entire towns destroyed, but those the dreadful god of nature created were elevated beyond that. They were each blessed with powers related to earth and air.


    The other kind of creature that the simple earthworms were transformed into were death worms. Death worms were smaller than minhocaos, quicker, and remarkably poisonous worms who were still around eight meters in length and had the ability to spit both poison and acid. Althos further blessed the creatures by giving them the ability to exert some control over water and other liquids, as a means to give them additional tools with which to cause mayhem and inflict pain.


    His powerful mind flooded into their brains, and both as a result of being the one responsible for their impossible transformation and also being a god of nature and animals completely dominated them. Normally the god wasn''t the sort to dominate living creatures, but he had quietly come to the conclusion that this ought to be a "test world" where he experimented with powers he normally wouldn''t consider using. And these creatures were only a step above mindless before his intervention so he hadn''t felt bad about giving them a purpose and new powers as his minions.


    "Worms... Your king and your god are one and the same. Listen to me and in doing so fulfill your purpose." The god''s sinister voice told them.


    "Your purpose is simple: reclaim the surface world. Go forth and feast on the humans," The god told them, before transmitting an image of humans and commanding them to memorize the idea but without words.


    "And destroy what remains of their piddling civilization. Break what they have built and allow this world to return to nature." The voice commanded them. Each of them, from the simplest to the most intelligent, was filled with a divine fervor upon hearing those words and began to race towards the surface. Their massive, impossible bulks effortlessly tunneled through the dirt that had once been all they knew, and their tough bodies effortlessly destroyed the artificial trappings of civilization that stood between them and the surface of the city, trappings such as sewer pipes, and eventually cobblestone roads and the booths of parking decks.


    ________________________________________________


    All at once I felt a number of new vibrations, perhaps a few minutes after I forcibly transformed a number of simple earthworms into newer creatures, more destructive ones. Beneath me, throughout the city, the unlikely force I had created had reached the deepest parts of the city. I felt their enormous bulks crash into and then through a number of artificial obstacles that would have never stopped them. It brought a smile to my face.


    I was still on the street. I had transformed the worms while wandering through empty streets, and admiring the remnants of the city. All around me shattered buildings, overturned cars, and destroyed objects abounded, and I had quietly touched such things and used my powers to absorb and learn history on them. Thanks to that I learned much about this world''s particular variant of humans.


    I knew for a fact that plenty of humans survived as well, but I had purposefully avoided areas with large numbers of them. It turned out that tornadoes, though great for destroying small things and even entire houses but weren''t the most effective at decimating huge cities with sprawling buildings. Plenty of humans had died, but the city itself was actually fine compared to cities across the planet that had simply ceased to exist, though not a single window survived the destruction intact nor did any electricity continue to work.


    The worm closest to me would eventually erupt from the sewers and then through the middle of a small street that was blocks away. I was still by and far by myself, though a few buildings around me housed humans who survived the carnage by hunkering down and working together.


    "Should I greet them? Hmm... No. I''ll let them be a delicious treat for my worms." I mused aloud, turning my mind towards the surviving groups of humans for a moment. My thoughts towards the humans whose civilization I had just destroyed weren''t kind, and if I had "greeted" them it would have been a rare moment in which I indulged in violence.


    Though I normally abstained from pointless violence, especially violence where I was the aggressor, this was a "test" world. "Test" worlds were ones where I willingly utilized my darker powers and allowed myself to behave in ways I might not normally.


    As a demonstration of that I quietly walked over to a nearby car, weirdly enough it was one that wasn''t unlike any car that I might find in Htrae and in a few worlds in the solar system of my birth, and touched the thing''s hood-cover. I silently absorbed the item''s history, learned about its owner, and then I began to utilize some of my eerier powers on the car.


    I possessed a number of abilities that I didn''t use very often. These included powers over discord, over entropy, over time itself, and even over metal, though the main reason I didn''t use power over metal was that I had only recently acquired it. I utilized a combination of those powers on the car itself and before my eyes, the car began to experience the powerful effects of aging.


    The car, before my touch, had been perfectly white and was well-maintained. The car, after my touch, began to visibly age, and over a unit of time that could be compared to human heartbeats due to how rapid it was the car''s color began to fade and brownish-red rust began to appear on it. I kept touching the vehicle, until the entire thing was a mass of rust and even began to exude the powerful aroma of rust, the metallic almost-blood like smell invading my noise at such a close range.


    It was at this point, that distantly, the first of my worms broke all the way through the city to the surface. Distantly, I could heard the guttural sound of triumph the death worm was making.


    This outing had done wonders for me. With it I could begin to clear my mind and prepare for my next quest. As I did, I unleashed one global proclamation, utilizing my powers over the system, to explain to the surviving people what had just happened.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The God Of Nature Has Judged This Planet


    Althos, the god of nature has come to this world. He has judged it and this is his judgment:


    The civilization the humans who dominated this world created was wasteful and unworthy of continuation. I have brought that civilization to an end and I shall allow nature to rule this world in its place. Welcome to the new age, one of nature, balance, and might. Do your best to live lives that exemplify strength, admiration for nature, and balance and you might be blessed by me. This world shall never be the same. In time those of you who live may come to appreciate what I have done.]

 198 Curiosity, Experimentation, And Empire Building

    Even though I had proclaimed this planet''s age of man to be at an end I was still surrounded by artificial objects. I turned my attention towards the large buildings that surrounded me. In every direction, my view was obstructed by at least one large building. It was annoying.


    I hopped over the car in front of me with ease, landing behind it on a sidewalk, and placed my hand on the building that was closest to me. The building was made of a mix of concrete and brick and was hard to the touch. I shivered as knowledge and memories seeped into me, depicting the building''s creation years ago and then the plethora of businesses that had since made use of the building. The memories that poured into me played out like something called "movies" from Htrae, and watching them was an easy and quick avenue to knowledge.


    Many different memories seeped into my mind all at once, and they all played out at once as well. I was still as I watched them and during this time my worms began their assault on distinct portions of the city. My enhanced hearing easily picked up the sounds of their vicious attacks and occasionally the distant cries of the humans who had survived the end of their civilization only to be swept up in another calamity.


    In time the memories ceased pouring into me and I withdrew my hand from the building. I glanced at it and considered what to do for a moment. And then I decided I would just destroy the thing. A soft grin spread across my face, a deceptively serene expression given the devastation I was about to unleash.


    I didn''t even bother to study the building. Instead, I just rose my hand in its direction and unleashed one of the powers I was given access too by the destruction domain. I looked at the building and began to manipulate nothingness, one of the more esoteric abilities I had been given access too through the destruction domain.


    I shivered again, though this was due to the unpleasantness of the sensations I was feeling. And then I felt it, the total absence of existence I had called upon. It came into being, for lack of better verbiage, in my hand, like a ball of total emptiness. Somehow I knew I could touch it and no ill effects would befall me, but I also knew that it would destroy just about anything else it made contact with.


    I glanced at it and saw that it had the appearance of empty air. Even with my supernatural vision, I couldn''t physically see the object, the ball, I held in my hands. Or rather there was nothing to see. Perhaps the most frightening part of this power, now that I was utilizing it for the first time, was that it would be incredibly difficult to dodge due to how hard it was to perceive.


    Everything was destroyed. The power worked perfectly. That said, the second the orb moved out of one place and into another oxygen and dust and other small things flooded back into the spaces the orb left eerily empty.


    "So this is nothingness manipulation? That''s fun." I mused, entertained by the power I had just utilized. I peered through the hole I had created and glanced inside the darkened building. The wall I had assailed was windowless and beyond it there was no light, aside from the light pouring into the circular peephole I had just made. I began to slowly push the orb in my hand against more of the wall, and thus widened the hole I had created.


    I spent a few moments making an Althos-sized hole in the wall for me to walk through so I could enter the building. Doing so was a simple task that consisted of me merely utilizing my orb and making it delete more of the wall until enough was gone for me to effortlessly step through and into the building. As I did that I was able to peer into the inside of the building without utilizing any of my supernatural abilities. I also had a chance to further experiment with my powers, which I did so eagerly.


    I studied the janitorial closet I was creating a hole into and spotted a broom. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on the orb in my hand, as well as the distant broom.


    While my eyes were closed I effortlessly made the orb in my hands the object that now had gravitational pull over the broom and opened my eyes just in time to see the broom fly from the wall it had been placed on, on the other end of the closet, and into the orb in my hand. This of course destroyed the broom, the object vanishing as it reached the orb, and eliciting a chuckle from me.


    At this point, I recognized this attack for what it was: a flexible, miniaturized black hole attack. And that was amazing. What''s more, was that I could manipulate it however I wished. And now that I an awareness of how at least a simple orb of nothingness worked I quietly uncreated the orb, causing it to vanish. Oxygen and dust particles began to flow back into the space the orb had occupied.


    A second later, I covered a single finger of mine with the dreadful power of nothingness. With it, I would be able to do away with anything that got in my way. I smiled, cruelly, at the thought of destroying anything that attempted to curtail my fun. Imposing restrictions or otherwise getting in the way of a god of chaos was ill-advised at best.


    I looked around the interior of the building I had just created an entryway into, before sighing. The building was filled with corpses and with few other things of interest to me. After a few moments of careful consideration and clear-headed thinking, I ultimately resigned myself to the knowledge that I ought to probably leave this world for now. I had more to do and I knew for sure that I would be busy if I wanted to go ahead and become an intermediate god.


    I had tools I could utilize if I truly wanted to speed my ascension into intermediate godhood. Potent tools, both living and not, that would happily aid me as I made power-plays across the universe. It was time I began to use them a bit more strategically. After all, I had an empire to build.


    With as much effort as it took to take a breath, I teleported from the janitorial closet to an old and familiar place: my tower, atop my island home in my divine realm.


    ________________________________________________


    One second I was in the darkened janitorial closet and the next I found myself in what passed for a throne room in my tower. The difference in the overall atmosphere was night and day, and in my divine realm, the sun was beginning to set.


    I quietly walked towards the throne, and warily sat upon it. An instant later I reached out to all of my angels, extraplanar entities who served gods in exchange for immortality and a set of godly powers of their own. I reached into their minds and spoke a single word, mightily using my holy voice to command them.


    "Come." I commanded, my voice entering their minds and in many cases overpowering their wills outright. Half a second later they began to appear, instantaneously teleporting into the throne room and I received a chance to look at the beautiful creatures, the first chance I had gotten in months.


    Angels were intriguing creatures to look at. Many of them were looked like idealized humans with fantastical features such as a halo, multiple sets of wings, or even visible auras, but more than a few simply didn''t look like humans at all.


    The very first angels I had ever laid eyes on, Lahar and Pagsabog, on were not humanoid in appearance. Instead, they looked like insects, but ones that lived in volcanoes. They were among the first angels to appear in the throne room, dripping lava onto the stone floor beneath their butterfly-like wings. The creatures were magmic angels, potent angelic entities who apparently tended to serve as either guardians of nature or weapons of mass destruction. I greeted them with warm smiles, heartened to be reunited with familiar faces after all this time.


    Other angels took on other, sometimes more fantastical forms, and at other times more familiar forms. Angels in my employ included angels of nature, love, faith, law, nobility, lies, truth, war, life, dreams, and even creation. Of those types of angels, the ones who took on more humanoid appearances included the angels of life, love, creation, law, and nobility.


    The other angels took on an assortment of forms. The angel of nature who worshiped and served me had a humanoid-shape but wasn''t that different from my Cosecha-forms in that it had a body composed of various elements and materials. The angel of war was immaterial and was the sole immaterial angel of the angelic host I had assembled to date.


    That said, angels had bodies that could be changed dramatically. I could force them to change, or they could change their own appearances, all at will. Angels who had agreed to serve me forsook mortality and even death altogether and in exchange, they gave me power over them. It was, in their eyes anyway, an even enough exchange since I legitimately hadn''t coerced them into serving me they opted to do so willingly.


    I waited until all of the few hundred angels who served me appeared before me. It took a few minutes for that to happen. When they did I began to speak.


    "It has been too long my angelic servants." I began, a smile on my face. It had indeed been months since I had seen them. A mistake on my part if I was being honest. This remark was met with soft chuckles and murmurs of agreement.


    "I have been a bit too independently minded, taking on things by myself and doing things directly that I hadn''t needed too." I confessed, smiling a bit sheepishly. This remark was met with braver, louder chuckles. I chuckled as well. I didn''t mind being frank at the moment. But then my eyes narrowed and I began to consciously radiate more power than I usually did, suffusing the air around me with my intense energy and divine might.


    "That said... I am beginning to think more clearly. And I am beginning to organize my thoughts. It''s... a bit hard for a god of chaos to do that. I admit I am inclined to be scatterbrained and distracted from my grander objectives. But that is changing." I told the assembled host of angelic entities. This time my remarks were met with awed, cowed silence. I was a god after all. But eventually, one angel spoke up.


    "Lord-god Althos, we are your angelic host. We exist to serve you. We have made ourselves available to you to use as you see fit. That said, please enlighten us. What are your goals?" One of the angels, an angel of law asked. The angel had the appearance of a boy in his teens with his eyes closed and a blank, stone tablet in hand. Its voice was soft, and I could tell it was legitimately curious as to what I would say. I studied it for a moment, and the creature shuddered as it felt my gaze fall upon it.


    "That is a good question. You know my major goals, but not my minor ones. Not my immediately achievable ones. That is but one mistake I have made. Allow me to correct that. I seek to build an empire. It need not be the most intimately connected one, but it''ll be an empire all the same. An empire that serves me and worships me." I told the angel.


    As I spoke my words after "Allow me to correct that" began to appear on the blanket stone tablet the creature held, before vanishing immediately after I spoke. I began to grin as I watched that, amused to see that the angel''s tool could record messages.


    "I seek to build an empire that stretches not only from one end of the universe to the other but into and throughout every dimension. It is my intention to be worshiped by every creature in this universe. And then... in every universe." I told the assembled host of angels. And then I smiled at the angels I had already drawn into my service.


    At the same time as I smiled, I activated an especially useful power I possessed. I turned "Absolute beauty" all the way up to the maximum, aware that it was one of my few abilities which could affect creatures greater than mortals. I felt their hearts speed up in response to the heightened beauty I was showing them, and I felt, in some of them anyway, another sort of reaction. A surprisingly physical one. It made me chuckle, but I did so internally.


    "I intend to save every angel and to give your species purpose again. In time we shall gather every angel in existence, in every universe in existence, and the whole of your kind shall serve me. But first, we shall gather more angels to our side." I told the assembled creatures. I closed my eyes and clapped, utilizing my power over my divine realm for one of the first times ever.


    Divine realms were, to my knowledge, places were gods were at their absolute strongest. They were cosmic strongholds for divinities, where a divinity could rest and recuperate from injuries and from boredom as well as perform feats of exceptional strength even for gods. And I intended to begin to truly use mine.


    When I clapped my hands my angelic host and I were teleported out of my tower. We were taken instantly from the tower to a clearing on my island. Above us, we could endlessly gaze at a rapidly darkening sky. That wouldn''t be the case for long. I rose a hand and created a vast portal that connected the skies above us with various points throughout the dimension that mortals dominated.


    It was after that that I quietly crafted and then transmitted a message to every single angel I could detect in each and every solar system my "Stellar Awareness" power allowed me too. It was a message I was quite proud of as well, one I constructed easily and proudly, utilizing both my godly pride and my knowledge of angels. And to ensure my success I fully unleashed a quiet and dangerous combination of abilities all at once.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Destiny Of Angelkind


    Angels throughout the cosmos, listen to the voice of your new god and come to him. A new god has come to life and he is intent on unifying the angel race under a single banner. His name is Althos and he is inviting you to his home so that you may bask in his power and be restored to your true, resplendent, immortal glory.


    Althos is an empire-builder who is working to build a universe-wide empire and he is in need of your power, your loyalty, and your faith. Join him, embrace your collective destiny, and come together so that as one a new divine force in service to a true ruler may sweep over the universe and usher in a new age of glory, piety, and wonder.


    Portals are opening near you. They lead to his divine realm. Enter them and embrace the future. Never again fear mortality, death, or even suffering. Come home and you shall experience that which you lost so long ago, the power and purpose that came from serving a god.]


    ________________________________________________


    Throughout the cosmos, the words of the powerful god entered the minds of over three hundred thousand angels. This number comically dwarfed the paltry host the god had assembled so far, but that was because the god had been small-minded before. He hadn''t even spoken to all of the angels in the solar system of his birth, a number which was around twenty-five hundred. He had opted to recruit exclusively the angels of the world he came to life on and that had limited the number of angels he could reach out too.


    The minuscule portion of the cosmos that Althos had an awareness of wasn''t even one-hundredth of a single percent of the universe and yet in it, the number of lifeforms he had awareness totaled several septillion assorted entities. Incredibly not even one million of those lifeforms were angels.


    Angels of all sorts received the notification. Angels who held powers over domains as great as death, and as minuscule as specific animal and plant subdomains, alike heard of the god at the same time. And yet that wasn''t the only thing that happened to them.


    At the same time as they were learning of the existence of a god their minds and hearts were under a certain kind of attack. Althos was unleashing his ambition and to do so effectively he realized that he needed the most powerful possible angels. To maximize the chances he had of recruiting the angels he had quietly unleashed a potent combination of abilities.


    The first thing he did was utilize his powers over relationships to subtly make angels indifferent to those they had previously loved. The second thing he did was make each and every angel apathetic towards their existing responsibilities, activating dangerous sloth-based powers throughout the cosmos. And finally, he activated an old favorite of his, "Religious fervor" in areas surrounding angels throughout the portions of the universe he was aware of.


    The combination, put together, was an insidious psychological assault that made it impossible for an angel to resist the idea of meeting with a god. It caused the angel to feel apathetic and indifferent towards their lives as they were, and then made them even more suggestible towards meeting gods than they were innately.


    Thanks to it the god''s scheme was a grand success, and the skies above the tower were filled with angels within minutes, the creatures filling every available spot easily as more and more poured in and found themselves in the presence of an ambitious, crafty god. When every single angel the god''s message had gone out too, night had fully fallen within his domain, and he began to feel well and truly victorious.


    ________________________________________________


    As angels from almost every conceivable domain and subdomain filled the skies above my island home I began to laugh, the victorious sound filling the air around me as my own angelic host turned to examine their once lost siblings who had finally come home. I stood up and stretched out my arms as if for a hug, an enormous grin on my face as I did so. And then I began to glow a divine light, my entire form subsumed by the radiance I was emitting. At that point I spoke, channeling my divine power into my voice so that I could do my best impression of a god of old.


    "Welcome home angels. I am Althos, your god, emperor, and the destined ruler of angelkind." I said, speaking arrogantly as I once again channeled the pride that I had heard the gods of old possessed and was a quality I held deep within me myself.


    "I am overjoyed you have embraced your destiny and have come to join me. Together we shall usher in a new, golden age, one that lasts forever." I said, as I continued to channel that pride that I usually tried to keep hidden, out of view and notice from those who surrounded me. As I did that I took my first detailed glance at the creatures who filled the skies above me.


    I could see good, evil, lawful, and even a few chaotic angels, in the skies above me. I could see angels of healing, necromancy, and other schools of magic, and even ones of time, disease, pain, life, death, all seven vices, and all seven virtues. I knew that these angels lurked throughout the portions of the cosmos that I was aware of, but to see them all gathered in front of me at once was a breathtaking sight. I was silent for a moment, a proud smile on my face and then I began to speak again, channeling the domain of law, as well as the sin of pride, into my words.


    "Welcome to the Althonite empire. Together we shall conquer every corner of the universe and bring the glorious knowledge of my existence and my power to every single mind that exists. Every nanometer of this universe shall know my name and every lifeform shall whisper it in reverential tones or in fearful cries." I told the assembled angelic host.


    I felt more pride than I had ever felt before as I gazed at the sky above me. Seeing a force of mine improve in power so considerably and so immediately filled me with pride and with awe at my own powers. At the same time as I was gazing out at the crowd before me, I effortlessly filled them with love for both me and for the Althonite empire, the new and official name for the collective empire I was creating.


    A second after I did that, I silently created a new language, words of which began to flood into my mind, and transmitted knowledge of it into the minds of every single angel in front of me.


    ________________________________________________


    The vast and incredibly powerful angelic host the god had assembled in a moment of unfettered ambition had angels of nearly every single domain and subdomain. In fact the only domains that lacked representation were the domains of fate, reality, and luck, themselves the final three greater domains that Althos lacked access too.


    The angels themselves felt replenished and renewed in the presence of their new god. Some of them were kilometers away from him, only barely able to perceive him, and even though distance weakened how strongly they felt his power it wasn''t enough to completely nullify it. They too felt his power wash over and seep into them, restoring their own energies, lifeforce, and might.


    For an angel, being in the presence of a god was an otherworldly, whole-body experience. Their souls were the souls closest to those of gods and so they resonated strongly whenever a god was close. And the more powerful a god, the greater the resonance.


    Althos was a lesser god, but in his divine realm his power was comparable to that of an intermediate god and it suffused the very air in the place, filling his worshipers and servants with greater power than they''d feel elsewhere. In his presence, it was impossible for the angels to be filled with anything but awe and loyalty to the god who was giving them purpose again.


    What''s more, is that Althos'' angelic host included angels of all levels of angelic might. Althos had recruited three thousand seraphim, the strongest possible kind of angels aside from the mythic angelic-kings, higher beings who had served as the second-hands of gods themselves. He also had regular angels, the lowest members of the hierarchy. He also had members of every other segment of the hierarchy. Althos, of course, knew this and it filled him with joy and pride. This knowledge made him lose any shred of doubt that he had made the correct choice.


    ________________________________________________


    I continued to glow but I finished speaking. As I did, I created a simple throne behind me by combining my powers over blacksmithing and creation. It was a beautiful, but an easily replicable thing. I sat in it and smiled at the assembled host, but I also knew they couldn''t see my face.


    I was, basically, light itself at the moment. I had shed my usual form so that I could take on a form that conveyed my all-reaching might. And in doing so I was also able to be easily identified by my servants. And as I sat down I studied more of them, looking for the more unusual ones.


    Some of them stood out physically. I had thousands of angels of disease at my disposal, and they had a number of forms. Many appeared as obviously diseased men and women. Others appeared as diseased animals, or even blackened clouds representing various plagues.


    Thousands of angels of life served me as well. In truth, I had thousands of angels of every domain and subdomain I could influence, and beyond. The angels of life in my service all had the forms of idealized humanoids, with a number of wings that corresponded to their relative level of power. The greatest angels had six wings, like my angel form, and the least powerful had two wings.


    In some cases, angels of domains and subdomains that were opposed to each other flew in different parts of the skies above my tower and island home. Angels of truth and angels of lies ignored each other, and angels of life and death occasionally glared at each other. Angels of creation and destruction didn''t seem to mind each other, curiously. Angels of nature and angels of technology were visibly tense around each other, but they didn''t seem to hate each other like angels of truth and angels of lies did.


    I studied the relationships between countless types of angels for a few moments before raising a hand and transforming my island home into something new, instantly.


    ________________________________________________


    The instant after I rose my hand my island home was totally reshaped. The island widened, becoming several hundred times wider than ever before and filling with new things. The biggest of the new things was a massive city, or rather a massive fort. It was the easily biggest thing I had ever created, and I created it effortlessly thanks to the amplification to my own powers I received within my divine realm.


    The rocks and earth that formed my island home and then extended it came from nothing and easily allowed the widening of my truest home. The materials used in the construction of my fortress were simple things like iron and silver, divinely empowered to withstand any blow. And at the center of it all sat my tower.


    I incorporated existing features such as the prior biomes that had existed atop my island by creating parks for them, parks that would also house angels of nature, animals, plants, and elements. I also incorporated the horde of the undead and their odd city that had been destroyed within the island itself into this new design.


    To do so I simply created a grander city of the dead then they could, warping reality around them and creating my vision for a city of the dead effortlessly. This caused them to fill with awe towards me, even more so than they usually did. I also extended my tower again, extending it underground and in doing so nearly quadrupling its height, though above-ground the tower looked unchanged. In doing so I connected it both to a hive of The Swarm and to the undead city that existed deep beneath the surface of my island.


    The final thing I would do for the day, the thing that would take the longest, was that I divvied up the fortress and assigned angels to their respective areas. I would do this by speaking telepathically to angels of each domain and subdomain, commanding them to go to their new homes and then await orders from myself or an angel of nobility.


    The fortress-city was built with this order in mind. It was admittedly unusual for me to do something like that but for angels, I felt like it was necessary to create an orderly place where they could be the best possible versions of themselves and that required that I create areas where their talents could be allowed to shine.


    Examples of these areas included vast and empty archives where angels of knowledge could sit down and fill tome after tome with their shared wisdom, barracks for angels of war, orderly apartments for angels of law, vast forests for angels of nature, chaotic slums for angels of chaos, maddening sewers and asylums for eldritch angels, monasteries for angels of goodness and darkened temples for angels of evil. Every single domain and subdomain, even animal subdomains, had a place in the fortress-city I created with but a commanding thought.


    Finally, in creating a home for my host I had created something unanticipated: a home that may actually have been worthy of a god. No longer a tiny tower more befitting a magician, but a glorious demesne that was truly godly. A place inhabited by angels, the lesser beings most close to the gods, where they wandered divine streets in the thousands.


    It was when I was finally done assigning angels to their new homes that I received an abrupt notification. One that caught me off guard and filled me with delight.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    The domain of nobility is a special domain. It is like the domains of luck, fate, and reality, in that it has quirky conditions before it can be unlocked. You have just earned the right to begin to rule over the domain of nobility. You have been awarded the first tier of influence over the domain of nobility and all of the pertinent powers that come with it.


    To do so you must have built a realm worthy of the god of nobility, earned the loyalty and service of a worth-while angelic host, and have ambition befitting someone who deserves to rule over nobility. All of which you''ve done, handily. Congratulations.]

 199 The Althonite Empire

    [Nobility Domain Details:


    The nobility domain is a selective domain that is only accessible to gods who have an innate desire to rule. By acquiring it at all you''ve proven that you''re ready to begin to step down the road towards true leadership.


    It governs nobility, royalty, lordship, countries, and empires. It is a prominent domain that helps manage territories and aids with administrative tasks. To acquire more power over it, build a wealthy, successful, diverse empire. The larger and more powerful your empire grows, the more your own power will grow with it.


    Nobility Domain Passive Powers:


    Artifact Rentership: This considerable power allows you to grant the status of "Rented" to an artifact. By utilizing this power you cause an artifact to be useable by yourself and by those you give permission to use it, rendering it immune to being stolen. If ever out of reach of the person who is renting it the renter can, at will, return the object to themselves.


    Aura of Royalty: This aura causes people to recognize you as a supreme royal. If you''re using it while masquerading as someone else then they will recognize you as a herald of yourself, a herald of Althos.


    Divine Mandate: This power causes those who you use it on to be filled with a fragment of your authority. Those who you use it on will gain a number of powers and boons and are considered to be enactors of your will by nature itself and other things that you influence. You can take this away from them and they learn that the second you grant it to them. This power is in essence you demonstrating that you endorse whoever gets your mandate. Keep that in mind.


    Noble artifacts: You can select artifacts and grant them unique restrictions that prevent unworthy would-be wielders from using them.


    Noble realm: Those who wield your mandate gain limited lordship powers of their own, in an area, they select once per year. This power is a considerable one, and those to whom you bestow it are recognized as nobility by your other, more spiritually attuned servants.


    Royal blood: Unless you specifically designate otherwise or take nobility away from the family in question nobility becomes a hereditary trait.


    Nobility Domain Active Powers:


    Protection: By utilizing your powers over life and healing, in concordance with your powers over nobility, you can, once per day, protect those who bear your mandate from pain and suffering for an hour. This renders them immune to harm to anything but the divine attacks of a god stronger than yourself. So... they become truly immortal, for an hour.


    Restoration: Once per week you can resurrect people who have royal blood, without it counting against your other weekly resurrections.


    Nobility Domain Blessing \u0026 Curse Details:


    ________________________________________________


    "Nobility... What an odd domain." I muttered as I willed away the notification. More than an hour had passed since I had finished assigning members of my angelic host to their new homes. I found myself absentmindedly wandering the streets of my new fortress-city. Night had fallen, just minutes ago.


    Stars glimmered in the skies above the newly built community. Their light trickled down to the streets beneath my feet. The road beneath me was made from gold and shone on its own, but the starlight added to their brilliance.


    Around me, angels walked the streets as well. They smiled at me and bowed nervously whenever I passed by. I nodded politely at them and I smiled eagerly at them.


    The angels were universally beautiful creatures. It mattered not what domain they held some degree of influence over, nor how much influence they held over the domain in question, they resembled idealized humans. The males were well-proportioned and had a number of forms. Many were like me, muscular creatures that fit a conventional conception of masculine attractiveness. Some though were at least physically younger beings, resembling teenagers and possessing the lithe figures that came with that.


    Female angels were similar to that. Many were curvaceous beauties who had airs of grace and class. Some were more youthful, looking like teenagers or very young angels, and possessing bodies that logically made sense with that.


    There were also mature angels of both genders. In both cases, those tended to be greater angels and they weren''t idly wandering the streets but rather either ensuring the security of the streets or attending to various duties throughout the city. The time I spent assigning angels to their new homes wasn''t a period where I only told angels where they lived, I also gave them tasks.


    In many cases though, it was the greater angels who took the greatest amount of responsibility when it came to completing the tasks. And what''s more, is that many tasks required that the angels go to disparate parts of my divine realm and communicate with the existing rulers and leaders. In some cases that was easy, angels of dreams and dreaming, for instance, could instantly commune with any leader providing they were sleeping. In other cases, it wasn''t so easy, such as for angels of the deep oceans who I had helped with their tasks by providing portals.


    ________________________________________________


    My divine realm wasn''t organized. That was a simple fact. My divine realm, my bastion, my final stronghold, was not a place that anyone could fairly describe as organized or even logical. But I had set about changing that.


    All of my angels that were actively completing missions were completing missions throughout the divine realm we all called home. Angels of death were collecting the souls of deceased Althonians to bring to the tower, angels of war and a few angels of law were visiting communities that housed more belligerent races and taking stock of their numbers and supplies. Angels of life and angels of biology were visiting communities and ensuring they had all they needed to reproduce successfully since we had transitioned out of Torus and into my divine realm.


    Everyone had work to do, though some were doing more than others. Even I had to work to do, I was simply taking a break in the wake of the work I had done organizing the angels.


    Around me my senses were constantly tickled and teased. Angels of the arts hovered high above the city and played music, the sounds lazily drifting down to those of us who were on the ground below. Angels of illusion ensured that anyone on the ground smelled something pleasant that differed from person to person.


    The fortress-city was a wonder, a true marvel to behold and it was only possible because of the angelic host I had gathered. Without them the wonders that made this place a paradise, even at a glance, simply wouldn''t have been possible. At least not with me at my current level of power.


    I continued my idle walk, while musing on the status of the rest of my divine realm.


    ________________________________________________


    The dark elves of Torus, unsurprisingly, were among my most steadfast worshipers. Dark elves had some presence in every continent back on Torus and that continued over into my divine version of my homeworld. Dark elves, particularly Puerto Rican Dark Elves, were fanatical worshipers of mine as a dark god in both a literal and moralistic sense.


    I sent angels of evil to Aronms and to other dark elven settlements, angels bolstered by golems I made and armed to the teeth using my ability to make simple, expertly crafted weapons instantaneously. I instructed my angels to tell dark elven historians to maintain the leadership of various dark elven cities, without any changes. If only that would have been the case for every other major racial group...


    I sent angels of law, goodness, and faith, backed by potent metal constructs to meet and in some cases protect groups of dwarves who had opted to worship me and turned their backs on Morehammer. Dwarves were most commonly found in one of the continents I had never visited: Anterior, a continent to the east of the world and now my divine realm that I had never visited but I knew housed the most diverse coalition of races of any of the continents in Torus.


    The major empires of Torus, the Reconquista Empire and the Ansari Empire, were made up of humans and of assorted types of elves respectively and both of them had been impacted significantly by the dark exodus Althonian inhabitants of Torus had undertaken.


    Worship of me was popular in Mysteria, the continent where the elves lived. I was worshiped by perhaps six out of every ten elves, and they had willingly undertaken the dark exodus. Now they had been awake for a few months, after being stuck in stasis for a few weeks. I quietly directed angels of magic and nature to go to their communities and to aid them, before I sent angels of nobility towards the major cities to ensure that their leadership knew they had my backing, something which was essential for their legitimacy now that they were in my domain.


    Worship of me was not quite as popular in Humana, where I was worshiped by four out of every ten humans. That said, I sent angels of civilization and agriculture, as well as of war and time, to Humana and to the remnants of the Reconquista Empire. Humans were less strong than elves were and would need greater support before some sort of new normal could be established.


    Iredale and Anterior, the two remaining continents both received assorted delegations of angels. Both continents had unusual governments, with Iredale being inhabited by all sorts of races and Anterior being governed by various monster-led states that had a loose alliance and coalition that largely protected them from outside influence but wasn''t itself a simple nor true alliance. Anterior also housed the majority of the world''s dragon population, though even it didn''t house an enormous number of the legendary creatures.


    Of all of the continents, my worship was the least popular in Iredale, and was the most popular in Anterior with only one in ten inhabitants of Iredale, the least populated continent in the world, worshiping me and nearly nine in ten inhabitants of Anterior worshipping me.


    One of the few non-angelic forces I dispatched from my island home and the capital of my divine realm was The Swarm. I ordered them to bolster the settlement of Florida and to begin to convert the whole of the coast of Iredale that was close to Puerto Rico into territory that was safe for trade and for travel. Along with them I sent eusocial angels and new creations like enormous centipedes and driders. I had plans for The Swarm that required that they be active, and soon so I wasted no time with them.


    ________________________________________________


    All in all, perhaps half of the angels who were meant to inhabit the city would be gone from it for the first night of its existence. I would spend a considerable amount of time in the city proper during that first night myself. I wandered the streets I created, quietly and indirectly bolstering various angels throughout my divine realm.


    I was busy, actively working to support my servants and despite that I was still grateful for their new loyalty and their willingness to busy themselves on my behalf. Without them the work that had gotten done in even a single night would have taken much longer. And their hard-work freed me up to do other, more fun, things.


    One of the things I did was remotely create a plethora of temples throughout my divine realm. I created them in forests, atop mountains, within mountains, deep underground, in the oceans, in lakes, next to settlements, atop floating islands, atop glaciers, and within cities. This was my divine realm and here my will dictated reality. I wouldn''t settle for anything less than a temple in every community, and indeed the number of temples in my realm exceeded the number of settlements.


    I would spend the next three days in my divine realm, content to set aside my ambitions and to reside within my deific vision of Torus for the time being. I conferred with angels of law, knowledge, and war. We established universal laws to be followed, and sent word of my whims and wishes to the farthest reaches of my realm. Every community without fail sent members to be trained in the assorted ways of Althonian or Cosechian worship. And for a time I was at peace.


    I owned this time to my realm. I owed it to my worshipers to safeguard the souls of the fallen, to keep them safe in my angelic city, and to establish order throughout my realm. I owed it to my angelic host to see that they were organized and had a true home. I owed it to future Althonians, and citizens of the Althonite Empire, to begin to establish laws and traditions.


    I didn''t mind the time spent in my city, though I did wish I had supplied the place with more water. I was quite fond of spending time in submerged temples, but I discovered that I wasn''t especially fond of only partially submerged temples. I liked to be in temples that were entirely underwater.


    It was only when things began to calm down that I turned my attention back to my earlier ambitions. I turned my mind first towards some of the simpler quests. The easiest three to complete were simple: the quests for the agriculture subdomain, the domains of dreams and stars, and the mind domain.


    ________________________________________________


    One of my Htraeian cults was a cult of famine. They worshipped me as a provider of food, and were a cult at the center of the largest non-city community in a small country far from New Sol. All I had to do was offer to make them the town''s saviors once the fires settled, which I did by showcasing my newfound prowess over nature.


    They set fire to several blocks of restaurants and stores, and I kept the other people of the community asleep until the fires died down. When it was over I ordered my cultists to flee back to their homes, and allowed the people of the town to awaken from their unnatural slumber. In the resulting panic my cultists were able to become town heroes by leading the way to perhaps the biggest orchard in the world.


    Completing the quest for the mind domain also wasn''t especially difficult. I created an artifact I dubbed a "Communication Stone" which when utilized by people I blessed with telepathy allowed them to speak to similarly aligned psychic cultists across even interstellar distances. I connected a few stones and earned the second domain of influence over the mind domain, greatly expanding my own psychic abilities.


    It was at this point that I noticed a trend among the quests related to acquiring a second tier of influence over domains and subdomains. Thus far, the vast majority of quests that I needed to complete before acquiring the second tier of influence over assorted domains required that I either destroy something or create something. It was an amusing and striking thing to observe, and I tended to choose destruction as it was simpler than creation.


    For the dual-domain quest of dreams and stars, two strikingly powerful domains, all I had to do was create a new kind of portal that only activated if approached by members of the cults. It was a simple solution that allowed even a mortal to travel instantly from one galaxy to another. One of the cults was based in a modern world occupied by humans and elves in a star system far from Torus, and the other was located in Htrae.


    I had expected the quests to be harder, but I wasn''t complaining in the slightest. With those three quests completed, I had far more power than I had even days ago, including powers over nightmares and a far more diverse range of psychic abilities. The powers that filled me now made my earlier powers look weak, and it was with great excitement that I opened up a portal leading out of my realm and back into Htrea. I had more quests to complete and more power to accrue.


    ________________________________________________


    [Destruction Domain Primary Passive Abilities*:


    Antimatter aura: You can generate an aura of antimatter. Antimatter is composed of anti-particles which have the same mass as ordinary matter but their opposite charges. Antimatter and matter, when colliding, are mutually annihilated, causing a number of nasty phenomena. This is synergistic with the physics domain.


    Antimatter manipulation: You can manipulate and even create antimatter at will. The energies released by collisions between matter and antimatter are extremely immense and this phenomenon can be used as an aggressive attack.


    Barrier buster: You can destroy barriers at will, even those made from abjuration magic. The only barriers that can withstand your destruction are those formed from divine beings and other higher-beings whose total strength exceeds yours.


    Crushing: You can crush objects, using your physical power or your mental power.


    Cutting: You possess the ability to cut through objects that weren''t divinely constructed. You can use sharp objects to do this, or you can utilize your own limbs to do so.


    Explosion manipulation: You gain nearly absolute control over explosions, a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. You cannot yet cause supernovae or other enormous explosions.


    Pressure manipulation: Pressure, the amount of force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area, is something you can manipulate now. This is a synergistic power granted to you by synergizing the powers of the physics domain. With it you can crush objects, move objects in some cases, strengthen the impact of gravity on them, or even induce pain or death.


    Separate: You can separate physical things. If someone is holding something you can separate them from what they are holding. If someone is wearing something you can separate them from that. If there are any sort of divisions between someone and something you can manipulate it to part them from that thing. Right now this is a purely physical power.


    *Attacks which previously didn''t work on humanoids now do. This means that you can shatter or disintegrate humanoids at will.


    Destruction Domain Active Ability:


    Sonic Attacks: At will you can utilize sounds to attack enemies in a plethora of ways. You can unleash attacks that can penetrate any physical defense by utilizing this unusual at-will, active ability.]

 200 God Of Memories

    Upon stepping through the portal back into Htrae I found myself in Glendale. With my new powers, I could do a lot at least as long as my targets were mortals. If my targets were mortals I had so many ways to play with them and I was determined to make use of my fun powers.


    I had appeared in the middle of Glendale, but it was quite late at night. The small town was nearly silent and only a few places had anything remotely resembling a lively number of people. The local motel had a few people in it at the moment, the town''s few bars had some people, and the town''s assorted neighborhoods had plenty of people in them.


    I was in the middle of the street. I spent a moment contemplating where to go and then quietly settled on paying a family a visit as a means to test one of my new powers. I didn''t bother teleporting there, though I could have. Instead, I merely willed myself into the air and began to fly towards the family I was going to pay a visit too.


    I was, unsurprisingly, physically spotted by a few people. That said in a demonstration of my powers over memories I merely destroyed their memories of seeing me the second I was out of their line of sight. It was an effortless demonstration of the potent power I possessed and one that I didn''t mind doing in the slightest.


    At this point, with my powers over memories, I was essentially able to say that for any creature I could capture reality was whatever I said it was. That was one of the fun parts of being a god with my level of strength, a level of strength that was paltry in comparison to the powers I could attain, one day.


    I flew through the middle of the town, acting boldly and without any shred of fear for my actions coming back to haunt me. I knew that no one in the town would move against me. Mostly because I''d work to ensure that no one could. I permitted no one to have an awareness of my current activities within the town itself so no one would be able to try and do anything to me as a result of my actions tonight.


    It took me a few minutes of easy flying, propelled by a powerful current of air underneath me, to reach the front door of a large house. Upon reaching the front door I let myself in, phasing through the thick oak door with ease. I made myself incorporeal for the second it took to phase through the door and then reverted to my physical form the instant I was through the door.


    The door led to a nice looking foyer. Once I was inside of it I chuckled and began to walk towards the guest room. I was, after all, a guest.


    ________________________________________________


    The house that the god had invaded and was using as a testing ground was owned by a fairly well-off couple. The couple, a man and a woman, were fast asleep a room above the room the god was heading towards. His sensory abilities allowed him to navigate the house effortlessly and without any sort of aid.


    The actual sensations one felt while experiencing a mind blast were always abrupt and sharply painful. They differed based on Althos'' mood, and today they felt like incredibly painful but also instantaneous electric shooks. They came and went over the course of a single heartbeat and by the time the couple was catching their breath the god was already in the midst of enacting the next part of their scheme.


    Anderson, the man of the couple and the house, looked at his wife, Mary, and he spoke gently. The truth was that at the moment his mind wasn''t his own, and his words weren''t either. He was a puppet of a creature who was using him and Mary to have fun.


    "Mary, we have a guest. One we mustn''t keep waiting any longer." The man said, his voice hollow and emotionless. His wife nodded at him, but there was something robotic and stiff about her body language. Nevertheless, the pair quickly got up and left their bedroom. They took the shortest path down to the guest room, located on the second floor of their multistory home.


    It took them about four minutes to get up from their bed, get ready, and join Althos in the guest room. The quiet god was awaiting them and smiled when they appeared, even though he wasn''t looking at them. Instead, he was using telekinesis to play with things throughout the room and causing them to float and fly around.


    The second they stepped into the room their minds were drained by the god who had called them there. He stole every single memory, thought, and secret, from their minds and in an instant knew both of them better than they knew each other.


    He knew every lie they told each other, every secret they kept from each other, and all of their darkest thoughts. He also knew every scrap of happiness they had experienced, every joyful moment they shared, and of every time they fell into a comfortable sleep next to each other.


    The god quietly created copies of their memories but modified them slightly. He filled their memories with lies, all of which pertained to his existence. In these modified memories the god himself was a quiet but known figure to them, someone they remembered in their dreams. He was the figure who matchmade them and who helped them throughout their lives, causing them to experience awe and gratitude towards him as if he were actually their friend. Without a single word, he infused them with their false memories right as they sat down in front of him.


    ________________________________________________


    "Anderson, Mary, it''s been too long." I greeted them, speaking warmly. There was a confident smile on my face as I spoke. I had utilized a number of powers to get them here. I began with a single pair of mental blasts, continued by utilizing brainwashing, a power I had just gained, I had to get them here, and then parasitically drained their memories before editing them and finally returning the edited memories back to them. After they sat down in front of me I had no need to continue to control their minds and released them from that power.


    The rich couple in front of me was a pretty pair. Anderson was a tall, decently muscular man with blonde hair that was tightly cut, and right now all he was wearing was a pair of casual, loose-fitting sleeping pants. Mary was a pretty, petite brunette, who was wearing a perfectly fitting grey negligee. They smiled at me as I studied them, a warm, curious gaze visible in my eyes. Their smiles were genuine. After all, I was the most important figure in their lives. I was, according to their reworked memories, responsible for their wealth and their marriage.


    The changes I made to their memories were simple. As far as they understood the world I played a direct role in countless good things that happened to them. I was responsible for more than just their wealth and their marriage, those two things were just some of the better things I was responsible for. Bad things that happened to them I attributed to other things, so that they only associated me with pleasant events.


    I didn''t speak anymore, I just motioned for the two to get on their knees in front of me. They didn''t hesitate to obey me. I smiled softly at them and rose a hand in front of the meek and submissive pair. For a moment I returned to my roots as a god of lust and transmitted pleasurable sensations straight into their minds. It was at that point that I spoke again.


    "Serving me is pleasurable. It brings you joy and ecstasy." I told the pair, my lips tugged upwards in a smug smirk. My very voice was enough to cause the pair to shiver in delight. I felt like playing with the pair of humans for a bit.


    ________________________________________________


    The creature who sat down in front of the pair of humans was someone the pair, according to their falsified memories anyway, owed everything too. He was also, in their minds, a god of supreme power who usually but not always kept his visits confined to their dreams.


    The god was a lascivious entity, and he gave the two of them memories of having sexual encounters with him. In both cases, their memories were of submitting to an adventurous, skilled, and thoroughly inhuman entity whose very presence was enough to stimulate and arouse lesser creatures. Their falsified memories included feats he was actually capable of such as inducing orgasms with but a flirty glance and causing people to acquire new fetishes with but a thought.


    The pair of rich humans blushed beneath the gaze of the creature they believed they owed so much too. Althos, unbeknownst to them, activated a number of auras and divine presence effects that increased their sensitivity to his presence and heightened the pleasure his presence caused them. He also began to assail their senses, particularly their senses of smell. He smelled of natural things.


    The air around the god began to smell of a man''s heady musk. The smell had a similar effect to the potent intoxication one felt after taking a few sips of alcohol. The married couple began to feel light-headed in the presence of their god, and this was just him being unusually playful. He wasn''t seriously trying to do anything to the humans, he was just enjoying the powers he now wielded.


    Anderson let out a breathy sigh as he felt the power of the sinful deity''s presence increase. Mary bit her lips and tried to silence a sigh. She didn''t quite succeed, and though he wasn''t facing her Althos smiled. Mary knew she was the cause of the smile. She felt it. He allowed her to feel it.


    The god himself turned his gaze to Anderson first. The man shivered as his body warmed due to the psychic powers of the god and his newfound mastery over even mental elements such as psychic flames. The god at the moment had scarlet eyes, and they stared at Anderson''s lightly dressed form. There was a genuine warmth to the gaze, perhaps a lust hidden behind them, but the god stayed silent. He was gazing, respectfully, but mischievously.


    After a few moments, the god''s gaze turned towards Mary. His gaze retained its warmth, and Mary''s body reacted to his attention. Her breath hitched, and she felt an outbreak of goosebumps on her skin. She gazed at the deity''s currently rather human form and imagined the things he could do with his powers.


    She recalled the false memories he had implanted in her, and was fooled by them since her mortal mind was nothing compared to his divine one, and felt the desires they stirred within her. She felt parts of her body harden in response to the god''s proximity and his attention. He began to chuckle, the deep sound further stirring something deep inside of her. Something primal, biological, animalistic.


    Althos enjoyed this. He was quite a tease, and for him to let loose and have fun wasn''t especially common. Althos lightly touched the heads of his newest worshipers, running long, slender fingers through their hair. Both of them relaxed at this action. The god read their minds and felt their emotions and knew that to the two of them the gesture felt both intimate and playful. They enjoyed the power they felt their divine lord, the deity they now fervently worshipped, had over them, and the sometimes rough ways in which he showed them his power.


    ________________________________________________


    There was something nice about feeling the two humans give themselves so willingly to me. I sensed their reactions to the first of my touches, and I knew that they''d do anything I said. I knew that they would submit to me in any desire I so chose.


    The two of them were in love with each other. Or rather they were as in love with each other as they could be. They deeply loved and lusted after me, now more than they loved and lusted after each other. Both the meek but muscular man, and the lithe but dominant woman held me in extremely high esteem and weren''t far from being fanatics. I learned this by scanning both their minds and through constant usage of my "Absolute empathy" ability.


    Their minds were perfectly suited for me to mess with, and their bodies were pleasant, but the truth was that I had some specific interests in mind for them. They were perfectly suited to be the first members of an altruistic, wealthy cult that worshiped me as a god of providence and fortune. If I were to be serious for a moment, that was why I had come here in the first place.


    I closed my eyes, focused on the task before me and began to speak. As I spoke, I smiled trickily.


    "Though I would like to indulge in our games, that may have to wait. For now there is important work to discuss. I have come here to instruct you to rise up and begin to spread the word of my faith." I told them, speaking softly. This shocked the two of them.


    "Althos... You''re finally beginning to spread your religion?" Mary asked, her eyes flashing with joy. I chuckled at her. Anderson looked at the two of us, delight visible in his face.


    "Finally, we''ll be able to tell people about you! I''ve always wanted to share how you changed my life." Anderson said excitedly. There was an energy within him that neither Mary nor I shared. An enthusiasm that a part of me envied.


    His eagerness was cute, especially since it would have been unexpected of him given both his gender and his physical appearance. He was a male human but he was also a large, fit man. And yet he had a childlike enthusiasm for sharing the falsified narrative I had installed in his mind. I stared at the man, and began to smile softly. Without a word I created teachings and began the process of implanting them into the minds of Anderson and Mary.


    When the alert and the teachings suffused the minds of the rich couple I gently put them to sleep and proceed to teleport them back into their beds. It was comically easy to do given the plethora of powers I possessed. The instant the mortals were asleep I closed my eyes and teleported into the forest where I had spent a good deal of my time after arriving in Htrae.


    It just so happened that some criminals were fleeing deep into the woods, something I was alerted too through my domain-sense abilities. I intended to use the pair of them as guinea pigs.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: The Golden Glove


    Welcome to the Golden Glove! Your god, Althos, has inducted you into this faith and appointed you as its high priest and high priestess.


    The Golden Glove is a charitable, kind-hearted faith that seeks to extoll Althos as a god of wealth, charity, goodness, health, and community. Its adherents are to be charitable, strengthen their communities, advocate for noble laws, and to spread the word of Althos.


    Members of The Golden Glove are to combat injustice whenever it appears and they are to work to ensure that even the most downtrodden have access to opportunities and whatever else they need to survive and thrive.


    Once every season, adherents of the faith will combine their wealth to host a festival. At this festival they will publicly proclaim their faith in Althos and they will ask him to test their faith and their adherence to the religion. If they are deemed deserving he will perform a public miracle demonstrating that he exists in a very real way that is up to him at the time of the festival.]


    ________________________________________________


    The pair of outlaws deftly dove deeper and deeper into the woods. Their feet silently trampled countless leaves and left deep tracks in the forest, but the pair of them were deep enough in the woods that they would have escaped mundane law enforcement.


    The two of them wordlessly and expertly ignored the countless obstacles that ought to have tripped them up. They were so skilled at this that they didn''t even need to look at the forest floor. They were arrogant. That was their first mistake.


    The darkened woods were excellent for hiding things. And they were even better for hiding people, especially people who were capable of perfect invisibility. Althos positioned himself a fair distance from the pair of thieves and then waited. He wouldn''t have to wait long.


    The thieves were, for all of their arrogance, quite fast. Yet their speed was of no use when they made it to a distance of about seven meters away from the quiet and dark god they had inadvertently made into their enemy. The god''s strike was swift, as he allowed himself to be seen by mortal eyes and in an instant activated one of his more potent and familiar abilities: the power to turn a mortal into a stone statue with but a single, pointed glare.


    Althos selected the thief that was the fastest to turn into a target for this dreadful power. The thief, a level seven rogue, was in mid-air when he fell victim to the frightening power of the gaze. The petrification began at his feet and the rough had enough time to take a single heavy breath when he felt the weight of his feet increase considerably all at once.


    He glanced down at his foot, unsure of the cause of the disturbance to his balance, and gasped when he saw that the black clothing he had worn to blend into the forest had turned a striking shade of grey, and that it had fused with his legs. It was at that point that the thief next touched the ground, heavily colliding with it even as the effects of the dark god''s petrifying gaze began to snake their way up the rest of his body. If nothing else, at least his body turning to stone caused him to feel less pain when his hard body collided with the ground.


    The other thief hadn''t seen the odd event, mostly due to the fact that the thieves were wearing black in a dark forest, but he heard its aftermath. He was a bit slower than his partner in crime, in part due to the fact that he was holding more of their haul. Althos'' approach to him was simpler than it was for his comrade.


    The god quietly rose a single hand and did something he couldn''t have done until he became a true elemental overlord. The god''s elemental powers invisibly reached out of him, extending from his body like a dreadfully powerful tendril, and snaked forward until they caught the thief in their frightening grip. It was at this point that the god activated one of his newfound abilities: "Hemokinetic paralysis", a potent manipulation of the blood in someone''s veins that forces them to abruptly stop moving. The god''s target, the remaining thief, came to a halt in the middle of the forest for reasons he couldn''t quite fathom.


    "What? What... the fuck is going on with my body?" He managed to roar out, his voice disturbing the silence of the forest and echoing quite far all things considered, due to the absence of noise in the woods. It was at this point that the god responsible for the man''s misery began to physically move towards his victims.


    ________________________________________________


    The forest was easy for me to navigate. And now it was even easier for me to control than it would have ever been before. I stepped out of the shadows and used the endless darkness of the forest at night to effortlessly reach the captured thieves.


    I teleported twice, utilizing my powers over darkness to bend space and to effortlessly appear behind of the thieves. As I did, I reached out to my own shadow, mentally, and commanded the thing to do one of the few things I had ever commanded it to do: devour the shadows of the thieves.


    It was at that point that my shadow detached itself from my body and slinked out across the forest floor, before reaching the shadow of the petrified thief. When my shadow managed to reach the shadow of the thief, it extended two-dimensional hands made of the same darkness the rest of it was made of.


    The shadows of its claw-like hands snaked across the ground. They sunk into the shadow of the petrified thief and I could have sworn I heard the sound of knives sinking into flesh when they did. My untethered shadow began to cruelly cackle as it began to pull the shadow of the petrified thief out of the area underneath the fallen statue. I grinned as the shadow of the thief fully detached from the man''s artistic new form.


    My shadow greedily and powerfully began to pull the shadow towards its eerie and void-like mass. A few seconds of struggling between the two shadows followed but the conclusion was foregone. In a matter of moments my shadow, itself an eerie and vaguely intelligent lifeform, had pulled the shadow of the thief into its mass and grown a bit larger for it. I grinned at the monster I commanded, and mentally demanded that it do the same to the other thief. It gluttonously bounded across the forest floor to do the same thing to the paralyzed thief.


    Making out individual shadows in the dark was something only I and my shadow could thanks to my powers over darkness. One of the quieter and more subtle improvements that came with that domain was the ability to see effortlessly under any conditions. It was useful in moments like this where I wanted to test out powers and where I was in the dark. I stepped towards the petrified form of the thief and began to activate one of my newer powers: "Cutting".


    I chuckled as I felt my own hand sharpen in response to the power I had just activated. As I approached the defeated thief, I also wordlessly drained every memory out of his body and then descended on his new form. I did all of this wordlessly and silently even as my shadow began its assault on the other thief and his shadow. I found myself mounting the statue, but even as I did that I realized how strange my actions were. I sighed and then chuckled.


    The statue in front of me presented the perfect opportunity for me to use an old destruction domain ability I had only rarely used. I pointed a single finger at the statue and visualized the thing shattering into a million pieces. I then closed my eyes and channeled my power into my finger, before even through closed eyes I saw an eerily bright explosion as power surged out of me and crashed into the statue beneath me.


    The statue I had mounted shattered beneath me, fracturing and then exploding under my weight. I went from sitting atop it to sitting on the floor, a floor covered in the bite-sized, leftover shards of the ambitious thief. The explosion sent fragments of the man flying, none of which harmed me due to my dense skin and mastery over the earth.


    The light had been bright enough that for a moment my shadow and I were exposed to the remaining thief, even as he laid on the floor barely able to move a muscle. I knew the second he saw me, but I still sighed in annoyance when he began to shout assorted and creative curse words at me.


    "You mother-fucker! What did you just do? You''re the one behind this aren''t you?" He roared. I sighed and turned to face him, just in time to see my shadow complete its surprisingly physical extraction of his shadow. My servant then retreated from the man''s still mobile body and pulled his shadow with it.


    I walked over to the man, and once again used my "Drain" ability on him. I shivered as he fell into a near vegetative state of total absence of awareness, and I felt all of his memories, thoughts, and secrets surge from him into me. Even though I was shivering as I felt the entirety of his life pour into me, I had a grin on my face. Every single secret, thought, dream, nightmare, and more that this man had had was now inside of me. And I wasn''t quite done with him just yet.


    I rose the hand that had "Cutting" applied to it, and I studied my own digits for a moment. They looked perfectly mundane at a glance and yet I knew that they were now destructive weapons that could in all likelihood penetrate any non-total defense. The thief continued to mutter and sometimes shout disagreeable and rude statements. He only stopped and fell silent when I struck him with my weaponized hand, and I felt the air around my fingertips aid me in cutting the asshole down. My hand effortlessly went into the man''s skin, and I felt his bodily fluids soak my fingers.


    "I suppose that''s one way to get you to shut up." I muttered as I glared at the man.


    ________________________________________________


    [Mind Domain Passive Powers:


    Brainwashing: You possess the power to brainwash mortals. This power can be used in conjunction with, or instead of other powers such as your abilities over memories which can just as easily cause an equivalent state to mind-control, arguably one that''s even better than it in fact since brainwashing can be undone under certain circumstances.


    Brainwave manipulation: Same as when this power was an active power, but it''s now a passive power.


    Consciousness creation: By combining the domains of knowledge, creation, and minds, you gain the power to grant sapience to small objects and mindless lifeforms. This power increases in power and scale as you gain greater influence over the mind domain.


    Emotional mastery: You possess total control over your own emotions. This is due to the synergistic fusions of purity, knowledge, minds, and emotions. With this power you gain a heightened awareness of your own emotional state and can use that to retain control in a variety of situations.


    Diseases of the mind: This tier of influence over the domain of the mind and influence over the disease domain, allow you to induce mental disorders in mortals you wish to plague with your powers or otherwise make miserable.


    Mental pressure: This power allows you to induce states of panic and anxiety in your enemies or anyone you feel like plaguing with it. This causes those affected by it to be more likely to panic, make simple mistakes, or otherwise experience anxiety.


    Psychic aura: You can generate an aura of psychic energy that serves as a shield against attacks and also rebuffs enemies that try to approach you or forces them to their knees and leaves them vulnerable to your other abilities.


    Psychic element manipulation: You can generate and manipulate psychic variants of the elements that affect people''s emotional states as well as affect the environment. For example: psychic heat or psychic flames can induce lust, passion, and tempers, while psychic water can cool emotions down and restore someone to calmness.


    Psychic scan: You perpetually perform psychic scans, your mind attuned to the psychic energies that flow freely around you. With this broad power you can sense disturbances in psychic energy pathways and detect anything that exudes any sort of psychic energy, the energy that thoughts innately give off.


    Psychic shield: You are immune to the psychic abilities of mortals.


    True mind-reading: This ability only applies to mortals, for now. With this, you can conduct in-depth readings of someone''s mind and in doing so learn everything there is to learn about them.


    Mind Domain Active Power:


    Belief inducement: You can make any mortal, once per week, believe something permanently. This synergistic power takes from the domains of faith and minds, and combines their powers to make someone a fanatical believer in anything you wish for them to believe.]

 201 A Casual Hun

    A few minutes after I slashed into the slower thief, the man fell to the grassy floor of the forest. He was dead, and had been for a few minutes. He was also missing several fingers.


    The man''s corpse was currently bleeding profusely onto the grass that surrounded his fallen form. I ignored him and gazed curiously at my fingers. There was a playful smile on my face as I studied them.


    "This was fun! It''s been too long since I directly partook in violence." I said, speaking to my shadow. The creature was silent, but I sensed its excitement and it radiated a general air of agreement with my words.


    My remarks were true, it was extremely rare for me to behave violently since usually, I left that to my servants. Though I was pretty violent towards demons. Many of my servants were quite violent and engaged in violence regularly, but I didn''t. In fact, I could go weeks without directly committing a single violent act. A small part of me felt saddened by that.


    I enjoyed utilizing my powers. Even my violent, destructive powers were fun to use and that was something I was only recently fully discovering. I had enjoyed destroying the human civilization over on Ryths. Changing that world just through usage of a few assorted animal subdomain, nature domain, elemental subdomain, and fungi subdomain abilities but on a massive scale was quite exhilarating.


    I had several sources of powers. The overwhelming majority of powers I possessed I possessed due to my godhood. I had other abilities due to the numerous classes I possessed. And finally, I possessed a not insignificant number of abilities due to the fact that I was an elemental overlord. Some of my most significant powers were actually my elemental overlord powers. I had mastery over natural disasters and extremely potent sensory abilities due to my unusual identity as both a god and an elemental overlord.


    An underutilized source of power for me were my class abilities. I had reached level 20 in a few different classes, druid, necromancer, rogue, ranger, brawler, berserker, and warrior. I also possessed numerous other classes, some of which were unique to me as a higher being. I was still for a moment, before I quietly reached inward and asked the domain of knowledge an important question.


    "How do I level up my classes?" I asked, inquisitively. A full minute later I was surprised to receive a pleasant notification.


    [Alert: Leveling Up And Class Information


    Classes were originally designed by a long-dead, primordial overgod of reality and law. Incidentally, that same god also designed the system. That god was determined to organize reality and to make the multiverse an understandable place. In many cases, it succeeded.


    Leveling up can be done in two ways. The first way, which is universal, is to defeat enemies using class skills and talents. This is the easiest way to level up some classes, martial classes especially. The other way is individualized, but basically, it is to utilize the talents of your class to do something that matches what the class would. The rest of this notification will be a list that lists out some ways to level up each class you possess, aside from classes in which you''ve already reached level 20.


    Assassin: You can level up this class by either killing or defeating creatures swiftly. You gain more experience if you use poison and/or defeat or kill someone in a single blow.


    Conjurer: To level up your conjurer class, utilize conjuration spells.


    God: The god class is a bit of a quirkier class. To level up with it you must grant people the religious classes, utilize the abilities granted to you by the religious classes, and it''s worth noting that you also don''t have all of the religious classes under your belt just yet.


    Magician: You level up in this class by utilizing spells creatively and spontaneously.


    Patron: To level up this class utilize your skills as a patron, create witches, wards, warlocks, and use the other skills you''ve gained as a patron.


    Shaman: To level up this class interact with spirits and use spiritual magic.


    Sorceror: Study magic rigorously and rigidly to level up this class.


    Spellsinger: Make music and utilize the skills granted to you by the class to level up this rather fascinating class.]


    ________________________________________________


    The list of classes I had access to but hadn''t fully mastered yet was considerable. Seeing it laid out flatly like that, just one after the other, put in stark contrast just how much I had ignored a real source of power. It annoyed me to see it displayed so bluntly.


    That said, it was also a bit illuminating to learn that the system and classes were creations of a deity of law and reality. It explained their innate orderliness quite well. The system was one of the fundamental underpinnings of reality, it was something that every single lifeform had some access too, and understandings its origins explained how it was able to be so incredibly significant.


    My godly powers were often enhanced versions of class abilities, but I knew that there was a very real reason to level up my classes: by leveling up my classes I could reach beyond level 20.


    Level 20 was the maximum available class level for mortals but it wasn''t the highest level accessible to gods. As a god I had the ability to go all the way to level 30 if I wanted too and in doing so I would apparently gain even greater powers and mastery over classes. I was really curious as to what a level 30 assassin or level 30 druid would be capable of.


    As a level 20 druid I was capable of manipulating nature and aiding it in ways that most mortals could only barely begin to imagine but my real power over nature came from my potent influence over the nature domain. I possessed such potent power over nature that every druid in the universe subconsciously felt my presence. If I wanted too I could turn nature itself against the inhabitants of a planet and destroy humanoid civilizations.


    I also wondered what sort of nightmarish powers a level 30 necromancer wielded. As a level 20 necromancer I was capable of using my powers over undeath to bring destruction to entire communities. And as a god of death and undeath I possessed even more potent and efficient ways to deal death than mere class abilities accessible to mortals. That said... Some of my abilities were handy.


    ________________________________________________


    I closed my eyes for a moment and took a single deep breath. As I did so I began to concentrate and forcibly transform my aura. For the first time in my life I was unleashing an aura that wasn''t due to divine power, but was actually a class ability. As I did so I mulled over some of the memories I had stolen from other, older lifeforms. For a few moments I quietly remembered incidents I had never experienced, events from before I was born. The life of a dwarven ranger.


    As I went down someone else''s memory lane I quietly began to exude a chilling air. All around me, life came to a sudden and chilling halt. Around me every blade of grass, every insect, every tiny woodland animal, was paralyzed with fear. And my own mind began to race.


    I pictured things dying. I pictured all manner of life coming to a startling end, centered around me. I pictured grass being crushed, insects being precisely cut in half, trees being set on fire, birds drowning, and all other manner of death. And so I began to exude extremely heavy and palpable killing intent.


    I activated a few divine powers one after the other, while exuding my paralytic killing intent. The first of my powers to be activated was an ability to create raw, unrefined metal. I then refined it an instant later, before turning it into a spear. The weapon felt light in my hand. I swung it lightly a few times and felt my hands quickly grow used to the weapon''s weight, length, and more. A gift from my class levels as a warrior.


    I opened my eyes and gripped the spear tightly in my hand. I then dropped to the floor and activated another ranger ability. The power to track wildlife as only an immensely skilled hunter could. Of course, tracking a creature wasn''t tough for me. In fact, no being short of a vestige could evade my detection. That said, I still pretended that what I was doing was a necessary part of me hunting in a darkened forest.


    I studied the forest floor and even in the darkness of the night I easily began to notice footprints in the forest floor at my feet. My skin also grew more sensitive to disturbances in the air, and my ears more easily picked up the sounds of shuffling and digging through the dirt beneath me.


    "So this is what it''s like to intentionally track life huh?" I asked, as I scanned my surroundings. My eyes narrowed as I stepped through the nearly pitch-black forest. I felt confident, supremely so. And that was because at the moment I was untouchable, unmatchable. I was a peerless existence within this forest. I was also radiating a nauseating amount of killing intent, so much so that I could almost see it invisibly seeping out of my pores.


    ________________________________________________


    The god and his terrible, sapient shadow stalked the forest. At the moment, though the god looked as human as he had ever deigned to appear, he was perhaps more terrifying than he had ever been.


    For one of the first times in his life, he was making use of the full breadth of his powers. Not only was he actively following the footprints of other lifeforms, but he was also utilizing a weapon he had created using his powers and he was being guarded by his shadowy bodyguard. Plus he was exuding a killing intent so intense that it was almost miasmic and made it impossible for any lesser beast to imagine standing up to him.


    Creatures within a distance of a kilometer of him were overwhelmed with fear to the point that their bowls were at risk of spontaneously emptying. Creatures more than a kilometer away relied on flight or fight instincts to determine their next course of action. His killing intent only petered out at a distance of over two kilometers.


    The spear in his hand was a simple tool, and yet because it was created by him even instantly its quality surpassed the sort of spear created by a dwarven master-smith who poured his heart and soul into a single magnum opus. There was simply that much of a difference between a god of something and a mortal who worked even their entire lives to master it. To call the difference between a god and a mortal unfair would be the understatement of the century.


    Althos slowly and silently trekked across the forest, studying different footprints with a casual ease that suggested that he was a veteran of a thousand hunts. He was not, but swirling inside of him, stored safely in his mind, were the memories of someone who was. A skilled dwarven ranger who managed to reach level 15 in the class before Althos'' theft of his memories.


    Althos used the dwarf''s memories and mixed them with his own knowledge of animals, knowledge that was granted to him in part due to the synergy of the knowledge domain and the animal subdomains, and due to his knowledge of biology and life. After trekking across the forest for a few minutes and glancing at countless sets of footprints, the quiet god eventually picked a single set to follow.


    The footprints the god picked belonged to a deer. He could tell just by quietly studying them for a few moments, and by accessing the memories he had taken from other people. After selecting the footprints the god gripped the spear in his hands tightly and began to poison the spear. The way he did it was by altering his very sweat itself, sweat which seeped onto his spear.


    ________________________________________________


    Without uttering a single word I explored the depths of the forest. I tightly held onto the spear in my hands and casually followed the footprints I had decided to lock onto. They led me deeper ad deeper into the forest, and in doing so caused many woodland creatures to begin to become exposed to my killing intent.


    Even as I physically explored this place, my mind was elsewhere. Or rather my mind was everywhere. Fragments of my mind were in countless dreams, quietly corrupting them.


    At the moment I was having fun inflicting nightmares on people. Tonight I felt like utilizing my powers over diseases to cause people to have to endure a night of restless sleep, and I filled their dreams with instances of themselves or their loved ones suffering from potent and in some cases as of yet nonexistent diseases. I was causing people to endure another kind of dream.


    In some dreams I was utilizing some of the other domains I had influence over. In the cases of the people who had the most wealth and fame in their worlds, which were usually the nobles but in some technologically advanced worlds were celebrities instead, I used my influence over the domains of emotions, faith, the subdomain of art, and the eldritch domain, to slyly tempt people. I was tempting them into thinking countless things.


    In many cases I tempted them on a simple, physical level. In other cases I performed true mind-readings and instead tempted them with things that resonated with their souls. This was often power, or beauty, and in both cases giving them a taste of whatever they sought was easy enough. Dreams, now more than ever, were a place for me to utilize my abilities to a truly terrifying extent.


    Being so active brought a smile to my face and was something I enjoyed very much.


    My powers over dreams had undergone an incredibly significant upgrade when I completed the quest to gain the second tier of influence over dreams and I was reveling in that upgrade.


    [Dream Domain Passive Powers:


    Dream and Nightmare Monarch: Your powers over individual dreams are effectively absolute. If someone is sleeping and in an individual dream you can at will seize control of that dream. This potent power also grants you a small territory in the dreamlands and the nightmare marsh, the dimensions of dreams and nightmares respectively. The first time you enter both dimensions you will be brought to your territories, spaces which you are the god of.


    This potent power also allows you to create portals connecting the waking world with the lands of dreams and nightmares. No other creature can do that, since all other gods are gone and the worlds of dreams and nightmares were one of the areas once controlled by the gods. In your territories within the worlds of dreams and nightmares, you are effectively omnipotent. It''s like being in your divine realm.


    Total Dreamwalking: You can now enter all kinds of dreams. Previously you were restricted to the dreams of humanoids, and this restriction is now gone. This restriction was weakening over time anyway, which was how you could enter the dreams of dragons and even demons, but this does away with it altogether.


    Dreamwalker Dominion: Creatures who can enter dreams, like succubi and incubi, recognize you as the king of dreamwalkers. This may make them serve you outright, but even if it doesn''t by itself it grants you a powerful bargaining tool since through it you can deprive others of their ability to dream walk. Inversely, you can also create powerful spy rings by giving servants of yours the power to dream walk. With this ability you can become the king of dream walking races, if you choose to pursue such a route to power.


    Dream/Nightmare Control: You can control what creatures dream of or have nightmares about even if they are awake. This means you can ensure they have pleasant dreams or terrible nightmares, even as they wander the waking world.


    Dream/Nightmare Trap: With this power, you can trap creatures in dreams. This is an upgraded version of the "Dancing Dreams" active power you acquired when you earned the first tier of influence over dreams. This power prevents someone from waking.


    Dream/Nightmare selection: This power allows you to target individuals and select whether or not they have a pleasant dream or a nightmare. What''s more, you can choose to make this permanent. That means that you can cause someone to suffer from nightmares the rest of their life if you chose to. If you do, this power will persist forever unless you choose to undo it. Nightmares also have the effect of draining sanity, at least if someone is exposed to nightmares night after night.


    Dream/Nightmare Wounds: If you chose, wounds one receives in dreams or nightmares carry over to the waking world. They are, at this level of influence anyway, weakened when transferring over. That said the abilities of their wounds to persist into the waking world can disturb and frighten people far more than they can physically harm people, for now anyway. If you wish, this power can sap sanity instead and those who are sufficiently injured in dreams lose their minds in the waking world. Synergistic power taking from the eldritch domain and the pain subdomain.


    Dream Domain Active Powers:


    Field Of Sloth: This power synergizes properties from the domains of dreams, darkness, and the corruption subdomain. With it, you can target an area shrouded in darkness and cause it to sap the energies of anyone who steps into it. Targets who lose all of their energy sleep for forty-eight hours. It''s useable once per day.


    Field of Nightmares: This power allows you to target entire areas and ensure that those who sleep in them have terrible nightmares. With this ability you can create areas the size of cities and ensure that anytime someone sleeps in them they get no rest from their dreams. This is useable per once twelve hours.]


    These new dream abilities brought a wicked grin to my face. And I was still grinning even when I was close enough to the deer to see the majestic creature. It was sleeping, and I lifted and then hefted my poisoned spear at the thing with ease.


    The deer was a large member of its species. It had brown fur, and an impressive set of antlers. I studied the creature as my spear fell towards it. The spear sliced through the air effortlessly, and that was even without my intervention. The spear collided with and stabbed into the deer''s neck.


    The creature wailed in pain, the pain giving it the strength of will needed to ignore the paralysis effect of my killing intent, but I quietly manipulated the pain it felt to reduce its suffering. After a few seconds I rose a hand and willed the creature to sleep, my mind surging into its mind and stealing all of its energy through a single usage of "Drain". The creature closed its eyes and its last moments were moments of peace where it was allowed to rest.


    Even as the creature passed from this world into whatever afterlife awaited animals, I received a notification alerting me that I had leveled up my assassin class. I silently opened a portal into my divine realm next to me, and without a word a single angel of necromancy rose a lithe hand and fired a spell at the deer I had just slain.


    A bolt of sickly green light shot forth from the portal and into the deer. Even with the spear still embedded in its side, the deer began to steadily and slowly arise, reborn into the embrace of undeath. As the deer struggled to its feet, I rose my hand and willed the spear back into it. There was a smile on my face as I did that.


    Within the portal stood a youthful angel of necromancy. He looked like a fairly young adventurer, dressed in dark robes that obscured most of his features while not hiding his face. He had a clean-shaven face that looked young enough that it was questionable whether or not he needed to shave at all. He had eyes the color of a moonless night, and his complexion was quite pale, giving him the image of a stereotypical novice practitioner of necromancy.


    "Hello Muerte." I said, greeting the angel I had just summoned. The angel turned to face me and grinned widely.


    "Hello Althos! I''ll make sure to take good care of my new pet." He said, greeting me back. He was a lesser angel, and he was also more youthful than many of my other servants. The more youthful angels tended to be more jovial in their reactions to me, especially necromantic angels with the sort of freewheeling mission that Muerte had: to transform the dead into the undead whenever they could.


    The deer slowly walked towards Muerte, having been fully transformed into a simple zombie when it was hit by the necromancer''s spell. It took the creature a few moments to reach us, and then another few moments to step fully through the portal. When it was through I smiled and closed the portal.


    Leveling up brought a smile to my face. I placed the spear I created in my inventory and opened a portal that I then stepped through. As I did I began to think about my next moves. And about the incredibly potent powers I had earned over the star domain.

 202 Cosmic Power

    [Star Domain Passive Powers:


    Astronomical Object Physiology and Creation: This is a distinct and key star domain power. With it you can become or create an astronomical object, though with your current level of influence you can''t become planets, or black or white holes, but you can become comets, meteors, nebulae, asteroids, and stars.


    This power can be used to wipe out entire planets or to help alter and configure star systems to your liking. Becoming a star doesn''t necessarily mean becoming as big as the biggest or smallest star, but it certainly could. You could also become bigger than the biggest or smaller than the smallest stars in the universe.


    Astronomical Combat: A power derived from "Astronomical Object Physiology and Creation" this power allows you to attack utilizing the energies and properties of astronomical objects. This means you can attack using solar energy, lunar energy, and more energies related to the bodies found in space. Unleashing a small solar flare, something you can do now, is probably the easiest unique attack you can do with this power but this also means you can unleash things like solar beams and lunar blades at will.


    Corona Aura and Manipulation: This grants you an aura of plasma, exactly like the one possessed by stars. You can also attack with this aura, and you can manipulate the coronas of stars you control.


    Cosmic Element Manipulation and Generation: You can manipulate cosmic elements. These elements are often supercharged compared to elements found on or in planets. An example of this includes the fact that cosmic winds, which move at super-sonic speeds and ferry particles throughout the cosmos.


    Cosmic Ray Generation and Manipulation: You can grant and manipulate cosmic rays, high-energy protons and atomic nuclei which move through space at nearly the speed of light.


    Cosmic Weather Manipulation and Generation: You can manipulate and generate cosmic weather, which includes things like solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and even the ambient temperature of space.


    Nebulae Manipulation and Generation: You can generate and control nebulae, enormous clouds of dust and gas tens to hundreds of light-years across that can be the birthplaces of stars and planets. You can become a living nebula if you so wish, spreading yourself hundreds of light-years out and becoming a living being of gases and dust.


    Stardust Manipulation And Generation: You can generate and manipulate stardust, refractory dust grains that condensed from cooling ejected gases from individual presolar stars and incorporated into clouds from which solar systems condensed.


    You can also destroy stars and moons, which would decimate life on local planets and send the planets themselves flying out into space.


    Star Domain Active Power:


    Localized Black Hole: This once per month attack allows you to create a miniaturized black hole with a range you set. This will suck up just about anything that isn''t magically protected by magic cast by divinities.]


    ________________________________________________


    "This... This is power." I muttered as I mulled over the newest powers I had acquired. I could feel my body more efficiently absorbing lunar energies even as I considered the powers that now lurked within me.


    I glanced at my fist and closed it. There was a grin on my face as I did so. I could feel the power of space settling within my soul. As I quietly adjusted to my new powers and power I felt my mind synchronizing with the stars I had visited. Without words I could feel my connection to the stars themselves and I shuddered as I felt it wash over me. I now possessed power beyond what I had imagined possible even in my wildest, most ambitious visions of glory.


    I could create or destroy stars themselves! I had the power to become a star within my soul, and at will could take on forms larger than planets. That was the sort of power that expanded my conception of what was possible even for a god.


    Even as I mulled over what was possible, a new icon appeared at the edge of my vision. It had been a long time since I had really needed one of them, and this one was no exception to that: it was a symbol for star manipulation. It was an icon in the shape of a six-sided star. A part of me was curious as to the raw destructive power such an ability would grant me, but for now I was content to ignore it.


    These new powers made me a cosmic entity in the most real sense possible at the moment. I would only become an even more cosmic entity as I gained greater power over the star domain, other domains such as the physics domain, and subdomains such as the technology subdomain.


    I closed my eyes and willed actual sunlight out of myself as a test for my solar and stellar capabilities. When I opened my eyes a heartbeat later I was pleasantly delighted, but not surprised, to see the forest floor brightly illuminated, even as pure sunlight exuded out of my very pores.


    Unfiltered, abundant, but thankfully not hot sunlight escaped from me. It lit the forest floor that surrounded me in a natural and divine glow that illuminated every single corner of the area around me. And as it did I studied the area that surrounded me.


    ________________________________________________


    The god was silent as light began to flood out of him. It was raw sunlight, sunlight that blindingly lit up every blade of grass and every nanometer of tree bark that surrounded him. The light fed the plants or at least the ones that used photosynthesis, as efficiently as normal sunlight fed them. The majority of the floral lifeforms that surrounded the god were almost grateful to the deity as they basked in his light. He was so excited that he quietly grew in height, becoming an entire meter taller over the course of forty-five seconds.


    This was the first time the god was unleashing actual sunlight even though it wasn''t the first time he had unleashed light. Back on his homeworld, where much of the planet''s continental crust was hallow, he had frequently unleashed light to illuminate caverns and to create safe spaces within the planet''s underground regions. That said, the god himself felt the difference in power and capabilities between what he was unleashing now and what he had unleashed in the past. It was incredible.


    The power he felt radiating out of his pores blew his mind more than anything ever had before. In his mind, this was redefining power itself as this sort of power was incomparable to the poultry powers he possessed until now. Within himself he possessed the ability to create or destroy objects bigger than planets, and he could unleash beams and attacks that were over a million degrees in celsius.


    Beyond just the ability to unleash unimaginably destructive beam attacks, he had gained other new ways to destroy than ever before. One brutal example was that if he wanted too he could now radiate light and that light itself could burn and destroy his enemies who made the mistake of existing near him.


    That ability was a particularly nasty synergistic ability he gained an awareness of while studying new synergistic powers he had gained as a consequence of his newfound control over stars themselves. It was a triple synergistic power that took from the domains of destruction, light, and stars. And it was separate from him just manually making the temperature around him millions of degrees, another thing he could do if he wanted.


    The god was still and silent as he continued to radiate pure sunlight in an omnidirectional wave around him. He didn''t let it radiate particularly far, but he did let it go on for several minutes before eventually ceasing to radiate the light.


    ________________________________________________


    After a few minutes of quiet introspection, minutes in which I mentally checked myself out for new and even greater synergistic powers, I spent a second to will the light radiating out of myself to stop. Darkness quickly crept back into the part of the forest I was located in, and as it crept towards me I opened and stepped into a portal that led me back to my submerged, subterranean temple home.


    I went from standing in a rapidly darkening forest to swimming in the depths of a submerged temple devoted to me as an aquatic and monstrous god. This was my favorite place in all of Htrae and I was quite happy to be back.


    The temple that surrounded me was massive for my current form. It was built, by me, to accommodate one of my more monstrous visages: that of a massive sea-serpent. That said I stayed in my smaller, human disguise for now.


    I was within one of the deeper chambers and I was on the temple''s floor, something which was quite rare for me. All around me stood statues of men and women, statues that were all once living people. The statues were of Deep-Ones, humans whose sanity I had take mere moments after their creation and transformed into aquatic, pious worshipers of mine.


    I walked over to one of the statues and began to study it. I stood mere meters from the thing and I lightly touched its face. The statue depicted a male deep one, an unusually burly and well-built member of his kind. He was perfectly encased in stone, and unless I ever sought to use him for something, would spend the rest of time in that form. He had volunteered for this during the months-long period in which I was building cults all over the cosmos. The creature had been eager to serve me and like all other abominations in my cult was one of my fanatical worshipers.


    The deep-one was a muscular member of his normally lithe species. He stood a few meters tall, towering over them and appearing to be far, far older than he actually was. Deep-Ones didn''t die of old age and kept growing throughout their immortal lives. I had physically aged this particular Deep-One because I liked the idea of him positively towering over anyone I commanded him to interact with and in doing so he became incredibly tall.


    In my current form, he and I were the same height but in my normal human form, he would have been almost an entire meter taller than me. That was an impressive feat because I was not a short man in my usual human form. He was nude from the waist up and wore a small loincloth that I had made water-proof using my powers over clothing months ago.


    I considered freeing him from his prison, just to have some company, but quickly decided against it. The creature was a fanatical brute who loved to obey me, but he wasn''t very smart. He wouldn''t have made for a good conversationalist. That said... I was worshiped by countless creatures. I knew plenty of fantastic conversationalists.


    I opened a portal into my divine realm, specifically the archives I had created for angels of knowledge and angels of law to sit down and archive all they knew, and then, someday, all I knew. I peered into the portal and saw a young, female angel who was scribbling away in a journal.


    She was a youthful thing with dark hair and darker features. Even her wings were jet black, which was a strikingly pretty color for wings. I silently observed her and chuckled, inwardly, at her focus and her devotion to her task. After a few moments I spoke, my voice penetrating the portal and despite coming from me while I was within the water came across loud and clear to the angel thanks to my powers over sound.


    "Hello! Why don''t you take a break from your task and come converse with me?" I asked her, startling the young angel. She leaped as she heard my voice and turned to her left in search of me. My powers over sound caused her to not be sure where I was. I allowed her to look around in confusion before clearing my throat and causing her to look to her right and see me, in the portal.


    As she turned to face me she began to think of a question to ask. I could read her mind effortlessly, even though she was an angel, since she was a member of my angelic host. I chuckled and spoke again before she could verbalize her question.


    "You can take a break. Plus, I''m your god. If I suggest you take a break and come chat with me, you can come and chat with me." I told her, reassuring her effortlessly. She looked at me, her dark brown eyes peering into my currently space-black ones. We stared into each other''s eyes for a few moments before she eventually nodded at me and got up and walked into the portal.


    ________________________________________________


    She was fearless. She had no hesitation once she was assured it was fine for her to take a break, even though I was in a submerged temple. She passed through the portal and found herself face to face with me.


    She was dressed in a white robe and kept a single, simple book on her at all times. Both her robe and her book were waterproof and I granted the angel the ability to breathe underwater even as she approached me. When she was on my side of the portal I closed it, and nodded at her. She nodded back and began to speak.


    "Greetings lord-god." She said, her voice filled with warmth. Her eyes, like her hair and wings, were dark, but there was a vitality there that lesser eyes would not have been able to pick up on. I smiled at her and began to speak.


    "Hello Ariel." I replied back, greeting the angel warmly. I knew her name even though we had never conversed before. I knew the names, and much, much more, about every single angel who was in my angelic host. She beamed at me upon hearing her name escape my lips.


    The angel was a low-tiered angel of knowledge but even at a low-tier she undoubtedly knew more individual things than I did. She was thousands of years old, and had worked for dozens of nations across as many worlds during her lifetime.


    "What would you like to converse about, lord-god?" She asked me, her voice sounding surprisingly chipper given the overall darkness of her appearance. It, like her robes, was light and bright.


    I was silent and considered her question for a few moments. My expression darkened as I did. There was so much I didn''t know, and a lot I wanted to learn about. I also knew that the angel would keep no secrets from me, nor would she leave a question of mine unanswered. Not if she could help it anyway. After a few moments, I finally had an answer to her question.


    "I was curious if you could tell me what you knew about the dimension known as the Wildlands." I told her, knowing extremely little about it aside from its status as the home of the Salvages, chaotic extraplanar entities I could summon if I ever felt like gaining the service of chaotic creatures. Ariel smiled as she heard my question and opened up her book, reading a few lines before beginning to speak.

 203 Dimensional Knowledge

    "The dimension that is now known as the Wildlands is the birthplace of nature itself. Or at least it''s this universe''s birthplace of nature. It is a dimension that is the home and birthplace of two especially powerful collectives, the fey, and salvajes." Ariel revealed, causing my eyes to widen in shock. The angel smiled when she revealed this, smiling not in response to her own words but rather as a response to my physical response to her words.


    "So I see those are creatures you''ve heard of." She said, somewhat jokingly. I looked at her and chuckled, before beginning to nod.


    "I have heard of both fey and salvajes. I actually have the quest I need to complete to become an archfey." I revealed, speaking frankly to the angel. This time her eyes widened in shock. And I watched as the wheels began to turn, metaphorically of course, in her mind. In a matter of seconds her eyes narrowed and she began to nod at me, before sighing embarrassedly.


    "I... had forgotten about your ''More Than Meets The Eye'' trait." She confessed after she spent perhaps twelve seconds changing her facial expressions and recalling what she knew about me. I had been forthright with my angels, during the hours I had spent assigning angels to various tasks, telling them about the myriad cults I had founded, my vast ambitions, and even the strange nature of both my relationships with abominations and my extremely odd wild traits. At the time I had thought about the risks of revealing this to the angels but considered it a calculated decision on my part to ensure that we welcomed even the angels of destruction and eldritch angels who had come to serve me.


    "So... You can already become an archfey? That''s impressive." Ariel said, a few seconds later. There was a bright grin on the young angel''s face. She was trying to hide it for some reason, but she was also deeply impressed. I wondered for a moment if she were trying to hide how awestruck she was.


    For a second I considered how to proceed. I knew that I could act haughty and mighty and be arrogant, channeling my godly pride. I also knew that if I wanted I could simply be honest, humble, and pursue knowledge. I debated the two options, aware that others also existed but I didn''t feel like mulling over every single possibility. Perhaps five seconds passed before I came to the conclusion that it was better for me to seek knowledge than to act proud. In response to that decision, I chuckled at the angel''s remarks and began to speak again.


    "Yes I can. But I am already an elemental overlord, and in all honesty I don''t know a tremendous amount about the differences between say an elemental overlord and an archfey." I confessed, opting to take advantage of the nature of knowledge angels, particularly in regards to how they served their divine lords. Ariel''s eyes began to glow with delight due to her sensing an opportunity to teach her master something new.


    "One past archfey that my mother wrote about was the known as the duke of droughts. He was a potent archfey who lived in a desert and made a palace made of glass. He held considerable power over droughts, dehydration, sands, and erosion and ruled over a court of desert-dwelling fey." Ariel told me, potent pride emanating from her gaze. She was quite proud of her knowledge, and she was also eager to share what she knew.


    "To further illustrate the differences between an archfey and an elemental overlord, an elemental overlord of the earth such as the long-dead elemental princess of earth named Dunya held powers over the earth itself but she wasn''t a higher being who had influence over autumn and thus she could do little to manipulate a harvest." Ariel declared. I listened to her thoughtful explanation and was grateful to finally have someone who could teach me about other higher beings.


    "So that''s the difference! How amusing." I said in response to her words, grinning as I thought about them. I closed my eyes as I absorbed the ramifications of what I had just been told. I also thought about the seasons themselves. Autumn with its ties to the harvest, summer with its ties to growth, spring with its ties to rebirth and renewal, and winter with its ties to coldness and solitude. As well as the more direct seasons, the dry season and the wet season. Ariel studied me, curiously watching my reactions to acquiring more knowledge. After a few moments of shared, comfortable silence, the angel spoke again and added more to her previous explanations.


    "Elemental overlords, though capable of creating spirits were real and solid creatures. They were material beings. That is... less the case with archfey. Archfey, like lesser fey, were both real and spiritual. That will mostly likely be the case with you when you become an archfey." The knowledgeable angel explained, studying me for a moment. I opened my eyes and gazed back at her.


    I silently began to picture the Wildlands in my mind for the first time. I had yet to try and interact with any Salvajes, though a few worshipped me, and I had had exceptionally few interactions with fey. I knew, due to having taken knowledge from some of my elven worshipers, that elves were once fey but weren''t anymore. Some suspected that dwarves and gnomes also shared that unusual origin. All three species, elves, dwarves, and gnomes, were now classified as both mortals and humanoids, which differed from the classifications of fey. After a few moments though I began to think of other things.


    "What do you know about Infernius?" I asked her, curious as to what she knew about the home of devils, lawful evil extraplanars who I knew to be fixated on tradition and order. The part of me that was determined to build an empire was actually quite fond of devils and their penchant for structure, organization, and hierarchy. They reminded me a bit of hymenopteran insects. Ariel took another glance at her book, just as she had earlier, and began to speak this time keeping her eyes glued to the thing while she spoke.


    "Infernius is an orderly world even now, in the wake of the catastrophe that it suffered in losing the higher beings who governed over devil-kind. The dimension itself is made up of an enormous planet and the planet''s surface is just one small part of the entire dimension." Ariel revealed.


    "The surface is covered in technology that was automated long ago to access to deeper portions of the enigmatic dimension. Devils lurk only underneath the planet''s surface, hidden away from prying eyes that would disrupt their plots. That said, they are suffering from their own unique circumstances. Archdevils, the lords of their home dimension, served a unique and irreplicable role in the lifespan of a devil. And since there are no current archdevils... Well life in Infernius has been different since the end of the mythic age." Ariel explained, mysteriously. There was an annoyed look on her face due to her own knowledge being incomplete.


    I chuckled and soothed her, using my powers over emotions to calm her down. I could sense legitimate annoyance and surprise coming off of her. I knew even without prying that her own knowledge was incomplete. This information, incomplete as it was, was still quite informative and deeply intriguing to me. I now knew of a mystery that was evidently even a mystery to at least low-ranking angels of knowledge. Impressively, even in the wake of my powers the angel managed to still be frustrated. I could sense it in her body language.


    I studied her for a few moments and then I realized I could try something that for me might have been a bit out there. I could use my words to comfort her! I knew that she''d listen to the advice I gave and even if I failed I could try a different route without much worry. So I spent a moment silently wondering what to say, before composing something that I thought struck that fine line between profound and stupid.


    "It''s okay to not know everything. I am a god of knowledge and there is... so much that I do not know. I do not let that hold me back. I use it to fuel my search for knowledge. Do not let ignorance, even your own, weigh you down. Be motivated by what you do not know, and seek to lessen what is unknown to you." I told the angel, utilizing my words to try and comfort her. I watched her size up my words and after a few moments, she began to relax. She looked at me and smiled, almost glowing as she was visibly heartened by my words.


    "Thank you. It is a bit hard to not get frustrated when I come across something that I don''t know, but at the same time you are right when you say I should be motivated to uncover what is beyond my comprehension." The angel told me, smiling more and more as she spoke. Each word that left her lips was spoken with more motivation and heart than the last.


    I grinned at her, excited that my words had had their intended effect. And so she and I began to converse even more.


    For the next few hours we''d exchange information. I''d spend the rest of the night learning from her, as much as she''d learn from me. And when day came, at least for the world above, I opened a portal back home for the knowledgeable angel and wished a good day with a bit of sadness.


    She was perhaps the most knowledgeable creature I had met to date, and in speaking with her I gained a healthy amount of needed knowledge about the universe I lived in. Even though I was fond of learning from her, I knew she had an important task to do and I was determined to not get in the way of the very task that I had assigned her. She respectfully departed from the mortal plane, and stepped through the portal back into the angelic city I had created to house her kind.


    ________________________________________________


    A few minutes after the angel departed from my home, or at least the home I possessed in this world, I floated silently through my temple. I was alone again, but I wasn''t idle. I was deep in thought. I was musing over Ariel''s feelings.


    "So that''s what an angel of knowledge is like huh?" I asked myself, rhetorically. I could sense her passion and her curiosity, but interestingly only when she came across something she didn''t know. I had quite liked helping her without my powers. It felt... good to help her, to console her in her moment of frustration.


    "I wonder if the old gods of goodness ever had to do such things..." I mused, amused at the thought of a being as powerful as a god consoling a mortal in a moment of weakness or defeat. I could see a weaker, more local god doing such a thing for a close worshiper but I struggled with the thought of a powerful deity taking time to comfort a lone worshiper of theirs, even though such an action would probably have been the "right thing to do".


    Deities were, and in my case are, entities that existed on a scale unimaginable to mortals. Only the very lowliest of us had not been perpetually aware of quintillions of events going on at once. Even ones as comparatively weak as I must be, as a mere lesser deity, were still capable of a truly staggering amount of feats and could in one breathe lay waste to entire civilizations, while in the next usher in a new golden age for countless others.


    In the rare moments I stopped to think about what real power, the power of even an intermediate god, must be like I found it almost unimaginable. From time to time I did think about what it must have been like in the distant past when gods freely roamed the cosmos. Imagining the raw intensity of their powers was challenging for me, because I possessed influence over numerous domains and subdomains but only the first tier of influence over them and was already so powerful.


    Morehammer was my hated foe but he was also once a greater deity and the overgod if, or at least maximally powerful deity of blacksmithing. At my current level of power I could instantly make every suit of armor and every weapon an army even billion''s strong could every need. And I possessed the lowest possible amount of influence over the subdomain. I shuddered at the darkly curious thoughts I had about the limits of Morehammer''s former power. And he wasn''t the only vestige in existence either.


    Somewhere in the universe or maybe in the multiverse lurked vestiges who were made from the leftover energies of gods of chaos, destruction, creation, and other truly terrifying domains and subdomains. It was entirely possible that some of them were even made from former overgods, and in a few cases maybe even true overgods who lorded over an entire alignment.


    I wanted to experience such power myself, even if the thought of it was scary. I wanted to know what it would be to have total control over a domain or subdomain and to stand atop the hierarchy of the gods. Who knows... such power could be great enough to grant me the ability to create and destroy entire universes.


    However for me to reach the mighty and distant pinnacle I wanted to reach I would need to focus. I would need to work hard and I would need to be smart. I realized that and focusing on it helped me clear my mind. I knew what I needed to do next to continue to inch towards the pinnacle of power that I wanted to reach one day. To begin to inch towards that goal I focused on one of the more important domains I held influence over: the domain of magic.


    Completing its quest would no doubt prove to be a challenge, but one that I believed I could achieve. To begin to complete the quest I opened a one-way portal in front of me with a special destination: the home of Saoirse Finigan, a member of the Finigan family and a worshipper of mine. I would need an educator on my side if I were to complete the quest to gain more influence over the incredibly mighty domain of magic.

 204 Education

    The portal itself was a swirling circular mass a few meters tall and wide. It interrupted and distorted the temple around it, even though it floated in an empty portion of the temple. The portal was composed of both divine and arcane energies and particles composed of such energies visibly infused the water surrounding the portal, creating an area that would have been difficult for a mortal or other lesser being to look at for a long period of time.


    On the other side of the portal was a tiny house that was painted a tame burgundy color. It was a quaint dwelling, perfectly suited for families of two or three people. It was a single-story building, and I had plopped my portal down right in front of its front entrance. I knew, due to my immense detection abilities, that Saoirse and her boyfriend were currently eating breakfast.


    As I closed in on the portal I mentally inspected myself, specifically for the abilities I had activated. I was going to visit a worshiper of mine and I wasn''t about to hide from or understate my own powers. Especially since I wanted her to serve me in a more direct capacity than she was at the moment. I wanted to make a big statement and show her the power and glory that came with serving me.


    I had activated my peace aura, my absolute beauty power, and even utilized my power over pheromones to ensure that no one near me would be capable of violence. I also layered a few of my divine presence powers onto myself as well. I wanted the mortals to make the choice to come to me willingly, but I wasn''t about to allow them to be violent towards me, nor was I about to allow them to be violent towards each other which was far more likely given what I was asking Saoirse to do.


    I grabbed the edges of the portal and pulled myself through it silently, my eyes aglow with delight.


    ________________________________________________


    With but a single forceful pull I found myself on the other side of the portal. I turned around, faced the shimmering thing, and closed it with but a glance. The portal vanished from existence, closing in on itself and making a gentle popping sound as it winked out of reality. For a moment I wondered if other gods at my level of power had as much control over portals I currently have, or if this had something to do with my powers over freedom and chaos. But I only allowed myself to be distracted for a moment, turning back towards the small house I had appeared in front of refocused and ready to go.


    The closer I got to the door, a solid slab of wood with no visible peephole, the more I began to think about a number of different things. One of the biggest ones was the nature of magic itself.


    "Magic grants mortals a remarkable power." I mused internally, finding its very existence peculiar given the multiverse''s apparent leanings towards order and structure. Magic gave mortals a tool with which they could edit and modify reality in very unorderly ways. As I mused on this I began to hear a scattering of soft chuckles from within me, or rather within the portion of myself where domains and subdomains seemed content to dwell. It was at that moment that I heard a powerful voice speak, its words echoing and reverberating throughout my mind.


    "How nice of you to finally devote some serious thought about me!" The voice said, sounding annoyed which was odd given just how powerful the voice itself was. It wouldn''t have taken a genius to realize that the voice belonged to the domain of magic.


    "I am the product of chaos! I am a recurse by which mortals can rise up against an unfair cosmos and challenge their destinies." The domain declared, proudly. I chuckled internally at this haughty explanation. That said, magic being the product of the domain of chaos made sense. Though I suspected that there was more to that story than there appeared to be at a glance.


    "If you''re the product of the chaos domain then how come there are classes that revolve around magic? The class system is a product of order." I pointed out, curious to hear it''s explanation for that discrepancy. I heard it gasp and had to suppress a smile.


    "Well... If you MUST know," The domain began, speaking indignantly. "I am the product of a deal that was struck between the domains of neutrality, chaos, and law. I and my children are direct products of chaos but we have restrictions imposed on us by the other two domains. The classes and the entire concept of ''schools'' of magic are products of order." The concept told me, speaking passionately.


    "The idea of spiritual energy being used as fuel for my power is a particularly clever product of the domain of neutrality, as a way to ensure that even abuses of my power must be done creatively." The domain confessed, revealing significant facts underpinning the nature of at least this universe, if not the entire multiverse. And then I heard a chuckle.


    "You are not learning great secrets you know. This is information that gods can readily learn." The magic domain revealed, and I could hear a snarky smirk in its voice. There was an irritating smugness in its words that annoyed me. That said, in response to its smugness I had a question that might succeed in taking the smile out of its words.


    "Oh? I''m not learning ''great secrets'' by gaining an understanding of the fundamental structures and order underpinning the universe? Fine, in that case maybe I''ll learn a ''great secret'' right now. Why does my ''details'' page about you say that there are twenty schools of magic but then only outline the basics of 17 of them?" I asked, questioning a discrepancy I was first exposed to when I was only two days old. And this question actually did cause the domain to exhale a sigh of annoyance.


    "So... You noticed?" The domain asked, evidently caught off guard by my question. I chuckled and nodded while sending the energy of the action to the domain in the form of mental and emotional energy.


    I knocked on the door while the domain readied a response to my nodding. The sound of my fit on the wood of the door resounded loudly throughout the small house in front of me. I was initially met with silence, or rather silence for mortals. I was capable of hearing the furtive whispers of the couple in the kitchen loud and clear, and the hammering of their hearts as they wondered who was paying them a visit early in the morning. While the couple wondered who was at their door, the magic domain spoke again.


    "I am glad you noticed, but damn you waited a long time to try and follow up on that... Not at all becoming of a god of knowledge." The domain complained. It annoyed me but I couldn''t fault the remarks as they were factually correct even if and in some ways especially since I was annoyed by them.


    "The undisclosed three schools are three supreme schools of magic. They are forms of magic that are simply beyond the ken of mortals, even working in tandem. Non-mortals may be able to scratch the surface of such schools of magic but they could never master them. Higher beings on the other hand..." The domain revealed, whispering the words conspiratorially. There was an edge of excitement in its voice as if it were somehow, subtly setting things in motion beyond my ability to understand. Which... it very well might have been.


    The magic domain was a potent domain that appears to have birthed several, at least somewhat, reality-bending subdomains. I didn''t know how powerful it was, and I knew that at least some domains could perform interventions of their own accord. It was possible that the domain was in the middle of setting something up. Though if it were it was probably something far away. The so-called "Supreme schools of magic"... I wondered how supreme they must have been, and how far off from gaining any real knowledge of them I must have been. Any further thoughts I might have had on the matter were interrupted before they began by the intrusion of new noises. Ones coming from the human-inhabited household.


    It was only at this point that I heard footsteps begin to come my way. I heard the soft footfalls of two sets of feet approaching me. Both Saoirse and her boyfriend were approaching me. I grinned as they edged ever closer to the door and then stopped. I could hear their muscles twitch and the soft sounds they made as they stretched their necks looking downwards to see if they spotted my shadow.


    For a moment I considered actually ordering my shadow to withdraw from view as I possessed control over it. That said I never issue that command. Instead, I solemnly and stoically waited for the couple to open the door.


    A few moments passed where all I focused on was their muttered words. They were in the middle of a heated argument.


    ________________________________________________


    "Are you seriously telling me to open this door?" Brandon whispered, angrily. There was a look of frustration on his face. His brown eyes blazed with fury at the thought of doing what his girlfriend suggested he do.


    Saoirse looked at him and scowled. She was not the rude type, and she had no idea who was behind the closed door.


    "Yes! It''s the polite thing to do." She said, sternly. Her eyes blazed with her own frustration and anger at her boyfriend''s rudeness and caution. She was fearless and had always been. He wasn''t. This was but one example of the frequent differences of opinions the two of them had had over the course of their years-long relationship.


    The two stared at each other for a moment. Which then extended into another moment. And went on for a few more. It was exceedingly awkward, especially since the two of them were dead silent.


    The moments seemed to stretch on for eternity. As they gazed angrily into each other''s eyes, dozens of thoughts and memories flooded their minds. Within the confines of the house, so long as the door was closed, they were safe from Althos'' powers. Or rather he allowed them to be safe from his powers. He was aware of their squabble, and on the other side of the door he was quietly amused at their expense.


    The god silently waited for them to act. For one of them to break the awkward impasse they were in. And when it was Saoirse he was unsurprised. That said, internally he still applauded her courage. He sensed the slightest twitching of her muscles as she began to lunge for the door.


    She moved, catlike in her speed and agility, for the door. She was smaller than her boyfriend and was able to catch him off-guard, even ducking underneath his attempt to stop her. On the other side of the door, the god who awaited them took a step back and smiled even as the young teacher managed to put her hand on the doorknob and turn it, all while pushing the door open. Althos chuckled at this and watched as the door opened.


    As the door opened and Saoirse laid her eyes on Althos once again, for the fourth time since he had invaded the home of her father, she began to smile. Althos'' own grin widened at the sight of hers. Brandon, Saoirse''s boyfriend, scowled at the pair and his expression darkened.


    "Saoirse... Who is this? Do you know him?" He asked, concern seeping into his voice. Jealousy too. And then for a moment, a look of confusion crossed his face as well. A heartbeat later a look of realization stormed across his brow. And this one continued to darken his features. The look of realization wasn''t one of delight, but rather one of horror.


    "This is... Him, isn''t it?" He asked. There was something especially venomous about the way that the man uttered the word "him", so much so that Althos audibly chuckled.


    Althos took a step forward and Brandon interposed himself between Saoirse and the god, stepping right where the once closed door had been. Althos sensed the jealousy and hatred of him that the mortal man felt deep in his soul. It was a curious mixture of emotions and one that the god had never truly felt directed towards himself specifically. It amused him to be the subject of such raw emotions and yet be so unthreatened by the one who felt them.


    "Don''t take one step closer..." The man uttered, his eyes filled with determination to stand between the god and the person he knew was the god''s target: Saoirse. Althos, who in his current form towered above the mortal, looked down on the man and smiled pleasantly. Internally, the god wondered how to handle this. A part of him considered violence, after all violence mixed with the god''s power over mortal memories gave the god the smoothest path forward. But he didn''t leap to smite the audacious mortal.


    Unchecked, unnecessary violence was never the god''s style unless it came with the acquisition of more power as a direct consequence. After a few moments, Althos made eye contact with the mortal and began to read his mind.

 205 Seals And Senses

    He stood between Saoirse and me, and there was a determined look on his face. I silently looked at him and activated "Ascencion". His eyes widened as he felt my power wash over him and alert him to the reality that I was what I said I was. His eyes filled with the blue screen that physically represented the system itself, as whatever link he had to it was suddenly updated to reflect the truth of my existence. He staggered back, caught off guard by the reality of my existence.


    ________________________________________________


    Brandon''s mind was immediately and easily overwhelmed by Althos'' abrupt usage of one of his more fun abilities. The power, using the might of the truth of the god''s existence, override any doubt or skepticism that Brandon had towards the veracity of the claims made by his girlfriend many weeks ago.


    The power surged into him like a tidal wave, and for a few moments he was lost in the glory of the new information he possessed. This didn''t change how he felt about Althos, but it did fill him with indescribable awe that he couldn''t help but aim at the deity.


    His system''s words filled his mind''s eye as he read through a new notification. This notification proclaimed the glory of the god of order and peace, Althos. It was selective though, focusing on the dark god that towered over Brandon as a god of order and peace, and not as a god of war, chaos, destruction, and lust.


    As this was going on, Althos wasn''t sitting idly by. Indeed, the god had come up with a creative way to punish the man for his hateful hubris and skepticism of his girlfriend''s claims.


    ________________________________________________


    As Brandon reeled back and was slowly beginning to come to his senses I rose a single hand and pointed it at him. This was, as was the case for many of my other powers, a needless display but it was useful for thematic and dramatic purposes.


    I possessed a particularly fun ability that I hadn''t utilized before. Like "Ascencion" it was a law domain power entitled "Seal mastery" and with it I could punish Brandon for his unkind and inconsiderate behavior.


    "Brandon... You have been quite sinful." I said, my eyes opening wider and wider and as I began to modify what the little human could see.


    One of my abilities, an enchantment subdomain ability entitled "Sense manipulation", allowed me to control what mortals perceived. And with it I could have a lot of fun. I silently activated it, targeting Brandon and preparing to change his life. The man''s eyes went wide and he stiffened, before freezing entirely with an eerie and surprised look on his face.


    I silently did one single thing before refocusing for a moment. I focused fully on Brandon and "created" an illusionary space to house his consciousness while he was under the effect of my power. Creating this space was simple, all it took was for me to envision there being an endless space to house his senses and it came into being. I threw his consciousness there, and then refocused on the world around me. For a moment anyway.


    I turned to Saoirse and smiled. There was a confidence and some mischief in my grin that left the kind-hearted human a bit unsettled. Even from our limited interactions, she could tell that gods, or at least I, was a creature of extremes.


    That said I wasn''t going to kill Brandon. I didn''t even plan to hurt him. But I stayed silent. For now I was channeling a few rarely used aspects of myself: my role as a god of trickery, as a god of enchantment, and as a god of law. I turned back to Brandon and began to focus anew, ready to deal with the human.


    ________________________________________________


    Brandon, as far as he could perceive, was now in a massive and blank black space. It wasn''t unlike the odd space I found myself in at the beginning of my existence, the odd void I spent my first few moments in. In this space he was naked and he realized this after he spent a few moments searching his surroundings and then happened to glance downward.


    Brandon was pale, like many of the humans in this country were. He was also lightly muscular and in this void-like space I had created. He had light green eyes and soft-looking brown hair. I studied him, invisibly in the eerie area I had created to house his consciousness, before beginning to decide how I ought to manifest.


    Deciding how I ought to manifest took me only a second. I figured I ought to lean into my current, chosen role as a god of order and law. That was, after all, the aspect of myself I was currently channeling in my interactions with Saoirse and her boyfriend. I created a face of impossible, androgynous beauty, one with sharp angular features and with perfect symmetry. That face, ethereal and supernatural in its beauty, was the one that appeared before Brandon.


    For a moment there was silence. I didn''t speak through my unusual form, and Brandon took in the appearance of the androgynous face that appeared before him. Brandon stared at the face, an awe-struck look on his face and the face starred back with eyes like sapphires. The face was serene, unjudgemental, and curious. And I allowed their staring contest to continue uninterrupted for a few seconds before deciding to make the first move.


    "Brandon... For your sinful behavior, you will be judged." I declared, my voice washing over the human and causing him to shudder even as he watched the face I had created with an awed expression on his face. He was silent for a moment before he managed to gather up his courage and speak, his voice trembling as he spoke.


    "But wait, what is ''sinful behavior''? I don''t know what that means!" He said, courageously questioning my judgment. I chuckled, and the sound escaped the lips of the face I had constructed.


    "Sins are behaviors that have been deemed immoral by a divine authority. By me. I am the god of order, hierarchy, and authority. The lord of law. And your petty hatred and jealousy of me is sinful." I proclaimed, speaking authoritatively. Brandon froze when he heard this, knowing that I was speaking truthfully and there was little of substance he could say in his defense.


    "I am the emperor of emperors, the lord of law. You are guilty of sinning and more than that your sins are quite grievous: you have sinned against me directly. You shall be punished." I informed the man, my voice audible across the entirety of the void I had created. Fear seized Brandon''s heart, and I softly chuckled.


    "Your punishment shall fit your crime. Each time jealously and other envious thoughts enter your mind and seize your heart, you shall endure pain equivalent to the level of jealousy you are feeling. You must learn to banish jealousy and envy from your life, otherwise for the rest of your life your sins will follow you." I warned the man, as I activated my power over seals and began to create one on him. His face began to contort as he felt the seal beginning to emerge.


    "Brandon... You shall be marked, with a seal, and until you get your envious thoughts under control and take stock of your heart you shall be haunted by your sins." I proclaimed, speaking mightily. I targeted him with the seals I had envisioned in my mind, and the power fully manifested all at once.


    On his naked body, right above his groin, a strange tattoo suddenly burned its way onto his flesh. He hissed as his flesh sizzled, and as the eldritch marking appeared. I felt his pain, and ignored the notification that appeared in my mind which informed me to the pain he was feeling.


    The tattoo was visually distinct. It was a simple design, the actual tattoo consisted of two parallel lines going straight up for a few centimeters, one was dark blue and the other was bright yellow. I studied it curiously, a confident grin on my face as I did so. The illusionary face that had "physically" manifested in front of the man kept its eyes glued to his face, even as tears began to stream down his cheeks.


    Hatred blazed in his eyes, which glared at the face I had manifested as in front of him. I aimed a single mind-blast at him, further spiking the pain he felt and causing him to experience a severe amount of pain all at once.


    "Learn to control your hatred and envy. Otherwise... I suppose you''ll have to learn to live with the pain you''re experiencing at the moment." I warned, my voice filling his mind. I made the beautiful face I had constructed glare at him, its eyebrows furrowing and lips twisting in a sneer.


    ________________________________________________


    Back in the real world, the world outside of the illusionary void I had created for Brandon, I smiled at Saoirse. I let myself into her mind and I felt the swirling mixture of emotions she was feeling at the moment. I felt her concern, her relief, her excitement, and other emotions deep within her. She was concerned about her boyfriend, she was relieved someone was doing something about his envious heart, her excitement at my proximity, and she felt other emotions that she tried to keep buried deep down within her heart. I also sensed her curiosity about why I had chosen now to appear in front of her.


    I looked at her and stayed silent for a moment. And then I began to speak, an amused expression on my face as I did.


    "I sense your curiosity about why I have chosen now to appear. I have a task you would be a perfect servant and worshipper of mine to do and I wanted to talk to you about it." I informed her, revealing my purpose plainly and honestly. The truth is that I wanted her to be a teacher in the institution that I sought to create wherein mortals could learn about magic.


    "I would like for you to serve me as an educator. But not an educator of something you know much about at the moment." I told her, cryptically. My smile softened as I spoke. She gazed at me curiously, and her eyes were filled with a bit of concern about what I was about to tell her next. That said, she didn''t immediately reject me.


    "Saoirse... Magic is real. And I am building a school to teach this world''s residents how to use it." I informed her, speaking dramatically and seriously. My words were true, but even as I spoke them the young woman''s eyes widened in shock. I sensed her mind filling with an array of thoughts. She was both skeptical and awestruck, as conflicted feelings filled her.


    "Magic... So then all of our myths..." She uttered, her mind beginning to process what I had told her. She also spoke of "myths", stories from the ancient past of Htrae.


    "I don''t know how true the myths are, though someday I hope to find out, but yes your train of thought is accurate. Htraean myths might well have been inspired by true accounts of a heroic era where your ancestors utilized magic to endure encounters with all manner of inhuman and often superhuman entities." I told her, smiling all the while. I chuckled, internally, as her mind went blank.


    "So you want me to teach other human beings to use magic... Can I use magic?" She muttered, before asking the question with a louder voice. There was hope in that question. Excitement even. For the first time since I began to deal with Brandon''s nonsense, the smile on my face actually reached all the way to my eyes. It was a whole-hearted grin.


    "Actually..." I said, as I rose a single hand and pointed it at her. She froze, and fear filled her eyes. Her reaction was understandable, as she had no clue what powers I possessed and the few she had seen to date were a very eclectic mix.


    "Your world is about to change forever. All it''ll take is for you to trust me." I told her, speaking sincerely.


    ________________________________________________


    [Contractual Magic Subdomain Details:


    Contractual magic is the sole school of magic that differs from its parent domain in its innate alignment. Contractual magic is inherently lawful. Contractual magic governs the sort of magic that empowers witches, wards, warlocks, and the sort of contracts that devils make for the souls of mortals.


    Contractual magic is difficult for mortals to use properly as even lesser contracts tend to require greater stores of spiritual energy than they possess. Contractual magic allows for even the least magical sapient creatures to use magic. That said it requires powerful or preferably limitless stores of mystical energy to be used to its maximum potential. Deities who acquire great power over this domain had enormously powerful magic-users in their churches and were capable of aiding their servants directly and indirectly. This is a support-school of magic, but do not underestimate it.


    To acquire more power over this subdomain, make mystical contracts with a range of creatures and make use of the powers this school offers those who use it.


    Contractual Magic Passive Powers:


    Magic Bestowal: The cornerstone power of this subdomain is the ability to bestow magic on people. Currently, you have minor ways to do this, but this allows you to fully bestow magic onto someone, including granting them the needed spiritual energy to actually cast spells. This power can also be supplemented by the power that boosts spiritual energy from the spirit domain. You can also create a contract that allows them to use your spiritual energy in place of their own but that requires your active consent for them to use magic.


    Magical Contract: This is similar to the power that you have for witches, wards, and warlocks, but freer. This ability doesn''t necessarily turn someone into a witch, ward, or warlock and can be used to gain agents who seek a looser relationship with you than the direct one you''d have with the aforementioned classes. With it, you can grant someone access to more spells a day without any spiritual energy costs, and you can send them on quests without using a geass otherwise they risk losing access to the magic you grant them.


    Limited Magical Immunity: This is a potent ability that this subdomain can offer but at your level of influence over the subdomain currently you can only offer it to your followers as part of a magical contract. You also now possess this power fully. No negative effects from schools of magic you can influence can harm you unless you allow them too. If someone signs a contract with you then they can receive immunity to negative effects from spells and magic from schools you can influence.


    Magic Selectivity: You can now blast entire areas with magic, be it in the form of spells or in more chaotic bursts of magical power, and grant select targets or even areas immunity to the effects of your magic. This means you could blast every corner of a city with fireballs and only negatively affect people and areas you specifically sought to destroy.


    Magic Drain: You can leech spiritual energy from someone. Synergistic power taking from the domains of law, spirits, chaos, and the vermin subdomain.


    Contract Nullification: At your current level of influence you cannot use this on any deals you''ve struck, but that may change in the future. Synergistic power that takes from the domains of chaos and destruction and the subdomain of lies. You can nullify contracts, magical or otherwise.


    Contractual Magic Blessing And Curse Details:


    By blessing someone with this domain you increase the benefits they gain from signing contracts, such as pay, and lower the downsides they suffer from signing a contract. By cursing someone with this domain you lower the benefits they gain from signing a contract and increase the downsides they suffer.]


    ________________________________________________


    Saoirse began to extend her hand towards me at the same time as I released her boyfriend from my sensory manipulation power. I also released him from my telekinetic grip, and chuckled inwardly as he fell the few centimeters from which I was suspending him. Saoirse was tempted to turn around and check him, but she steeled herself in front of her god after hesitating for a split second. She looked at me, a determined look in her eyes, and spoke.


    "I... have faith. How may I serve you?" She asked, giving me a bold look that I approved of.

 206 Order And Magic

    "Saoirse, you shall serve me in the same way you serve your community. By educating people." I informed her, beginning to hint at the idea I had in mind for her. In response to my words her eyebrows rose curiously. Behind her I watched as Brandon''s lips and throat strained and yet no words came out. Earlier the man had been in his mind and thus could speak, but now he was back in the physical world and thus was still affected by the silence I had inflicted on him earlier.


    "Althos... You know I have no clue how to use magic." She told me, almost chuckling as she spoke. I could see something in her gaze though, a small amount of hope, and a twinkle of curiosity. It amused me. I looked into her eyes as I spoke the next words that escaped my lips.


    "Saoirse... I know you think of gods as comparable to mortals. That deep down you think of my kind as merely extremely powerful mortals." I told her. I was speaking honestly to her. I knew that that was what she felt, deep down. I knew every thought she had ever had.


    I knew every secret she possessed. Every dream and every fantasy. Her eyes widened when she heard me say this, and though she physically moved to deny my words, she was lying and thus couldn''t actually speak. The look in her eyes became confused when she realized she wasn''t speaking.


    "You can''t lie in my presence, Saoirse. I do not allow it." I explained, which was in and of itself a good demonstration of the powers possessed by a god.


    "Gods are not super mortals. Even the very weakest of us are existences beyond what even the most creative, powerful, or well-traveled mortal could fathom in their wildest dreams. We are the lords of creation and the dukes and duchesses of destruction. We are power incarnate, and our mere proximity leaves mortals permanently changed." I declared, speaking honestly but also proudly.


    "If I wanted too I could leave this planet a lifeless, lightless rock adrift in the cosmos and it would take perhaps two hours of my time. Inversely I could turn this world into a paradise devoid of death and suffering, though admittedly that would take... a bit longer." I told the mortal, a smile on my lips.


    "Gods are the makers and unmakers of reality. The oldest myths still vaguely recall our existences, or at least attempt to remember us. They do not capture one one-hundredth, nay even one one-thousandth of our power." I told her, my eyes beginning to flash as I spoke.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the passive perks of acquiring the first tiers of influence over the domains of the basic schools of magic was that I acquired the abilities to use thousands of spells. Floating within my mind was the knowledge I needed to freely cast all sorts of precise, magical invocations that would alter reality.


    Spellcasting was the lawful, almost scientific way to use magic. It was orderly, replicable, reliable magic-use. It was also the most convenient form of magic-use for mortals who had limited, often small stores of spiritual energy.


    Among other things, I could conjure creatures from across the cosmos, I could create swamps, castles, and farms, using immensely expensive spells, and I could create all sorts of projectiles to attack foes. I could also heal people, alleviate discomfort, and strengthen them.


    I silently cast a number of tiny spells to demonstrate the capabilities of magic. The first spell I cast created a small spark of fire above my middle finger. It hovered over my fingertip and cast a warm glow over the area in front of the doorway. I still hadn''t entered the home of Saoirse and Brandon. Saoirse stared at the tongue of fire that hovered over my fingertip while I cast other magic.


    I aimed a spell at her, this time not hinting that I was doing so. It was a powerful healing spell entitled "Holistic heal", which cost a hundred and fifty spiritual energy to cast and would heal people of any discomforts too minor to constitute actual damage to their health and any negative status conditions aside from potent ones like petrification.


    My magical energy washed over Saoirse and her face relaxed as she felt pure magical energy infuse her very being. It seeped into every corner of her and I felt her internally warm up in a rather sexual and sensual way. Inwardly I grinned at this but for now I chose not to push her or it in any specific direction. Saoirse released a rather soft sounding sigh as my power defeated each and every discomfort she felt.


    "Magic is... a truly powerful tool." I explained, even as I cast alteration magic on Saoirse that gave her wings. They were spiritual wings, not ones that physically existed, but they were more than capable of lifting the woman into the air which was something that her system informed her of. They jutted out from her back and incorporeally spread out into the small hallway that she stood in. She turned her head slightly and was able to see them due to their impressive width. Her eyes widened as she first glimpsed at them.


    "Magic is amazing. With magic I can even show you this." I told her, before casting an impressive illusion on the mortal.


    ________________________________________________


    Saoirse immediately felt the effects of the illusion I cast on her. Her eyes darkened and went from being their usual mortal color to being orbs that reflected a moonless night, with little dots representing stars. And what was more impressive than that was what she herself saw in the depths of my illusion.


    In the throes of the illusion Saoirse''s mind was taken from the small house she and her boyfriend lived in and transported to a new, nonexistent location. The girl''s mind was taken to a fictional location deep in space. I took her into a spot that if it actually existed would have been in the depths of the galaxy of my birth.


    Invisibly, I "traveled" alongside her. We only stopped "travelling" when we found ourselves in front of a truly enormous star. The star was unlike any Saoirse had ever seen or even heard of, as Htraean humans were a species that was advanced enough to know of other star systems and galaxies even if they had only begun to dabble in actual space-travel.


    The star in front of Saoirse took up all of her vision and she couldn''t look away from it even though she tried. It radiated an impossible violet light and Saoirse felt a fraction of the heat it gave off. She was grateful that it wasn''t burning her, even though she felt quite warm.


    "Saoirse... Behold, the lord of order and the soverign of the stars." I whispered, my voice echoing into her mind. As I spoke I activated my "Believe me" power, and I felt any resistance the young human might have had to my words fade away. She fell to her knees and her astral self, her self-perception that was with me right now, also fell.


    "I am the lord of magic. The defeator of death." I told her, before swiftly taking her mind elsewhere. I showed her two worlds.


    In one world those who died came back to life as undead monsters, feeling no more pain or confusion and delighting in the chance to create more of their kind. In another world those who died were brought back to life as their true selves, fully resurrected from within specially crafted coffins.


    "Saoirse... I shall become the god who rules over everything. I shall become the lord of this world, and every other world. If you continue to serve me loyally, you shall be awarded for your service. Immortality, magic, respect, all of those things are within your grasp." I told her.


    "A world free from suffering. Free from inequality. Free from chaos and death. Help prepare your people for such a place." I whispered into her ear. It was at this that she began to display some confusion. She looked up at me quizzically and asked me a question.


    "If I may be so bold... Why don''t you simply defeat death and suffering on Htrae right now? Why do I and other Althonians have to prepare our world for a time when you may do so?" She asked. I respected the courage it took to ask such a question. The truth was that this was a motivation for her to be a good leader and teacher. I could easily do to Htrae what I did to Torus and the other worlds in my solar system, and what I had done to many other worlds.


    The Althonite Empire was an impressive one consisting of hundreds of worlds, though it was admittedly not extremely well-connected just yet. I had bent many worlds to my whims through the usage of "Healing burst" and my druidic ability to create mystical foods. These post-scarcity worlds were places of great devotion to me and ones where on the rare occasions that I spoke directly to my servants my words were laws that superseded the laws of mortals. I looked at Saoirse and began to speak.


    "I ask that worlds accept me first before I free them from their suffering. It is the role of creatures like you, my devotees, to prepare the way forward. I want my gifts to come not as surprises but as something you all pick of your own free will. Your people must chose me, and in choosing me chose to free yourselves from suffering and from mortality. I shall not force myself or my gifts on them." I told her. I then closed my eyes and added something to my remarks.


    "That said... I can help those who make the choice to serve me on an individual level in advance." I told her, smiling wily as I did so. She was still for a few moments and while she was thinking I withdrew us from the illusion.


    "The time has come Saoirse. I am now asking you formally... Will you serve me as a mystical educator, one who teaches those less fortunate and skilled than you the ways of the arcane? If you do, if you pledge your soul to me and I shall give you both knowledge of and the means too use magic. In addition to other gifts." I told the human, asking her formally for her soul. This was a moment of fate for her, and a time for her to make her own decision.


    A second after I spoke the two of us were out of the spell and back in front of her house.


    ________________________________________________


    A chilly breeze blew over the two of us a second after we returned back to her house, out of the illusion, and I watched her shiver. I placed a hand on her shoulder and warmed up the frail human. As I did she blushed lightly, and I chuckled. It was shortly after I chuckled that she looked up at me and had a fire burning in her eyes. She had made a choice.


    "Althos... I will serve you. In the past weeks and months you have demonstrated your knowledge to be beyond mine. If you have chosen to offer me this opportunity, surely you must believe that I can do it successfully. I am choosing to believe in you and to serve you. I will pledge my soul to you, for you to use it and me as your divine wisdom sees fit." She told me, speaking solemnly.


    Behind her I heard Brandon muffle cries of protest and despair. At this point what was done was done, and I did two things at once. I placed a hand on Saoirse''s head and began to activate a number of powers, and I freed Brandon from the effects of silence. As soon as he was freed from the powers of silence he began to cuss at me, but I ignored it. I was focused on what mattered: Saoirse.


    Saoirse stiffened and went completely still as my powers over knowledge, magic, and spirits washed over her. I filled her with knowledge about the ten basic schools of magic, and I began to increase her spiritual energy, while activating my "Magic Bestowal" ability. I also blessed her, utilizing the blessings of the various schools of magic I could influence. All in all this took a few seconds, and when it was done I released my hand from the top of her head and she shivered in pleasurable delight. This amused me.


    I knew from experience that when I seriously applied a number of abilities to any of my faithful it tended to wash over them sensually. Quietly, I assumed that this was due to my innate nature as a lord of lust.


    "Althos..." Saoirse moaned out, uttering my name with the exact same sweet voice she moaned out Brandon''s whenever the two of them were in bed together. Her voice washed over me and inflamed a small part of me but for now I chose to ignore it. There was still something I needed to do after all.


    "Saoirse... I have one more question for you. Based on what you know about magic, what sort of magic-user would you like to be?" I asked the human. She answered me immediately, which was a nice surprise. Her answer wasn''t a surprise, as the studious young woman chose a class that fit her bookish personality.


    "I would like to be a sorcerer." She informed me, smiling brightly at me even as her cheeks continued to flush. Without hesitation I rose a hand in her general direction and granted her the class, before immediately raising its level to 7 so that she would have an innate edge on any of her future students. She bit her lip in response to the power that washed over her and her pale cheeks turned an even deeper shade of red than they had been.


    I sensed her mind filling with knowledge about her class, new class features, and even spells coming to her in a flash. She closed her eyes and kept them closed for a moment. As she did I said one last thing before preparing to depart from her presence.


    "Let your school know that you will be quitting soon. In the next few weeks I shall prepare the actual place from which you will be teaching your students. And I shall also be finding other teachers to come and teach as well." I informed her, smiling at the new sorceress. She nodded at me, and without another word I quietly teleported away from her home.


    Now that I had found a teacher, I suppose I needed to find an administrator. Fortunately, possessing the sharp senses I possessed and the domain-sense powers I possessed, I knew of many different administrators I could trust with the important work anyone who''d serve me at my magical school would do. And some of them had desires and other proclivities that made them perfect as servants for me.


    I teleported from the home of Saoirse and found myself facing the main building of a prestigious university in New Sol''s capital city of Lavern. No one was around me as it was still very early in the morning. Fortunately that gave me plenty of time to get creative in what I was about to do.

 207 Declaration of War

    Agustino had a smile on his face. The cruel demon-princeling was quite satisfied with the horde he had assembled over the course of the last two months, having done everything in his power to rally demonkind against the terrifying might of the god who had already built one settlement in the Heart of Darkness.


    He could sense the fruits of his labor nearby, sensing the presence of a massive demonic horde just outside of his eerie palace. Thousands of demons, physical manifestations of destructive hatred and of xenocidal hatred, had answered his call to come and aid in his efforts to capture a god.


    The soluto demon, an embodiment of hateful pride, had no doubt in his heart that this horde would be the one to squash the settlement the god had created in his little incursion into The Heart of Darkness. After all this horde was outfitted with all manner of magical enhancements and mystical armaments.


    In front of the powerful demon stood a pair of his generals. One of these demons was a statuesque demon with a beautiful and feminine face and a simian body, though most of her fur was located on her arms and her legs, not her face or her chest. In her hands was a potent and mystical quarterstaff and on her head she wore a surprisingly delicate crown.


    The other general who stood in front of the demon who was playing at being a monarch was a powerfully built centipede demon. His highly segmented body was divided into well over two hundred different sections and he extended all the way out of the throne room since each portion of his body was as large and thick as a young human.


    Each segment of his body was several meters thick and was incredibly reinforced by both magic and his. The carapace of the centipede demon was the demon''s pride and joy and he was so confident with it that he had once taken a direct blow from Agustino and only suffered slight damage.


    Both demons were highly prized warriors who loyally served the strongest demon they had ever encountered: Agustino. And both generals were component commanders who sought to expand their lord''s dominion throughout the horrifying dimension that birthed and housed the vast majority of demons throughout the cosmos.


    Agustino gazed into the eyes of one of his generals, the centipede warrior. The demonic general had a set of human-like eyes and a set of compound eyes above them. The pseudo-monarch gazed into both pairs before speaking.


    "And so... Demons march to wage war on the gods once more?" The unbelievably old being asked, rhetorically. The demons who heard its utterances heard the amazement in its voice. Truthfully, the two of them were also quietly amazed by this turn of events.


    Neither of the two had expected the god who had invaded their dimension to be so skilled at rebuffing their attacks. Nor had they expected him to be what they needed to unify hundreds of thousands of demons and expand the size of their holdings, even as a foe. The god''s presence had allowed the faction of demons led by Agustino to speed up their acquisition of demonic allies and of territory, and the demons were quite excited at the prospect of leading a horde unlike any seen since the mythic age against their potent enemy.


    However, the demons had made a critical mistake. Agustino had just declared war and that mistake would haunt him for the rest of his life. Distantly, on another plane of existence, Althos silently read a new notification. And this notification caused the god to chuckle.


    ________________________________________________


    [War Domain Alert:


    Agustino the Soluto demon and a pseudo-monarch of demonkind has declared war on Althos, the emperor of the Althonite Empire. His forces are minutes from departing to raid Althonian territories throughout the terrifying dimension known as the Heart of Darkness.]


    ________________________________________________


    The moment after I arrived on the grounds of the prestigious and public Lavern University, or L.U. as it was affectionately known by its students and staff, was when I read the notification alerting me to the machinations of my enemy, the ambitious demon known as Agustino. The notification brought a sly grin to my face and caused me to quietly chuckle.


    I found myself standing just outside of a large building on the university I had visited''s campus. I stared at it and shook my head regretfully. I had wanted to continue making progress towards acquiring the second tier of influence over the domain of magic, but I knew that this decision by Agustino meant that it was at last time for me to deal with him.


    I admired the peaceful scene before me. Htrae was a world that was by and large at peace. It was a place that still had its fair share of struggles and inequalities but it was one of many worlds I had seen where the people who dominated it had largely grown tired and wary of wars and moved beyond the barbarism of warfare and conquest. I took a second to study the scenery around me.


    The sky above me was a beautiful mixture of colors as the sun began to conquer the fading remnants of the night. No clouds dared show their faces and besmirch this moment of solar conquest. The building in front of me wasn''t yet open to the public, or even to students, and at the moment only a skeleton crew consisting of the people who kept the building running occupied it. I could sense them easily, due to the assortment of powers I possessed that allowed me to make sense of the world around me.


    The actual building was a surprisingly pretty multistory, multipurpose building that stood at the heart of the university''s campus. Distantly, students were gradually beginning to awaken and once fully awake they would slowly begin to make their way over here over the course of the next few minutes. Sadly, by that time I would be long gone.


    I spent another moment staring at the building. I was both sad and annoyed that I had literally just arrived and was now needed elsewhere but even my chaotic nature and the inclinations that came with it weren''t able to make me deny the obvious truth: if Agustino was truly making his move to destroy or capture me I needed to meet his forces with my own.


    I stopped looking at the building and teleported myself back to the eerie realm known as the Heart of Darkness. Doing so was an instantaneous process, one which I had done a few times now and was intimately familiar with.


    ________________________________________________


    I went from standing in the middle of the campus to standing just outside of the Blackened Boscage, the forested area I had claimed as my own deep within the Heart of Darkness. I was facing a vast and bleak plain and behind me I sensed the presence of the light-absorbing trees I had long grown accustomed to within this odd dimension.


    I was outside of the area I was used too, but I also knew that this was where my enemies would come from. I knew this because of the demons I had captured during my time colonizing the Heart of Darkness. I had greedily devoured their memories and edited what the demons themselves remembered to suit my fel agenda and in devouring the memories of my former foes I learned about the identities and goals of my demonic rivals. Unfortunately for my enemies I also learned where they had come from and also where the enemies who were on their way to capture me would arrive from.


    I wasn''t the sort to start wars of my own volition so I had been content to sit on this knowledge but now... Now I had reason to become a god of conquest and to embrace those who worshiped me as a god of war. And with that came a reason to act on the knowledge I had acquired in the wake of defeating several small bands of demons over the course of the last few months.


    The plains before me stretched farther than even I could see. And I knew that in time, perhaps in hours, perhaps in minutes, the plains would before me would host a gigantic horde larger than any single demonic force had mustered in countless years. I readied myself for their arrival by raising my hand.


    The truth was that what I was about to do was unnecessary but it was fun. And more than that it would sate the bloodthirsty nature of many of my more monstrous servants. I was about to marshall an army that would dwarf that of my enemy. And the army I was about to marshall would exceed my enemy''s army in everything, even bloodthirst. I couldn''t help but be a bit happy as I did something I had never done: I prepared for a real war.


    Deep within me, multiple domains roared their approval of my actions. Not all of them ever evil or destructive domains either. The domain of goodness was one of the domains delighted by what I was about to do. I could sense that it enjoyed me turning my attention on evil forces rather than affecting neutral or even good people with my actions.


    Even deeper within me, a small part of me enjoyed what I was about to do. This small part of me was a violent force, a chaotic force, one that wanted to conquer and take. It had only recently begun to rear its ugly head, but I knew that it was going to positively love the efforts of the next few days.


    I silently opened a number of portals behind me. The portals led to a number of locations throughout the universe. Some of them were portals to vast hives of gigantic and intelligent insects. Some of them were portals to eerie cities of undeath and ruined settlements. Others were portals to planets ravaged by an ancient and unending war between mortals and abominations. Others led to distant worlds where all manner of monsters worshiped and served me. Some even led to worlds where humanoids had decided to throw their lots in with my worshipers.


    The one constant brought on by the portals was that they opened into places where I was worshiped and served unquestioningly. I studied the portals without turning, utilizing my enhanced senses fully for a moment. And then I began to speak.


    "Althonians... Come forth and serve your god. Come forth and conquer." I said, my voice echoing across the vast expanse before me.


    "There is a pathetic demon by the name of Agustino who in his reckless arrogance has deluded himself into thinking he and I are equals. That we are enemies. He has stirred his forces into a frenzy and is sending them to squash a settlement I made in the forest behind us. He believes he is strong enough to declare war on us, on me. He is wrong. We shall show him the might of the Althonite Empire and we shall take and destroy all that is his." I declared, speaking divinely and authoritatively.


    "The time for battle is now. The time for slaughter is now. The time to spread knowledge of my power is now. If you worship me, join my forces here and now and let us wage war on the fools who believe they can oppose me." I said, my voice washing over my monstrous subjects.


    The creatures began to flood out of the portals that I had created. Massive ants, horrifying abominations, teeming hordes of the undead, some dragons, organized groups of militaristic devils, and all manner of other creatures marshaled onto the plain and began to march, crawl, fly, dash, gallop, and ooze across the vast fields before me. I watched, a delighted smile on my face as the first of my forces began to make their way towards my enemies.


    The skies were filled with swarms of pests, and other deadlier things. Dragons, a few hundred of them, flew in disorganized groups above my own horde. Elementals also danced through the skies, effortlessly dashing towards my enemies. Mi-Gos, both in vehicles and with their own power, flew across the skies as well.


    The tremendous volume of my minions and worshipers was unbelievable. I heard ecstatic exclamations, uttered profanities, cries of wonder, and delighted roars in hundreds of languages. They filled the plains and resounded mightily throughout the area.


    I fell silent in response to the tremendous scene before me, but my silence was short-lived. As the very fastest of my followers managed to reach a distance so far from me it was about half the distance my godly eyes could see I saw my foes for the first time. The demonic horde that Agustino had managed to marshall against me appeared off in the vast distance. They were so far from me that they resembled only a distant speck on the horizon, but their numbers were nothing to laugh at so I studied them for a mere moment before acting of my own accord. I had made the bold choice to be the one who struck first.


    I closed my eyes and activated a power I had only rarely used: "Disintegrating radiance". It was one of my ultimate offensive powers, a strike that sundered all defenses and obliterated even entire armies. The moment I activated it, I immediately felt its effects take hold.


    My vision was abruptly altered. Instead of being able to see darkened, colorless outlines like I normally could when I closed my eyes I could see the world around me from a bird''s eye point of view. I could see everything that I could see normally, even out to the point from which my enemies were appearing. I targeted that place and began to laugh.


    The sound that escaped my lips was a cruel sound, the sound of someone who was delighted at unleashing a devastating weapon of mass destruction. It was the sound of a marauding warlord. The sound of a genocidal general who was prepared to slaughter his enemies. I continued laughing even when my power began to activate in full.


    ________________________________________________


    The teeming horde of demons was a ravenous and cruel horde. They were loosely organized, only scarcely controlled, and filled with evil thoughts. The fastest of them had dashed far ahead of the centipede demon who was leading this attack. Solomon was the head of the offensive armies of Agustino after all, and so it made sense that he had led this attack, even if he wasn''t quite physically leading it from the front.


    Solomon was far behind the fastest demons. He crawled over the plains, his hundreds of legs working tirelessly to carry his gigantic length a truly vast distance. Solomon was lucky though. He was far enough away that the first strike the god he and his master were opposing wouldn''t destroy him. Instead he had the perfect view to watch the skies above his scouts and skirmishers begin to light up abruptly.


    The demon''s head tilted upwards and studied this odd phenomenon with great curiosity. He studied it for a few moments, before he felt something he was unfamiliar with begin to eat at his mind. It was an odd sensation that he had only felt from one thing before: Agustino. It took him a split second to recognize it as fear, and the precise moment the demon realized he was afraid, was when the light''s true nature was revealed.


    The light suddenly came down to the surface of the plains. It began to touch the fastest members of Solomon''s horde, and the demon''s human eyes widened in terror as he realized what was about to happen. And then he saw the beginning of the unraveling of Agustino''s plans.


    The light increased in intensity until it became blinding. The light increased in intensity at a speed comparable to the speed of light, but Solomon''s supernatural senses allowed him to see the exact moment the lights transformed into an inescapable attack and disintegrated the fastest members of the demonic horde he had loose control over.


    He watched, helpless, as his first wave of attack-dogs were effortlessly dealt with. Demons his master had entrusted him with were turned to dust by a creature who was so far away from him that he couldn''t even see him. The mere thought of that hurt his pride. The reality of it filled him with an unending rage.


    The demons, oftentimes canine or ursine demons, were effortlessly obliterated by the attack that Solomon knew could only come from Althos himself. The demon-general roared in fury and cursed the god he had been tasked with defeating and dragging before Agustino.


    "Althos! I''m coming for you!" The demon roared, his voice exploding out of him and echoing across the vast plains for kilometers. His eyes were narrowed, fury-filled slits as he pushed his insectoid body ever harder and ever closer to his foe. A few moments later he heard a humorless chuckle, the sound incredibly loud and filling his ears and his mind.


    "Come Solomon. I will meet you head-on." Roared a voice back at the demonic centipede a second later. This voice was a voice filled with supreme arrogance and authority, the voice of the god Solomon had come here to hunt. This was the first time he had ever heard the voice, but Solomon, a powerful berserker, was so filled with rage that at the moment hearing Althos goad him was enough to cause him to speed even faster than he had been before.


    His multitude of legs worked harder than they ever had to carry him towards the light that had obliterated his lesser minions. His eyes were nowhere near as developed as the eyes of his enemy, so he didn''t get to glimpse the new form his foe had taken on, off in the distance. He wasn''t able to see it just yet. None of Agustino''s forces could. That said, shortly after unleashing his attack, Althos had taken on a new form. One that was incredibly vast and inspired his forces.


    On the other side of the battlefield, the Althonians dashed towards their foes, inspired by the light shining on them from the new sun that shone radiant light on them. For the second time in his life Althos was preparing to engage in a battle seriously. And to do so he had taken on a new form: a star that hovered over his forces and bathed him in resplendent light befitting holy crusaders on a mission in the depths of one of the evilest dimensions in the universe.


    The god of conquest began to bless his forces in full as he wondered whether he should launch another attack, or let his forces actually battle the remaining warriors. As his blessings seeped into his forces, he received a new quest. The quest to earn the second-tier of influence over the domain of war. It was a demanding quest, but one that I sought to complete anyway.


    [Quest Alert:


    To earn the second tier of influence over the domain of war, defeat Agustino''s forces, conquer his cities, and defeat him in one-on-one battle both in magic and in swordplay.]

 208 Clash of the Hordes

    I watched as the mixed horde I had assembled dashed towards my enemies. This was the first army I had gathered and in time I would reward them for their service. Though for now I was wisely focused on the fighting ahead of me I was quite happy that I had so many followers who were willing to risk their lives for me. In many cases this was the first real test of this sort for my worshipers.


    I wasn''t a peaceful god but I wasn''t especially aggressive either. That was probably a good thing overall, but it had met that until now I hadn''t gathered armies under my personal command.


    The only army I had gathered before now was the one I had raised myself as a necromancer and together we had fought multiple battles together. They were utterly loyal to me but they were my direct creations. There was a similar problem with The Swarm, though less so than with my horde of undead servants. This army had millions of creatures in it, many of which were fully living, nominally independent beings. That met I was inching towards mostly new territory, a realization which was a bit exciting. I was becoming a god of conquest and for one of the first times in my life embracing my powers as a god of the apocalypse quadrangle.


    As my soldiers dashed across the featureless plain and towards an army of demons they felt my powers surge into them. They were empowered not just by my blessings but also by abilities like "Minion empowerment" and "Death empowerment". When I focused on them I could see them grow in size and I watched their muscles visibly expand. They also began to radiate power, and for not the first time in my life I slightly regretted not becoming a deity of wrath. In moments like this having powers over wrath would have been useful. But I did have other powers that would help me here.


    I had countless abilities I could use to disrupt a battlefield of this size. Especially one where there was a vast distance between my minions and my enemies. I couldn''t physically smile, I was a star at the moment after all, but internally I began to smile.


    ________________________________________________


    Solomon was dashing across the plains when Althos began to strike for real. The centipede-demon was moving forward on a tremendous number of legs hoping to get within range to begin to attack, when his enemy well and truly went on the offensive.


    Solomon had recruited numerous demons to fill the ranks of his unorganized army. Some of the demons he had recruited included towering monstrosities of ooze, corruption and pollution demons that were capable of permanently altering the landscape wherever they were used. Althos appreciated the demons and distantly he felt like recruiting them into his forces.


    The ambitious god aimed at the one that was the furthest back and for the briefest of instants a phantom copy of the god itself appeared above the unlucky tower of ooze and corruption and fired a few spores into the creature. The phantom then vanished, but the spores it had created and fired were incredibly real. The spores were nearly invisible due to how small they were, at least at first.


    The spores, incredibly tiny even for spores, aggressively invaded the demon Althos had chosen as the first to "befriend" as the fungal subdomain would put it. They invaded the demon, and then Althos caused them to age rapidly, creatively utilizing his own powers. The spores visibly grew within the demon, causing the transparent ooze to begin to mutate rapidly. That said, at this point the other demons were either already affected by Althos'' powers or they were too far away to effectively do anything to either destroy the corrupted corruption demon or help free the thing from the powers that were assailing its mind.


    The demon began to moan pathetically. The sounds were the pained groans of a mind that was feebly resisting this attempt to control it. The creature, a towering dozen meter tall behemoth of a demon, was pained by the fungal effort to take over its mind. It was also failing in its efforts to resist.


    This painful process lasted several seconds before Althos, taking a bit of pity on the thing, distantly sedated the beast and its mind fell fully to the overriding influence of the fungal subdomain. The sedated creature stopped resisting and fully became a pet of the god of fungi, as the aged spores rapidly ate away the beast''s modicum of free-will.


    Althos, from far away, commanded the beast to do one thing: spread its spores to its former companions. The demon howled, the sound causing its liquid body to shudder, and eagerly turned on its former allies. It was determined to be reunited with them, in its own way. The creature immediately lunged towards the nearest group of its former allies, many of whom were unmotivated even in the face of the terrifying demon and made no effort to dodge the fierce demon.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep within me, I heard the delighted and shocked gasp of the fungal subdomain as I unleashed one of the subdomain''s key abilities on my demonic foe. There were no intelligent words to go with the cry, but the emotion was so pure and intense that even before I gained my absolute empathy ability I''d have been able to identify the emotion. I was being creative and aggressive, and so I didn''t mind unleashing a power as apocalyptic as my parasitic spores on my enemies. They were demons after all.


    My demonic pet was hard at work spreading the aggressive and contagious condition throughout the ranks of my enemies. And now the two factions were so close that the sharpest eyed members of both groups could see each other. I heard the distant and triumphant roar of Solomon as he pushed himself even harder to reach my minions, as well as the distant and furious roars of dragons as they hurled themselves at Solomon and his minions.


    Solomon himself was an interesting figure to me. I, of course, wanted to bring him over to my side. He was a toy of Agustino''s, and I wanted to take each and every possession of my demonic foe as one minor punishment for refusing to stick to our status quo until I had felt like turning my attention towards him. But how should I bring the rival general over to my side? That was the question I was pondering.


    The easiest way would have been to utilize my fungal abilities. As far as recruitment went, they were probably my most potent abilities. There was a part of me wanted to do that. It wanted to defeat, possibly even kill, Solomon and then forcibly bring him back to serve me as a fungal monster. My powers over civilization-ending spores were so powerful that not only were extraplanar entities affected by them, I could also use them on corpses and thus reanimate the bodies.


    I could also utilize my powers over insanity. I could drive the demon mad and then forcibly reconfigure the creature''s mind so that by the time I was done it was loyal to me. I also had the power to just inflict so much pain on the creature that I could make it serve me out of fear for what I could do to it even across dimensional distances. I had a number of options.


    Under other circumstances, if I were a less confident or powerful god, I''d probably be paying attention to the battle. And I was. I was powerful enough that I could split my focus without it negatively affecting me. And now the battle had begun for real, as the first of my soldiers was about to meet the first of Agustino''s demons in close-quarters combat.


    ________________________________________________


    An orc was the first of the Althonians to both reach an enemy and also engage in close-quarters combat. He held a warhammer made of silver in one hand and a thick shield in the other. The demon he was facing was a demon with a humanoid frame, but more closely resembled a walking skeleton than anything else.


    The demon held no weapons, but its claws were emanating a sinister heat. It cackled as it leaped at the orc, who rose his shield to meet the demon''s inevitable strike. In mid-air the creature extended its claws at its foe and a grim grin appeared on its skeletal face. The orc smiled back, as the warrior was both a true zealot of Althos and also a battle fanatic. He met his foe''s charge head-on and parried the strike using his shield all while moving his hammer towards his enemy in an effort to strike his foe down.


    As they clashed, their allies closed in. The next set of warriors to clash were a demonic wolf who was one of Agustino''s servants, and a gug, one of the Althonian abominations from the world of Salifinos.


    Elsewhere on the battlefield the demonic centipede who ruled over this group of demons, for the moment anyway, had spotted the unnatural star floating above the battlefield and was dashing towards it. He knew of the impossible powers possessed by the gods and had correctly guessed that the star was Althos'' doing.


    Solomon was an unstoppable juggernaut, but in his wrath, he had made a tactical error: he had separated himself from his allies. Althos didn''t stop this and was instead healing the creatures that had been hurled out of the way by the demon. None of them had died, mostly because of the countless blessings that were altering them and making them hardier, among other things.


    Eventually though the demon got close enough that Althos acted. The god created an illusion of a star to continue to radiate light and he used an impossibly powerful burst of wind to scatter his allies and give him a clear battlefield on which to meet the enemy general. And at last he met Solomon on the field of battle, manifesting as his usual humanoid self a few dozen meters away from the demonic centipede.


    ________________________________________________


    I swept a small portion of the plains clear of my soldiers using impossibly powerful and targeted winds. I hadn''t felt like continuing to heal my servants all while meeting my foe head-on. The demonic general made no efforts to continue to harass my worshipers and instead remained laser-focused on me, evidently still outraged by my decision to kill his scouts.


    Inwardly I chuckled and felt his hatred towards me cause him to push out all other thoughts. His rage felt odd to me, personal even. A curious part of me wanted to go ahead and drain the demon''s memories to determine why he had developed so much hatred for me, but I could wait.


    The demonic general posed no threat to me. In fact, I actually had the power to kill both him and Agustino instantly if I wanted. It was a death domain ability entitled "Death inducement" and with it, I could kill two things per twelve-hour period. I instinctually knew that it wouldn''t work on someone like Morehammer, as it couldn''t work on undead just yet but it could work on Solomon and it could work on Agustino.


    The demon continued to charge at me, heartened by the fact that he had found my physical form. The sound of his hundreds of feet crashing into the ground underneath them was incredibly loud. His face was oddly human, and there was a malicious, hateful grin on his face as he charged at me. I calmly stood my ground and took on my angelic form once more.


    I immediately shifted, changing from the form that I preferred to interact with creatures with, into my massive angel form. I felt the six wings manifest and materialize from my back and my wings and I opened my hands so that I could grip the sword and shield that were about to materialize.


    Solomon wasn''t phased by my transformation, and ignorantly continued to charge at me. I sighed and began to channel potent holy energy into my throat. I felt the power well up from near where my heart would have been and surge upwards until it was in my throat. That was the same moment that the angelic sword and shield my angelic form came with began to materialize. I locked eyes with Solomon and uttered a single word.


    "Stop." I commanded, my voice powerfully resounding throughout the area around me, my word charged with holy energy. My word resounded throughout our private battlefield and this wiped the smirk off of the demon''s face. He stopped charging at me and reared up, before beginning to howl in pain. The sound of his agony was so intense that my servants who were closer to us stopped for a moment and looked back at us. I nodded at them, my form now towering over the battlefield. They cautiously nodded back and turned their attention back to the demons ahead of them.


    Solomon, the demonic centipede continued to wail in agony as the potent holy energy I had just hit him with, with nothing more than my words, surged through him. I chuckled at my foe. I figured that wouldn''t be enough to stop him, and I could sense his anger building even as he tried to recover from my blow.


    The real "battle" was about to start.

 209 Acquisitions

    His opponent, the god his master had declared he go and capture, had created a private battlefield just for the two of them. Behind Althos were a number of massive open portals, spewing out a large number of Althonians, innately a diverse bunch, who saw the two creatures and wisely chose to give them a wide berth. Even creatures as large as dragons opted to steer clear of the hundred or so meter area Althos had cleared for their fight using potent prowess over wind and air.


    Althos himself was in a "battle" form and had the appearance of a fierce-looking and enormous angel with six massive wings. He had radiant, almost golden skin, a sword made of angelic energy, and a shield made from the same aetherial substance. He had his eyes locked on the demon and slowly rose the sword in its direction. There was a smile on his face as he did that, a confident and unafraid smirk that served to taunt his demonic foe. Solomon, for the first time, began to feel just a bit of fear.


    The demon, not quite as wrathful as a demon of wrath, was every bit as foolish as one. The opponent in front of him was capable of inflicting real damage on him without even attacking. The demonic centipede couldn''t remember the last time he had met a new sort of opponent who was capable of such a feat. Even Agustino would need to attack to harm him.


    After a few moments of standing still, Althos silently took to the air. His massive wings beat every few seconds and kept him aloft as he continued to focus on his enemy.


    ________________________________________________


    The demon in front of me was in all likelihood the second strongest creature I had fought one on one. The strongest was, unsurprisingly, Morehammer was infinitely stronger than this demon. I studied the demonic insect and felt the powerful energy radiating off of Solomon.


    The unarmed and unarmored creature was enormous. His two hundred segments were each at least the size of a man, and thus his total length was titanic, and originally my impression of Solomon''s strength was a bit higher. However after harming him with nothing more than an uttered word I could see that even as powerful as he was in comparison to his peers, his strength was nothing compared to mine.


    The sword and shield in my hands were synced to my soul and matched the size of my form perfectly. Both of them exuded angelic energy and I felt their power. I knew that with the blade in my hand I could destroy demons, their structures, and maybe even the very essence of this place. I felt the blade''s power and it filled me with confidence. I continued to point my blade at my enemy but now I spoke again, though this time I wasn''t channeling holy energy.


    "Agustino made a mistake." I warned Solomon, ominously. I wasn''t at all afraid of the demon and for me to continue to let the general live was a display of my confidence. Solomon glared at me, though I could see the fear continuing to circulate throughout the creature.


    "Your master made the decision to send you and the other demons he''s gathered, to your deaths. There is no chance you stand of victory against me." I told the demon. My words were filled with confidence, and I felt them lower the demon''s morale. That said the demon''s prevailing emotion was still a quiet fury. His azure colored eyes remained locked on mine. When I opened my mouth to speak again, the demon interrupted me and snarled a few choice words my way.


    "Talk, talk, talk, is that all you do!? I thought gods were supposed to be destroyers of worlds! Masters of entropy! Lords of death! Where is that side of you?" He asked, trying to power through the bit of fear that had wormed its way into his heart. He had made the choice to act tough, and in response, I sighed softly.


    "So impatient..." I muttered before the demonic general attempted to charge at me. The demon bounded across our battlefield, his multitude of legs allowing him to effortlessly cross the area separating us quite easily. I allowed him to approach me for a second, giving him more than enough time to move several meters closer to me, before he was buffeted by winds that exceeded the speeds of brutal hurricanes and tornadoes, the winds suddenly and painfully stopping the demon.


    "Gruh!" The demon roared, as its charge was painfully stopped by the unnatural and divinely empowered winds. They were so fast even the demon could almost see them, but their unnatural origins had kept the monster from reacting to them in time to dodge out of the way. The demon may have been stopped, but I could hear his countless legs working to push him past the winds. I chuckled at his display.


    "When this is over I may resurrect you and bring you over into my service. Or else I''ll devour your soul and use it to create an army of demons just like you. If I''m feeling cruel I may even order them to hunt down natural centipede demons and devour them." I said, taunting the demon. This caused the general to roar ever louder and ram into the winds with even more force.


    Without uttering a single word I targeted the innards of the demon, aiming for one segment near the demon''s rear end, and silently activated one of my new destruction abilities: "Explosion manipulation". The demon froze, confusion quickly overwhelming all of its other emotions, and I watched as one of its last segments suddenly began to expand. The expansion took over three seconds, and at the end of the expansion, a loud and violent explosion occurred from inside of my foe which sent portions of my foe everywhere.


    The explosion, caused by my cruel power, sent hefty and dark chunks of carapace and muscle alike flying dozens of meters in every direction. The demon remained frozen in confusion until the instant the explosion happened and when it did the creature began to wail in agony, the pain in its voice exceeding even the pain the creature had felt earlier when I had utilized my holy voice on it. I hovered over the monster and studied its pain. I was, after all, a god of pain.


    The creature, like many mortals, appeared to not like the pain it received. And like many demons, it seemed to relish the chance to inflict pain. Earlier on, when it was dashing through my forces to get to me the monster had at least somewhat enjoyed the pain it brought my worshipers.


    "So you''re telling me you can''t handle a little pain?" I asked, rhetorically. I smiled at the monster, my angelic lips twisting upwards in a cold sneer. The demon heard my cruel question and looked at me, and now the fear on its face was overwhelming.


    I continued to point my sword at the demon, but I also began to lift the thing into the air with my unlimited telekinesis. The creature gasped as it felt me abruptly lift the middle of its body off of the ground and it began to try and back away from me before I rapidly lifted it high enough into the air that even it couldn''t reach the ground. The body was light to me, but my telekinesis possessed unlimited strength. If I wanted too I could probably move stars with my version of telekinesis.


    The demon refused to give up, and I allowed it to continue to resist me for a few more moments before I targeted it with a familiar power. One that I was more than a bit fond of; "Soul Destruction".


    The floating demon opened its mouth as if to let out one final wail but no sound escaped its lips. All color faded from the creature, and I felt its life seep out of it and into me. As I felt the creature''s life seep out of it and into me, the body began to shrink even in my telekinetic grasp and my eyes were suddenly filled with blue light as a notification appeared in my mind.


    [Multi-Part Alert:


    You have acquired the powers of a centipede demon, and now possess the power to create souls of these creatures. Which means you can create full-bodied centipede demons. This is also the first time you''ve destroyed the soul of an extraplanar entity, even though you''ve devoured such souls before. As such... Additional information will be transmitted to you.


    Extraplanar creatures differ from mortals on both physical and immaterial levels. Mortals have a soul that is separate from their bodies, but the bodies of extraplanar entities ARE their souls. By creating the soul of an extraplanar entity you can create the creature outright and freely.


    To gain the second tier of influence over the domain of souls, acquire the ability to create fifty different types of extraplanar entities. To facilitate this, you can now absorb the souls of those sacrificed to you, be they willing sacrifices or not in much the same way as you could absorb the souls of those you destroyed using your "Soul Destruction" power. The "Soul Destruction" power becomes a passive power the moment you acquire the second tier of influence over the soul domain.


    The souls of extraplanar entities are similar to blueprints and in using them as such you can acquire greater power than you''d be able to otherwise. Acquiring knowledge of these blueprints is also a necessary step in gaining the power to rule over dimensions inhabited by extraplanar entities such as angels, demons, devils, and celestials.]


    I read through the notification and then I felt... Odd. Power, memories, and more began to flood into my mind quite unexpectedly. My form changed, for perhaps the first time ever without my consent, back into my human-like form, and I began to fall to the ground. I stopped myself from falling completely by creating a gust of wind underneath me. I used the gust to slowly fall to the ground and land on my knees.


    Solomon''s body was now completely gone, not even a speck of the demon remained. That said the demon itself wasn''t really gone. And in a sense it would never be. Because now I possessed the power to recreate it and I knew that I also possessed every shred of the creature deep within myself. If I wanted too I could create a centipede demon, model it after Solomon, and give it the memories of Solomon. It''d be as close to a perfect clone as possible.


    I felt something I hadn''t realized was possible occur within me: I felt my own soul increase in weight. This was happening as all that Solomon ever was settled within me, It happened as I absorbed his every memory, his every thought, his every secret. A second later, another notification filled my view.


    [Alert: Unexpected Synergies


    Normally absorbing a soul, even a greater soul, isn''t so intense, or so comprehensive, but it turns out that one of your innate subdomains is responsible for this: the subdomain of vermin. The parasitic aspect of the vermin subdomain latched onto the soul you were absorbing and in doing so drained it of everything. That is why you are enduring what you''re presently enduring.]


    The vermin subdomain is a sly and dangerous one and with it a clever deity is capable of much. The fact that it is an innate subdomain of yours suggests it resonates with your soul which means that your parasitic abilities will always be capable of the unexpected.


    When I finished reading through this notification, I mentally commanded my minions to take on a defensive stance and then rose a hand in the direction of my enemies. I was still experiencing the odd sensations as Solomon''s essence was absorbed by me but now that I had an avenue to greater power I was going to take advantage of the smorgasbord before me.


    I took a second to will the earth beneath the feet of every one of my enemies to open up below them and swallow them up. Distantly, I felt the earth of the plain obey me and instantly end the battle. I could sense the disappointment of some of my soldiers, but given the conditions, I needed to fulfill before I could acquire a new tier of influence over a major domain I was in front of an all you could eat buffet and I intended to feast.


    With one move I brought the first battle in my war against Agustino to an end. And I knew that distantly the demon lord would be infuriated by both what I had gained in fighting this battle and also what I had taken from him. That knowledge brought a cruel smile to my face.

 210 Technology And Darkness

    For his part in all of this, the god himself was still seated where he landed after defeating the demonic general and was busy adjusting to the memories of the demonic general he had just slain and absorbed. Among the creature''s memories were recollections of exceptional moments such as encounters that the ancient demon had had with long-dead demon-lords and ancient battles between massive otherworldly armies that even the god of creativity doubted he could have dreamed them up prior to these last few minutes.


    Althos found himself quietly grateful to Solomon. He wasn''t grateful for the demonic general''s lack of intelligence, at least as far as greater demons go, but he was grateful for the quality of the demon''s memories. And for the knowledge, he was gleaming just by sitting down and fixating on the memories of a demon who had lived for well over three-quarters of a million years and remembered every second of it.


    "These memories... What a treasure trove." The god whispered, his eyes filling with excitement as he greedily gained more and more knowledge. He largely ignored Solomon''s annoyingly low-quality thoughts but fixated on the actual memories the ancient demon locked away in his mind.


    The Althonians who looked at him, especially those who approached while he was on his knees, saw him in an unusual state. He almost looked vulnerable while his youthful mind worked to accommodate the impossibly ancient memories he had just killed to acquire.


    His current form was his oldest human form, that of a middle-aged man who had a rustic look. An almost stereotypical depiction of a druid. He wasn''t radiating beauty, nor was he radiating an aura of insanity. Instead of looking superhuman or supernatural, he looked to be calmly meditating.


    ________________________________________________


    To say my mind was running a kilometer a minute was an understatement. It was more like it was moving light-years per nanosecond.


    I could feel my mind growing. It was odd, to say the least, to feel one''s mind expand in a real almost physical sense. But that was the only possible way to describe what was happening to me in the wake of my decision to absorb Solomon''s soul.


    The Heart of Darkness was making me feel at ease. It was as if it was intentionally trying to make me want to stay. I didn''t like it. That said I stayed on my knees for a while longer. I could do a lot from any position after all. I wasn''t as weak as mortals were.


    I closed my eyes, and from behind closed eyelids, I allowed countless memories to unfold in my mind''s eye. Not all of the memories were mine, in fact, I''d say that most of them weren''t. They belonged to many different creatures. Dwarves, humans, dark-elves, some demons, other, older creatures. Some of the memories originally belonged to friends, and others belonged to foes or at least those who had once been foes and were now allies, servants, worshipers, and members of my empire.


    While I allowed the memories to unfold before me, as a sort of private film-screening, I did something else. I began to call out to my angelic host, the legion of angels I had recruited and ruled over.


    ________________________________________________


    The charnel plains were a nondescript area, an almost totally featureless and impossibly large flatland of assortedly colored dirt. For eons, this particular layer of the Heart of Darkness housed extremely little and served primarily as either a neutral meeting ground for different demonic factions or as a small portion of a larger transit route that facilitated the transportation of demonic goods from one layer to another.


    From time to time this layer served as a battlefield for different demonic factions that would clash and temporarily gain territory and experience in combat. But the forces that currently occupied the charnel plains soon revealed that they had other plans in mind. Or at least their overlord, their emperor, did.


    The skies above the plains were equally plain and nondescript. No matter the time of day the skies were an unearthly orange color as if they were being corrupted by some potent pollutants. That said, someone could only see the orange tint of the sky if they could see the sky.


    One moment the Althonian army could see the sky above them, the next it was blacked out by a large number of massive portals appearing directly overhead. Althos himself began to grin, even as the shadows cast by one of the portals directly swallowed him up and rendered the god invisible. At the moment that the god vanished from view none of his followers had their eyes on him personally, having all collectively turned to watch the portals after the first few appeared and began to black out the skies.


    There was a second of silence as the very layer itself appeared to have held its breath. The second of silence was shattered when the first angel threw itself through the portal that had appeared in front of it in Althos'' gleaming city and began to descend from the skies above the plains.


    The angel in question was an odd fellow, a cube with two pairs of beautiful golden wings jutting from two pairs of edges the thing possessed. It was only possible for the assorted creatures who were looking at the skies to see the creature because it radiated a beautiful, sun-like light.


    The angel of creation was not the only angel who was making an appearance, it was just the first to step through any of the many portals that had appeared in Althos'' royal and divine city. Seconds after the god opened the portals throughout the city and ordered scores of his angels to come to his side, they began to appear in droves.


    ________________________________________________


    I was invisible in the dark, at least whenever I wanted to be thanks to an invented synergistic power I had created during my few months building cults. And at the moment I didn''t care to be seen. I studied the blackened skies and watched as scores of angels appeared in the skies above me. Their work would allow me to take stock of my situation.


    I telepathically ordered my angels, particularly my angels of creation and civilization, to build a city fit for inhabitation by multi-species. The first of my servants to arrive, such as the odd, angelic cube who was especially eager to serve me, immediately set about their work. I watched as the multiple cube-angels appeared out of portals not far from the initial cube angel to appear, and moved into action.


    The cube-angels "aimed" by repositioning themselves so they were "looking" straight down. A second later they began to shoot a potent ray of angelic energy into the plains, creating raw materials for an assortment of buildings.


    I chuckled when I saw this, and then gasped when they stopped shooting the rays that created material and paused for a moment only to begin to fire a second beam a split second later. This second beam was interesting to me as they fired it at the raw materials they had just created and when the beams made contact with the raw materials they instantly transformed the raw materials into buildings or other structures that were useful in or for towns.


    I watched bricks transform into houses. I watched mixtures of materials turn into wells, barns, and a number of other, more complex buildings. The display of angelic prowess was quite impressive.


    Angels of civilization, some of whom looked like humans and others of whom did not, busied themselves as well. I watched as they aided in building buildings and in the creation of things such as furniture and walls. They also created complex structures such as mines.


    One of the more important things I did here was go ahead and complete the quest given to me by the domain of technology by ordering my technological angels to create a factory that once active would create robots and androids. My technological angels, who themselves looked like the sort of technology I could see wandering around the surface of the world of Infernius, immediately threw themselves into their work.


    I watched as they rounded up a number of blacksmithing angels and the two groups collaborated to map out a large area. Once they had selected a place the technological angels ordered their allies to create and mold metal walls for the rough exterior of the facility itself. From there the angels threw themselves into their work. I watched, peering through the walls that guarded the facility from the outside.


    Angels got to work creating conveyor belts, machinery that would man the conveyor belts, and all sorts of monitoring stations for the factory. As they set to work furnishing the interior of the factory, I received a notification that brought a smile to my face. As I began to read it, I bestowed a number of blessings on the warriors who had fought for me, and then opened a number of portals allowing them to head back home.


    Wordlessly I devised a notification asking them to return to their homes and thanking them for their service. The vast legion I had just assembled all began to head back through portals that would allow them to return to their lives, stronger and more experienced for having fought in this battle.


    I had just acquired a number of significant powers, ones that I would use to be able to continue my war against Agustino without the help of my largely organic legions. Among my new abilities I could now create a new type of inorganic soldier: robots.


    ________________________________________________


    [Technology Subdomain Details:


    The subdomain of technology is an incredibly potent subdomain. If anything could be considered a "greater subdomain" it would be this subdomain. This subdomain governs all technology, which is among other things inventions such as sea and space faring vehicles known as ships, the mechanized and artificial lifeforms known as robots and androids, and weapons such as guns.


    Technology is wrongly considered by some to be the lawful response to magic. That would imply that there is a conflict between the two. There is no conflict between technology and magic, and indeed in the ancient past skillful gods of industry and civilization wove both together and changed the multiverse.


    Ancient gods of technology created vast intergalactic empires utilizing technology. To gain greater power over this domain you must build cults that utilize technology and actively use the powers this subdomain grants you.


    Technology Subdomain Primary Passive Powers:


    Android and Robot Mastery: You are the lord-god of robots and androids. This power allows you to create robots and androids freely and also be recognized as their god whenever you wish to be even by ones you didn''t create. Robots and androids are artificial lifeforms made of various metal or of synthetic material.


    There are synergistic components of this power. As a god of destruction and death, you can destroy robots and androids at will, even the most complex. You can also inflict diseases on them, as well as computer viruses, or otherwise, render them vulnerable to such things. You can also fill them with souls and bless them as you can bless other creatures.


    Artificial Intelligence Creation and manipulation: By synergizing the domains of life, the mind, and the subdomain of technology you can create artificial intelligences. Artificial intelligences can serve a number of purposes, but most frequently inhabit technology, particularly robots. You can also corrupt or otherwise indoctrinate existing artificial intelligences.


    Basic Technology Lordship: You have mastery over all forms of technology less advanced than spaceships capable of moving at the speed of light. This means you can control everything from catapults to drones and can shatter them just as easily. You can create or destroy any of this technology at will.


    Computer Mastery: You have total control over computers, devices that store, and process data. Artificial intelligences can go within these computers. You also now lord over computer viruses, a type of program that alters and harms computers. Having total control over computers means you can control a range of technology, particularly different planetary and interplanetary internets.


    Customization: This is a multi-synergistic power. With it you can apply all sorts of abilities to your mechanized servants and to other bits of technology.


    Technology Subdomain Active Powers:


    Robotization: Once per week you can transform any non-extraplanar entity or greater being into a robot. The robots you create this way are, like all other robots, automatically loyal to you once they learn of you.


    Technology Subdomain Blessing and Curse Details:


    This is one of the subdomains where the effects of blessings or curses depend on who receives them. If organic or at least non-technological lifeform receives a blessing they gain improved ability with technology and a faster mind to help process information quicker. Cursing a non-technological lifeform will lessen their ability with technology and slows their minds.


    Blessing technological lifeforms gives them enhanced intelligence, physiques, and turns them into champions of yours. Cursing them harms them significantly.]


    ________________________________________________


    Reading through the notification fascinated me. I felt powers surging into me and my mind expanded further still thanks to the new bevy of domain sense notifications I was receiving. For the first time since I had fallen to my knees when I first absorbed the memories of Solomon, I got back on my feet.


    All around me creatures were either leaving, or were hard at work building my admittedly unorthodox new settlement. All sorts of angels were hard at work completing various tasks to aid me, their lord-god. The portions of the plain that we had chosen to house the settlement were undergoing a vast change and one that was occurring extremely rapidly. The angels were a tireless, and thanks to me limitlessly powerful force when it came to building settlements rapidly.


    Their willingness to do what I had previously done myself gave me the freedom I needed to begin to have some fun. And I knew what I wanted to do. I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to adjust to the darkness of my eyelids before I began to think of what to do next. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to test out my new powers. As well as a few specific possibilities that I had thought of while I was reading through the notification alerting me to what I had earned in earning the first tier of influence over the technology subdomain.


    I was a god of shadows, darkness, chaos, parasites, and evil. And that made me the perfect god to be worshiped and served by praereptor demons, shadowy and incorporeal parasites who without my intervention lacked physical bodies of their own. That said, I could give them bodies freely and now I could give them a new type of body. Or at least I suspected that I could.


    I considered using Sombra, my pet praereptor demon, to test this out but I knew she was fond of her body. I had modeled Sombra''s physical body after Imbrosa Ravenfist, a drider who was one of the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen so I couldn''t fault her fondness for her body. That said, I had recently acquired the ability to create praereptor demons on my own, thanks to a title I had acquired.


    I moved one of my hands until it was in front of my face. I chuckled and opened my eyes so that I may see what was about to happen. I wanted to watch the mystical processes that allowed me to create a demon unfold. For the first time since I had acquired the title "The Shadowy Lord of the Unseen", I activated the key power that came with it. I created a praereptor demon.

 211 Technological Experimentation

    The speck of darkness was alive. I sensed its lifeforce and even if I wasn''t the demon''s creator I would have been able to detect the creature and determine that it was alive thanks to my sensory powers. I had successfully if a bit anticlimactically created a demon!


    The praereptor was currently in a state similar to unconsciousness. It was technically conscious, but was unresponsive and when I attempted to read its mind in the still annoyingly shallow, at least compared to how I read mortal minds, way I could I saw that it was being taught extremely basic information about the universe by its own iteration of the system. I could tell that this might take a while. Fortunately for me that gave me a natural opportunity to begin to learn new things and experiment with my newfound powers.


    I closed my eyes and turned my mind inward. In doing so I effortlessly "reached" the mental location "within" myself where the domains resided. Within me the domains and subdomains idly chatted amongst themselves, many of them excited by my decision to defeat and overthrow Agustino.


    I was mentally quiet for a moment, before I began to "speak" or rather transmit my thoughts, to the domains and subdomains gathered within me. I was "speaking" to a single specific subdomain. In an admittedly unusual move I was immediately reaching out to a newly acquired subdomain and being proactive in my interactions with it. I was reaching out to the technology subdomain.


    "Hello, technology subdomain." I began, and I allowed my mental voice to be heard by all of the subdomains. The idle background noise produced by the subdomains conversing with each other came to an abrupt end. That said, a split second later the subdomain replied to me.


    "Greetings lord-god. It is kind of you to ''stop by'' as it were and initiate a conversation of your own accord." The subdomain told me, greeting me with sincerity and respect. If I could nod, in my own head, I would have. That said I approximated the motion with my mental energy and then continued to speak internally.


    "It is admittedly not my style but I am interested in becoming a more fitting god of knowledge. And given the tools I have just acquired in the form of the powers you''ve given me, I suppose the best way to begin to do that is to converse with you." I told the subdomain, seeking to learn from it.


    "Anyways, allow me to begin to expand your knowledge about my powers. I can sense an interest in you in my abilities, and I am not surprised. Many subdomains don''t offer the immediate boost in power that I offer. After all, prior to acquiring my powers creating robots and androids would have been beyond your reach, but now you are the god of such technology." The subdomain said, just before it began to chuckle.


    "Oh believe me, I noticed. The power that seeped into my soul in the wake of acquiring the first tier of influence over you... It didn''t feel like I was acquiring power over a new subdomain, it was more like acquiring power over a new domain. And the customizability of this subdomain too... It''s quite impressive." I exclaimed, even as I began to move again. I opened my eyes and began to experiment with the newly acquired abilities.


    I stayed still as I began to visualize robots. To date I had never had an up-close encounter with a robot, but I had seen them before. I had actually seen robots more than once.


    The closest encounter I had had with a robot was when I visited the island colony of the Mi-Gos. They had had a robot experimenting with magic and I was able to observe its efforts from a safe distance. I had also seen robots in Infernius, and a significant part of my excitement related to the technology subdomain came from that simple fact.


    The first area someone reached when they physically traveled to Infernius, the homeworld and dimension of devil-kind, was an abandoned wasteland inhabited by devil-like robots and both simple and complex machines. I had seen it myself. For the first time in my life I possessed the perfect ability to secure control over that portion of the tyrannical dimension.


    The part of me that was focused and thought about being an emperor constantly, though admittedly a quite small portion of myself but one that was growing, relished the idea of going into Infernius and colonizing it while also gaining access to its undoubtedly plentiful lawful-evil resources.


    "Robots and androids are truly fantastic servants. They can be made far more sapient by giving them souls, any kind would do, and they retain their loyalty, to you at least, no matter what. Both robots and androids are also incredibly diverse. A god who is as... well-traveled as you are, can bestow countless abilities on your robots and androids through the ''Customization'' ability." The subdomain told me, teasing me with the possibility of creating incredibly versatile technology that served me and aided my minions.


    As the thing spoke, using the knowledge I had of robots that I had actually seen with my own eyes, or was quickly becoming aware of thanks to domain-sense, I began to picture all sorts of technology.


    "One of the key perks of robots and androids, a staple technology for any technologically advanced empire, is that they don''t need sleep and are perpetually loyal to you. They are like undead in that regard, but without the hatred for life that undead possess." The technology subdomain bragged, speaking of androids and robots like a proud parent might speak of their children.


    That said, it was impressive. Androids and robots, especially ones I created, could become the new default for my troopers. That meant that if I wanted I could keep my organic and even my undead followers safe and out of the fray. I wasn''t sure if robotic minions would make for adaptive front-liners as my understanding of robots was that they were known for being inflexible, which was something I''d need to test someday to see if there was any truth to that line of thinking. But even then I already knew that androids didn''t suffer from that problem.


    The source of my knowledge in reference to technology was unusual. The mixing of the knowledge domain and the technology subdomain proved to be quite informative. The two of them mixing in my mind filled my head with opinions, impressions, and even random bits of trivia concerning all sorts of technology. Among these bits of trivia were the "facts" that robots tended towards inflexibility in their thinking and their execution of their directives, meanwhile, androids were apparently quite responsive, mentally, and possessed growth-oriented minds.


    Without focusing on which robot I created, I rose my hand and created my first robot. The very first robot to appear in front of me was a bit of a surprise, even to me. On the ground ahead of me a large, perhaps meter tall and few meters wide, drone popped into existence. The thing popped into being fully formed and even painted a nice purple color.


    The drone, much larger than the small ones I had "seen" through sensory powers in the solar system of my birth or even throughout Htrea, was a combat type drone. Upon studying it for a moment I realized it was a type of flying combat vehicle meant to respond to ground incursions from range: a gunship. It was also fully autonomous, though I knew that if I wanted too I could change that at will. That said its "mind", as far as the vehicle even possessed, was unexceptional.


    By "glancing" into the mind of the robot I sensed that it would loyally fulfill tasks for me, and even directed a modicum of worship my way but it wasn''t as intelligent as it could be nor was it meant for true independence, as far as its design went. This was a simple gunship, not an advanced command-ship or even an elite soldier. I took a step forward and placed one of my hands on the thing.


    The drone lifted off the ground ever so slightly and slowly approached me. The vehicle was capable of movement thanks to a number of silent rotors that spun blades at extreme speeds. Even this drone, one of the simpler military robots I could create, was more complex than anything that could be found on Htrae and I knew that its performance was not to be underestimated.


    As far as armaments went the thing was a veritable invasion killer. One of the advantages of the drone''s size was that it was armed to the teeth, or rather the rotors in this case. A number of small but dangerous turrets lined the top of the robot. The turrets were capable of firing a variety of types of bullets and energy, as it could shoot bullets or it could fire electricity or plasma at foes. On the drone''s "face" where it was the thickest it had three sets of dual missile launchers that could handle enemy tanks. The final method of enemy disposal that it had was a bomb bay which were capable of holding three small bombs at any one time.


    Gunships were usually intended to handle infantry but this brutal weapon could repel all sorts of grounded enemies. And this was not the most complex gunship I could create either.


    As far as enemy visuals went, the vehicle was covered in sensitive sensors and had tiny but ultra high-quality cameras that gave anyone who commanded it and could see through its sensors perfect clarity of vision in every direction. The vehicle could be used for scouting, so long as it was just going to be fighting against ground-based enemies or it had adequate aerial support. I could see this sort of drone becoming one common drone found throughout any mechanized legions I built in the future.


    The somewhat sapient piece of technology approached me and I gently placed a hand on its "face". The "face" of the machine was a thick central core that connected its rotors. The object was made of adamantine, a powerful and magical metal. I had recently gained the ability to manipulate even mystical metals thanks to my upgraded earth abilities, and I now knew that I could create machines and robots from the stuff. Such knowledge filled my heart with excitement, especially since I could generate the material even in places where it didn''t or even shouldn''t exist.


    I physically grabbed the sliver of darkness that was my newest praereptor pet and I willed the mind of the drone to shut down. As soon as the mind ceased operating, I threw the darkness I had grabbed onto my newest creation and I watched it immediately expand to the size and shape of the drone for a moment before shrinking until it was so tiny that it was basically invisible.


    A part of me wanted to cheer when this actually worked. I was testing out if praereptor demons could possess sufficiently advanced technology and was delighted to see that they could! This was one way I could mix technology and another sort of power.


    I''d need to test this more thoroughly in the days to come, and praereptors were not exactly stable testing subjects, but it was an exciting thing to add to my knowledge. The drone took a second to come fully to life, now that it was possessed by a praereptor but less than a minute after my minion successfully possessed it the thing began to strafe from side to side.


    I watched, curiously, as the demon experimented with the body it now possessed. As it did, I made contact with the thing.


    "Hello there little one. How are you liking your first body?" I asked the tiny demon, which was now possessing a person-sized robot. The demon, still getting used to the body it now inhabited, turned on bright headlights located on the robot''s "face", which were swiftly turned on me. A second later, the robot began to emit static, before its static turned into actual words.


    "Hello creator! This body is... Is it even a body?" The creature asked, displaying an amusing amount of both skepticism and curiosity. The creature was more intelligent than I had anticipated it being. Sombra had given me her memories and she was not even this inquisitive when she first began to exist, many millennia ago. I chuckled at the demon and responded bluntly.


    "Well, it''s a body. That said it''s definitely not a body many praereptor demons would think to possess even though it has a lot of destructive potential." I informed the creature, grinning as I spoke. I now had enough praereptor worshippers to know that most of them wouldn''t think to try and possess technology unless they had a master who directed them to do that. Frankly that was a shame, as technology had a lot of destructive power.


    The drone fell silent for a moment. I touched the mind of the demon possessing the bit of technology and I grinned when I realized that the tiny invader was taking stock of the weaponry the machine it was possessing had access too. When the demon next spoke, its excitement was audible to me though I doubted anyone else might be able to hear it even if the words would have given away the emotional state of the creature.


    "Oh yes. I... I love this." The creature said, gasping as it playfully reached into itself and studied what sort of armaments I had given it.


    A part of me had wanted to give the demon an android body, but frankly the creature seemed to truly love the toy I had given it. I could sense the creature''s joy and the gratitude it felt towards me for creating it and immediately giving it such a potentially destructive body it could go wild with. It was a distinct type of joy compared to the joy felt by praereptors who were given true physical forms, but it wasn''t a bad sensation. It was at this point that another voice chimed in.


    "Even a tiny drone possesses such destructive capability... I had almost forgotten just how destructive the technology subdomain was." Whispered a quiet and calm voice from deep within me.


    "I... encourage creativity in pursuing further destructive approaches." The same voice whispered, clearly speaking to me privately. The voice''s tone was one of awe and joy, which suggested that it enjoyed this. I had a feeling that the voice belonged to the destruction domain, but I felt it "leave" my presence, insofar as domains and subdomains could "leave". It was an odd sensation, like someone invisible was next to you and then they weren''t.


    I thought about the voice for a moment, before shaking my head and committing to continue my experiments.

 212 Amusments and Diversions

    In front of me, my eyes lazily followed the motions of my two creations: the drone and the praereptor demon who possessed it. I wasn''t really paying attention to them either, but I was glad they were having fun. My mind was elsewhere. In a more... immaterial place than here. My attention was focused inward, on the conversation I was having with one of the many conceptual entities who lived within me.


    "Being able to create creatures like that freely... What a power to gain right out of the gate." I mentally muttered, voicing my thoughts in such a way that all of the domains and subdomains could hear me. My remarks were met with amused chuckles by a few of the domains and subdomains who resided in my mind. I could hear the distinct chuckles of the domains of physics and creation and the subdomains of technology and evocation.


    "You think this is powerful? If you master me you will see true power." The entity whispered, attempting to stoke my ambitions. This time it was my turn to chuckle.


    "Oh, I fully intend to master you. I intend to master every domain and subdomain." I replied, speaking ambitiously. There was a smile on my lips, and it was audible in my mental voice as well. This time I heard a soft chuckle from the subdomain of corruption.


    If I could hear the voice of the vice of sin, I''d no doubt hear it chuckling as well but to date, the sin had not made itself known to me in the ways that the sin of lust had. That aside, I knew that my words were more than the eager boasting of a young person, but were fact. I would patiently master each and every domain and subdomain. I had all the time I''d need to one day become the greatest overgod to ever live. It was while I was thinking about the nature of my pride that the voice of the subdomain once again reached me.


    "That sort of ambition is good. That''s the attitude that may one day, in the incredibly distant future, result in you actually succeeding. Now let me ask you, what else do you seek?" The subdomain asked me, curiously.


    "I seek to create a multiverse spanning empire, one that is so unimaginably vast that every single being in existence knows and worships me." I replied, speaking of my comically ambitious goal freely.


    Meanwhile, a small part of my mind began to stop thinking about militaristic might, or so-called "hard power" and began to think a bit more subversively. The technology subdomain wasn''t just a militaristic subdomain just like technology itself wasn''t solely about military might.


    One of the most interesting aspects of this ability of mine was that it meant that I could remotely manipulate say... the internet on Htrae if I wanted to. If I had wanted to I could do a lot with just the power to alter the internet on the human world. Htraens were extremely fond of the internet and were overreliant on it for information to the point that in more "advanced" nations like Htrae, libraries and other physical sources of knowledge were both underfunded and underused. This was a weak point I could exploit if my plans for Htrae ever changed.


    That said there was another angle to the Htraens and their fondness for the internet. Their fondness for it meant that it was a treasure trove of knowledge that was readily accessible to anyone with the means and the time needed to do so could learn almost anything known to modern Htraens. I could easily create an artificial intelligence and task it with absorbing and aggregating every single fact that the Htraeans stored on their "world wide web". After a moment''s hesitation, I decided that I would do that. And a little bit more.


    ________________________________________________


    I took a deep breath and activated one of my newer powers: the ability to create artificial intelligences. When I first activated this power, nothing happened. At least not immediately. However a second after I activated the power my vision was subsumed by a large notification.


    [Alert: Artificial Intelligence Creation


    Hello! Welcome to the technology menu, or rather one specific subset of it. This table will assist you in creating your first artificial intelligence.


    Artificial intelligences are the equivalents to minds possessed by robots, machines, androids, and other complex technologies. The term itself has a few different applications. The most simple application is as a generalized term which refers to the overall intelligence demonstrated by machines, robots, and androids. One of the more complex applications is what I, the technology subdomain refer to when I discuss artificial intelligences: an individualized mind-like component of a machine, robot, or android.


    Creating an artificial intelligence, or an A.I., without a mechanized body to host it might strike some as odd but as a god there is a lot you can do with an individual A.I., especially since you can influence a wealth of domains and subdomains right away. A solitary A.I. you create could infect a starship or a planetary defense-grid and wreck havoc. Or you can use an A.I. to turn technology on a planet into your minions before you invade.


    Alternatively, you can use your own more or less unbound A.I. to save lives such as stopping a conflict in space between two different starships nonviolently or taking control of a malfunctioning facility by repairing existing programs and fixing glitches using your minions.


    Now, to help you create the most precisely designed A.I. please tell me what sort of functions you''d like for this A.I. to have and what it''s intended purpose would be.]


    ________________________________________________


    I read through the notification and sighed. Of course this was more complex than creating robots was.


    "I want to create an A.I. that infiltrates the Htraen ''World Wide Web''. I want it to be an... ultimate hacker that has as close to unlimited power, in the internet of Htraens, as possible." I told the notification, before pausing for a moment.


    "I''d like for it to be able to edit, copy, shut down, or otherwise modify any website or web-page on the internet freely. I also want it to obsessively log information and note any and all changes that occur to even the smallest pages throughout the entirety of the ''Web''. I want it to have the capabilities to be used offensively but for it to defer to my judgment as for when to actually begin to affect Htraens." I told the subdomain.


    I would begin to articulate my specific vision over the next few minutes, while I physically experimented with my other powers. The first one I''d experiment with was my ability to create new sorts of items.


    My demon-drone stayed close to me and began to fly around excitedly when I created the first of the new items I could create: a gun. I created a simple gun, a mundane one that fired bullets. The thing felt light in my hands, but also quite boring. I chuckled as my drone found the weapon more exciting than I did, closing in on me to study the item closely.


    I gave the item to the demon and began to create items more complex than a gun that Htraens could have created over a century ago. As I customized the A.I. I was creating, I spent some time, three hours to be precise, idly creating an array of technologies.


    I created a series of androids, all of whom were more or less human in appearance, and ordered them to patrol the mechanical city. I created a variety of weapons, from guns that fired plasma, to weapons infected with diseases that would weaken organic, mortal foes, to sonic armaments meant to stun and disable enemies.


    My second most noteworthy achievement during this time was my creation of a series of robots. These robots were all totally inhuman and were actually large vehicles such as tanks and aerial ships that were sent on missions to patrol the plains so that I could begin to understand and map it accurately.


    It was while I was working on a tank that I made the choice to try and win the rest of this war using robots. This was more to test the potential of the newest inorganic additions to my forces than anything else. I made this decision shortly before discovering something truly exceptional: the actual powers of my "Customization" ability.


    "Customization" was a power that gave me the power to apply all sorts of abilities to my technological creations and servants. It was mentioned in the ability''s description that it was a multi-synergistic power which was the first tip I got that the abilities I could apply to technology were related to the domains and subdomains I could influence.


    When I had first activated this power I received a new notification. It reminded me of the first time I activated my "Divine Presence" power and received a long notification alerting me to some of the "Divine Presences" I could utilize. The notification was long, but more than a few of the abilities I could attach to technology were amazing.


    I could attach all sorts of attributes to technology, and freely at that. One example that I quite liked was that I could give robots, including automated turrets, the ability to fire bullets that were infused with alignment-based energies. For example, I could attach an automated turret to a tank and give the turret a machine-gun-like firing mode that hit enemies with lawful bullets. These bullets would have healed devils and dealt critical damage to demons.


    In terms of non-destructive abilities, I could attach to things, I could bestow robots and androids with natural magical capabilities. I could create robots whose missions were terraforming and grant them access to potent ecomantic spells, or robots designed to non-violently pacify enemies and give them access to illusion and enchantment magic.


    Some of the stranger things I could do with robots included things like make them extremely adept doctors of organic lifeforms by filling them with knowledge from the life domain and the healing subdomain, or fill them with a desire to self-replicate by filling them with lust-based corruption and instincts from the life domain.


    That said, perhaps the most groundbreaking thing of all that I found I could do with them in just a few minutes of experimentation was that I could give them the power to outfit themselves in an anti-magic forcefield at will. This was due to my powers over two subdomains: contractual magic, and alteration, both of which granted me some anti-magic capabilities.


    That said this felt almost too powerful as these anti-magic forcefields canceled out as many magical effects as those who used them wanted against all ten of the basic schools of magic. Magic was in all likelihood the most powerful weapon a world like Torus or Retribution would have had against my machines but if I wanted to create an invasion force that was basically almost invincible on such worlds I could do so with ease now since the next tier of magic and magical schools had extremely few users both in Torus and in Retribution.


    If I wanted too, I could give some of these robots to inhabitants of the world known as "Mercy". I had no doubt that once they knew of the anti-magic capabilities of my machines they''d use them to launch attacks on Retribution. That was of interest to me, but I suppressed those blood-thirsty thoughts for now.


    ________________________________________________


    During the three hours I had spent experimenting with my abilities my angels had been hard at work. I glanced around, focusing on myself for the first time in hours and began to visually explore the city.


    It was an odd, quiet place. I saw sleek, angular buildings all around me. They were all solidly colored and were most often colored shades of silver. Many of the buildings were powerful, efficient factories that were churning out basic but powerful robots, lesser machines, and androids in incredible numbers. Only a handful of buildings were anything but factories.


    As I visually explored the city I was amused to see all sorts of angels getting up to various sorts of mischief. I could see angels of the arts tapping buildings and changing their colors, angels of life studying the robots and androids who left their birthplaces, angels of technology hard at work expanding the city itself, and other angels doing miscellaneous tasks.


    The angels themselves had various body types. Some of them, particularly lesser angels, were more often than not humanoid-like in appearance while other, greater angels tended to more closely resemble something related to the domain or subdomain they represented.


    The city was very pretty and I was quite fond of it. It was a place of order in a dimension of disorder, and in hours it would become made up entirely of inorganic life dedicated to following my instructions and for the moment to winning the war I was fighting. I allowed a day to pass without making another offensive move and I recommitted myself to thoroughly mastering my new abilities. For once I was determined to master my abilities and to figuring out creative ways to use them before I continued on my adventures.


    During this time I also became a whiz at creating artificial intelligences. And by a "whiz" I mean an expert at creating different archetypes for artificial intelligences which allowed me to mass-produce them and thus gain a new and subtle tool for manipulating technology. I combined this with my ability to create starships that moved at the speed of light and gained an excellent tool for exploring the universe, as well as for combat on a vast, interplanetary scale.


    ________________________________________________


    Back in the mortal plane, the portion of the universe inhabited primarily by mortals, a number of things began to happen, millions of light-years apart from each other. All of these events were caused by the ambitions of the lone living god and were events that he orchestrated from another dimension. To him, distance was not an obstacle.


    In different portions of the universe, robots came into existence spontaneously. These robots were all given the same directive: find a place fit for a factory, mark it, and then build a factory there.


    Some of these robots came into being on asteroids, on moons, and in a few cases even on lifeless planets. In every case, these robots had the ability to create the materials they needed to build both helper robots and the factories they had been told to build. Mere seconds after they began to exist, they set about achieving the first of many instructions they''d were destined to receive over the course of their lives.


    Another, far more subtle event was going on as well. In different portions of the universe, across dozens of worlds in different solar systems, a horde of artificial intelligences immaterially infected countless bits of technology. Every from so-called "smart cars", to things as advanced as defense systems against nuclear weapons were abruptly infected by alien A.I.''s who cared only for their master and creator, himself an alien entity who for now was content to merely and calmly usurp technology but not make himself known.


    The single most direct thing that happened though was the abrupt appearance of a few hundred starships in distant corners of the universe. Althos, in an unusually exploratory move, created the sorts of ships that marked the very edge of his "basic technology lordship", starships capable of traveling at the speed of light, and sent them throughout the universe. He also gave the A.I.''s on board those ships an excellent tool: the power to project a phantom copy of himself that would be able to trigger "Stellar Awareness" when it reached a solar system''s star.


    In the dimension known as the Heart of Darkness, the quiet god grinned when he felt his servants beginning to go to work throughout the mortal plane. He silently connected the minds of all of his machines in the mortal plane to his own using his ability to establish hiveminds and then he did the same for the machines located in the Heart of Darkness. Before he did anything else, the curious god performed a minor experiment.


    He projected his mind into Infernius, specifically onto the surface of the world. He found himself in a ruined city, and his sensory abilities allowed him to detect countless machines, robots, and androids, all of whom were in disrepair, disarray and were deeply damaged or broken. That said this gave him an idea, one that was reasonably certain would work.


    That said, his physical body issued a command to all of the offensive robots located in his inorganic city. The god chuckled as he began to speak.


    "Offensive robots, machines, and androids, ready yourselves! The time has come for us to continue our war against Agustino and his servants. We can and will crush him! Assemble yourselves and go out into his lands so that we may destroy him and his armies." The god commanded, a cruel enjoyment of his new powers visible in his gaze and his smirk.


    The city came to life as factory doors opened and an assortment of robots, androids, and lesser machines began to march in unison towards their leader, and then towards the outside world. One of the more unusual members of this otherwise orderly army was the small praereptor demon, who was still possessing the drone and wanted to participate in the war against the enemies of its creator, as well as thousands of other drones and aerial vehicles, all of whom were tiny and armed with a frightening variety of weapons.


    The Althonians, now more varied than ever, marched off to continue the first true war the god had ever waged. And their god himself was allowing them to fight with minimal guidance to see how they did, while he himself was preparing to make his first moves to affect a mysterious new dimension.

 213 Dungeons and Robots

    The surface of Infernius was also very dark. If I gazed up at the sky I saw a dark cloud that loomed above me in every direction. The dark cloud cast a grim shadow on the surface and what I could see when I glanced through the cloud was a starless and sunless sky that was also pitch black. I didn''t see a moon either.


    I found myself inside of a once large city, and around me, I sensed machines, robots, and androids of all sorts. I took a moment to orient myself and to study the things that most closely surrounded me.


    I was surrounded in every direction by skyscrapers, cars, and other Htraen-like features of cities. I was also surrounded by inorganic lifeforms. There were no organic lifeforms near me, not for entire kilometers, but there were scores of technological lifeforms near me.


    I was on a sidewalk, beside a building that stretched for hundreds of meters straight into the ashy skies. On the road next to me there were countless cars, none of which had any drivers nor did they appear to have been moved in a very long time. The cars were covered in thick piles of ash indicating that no one had disturbed them in weeks, at least, but judging by the thickness of the ash it had probably been years since anyone did anything of note to the cars.


    I was doing my best to ignore an ominous notification but it was getting harder and harder to do the more I looked around. That said, I managed to ignore it just long enough to note that up ahead of me was a four-way intersection. I considered walking over to it and using it to gain more information on this odd place but I also knew that it''d look nearly identical to where I currently was. My sensory abilities were just that strong. Eventually I had to give up and read the notification in full.


    When I first projected into this city I had read the first two words and then elected to temporarily ignore them and order my robotic, mechanic, and technological soldiers to go to war. I knew just by reading the first two words, one of which I had only really heard of when I was actively in the presence of members of one of my evil cults, that I was going to probably going to need to be fully present to successfully enact my scheme. Now I was fully focused on the scene in front of me and that meant that I needed all of the information I could get.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dungeon Alert:


    Large cities controlled by evil extraplanars were often the homes of these secretive tools created to exercise the greatest amount of control over their inhabitants as possible. If you want to gain control over the surface of Infernius you need to acquire control over at least three dungeons, and thus the cities or other facilities and communities that come with the dungeons, and one of the greater facilities located somewhere on the surface of this super-Htrae-sized dimension.


    Part of the problem with Infernius'' surface, as well as portions of the history of this dimension, can be discovered by obtaining the dungeon-core located somewhere inside of this city though there may be other ways to discover the history of this place if you''re inquisitive. With your current tiers of influence over a few key domains and subdomains, you cannot detect the location of the dungeon core solely by utilizing your sensory powers.


    This dungeon does currently have a dungeon master but the dungeon master hasn''t updated the dungeon core in close to 490,000 years.]


    ________________________________________________


    "I am in a dungeon... Of course I am." I mentally whispered, annoyed by this. I had heard of dungeons before, back when I still had my devil worshipers near me, but since I wasn''t currently in their presence I hadn''t had much of a chance to study them. I had also planned to not come to Infernius for a while, but when I acquired influence over the technology subdomain I knew that I had the powers I''d need to successfully visit this place. Now I was being given a chance to theoretically take control of a city.


    I sighed and studied my surroundings some more. After a few moments of careful contemplation, I decided to physically examine the city for a brief moment before I began to tend to machines.


    I teleported myself as far as I could see in the direction my enhanced settings told me was the direction I needed to travel to reach the heart of the city. In an instant, I went from standing beside a towering skyscraper to standing in the middle of a vast city-square. I could tell in part for the lack of nearby cars and also because I popped into being next to a fallen robot who was mostly buried underneath a thick pile of ashes. And this was enough for me. Now that I had teleported once and seen even more of the city I swiftly decided to examine the local technology. By helping the technology I would definitely be able to both explore the city and learn more about it anyway.


    The robot I noticed earlier was facedown in the ashes and had a body that was similarly colored but my senses were sharp enough to detect it anyway. I lifted the humanoid-like creature out of the ashes and as I did so I went ahead and activated one of my synergistic abilities, a new one I had acquired thanks to my acquisition of the first tier of influence over the subdomain of technology.


    My hand began to glow while I hoisted the robot out of the ashes and as my hand glowed, the robot I had grabbed was beginning to glow too. I effortlessly pulled the robot out of the ashes and placed him on the ground, solid ground not ashes, next to me. By the time the creature was on the most solid ground possible at the moment, next to me, it was radiating a bright glow and I heard gears, cogs, and more within it beginning to turn for the first time since I had laid eyes on it. My attempt to bring the creature to life was evidently succeeding!


    I looked at the creature and began to study it. It was a robot, which I knew at a glance, but it was unlike my robots. Among other things it had a humanoid body, with two arms, two legs, a head, and it even had eyes! But while it had a humanoid body whoever designed it had no intention of making the thing look like any organic humanoid.


    The eyes the robot had were polished sapphires that sat in the middle of a face made of a darkened metal named "Orichalcum", which I learned thanks to a notification I received when I touched the robot. Its body was made of the same material, but where an organic humanoid would have had a chest, this creature had an orb-shaped incision, as if it were a mobile orb-transporter or something.


    The creature was still for a moment before it began to vibrate as it came fully to life. It moved robotically and began to move its head from left to right. As it did, it stoically studied everything around it, pausing only when its eyes met mine. I noticed that there was an inflexibility to the thing that kept it from making precise, flexible movements even as its neck slowly scanned the area around it.


    When it did, it stopped and the thing emitted static for a second. It then fell silent, and somehow I could sense the faintest bit of confusion from the technological lifeform. It then emitted static again. And this time I felt more confusion and even a bit of anger. A few seconds later it tried to do whatever it was trying to do once more, only to blast static again.


    At this point I was annoyed, and I calmly rose a hand and aimed even more healing energy at the ash-covered robot. A beam of light shot forth from my hand and phased into the robot. The creature stopped and studied the light that was emanating from my hand and into it, before appearing to relax and gain a looseness and flexibility that it was lacking before. This time, it didn''t emit static. Instead the odd creature spoke for the first time!


    "Data banks damaged. Current memory-processing power: 5%. Access to collective knowledge... Negligible." The creature said, robotically. Its voice was quiet. There was a pause, but then it spoke again.


    "Greetings Lord-God. My iteration of the system is informing me that you healed me and also that you are the god of technology. I extend my gratitude towards you, as well as express my servility towards you and your divine majesty. May you please announce your name?" The robot muttered, its voice stiff and formal. I chuckled, but was excited that my power worked! I locked eyes, or at least I tried to lock eyes, with the robot and began to speak.


    "Althos. Althos is my name." I declared, speaking confidently to the robot. It nodded at me and began to speak again.


    "Affirmative. Editing full designation for the entity recognized as the lord-god. New title: ''Lord-God Althos''." The robot declared though I sensed a bit of happiness within the creature.


    "How may I assist Lord-God Althos?" The entity asked. That made me grin and I immediately replied to it.


    "Do you know how to get to the dungeon-core? Or at least how to learn how to get to it?" I asked, curiously. The creature, or at least some part of it was damaged, so it was possible that it wouldn''t know what I was seeking. And it might not have had enough authority to know the possibly "secretive" location of the dungeon-core I was seeking.


    The creature was still for a second and I sensed it''s mind attempting to search its internal databank for a moment. And then the robot''s shoulders fell in disappointment. It began to shake its head, the movement still kind of stiff but far more fluid than before.


    "I apologize Lord-God, I do not have that knowledge. I am still damaged, but I know that even if I am fully healed I would not have permissions that high. That said, I do know of a possible solution." The robot informed me.


    "If you go around repairing local technology in the same way as you repaired me, reactivating us along the way, you will eventually find a robot with the proper protocols needed to inform you as to how to find the dungeon-core. Even before then, once you''ve repaired enough of us we''ll be able to restore our ability to access our collective knowledge which will allow us to tell you who precisely you need to heal to determine the location of the dungeon-core. Unfortunately even fully healing me would not give you access to that information." The robot informed me. This was deeply valuable intel and so I smiled at the robot, grateful for its help in all of this.


    "Thank you for your aid. In exchange, allow me to reward you. Hold still little one." I told the robot, before raising a hand and emitting a potent wave of healing energy. The energy infused the air between myself and the robot with a brilliant silvery hue, and gently phased into the robot. The light was absorbed by the robot''s dark metal exoskeleton and I watched as the creature began to be healed more thoroughly than before.


    I was using a new synergistic ability that allowed me to heal robots and technological life as efficiently as possible. I studied the robot, and in doing so gained an increased awareness of the thing, including learning its total hitpoints and maximum possible hitpoints. The thing had been quite damaged originally, but now was being steadily healed. I only stopped when the entity was fully healed.


    When it was fully healed, the creature was momentarily surrounded by a solid sphere of darkness, one I could see through but that would have stumped other, lesser creatures. I watched as the creature''s full power washed over it and as it regained access to a number of abilities lost to the bot when it was damaged.


    A minute after the sphere of darkness emanated out from the robot the darkness disappeared. The creature looked around, its head now more flexible and in a perfect state of repair, before it spoke.


    "Gratitude transmitted to Lord-God Althos. Thank you, oh deity of technology. As a way to further express the gratitude stored within unit 627-Alpha, please allow the aforementioned unit to travel alongside you while you remain within the city and presumably track down the dungeon-core." The robot said, its voice beginning to come more fully and emotionally to life. I could hear a trace of gratitude in the technological lifeform''s words! I chuckled and nodded even as I spoke.


    "I shall allow it. That said... I know where some nearby robots are. It''d be faster if we just go together my way rather than walking." I told the creature, having already identified other creatures like it that I could heal. I extended my hand and waited for the robot to take it. When it did, the two of us blinked out of the square and into a nearby building.

 214 A Gods Impatience

    Althos'' actions and the pair''s interactions during the dream in which she met him had forever changed her life. She awoke on a bed she purchased using her own money, in an apartment that she could only afford because of how the strange god had altered her appearance and the decisions she made after he did that.


    She was a top-tier student at an expensive institution but her rent now cost several times her tuition and she was able to afford both without any difficulties. The young woman, who had once been beautiful and was now more fairly described as sexy, opened her eyes and sat up in her bed. She looked around and admired her ostentatiously expensive mattress, shortly before she let out a sleepy yawn.


    She wasn''t wearing anything at the moment, preferring to sleep in the nude even before her transformation at Althos'' hands. Every day she awoke and admired all that she had acquired, be her own glamorous looks, her incredible apartment, or the audience she had built online in the wake of her Althonian transformation.


    The young woman would spend the first few minutes of her day getting ready for the day. She did this by showering and putting on the outfit she planned to wear for the day. In today''s case that consisted of dark jeans and a dark t-shirt. She also put on a bra today, though on days when she planned to post pictures to her social media accounts she usually didn''t do that.


    Her appearance was eye-catching, that was the whole point of her transformation after all, but oftentimes she wore clothing that minimized that unless she intended to leverage it to her advantage. She was greedy, but unlike the creature who had transformed her she wasn''t lustful and didn''t especially enjoy unwanted attention from anyone unless it came with money or the opportunity to make money.


    The quiet woman found herself in her kitchen eating a small breakfast consisting of oatmeal, water, and a banana, shortly after putting on her outfit for the day. Her kitchen was a grand room, spaciously designed to include cutting edge technology and plenty of storage space for all sorts of foods. It also included space for entertainment and dining, which Andrea had chosen to fill by purchasing a large T.V. that was currently on. At the moment a news program was showing footage of an abandoned ship in the middle of the ocean.


    Andrea wasn''t interested in that sort of news. She had actually tried to pay attention to it when the string of disappearances actually began, but the accompanying news coverage weeks ago had fixated on the possibility of the source of the disappearance of the first ship being a hitherto unseen and unidentified aquatic creature and the generic b-role footage many news agencies had played being footage of the deep-sea. This reminded the woman of her almost totally forgotten childhood fear: thalassophobia.


    Now the young human woman had begun to ignore that specific story, since as a child the thoughts of the deep sea and the incredibly inhuman life within it deeply terrified her. That said the T.V. was still on, and footage continued to be visible as Andrea slowly ate her breakfast.


    "The Murphy Administration has not yet ruled out the possibility that these disappearances are the result of some sort of terror attack, though thus far no terrorist organization has yet to come forward and claim credit for the attacks." The same narrator from earlier said, uncertainty audible in his voice.


    Neither Andrea nor the narrator could have suspected the terrible truth behind the odd attacks. The narrator had no idea that there existed a creature like an akkorokamui in the deepest depths of the ocean, and Andrea had no possible way of knowing or even suspecting that the same entity responsible for her beauty was himself a nightmarish god of the horrifying lifeforms found in the darkest corners of the ocean who had permitted one of his pets to freely pillage vessels daring to cross the ocean.


    Distantly, Althos was quite proud of the akkorokamui and its family and each night when they fell asleep their dreams were visions of the afterlife they were likely to receive: private homes in an endless ocean where they''d live blissfully for eternity, aside from when their god needed them. In these dreams they were exposed to a sanity-draining version of the god''s "Siren song" ability that ensured that their minds were perpetually open to the dark influence of the vicious god they worshiped.


    Andrea also never imagined that the same god who was responsible for unleashing a living calamity on the ocean would soon approach her with a business deal of all things. That same god was currently in a distant dimension and he was hard at work reenergizing another robot, a grin on his face as he acquired yet another servant.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself inside of one of the skyscrapers found throughout the city of Duvessa. I was pretty high up, and "Alpha" stood beside me, his gemstone eyes locked on the slowly reviving robot sprawled on the floor in front of me.


    In the few minutes since we had arrived inside of the building we had explored the empty place and found nothing of great value, at least not while the building lacked power. Fortunately, I had a way to fix that.


    As I stood over the newest robot to begin to join me, one that a surprisingly colorful bright green and had ruby eyes, I watched my healing energy surge into it. That said, that wasn''t all that was happening.


    Above the building, above the entire city actually, a massive storm cloud was being formed by a single usage of my ability to control the weather. I intended to use it to restore power every building in the city at once. I wasn''t a human, a mortal, or even a devil or archdevil. I was a being who existed on a scale unimaginable to any lesser being, even other non-deity higher-beings. I had the power to instantly restore power to the city, though admittedly in a quite brute force sort of way.


    I glanced out the window and saw the darkened cloud increasing in size. I watched a single bolt of lightning flicker across the sky, and chuckled. A second later I heard the boom of thunder. Alpha had commented on the first thunderclap it had heard, but now was silent and calmly watched its fellow robot.


    The robot I was healing finally began to undergo the same process Alpha had undergone when it was first restored to functionality. I continued to heal the thing, even when its eyes scanned me and the robot began to speak.


    "Greetings. Commencing shared knowledge check... The pseudo-organic entity this unit just scanned is, according to shared knowledge, the being designated as ''Lord-God Althos''. This unit, Gamma-594, extends its gratitude towards you, Lord-God Althos." The robot told me, revealing its name and greeting me similarly to how Alpha had done.


    It was at this moment that the robot got out of the synthetic chair that it had deactivated in, nearly half a million years ago. The robot then turned to Alpha and began to speak in the same monotone, robotic voice it had spoken to me in.


    "Greetings unit 627-alpha. By accessing our shared knowledge this unit has determined that you accompanied the Lord-God. For that you have this unit''s gratitude." The robot told its peer. The two began to converse, and I turned my attention elsewhere.


    I glanced outside again, and this time I focused on the cloud I had created. In doing so I took full control of the thing and without uttering a single word I caused the cloud to release an electrostatic discharge, a bolt of lightning, at the building I was in. The electricity arced across the sky before striking a metal corner of the building and sending electricity throughout the building, sending an amount of power unseen on this dimensions'' surface, electricity which I immediately took command of.


    That said, this caused the robots in the building to fall silent as the building shook around us. They merely gazed at each other, largely unthinkingly, and waited for the next few seconds while I wrestled to control the electricity the lightning produced. The problem wasn''t the electricity itself, the problem was that the building was too large. I was trying to spread the electricity throughout the building so that I could power the whole thing, as otherwise it''d stay largely where the bolt of lightning struck the building.


    After a few seconds of this struggle I gave up, and rose my hand. I sighed in annoyance. A long time ago I had gained a synergistic ability to control electricity, one I hadn''t used all that often. Today I supposed I''d be changing that. The robots stopped watching each other and turned to face me.


    I bit my lip, annoyed that my attempt to power the building had failed, and I activated my mastery over electricity. I felt an aura of electricity begin to spark into being around me, and I grinned. I also felt electricity suffused my astral body, and I knew immediately that I''d be able to direct as much electricity as I wanted in any direction. This made me begin to laugh and had I been surrounded by mortals or even devils I suspected that the sound would have elicited reactions of fear but the robots looked at me impassively. I ignored their blank stares and I began to act.


    I moved forward and phased through the window that I had looked out earlier. I found myself floating freely in the air, almost a hundred meters up. I could look through the window and see the two robots still watching me passively. I grinned and pointed a single finger at the building. I then began to direct electricity through my finger and into the building. And this time I succeeded.


    ________________________________________________


    Within the abandoned, devilish city of Duvessa a miracle occurred. This miracle was due to impatience, but it was nevertheless a miracle. One of the many skyscrapers that lined the skyline of the city, just one of hundreds that had long ago lost power, was brought back to life.


    The skyscraper, like many of its neighbors, was an efficiently built building with no real personality or features that made it any different from the other buildings that surrounded it. It was made of dark material, designed to withstand even trillions of year of exposure, and until second ago had gone hundreds of thousands of years without any power. And then the building gained power, not once but twice!


    The first time was when a single, brilliant bolt of lightning struck the building and power surged through a tiny portion of it. Tragically, devilish buildings both produce and demand considerable more energy than most mortal buildings and the electricity produced by the bolt of lightning was insufficient to power it. However the infusion of more energy than the building had ever needed suddenly surged into the building, thankfully in a controlled manner, and saved the building from its long, powerless sleep.


    The electrical god responsible for the building coming back to life watched with a delighted expression on his face as the building began to shine again. Now it differed from other buildings around it because each of its countless floors was suddenly illuminated again, and the computers within the building began to come to life again. For a moment the building was incredibly loud as a maddening cacophony of noises resounded throughout the building.


    All at once the building''s P.A. system, security system, computers, and countless other smaller bits of technology were resurrected and they all came to life at the same instant. That said the almost eldritch noise was over in an instant. The god watched this all play out and was grinning the entire time. After having confirmed that his method of restoring power to the building was a successful one, the god zipped to the skies above even the tallest of the skyscrapers.


    His grin hadn''t left his face. He had an idea for how to be maximally efficient, and it was one that he liked. When he reached the zenith of his flight, he turned in mid-air and found himself staring at the city. He was high enough that he could see the entire thing, and he was astounded at its size. The city stretched on for kilometers, and it was only because he was hundreds of meters in the air that he could see the outskirts of the place. Its scale shocked him for a moment, but it also made him want to take control of it even more. And first he intended to restore it to life.


    Up high the god could see every building in the city. And since he could see every building, he could see into every building. The god possessed the power to target not just every single building with his electrical powers, but also every robot within each building, and of course every robot that had deactivated within the limits of the city but outside of any buildings.


    He spent a few moments preparing two of his powers. The first of them was one of his signature powers: the healing burst. The second power was his mastery of electricity. To use the first he had to target every robot in the city, a number that was in the hundreds. To use the second he had to target every building in the city, a number that was in the thousands. When he was ready he closed his eyes and activated both abilities at once.


    The result of the god''s actions was a miracle on a scale that comically dwarfed the previous miracle. All at once every building in the city brilliantly lit up, and the same maddening eldritch noise rang out of thousands of buildings at once, causing the sound to be audible for entire kilometers beyond the city, but it was also blissfully short-lived, and silence returned to the city a second later.


    Throughout the city''s streets and in buildings alike, robots began to come to life, restored by a deity of life and restoration. Hundreds of the automatons began to scan their surroundings, and they were all confused when they failed to detect the hero who restored them to life, and fully fixed them. That said, they did share knowledge and the rebooted robots were immediately informed as to the existence of Althos, and his status as their repairer.


    One robot was a special being. This particular robot was located in a small building that wasn''t even a tiny skyscraper. This robot, aware of Althos'' mission as someone who sought the dungeon core of the city and also a newly converted Althonian, knew how to reward its master for saving it and the city.


    This advanced robot quickly got out of the seat it had been seated in when it was deactivated and ran towards a special elevator located in the building the robot had lived in for hundreds of thousands of years even before it was deactivated. It was on its way to retrieve the object Althos sought.


    As the tiny robot made a mad dash towards the elevator that would lead it underground, it began to think. Its thoughts were simple.


    "The grand restorer has arrived! Such a creature obviously deserves the city''s core."


    "I can''t believe the restorer has come AND he was smart enough to seek out information on the core specifically. Surely he must be a good ruler."


    "I''ll get to meet the grand restorer! What a happy day."


    ________________________________________________


    Though the surroundings of my astral body were fascinating, a portion of my mind was elsewhere. In all honesty, I was scheming.


    In the depths of my mind I harnessed my cosmic will to begin to come up with a new plot to advance my own power. Until now I had leveraged my godly abilities in a number of ways, but I hadn''t yet become particularly economic with my might. But with the subdomain of technology, and the grander domain of creation, as well as the domain of nature and the subdomains of earth and agriculture I had countless reasons to become a business mogul. And what''s more is that I had a perfect person to use for that on the world of Htrae.


    The sin of greed was the personal vice of the young human named Andrea Handsfall. It was an incredibly powerful driving force for her, so much so that within days of becoming aware of my power and experiencing it firsthand she had made a considerable amount of money selling pictures of her body, either naked or nearly naked on Htrae''s internet. She used that money to pay for a number of things, including her new apartment, a website where she could more easily sell pictures of herself, and better equipment to take the money-making pictures. This ballooned online and she took advantage of it.


    Greed drove Andrea more so than any other need or emotion. Greed and pride were easy sins to understand and greedy and proud souls were easy to deal with. I finally had a reason to reach out to Andrea again, and that filled me with excitement.


    The plot I came up with wasn''t complex. I was going to start a business, and Andrea would be my frontman, or rather my frontwoman. I would utilize my godly powers to great effect and while Andrea was getting famous for the guaranteed quality of my products, all sorts of my creations including my foods, would be spreading throughout the world of Htrae, all without me ever appearing publicly.


    The woman was guaranteed to get rich off of my products, as well as become a celebrity in time, all without her spending a dollar of her own money, and I''d be able to utilize all sorts of my new abilities. I''d be able to sell medicines in the forms of potions I could create from nothing and instantly, food I could create due to my newer abilities over agriculture, technology I could create from nothing, and countless other sorts of products.


    After I spent a few moments enjoying the deviousness of my own scheme, I reached out to Andrea. As I transmitted a mental message to her, I was amused to find that she was cleaning up after eating her breakfast. I slyly reached into her mind and began to whisper.


    "Hello Andrea. I see you''ve been enjoying the new body and appearance my powers have given you. I think it''s time that we have a chat. There is so much more we could offer each other, so much I could offer you and so much fun to be had." I whispered, altering my voice to make it as seductive as possible. I sensed her shiver in response to my words, and I felt her fear.


    The girl knew my powers were real, and she had never forgotten my voice. I just didn''t communicate with her much, hardly ever really, so I knew she wasn''t expecting to hear my mental voice worm its way into her brain. A second after fear surged into her from the surprise of hearing my voice in her head, I felt a small amount of excitement too. All I needed was to sense that, to know that she was at least open to my idea.


    "Hello Althos. You know I''m always ready to hear your ideas." She mentally whispered, and I sensed the smile on her lips. I knew she was opportunistic, and though that made her unlike some of my servants I didn''t mind it at all. I just had to use different methods with her than I did with many of my other servants.


    Speaking with her reminded me of the trinity of mischievous domains and subdomains of falsehoods, lies, and enchantments. And that was something that I quite liked. I allowed there to be a moment of silence between the two of us before I began to explain how I planned to make her quite rich since I knew that framing would do the most to get her to go along with my scheme willingly and without any mystical compulsion.

 215 Lesser Matters

    Animation: You can use the life and mind domains to give life to even inanimate machines such as Htrae-level planes and trains. This power will obviously turn them into your worshippers.


    Core Creation and Manipulation: By utilizing a number of domains such as the law domain and the eldritch and faith domains you can create dungeon cores and manipulate ones you own. Dungeon cores are efficient power gathers and dispersers and can be used to control cities, larger pieces of technology, and other spaces. Once you increase your power over the correct domains you''ll be able to immediately seize control of dungeons upon entering them, or even from a distance.


    Corruption And Purity Transmission: You can transmit corruption and purity into all sorts of lifeforms and undead beings aside from vestiges. This means that you can corrupt or purify machines using your virtue and your vices.


    Cybernetic Necromancy: By infusing a corpse with the proper machines or even by killing someone with the proper technology, you can create undead-machines. You can also revive a piece of technology with necromantic powers rather than healing powers. Undead-machines are more naturally suited to utilizing technology and if you seek to wage war on a technologically-gifted civilization is one of the most horrifying things you can do to instill them with fear.


    Fuel Manipulation: This synergistic power takes from the domain of faith, the eldritch domain, and the technology subdomain. This potent power allows you to manipulate the amount of fuel present in a machine and allows you to do other things such as give a machine infinite fuel.


    Repair Manipulation: This synergistic power takes from the domain of life and the subdomain of healing. With it you can efficiently repair any machine or other bit of technology that has been broken, destroyed, or deactivated.


    Enhanced Illusions: Taking from the subdomain of enchantment, this ability allows your enchantments and illusions to fool machines, robots, and androids.


    Killswitch: You can immediately kill any technology or technological lifeform that is within the realm of what you can manipulate.


    Illogical Technology Modifications: This synergistic power takes from the eldritch and chaos domains. With it you can apply nonsensical modifications to technology, such as giving a robot with a gun infinite ammunition. Incidentally, if seek subtlety you can also drive intelligent technology insane which causes them to obey you without realizing they are obeying you. This works by causing them to hear your commands as quiet and irresistible whispers in the back of their minds.


    Pain Transmission: You can cause technological lifeforms to feel pain.]


    ________________________________________________


    As I floated back down to ground-level my robotic servants took the elevator of the building I had left them in and met me right outside of the building. Once on the ground I could more clearly hear the sounds of the city coming back to life. It was odd for the city to be so alive without a single organic lifeform but I mean my inorganic city in the Heart of Darkness would soon be the exact same way. That said at least my city will originally be an inorganic one and not a city where all inhabiting organic lifeforms were killed or fled.


    I glanced at my robotic servants, but only had the briefest of moments to focus on them before my senses picked up movement relatively nearby. And I detected a lot of movement. I couldn''t quite detect the entire city at once, not from the ground at least, but I could feel that hundreds of thousands of mechanical lifeforms were on the move at once and that their hearts, insofar as they had hearts, were filled with awe and gratitude, their hearts turning towards me in worship out of sheer joy for being well and truly alive once more. It was an awe-inspiring sensation.


    For a moment I simply enjoyed the sensation. I quite liked the fact that I was expanding the type of creatures who worshiped me. This active expansion of my worshiper base and the new abilities I possessed were both quite exciting to me which was why I had chosen to actively learn about them immediately rather than wait as I often did. I found the new things I could do with this subdomain extremely exciting and I had already made moves to begin to affect the mortal plane utilizing these newfound powers. In time I intended to make aggressive use of this but for now I was content being patient.


    The reality was that until this point I had avoided interacting with the few high-technology civilizations I had learned of. That was because I didn''t want to interact with them until I had powers that matched their technologies. Some of these civilizations could be found on gas giant planets, though in many cases they simply maintained outposts on such worlds, which I had come across and knew of thanks to "Stellar awareness".


    That said I now had the technological powers necessary to at least begin to interact with them safely. They were the only interplanetary empires I had seen to date, and I would be patient around them as I didn''t plan to get embroiled in two conflicts even though I had more than enough power to handle two different conflicts at once.


    ________________________________________________


    As the robots continued to approach me I continued my interactions with my distant servant, Andrea the Htraen I had met a long time ago. I chuckled as I interacted with the girl and sensed her greed.


    "I have a business opportunity for you." I told her, a grin on my face as I did so. I sensed her amusement and her curiosity be piqued in response to my words and I sensed that she was listening. She stayed silent, so I decided to keep on speaking.


    "I have no need or even interest in the money and wealth of mortals but I know how important money and wealth are to you all. I am interested in starting a business but I am trying to remain subtle and thus would need a public face. I think you would do well in such a role, and I am prepared to offer you a chance to gain all the wealth and fame you could ever desire." I told her, sensing her interest spike by the time I was done speaking to her. That said I also sensed suspicion in her, due to her cautious and almost cynical nature.


    "I... am interested, I''ll freely admit that, but I fail to see what benefits you would gain from this." She told me, honestly.


    "I see your skepticism hasn''t changed, even after seeing my powers firsthand," I remarked, chuckling.


    "The truth is that I desire subtlety. I seek to expand my influence in small ways and to test how a business that is created and supported by my powers works in practice, and I don''t care to reveal my connections to the business so I seek a proxy. I know that ultimately you value wealth and money and I figured you''d make a perfect fit for this." I informed her, speaking to her honestly. She went silent for a few moments, before transmitting her thoughts to me again.


    "Why do you seek to act subtlety? Is there a reason for it?" She asked, surprisingly directly though politely enough I suppose. That said, I didn''t like the question. There was a directness to it unbefitting someone of her station towards someone of my station.


    For a moment I considered instilling fear in her. I considered transmitting images from the world I had scarred while gaining greater power over nature, Ryths and thus showing her what I could do to those who questioned me. I didn''t consider killing her but I did consider hurting her. That said the flash of violence, even hypothetical violence, didn''t last long. Eventually, I calmed down. When I did, I merely sighed.


    "I seek subtlety. That''s all you must know." I said, my mental voice sounding far older and more powerful than it often did. This was unusual for me, but I sensed her weighing her desire for knowledge versus her sense of self-preservation.


    Inwardly I smiled. I knew her well enough to know whether her curiosity would win out or her self-preservation would. A few moments later I was proven correct and she mentally sighed, accepting my cryptic remarks. I immediately began to plan to reward her even more handsomely for her efforts in all of this as a result of her wisdom.


    "I know better than to not accept a deal this heavily laid in my favor. That said I''d prefer to meet you face to face, or even in a dream, to further discuss this. I am a bit surprised to be saying this, but stop by sometime soon and we will iron out the details." She told me, though I heard a hint of trepidation in her mental voice as she "thought" that.


    I smiled and began to focus. Now the fun would truly begin. The robots were nearly done gathering around me and in the buildings that surrounded me.

 216 Learning And Power Creation

    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Transference of Power


    The actions of the deity Althos have resulted in the reactivation of Gamma - 0329, the dungeon-master of this city. The dungeon master has retrieved the dungeon-core and is making his way back aboveground. His intentions are clear: he plans to give the core, and power over the city, to Althos.]


    ________________________________________________


    I grinned when I read through the notification. It meant that I had won, or rather earned at least a significant victory. One of the things I needed to do to learn about the history of Infernius was take over three dungeons, and with this, I had basically taken over the first of the city-dungeons and thus earned the first notch on my belt.


    I took a moment to admire the city, relaxing for the first time since I had arrived here. The city, even covered in ash was quite pretty. It was also quite quiet and a not small part of me wondered how I''d be able to permanently rid the streets of ash. I had the ability to manipulate ash, but even I was unsure of how to prevent further ash from falling on the city.


    I could easily gather all of the ash into a single massive sphere and then deposit it outside of the city, but I had no ability to create barriers that would actually keep out all future ash. It was annoying. But for now, I stayed patient. And I began to think about something. Life.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the things I well and truly wanted to lord over was life. I had always had an affinity for life in its myriad forms and this affected me as a deity in various ways.


    The first way that it affected me was my particular brand of relative nonviolence. I had a strange attitude towards violence: I wasn''t fond of it. I was willing to commit acts of violence, in exchange for acquiring more power, if it meant freeing slaves, to see how my powers affected lifeforms, and if I needed too to protect my own servants, but I tended to not commit acts of violence randomly. This was because of the value I placed on life.


    I suspected that some of my more unusual abilities were due to my general fondness for life. One of the biggest ones I suspected this was the case for was my "False Resurrection" power, an extremely handy resurrection ability I possessed that allowed me to bring the dead back to life but with a subtle alteration: they come back changed. People I resurrected in this fashion were brought back to life but they returned to life as evil creatures.


    This was a potent power of mine that I had already used to significant effect in the past. After thinking about it for a moment, I closed my eyes and created a number of powerful resurrection-based abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    [New Power(s) Creation:


    Changed Resurrection: You can modify someone''s total alignment when resurrecting them. This means that you can do more than just change their good or evil, or lawful or chaotic alignment you can now change both.


    Virtuous Resurrection: You can infuse someone with a shard of holy energy when you resurrect them. This energy makes them loyal to you and alters their souls so as to be suitable for a religious class.


    Ordered Resurrection: This power twists a soul by infusing it with order energy. When someone is resurrected in this manner they become lawful worshipers of yours who acknowledge you as the ultimate law-giver. This power, at your current level of influence, cannot turn chaotic extraplanar entities lawful.


    Spontaneous Resurrection: This power infuses a soul with chaotic energy as it is resurrected. This resurrection transforms those who are resurrected by it into chaotic worshipers of yours. This power, at your current level of influence, cannot turn lawful extraplanar entities chaotic.


    Maddening Resurrection: This power brings someone back from the dead, but at the cost of their sanity. They become insane cultists of yours, fit to be used as fodder for transformation into abominations, or for other plots and schemes.


    Fungal Resurrection: With this power you can resurrect people by infusing them with your parasitic spores. This comes with the other effects of infecting someone with parasitic spores.


    Loving Resurrection: By using this you can resurrect someone and upon returning to life they fall in love intensely with you.


    Ambient Soul Detection: You can detect the souls of deceased extraplanar entities. This allows you to target extraplanar entities and resurrect them more easily.]


    ________________________________________________


    I now possessed far more resurrection based abilities than I had previously. And I intended to use that power. While I waited for the robotic dungeon master of the city to appear with my prize I closed my eyes, felt my not-so-mini-map fill my vision, and activated "Ambient Soul Detection". I was going to bring this city back to life as soon as I was the dungeon master.


    From behind closed eyes I focused on my immediate surroundings and grinned as I began to detect the souls left behind by the devils who once lived here. This was a devilish city after all, and any corpses left behind by the devils had long rotted away but their souls hadn''t. I silently took mental notes on the sorts of devilish sorts I detected.


    Unsurprisingly a wide variety of devils once occupied the city. I could detect every kind of devil from the lowliest soul-orbs, creatures so weak they might as well not have been creatures at all, to a particularly powerful trio of devils, one of who was a vizier devil, and two of whom were blitzkrieg devils. I had a basic awareness of the infernal hierarchy, the social structure that governed devilish society and I knew that vizier and blitzkrieg devils were especially powerful and high-ranking devils.


    The city had an equal population of lesser and intermediate devils and a small population of greater devils who in all likelihood served as an upper class. I didn''t sense any souls of the strange "true-devils", a ranking that apparently existed between the so-called infernal hierarchy and the most powerful devils of all: arch-devils. In all honesty, I was a bit disappointed to not sense of them, I would have liked to resurrect such a powerful or at least unique creature.


    I sensed the robot I was waiting for, the so-called "Gamma - 0329" enter the very edge of the space I could detect and began to smile. I opened my eyes and while I was waiting on the robot I quietly designed a pair of new powers, two I particularly liked.


    ________________________________________________


    [New Power(s) Creation:


    Heart-Snatcher: While this power is active, so much as gazing at you is enough for someone to fall in love, in some form or another, with you.


    Lust-Vision: This power causes those who gaze upon you to be filled with an incredible amount of lust.]


    ________________________________________________


    Minutes passed each time I designed new abilities. It was mere moments after I designed the second power that the robot I had been awaiting finally reached me. The tiny robot was smaller than its companions and it held a palm-sized orb in both of its hands.


    The creature was dashing towards me, its tiny legs speeding it across a vast distance. It only stopped when it was right in front of me, and before it said a single word it knelt humbly and offered me the orb it clutched in its hands.


    "Hello, Oh Grand Restorer! In the name of the city of Duvessa, I humbly offer you our core." The creature said, emotion seeping into its robotic voice. I could hear hope, joy, and awe in its words.


    "This core shall allow you to lord over our city, and make it your city. I speak for both the robots that call this city home, and for the city itself when I say that we are all eager for there to be a lord over this city. There hasn''t been a true lord over this city in a very long time. Lord-God Althos, the city senses your ambition and it is pleased by it. Take this core, and become the lord the city deserves." The robot beseeched me.


    Upon hearing the words spoken by the tiny robot, I was concerned. I stared at the orb in its hands, and I began to sense the power it radiated. It faintly radiated mystical energy that even my eyes couldn''t precisely identify. It also vibrated softly.


    I silently steeled myself, my will, and then I went and clutched the orb. And when I did, my mind was positively assailed by memories that weren''t mine.


    ________________________________________________


    The visions that plagued my mind began by showing me a completely different vision of the surface. A long time ago, perhaps even before the cataclysm that ended the mythic age, I saw a surface that was efficiently run by machines and devils working in tandem, cooperating effectively and intelligently. This version, or rather memory, of the surface wasn''t a post-apocalyptic wasteland covered in ash but rather a diverse place with a number of different natural features, a true day and night cycle, and other things one might expect of a true, full world.


    I saw grand cities and grander machines dot the surface of the world. Legions of devils and mechanical armies patrolled the surface of a diverse, verdant planet. And the skies were patrolled by a gleaming bird made of metal and fire. This creature was unique in that it was alone. It patrolled solitary skies, skies that no devil or machine was foolish enough to go into.


    These visions showed me a long period of relative stability. I watched cities rise and fall, but the population of both devils and their technology never waned too significantly. This vision lasted for an unknown amount of time before it changed.


    One day, the surface of the planet went completely dark. This was clearly an unnatural change. I had a chance to watch those who guarded the entrance to Infernius wonder what the chaos of this was, before everything changed forever. Abruptly, at least in the context of the vision, a creature appeared at the edge of the entrance into Infernius, and in its hand it held a spear made of swirling, chaotic miasma. This creature was a swirling, chaotic mess of an entity, with no apparent true form. It had the shape of a humanoid but no real identifying features, looking almost like a starry sky in the shape of a person than a person.


    The creature immediately sprung into action, attacking devils and machines alike with its spear and with all sorts of energy beams, which immediately dissembled machines whenever they got touched by them. My vision came to an end, with this figure still dashing about, stabbing things with its spear and hurling chaotic energy at machines.


    ________________________________________________


    [The History of Infernius'' Surface:


    Once, in the distant past, Infernius'' had a surface that was like the surface of regular planets. That surface was guarded by a legion made up of both devils and robots. The overseer of the layer was a minor deity of technology and creation named Technos who was a servant of the Dark Saint, the mythic overgod of law, evil, and devils, who in the unspeakably ancient past created Infernius.


    Technos was slain in battle in the years leading up to the end of the Mythic Era, by the sworn enemy of the Dark Saint, the overgod of chaos, a god known as Rok. Prior to the end of the Mythic Era, Rok appeared in Infernius for the first time ever and launched a one-man invasion. In doing so he ushered in the beginning of the apocalypse that would ravage the surface, and by the time his chaotic crusade was done he slew many millions of devils by himself.


    More details are currently unavailable to you at this time. To learn more, please acquire control over more cities. New information acquired for gaining control over the surface of Infernius. Processing this information into an appropriate quest.]


    [New Quest Acquisition: Infernius Invasion


    The final step you must accomplish to become an archdevil, the first seen in countless eons, is to complete the invasion of Infernius. Once you have acquired enough dungeon cores, you''ll be able to combat the overseer of the surface layer of Infernius: the vestige of Technos.


    Track down and slay Technos'' vestige, and you will earn multiple rewards, including the second tier of influence over the domain of death, the right to rule the surface of Infernius, and other, hidden rewards.]

 217 Resurrections Aplenty

    I did my best to mentally hover over the shortcut without actually activating it as I was curious as to what it was. I had a theory that it was a dungeon menu, one which allow me to control the city more efficiently and also do a number of things utilizing my power. A second after I began to mentally hover over the shortcut, words appeared over the icon. They were simple, which made it a bit vague.


    "Dungeon menu". Those words were simple but they told me all I needed to know to activate the shortcut. I grinned as I mentally tapped the tiny icon, and as another notification appeared at the center of my vision.


    ________________________________________________


    [Dungeon Menu:


    Welcome to the "Dungeon Menu". This menu lets you exercise control over dungeons and utilize your powers in them more efficiently. This menu exists to serve higher beings and it allows degrees of control over dungeons that are astounding and beyond the capabilities of lesser beings. You have become the lord of Duvessa, a city-type dungeon located on the surface of Infernius.


    Duvessa''s core, like every other core on the surface of Infernius, was hand-created by Technos. Technos'' cores were efficient and easy to use power distributors. The core is currently returning full power to the city, and thus even when the power given to the city by your usage of your abilities wears off the city and its robotic inhabitants will continue to stay on.


    One thing the core can do that isn''t being done at the moment is turn on a city-wide barrier that will disperse the ash and keep the city clean. Would you like to do that? Additionally being the lord of Duvessa means you have control over the city''s resources.


    -Manage city robots


    -Gain total awareness and detection of and within the city


    -Activate illusionary day-night cycle


    -Manage robot factories


    -Manage soul-orb processing plants]


    ________________________________________________


    The notification went on, but the rest of the rows it contained were all devoted to management. I silently informed the menu that I''d like to turn the barrier back on, and a second after I did so the ash that covered the floor, the robots, the buildings, and drifted lazily through the air began to move on its own. I also gave myself total awareness of the city, and felt my sensory capabilities expand further than they could innately.


    The city''s appearance now, cleared of ash, was incomparable to the sight of the city when it was covered in ash. Objects had color to them, and they shone on their own. The added fact that the power was back on throughout the city helped as well, providing real illumination to light the streets and provide an illuminated backdrop through which to see everything.


    Vehicles, which lined some streets began to come to life as well, humming with power and returning to their eerie mimicry of life. I could hear the sounds of thousands of vehicles, cars, and other things, reviving. The city restored was an odd, yet miraculous sight. This entire place was an ancient relic from long ago, the age of myths and legends, and yet here it was coming to life as a direct result of my actions.


    That said all of the life that was being restored here was mechanical in origin. These were robots, intelligent and skillful machines, not creatures of flesh or of the soul as mortals and extraplanar entities were. And all around us, I could sense the barest fragments of the souls that once formed devils. And for me, that was enough.


    I enjoyed the sights of the city beginning to come back to life, even as an opaque barrier formed at the boundaries of the city and raced across the skies above my head. The city was incredibly vast, larger than any city I had entered to date. I watched it zoom overhead and then out of sight and grinned at it. The enormous mass of ashes that hovered in the air began to vanish before my eyes, silently and forlornly shrinking until nothing at all remained. Seeing it gone brought a grin to my face.


    Once it was out of view, I closed my eyes. And with my eyes closed, it was easier for me to focus on and latch onto the fragments of souls that lingered in the city. I focused, and I began to undo death on a massive scale, for the first time in my entire life.


    ________________________________________________


    The god stood at the center of the city. As he focused he began to glow, his skin radiating a potent silver light. The robots gathered around him, already in awe of the god who had brought them back and restored their city to its former glory, began to grow even more awestruck by the incredible light coming out of him. He was in essence a mobile sun at this point.


    After a few moments the god lifted his hand up and he spoke. His voice was incredibly powerful and amazingly confident. The robots could hear the smile in it, even though he was hidden within the light he had begun to radiate.


    "Today... I defeat death. Arise fallen devils, arise!" He said, his powerful voice booming out of the light. The robots who were close enough to see the light he radiated were also close enough to feel the extremely concentrated lawful and life energy he began to exude, and they froze as the energy washed over them and seeped into their skin.


    A second later, even areas not touched by his light began to change. Wherever the smallest fragments of a soul were touched by the god''s capabilities the area the soul occupied began to change. A devilish outline began to slowly appear, almost ethereally at first. It took each outline a few seconds to begin to solidify and when they did, they began to moan painfully.


    The wails of deceased devils soon overtook the city, even as the god''s abilities began to heal the creatures. For a few minutes, the only sounds audible in the city would be the incessant cries of the damned, an unholy and sinister cacophony of sounds that reverberated throughout the massive city.


    The robots who had long ago patrolled the city and did countless menial tasks to keep it running remembered a time when the city was filled with life. And they remembered the end of that time. They remembered the savage creature who roamed their streets and defeated both the devilish guardians of the city, and the robots who were indispensable to the city''s ability to operate. They remembered when they last heard those sickening wails of pain and sorrow. The robots froze and watched, and listened, as the god''s power washed over the entire city. And they felt awe.


    The sickening wails of agony continued. They went on for what felt like hours, even to the robots. But after a few minutes the first of the wails stopped, and then another. And another. And another. And more still. This was because these souls were entering the final stages of their respective resurrections.


    The god had quietly utilized a number of different resurrection-abilities to bring the creatures back to life. And depending on which he had used on any particular soul, their reemergences as living beings would differ drastically. He used his ability to truly defeat death, his "true resurrection" power, on less than a handful of leaders. He had chosen just two devils to receive that honor, and they were the only devils to escape death''s clutches and come back from their long slumber unchanged.


    The god used a smattering of his other powers on the remaining several thousand devils he was resurrecting. On some he used his fungal resurrection ability, his parasitic spores gaining the power to even affect the soul at the moment they latched onto the devils. On others, he used his ordered resurrection ability, his power allowing the affected devils to defeat even death and snaring their minds so that they would return to life with an irrepressible desire to see Althos'' will be enacted. And as his powers spread to affect tens, then hundreds, then thousands of devils he began to further diversify his powers.


    ________________________________________________


    The city felt the god of life''s powers wash over it. Silvery light began to creep out of the aura of light that totally engulfed the life-giving and life-restoring deity who had decided to busy himself by saving the city. The light that crept out of the aura, that escaped it, wasn''t just light either.


    Where the light crept, plants sprung up. They were never big plants, but they did appear and quietly covered the ground that surrounded the god in green vines and grass that managed to grow even on the synthetic materials that made up the city''s "streets". Beneath the city, tens of millions of vines and roots began to appear, spawned spontaneously and unconsciously by the god of life.


    Within the aura of light the god was skillfully working. He was carefully weaving together new powers, ones that would allow him to resurrect the devils in newer ways. He crafted a power that allowed him to resurrect creatures using corruption, nature, the elements, virtues, and even peace and war.


    During this time the city grew quiet as even devils who had yet to be fully and truly resurrected stopped feeling pain, their new god having found their wails quite annoying so he willed away the pain they felt and gave them a peace they lost long ago. He did this idly, utilizing his powers effortlessly, but to them who had been released from suffering this was seen as a display of incredible mercy and kindness and it was their the first memory they''d make during their resurrections.


    The city fell into a strange, almost kind silence. Everything, everyone, in the city held their breathe as one. And the resurrections continued.


    Devils began to come back to life, their souls fully formed and fully healed for the first time in over half a million years. They appeared, fully formed and whole once again throughout the city. They appeared in buildings that touched the sky, on the city''s many streets, in countless plazas and in subterranean portions of the city.


    In restaurants and offices, in malls and in infernal parking lots, in skyway bridges and in metro stations, devils appeared on the surface of the infernal dimension known as Infernius. For the first time in over half a million years, scarlet, amber, purple, and black eyes opened. Devilish wings unfurled, and infernal voices could be heard roaring in triumph and crying in elated joy.


    The chaotic, life-giving god, was undoing the legacy of the last chaotic god to storm through this dimension. Both gods were unpredictable, both gods were flexible, but where one had been destructive the other was invasive and corruptive. Where one had sought to undo the horrid works that took place in this dimension, the other sought to rule over it. And the one who sought to rule over the darkness of this place had to first restore it to its former glory.


    Devils continued to come back to life, even as the god extended his range and worked to track down every devil in the city. This was such an undertaking that it took even Althos many hours to do successfully. When he tracked down the last devil in the city and successfully resurrected the creature, a potent sort of devil known as a verminlord, he grinned from within the sphere of light that perfectly surrounded him. It was at this point that he finally allowed the light to begin to vanish.


    ________________________________________________


    As the light that surrounded me began to vanish, I sensed a large number of creatures begin to approach me. I knew what they were and didn''t tense up even when they got quite close to me. I was being approached by a number of newly resurrected devils, all of whom had been changed in some way by my powers.


    I wasn''t nervous, I could sense their emotions towards me. All of them were awed by my power and my decision to bring them back from death''s greedy clutches, and none of them had any hostile intentions towards me. I silently made the choice to slow the speed at which the light that surrounded me was vanishing, so that it''s complete disappearance would coincide with the arrival of the devils who had been released from death by my intervention.


    Among the devils who were approaching me, knight devils and faith devils were mixed with other lesser devils. Both faith devils and knight devils were medium-ranked devils who had powers tied to piety and chivalry respectively. A small part of me, the part that was interested in devils in the first place was excited to meet these new creatures. It didn''t take them long to arrive and prostrate themselves before their savior. When the light I had wrapped myself in vanished, I was able to see the bowing bodies of over two dozen devils. I began to smile, wickedly, as I took in the forms of the diverse bunch gathered before me.

 218 Devilish

    Even the skies around the god were packed with devils who hovered in mid-air and silently watched the life-restoring deity. When his light had fully vanished, he looked at the scene around him with an arrogant smile on his lips.


    The devils who were on the ground before the deity humbly knelt before him. They knew of his power, sensed it radiating off of him, and even the most ignorant and weakest of them could easily tell that if the deity wanted too he could easily turn his powers on them and destroy them as easily as he resurrected them. In fact, destroying the devils would be much easier than resurrecting them.


    The devils who floated in mid-air watched the god, cautiously and curiously. They had stronger wills than their more eager peers and though they felt immense curiosity aimed towards the incredibly powerful entity before them they also recognized his chaotic nature. Their greater awareness of the universe allowed them to sense the god''s innately chaotic nature, and as they studied him he studied them in return. He stared at them all, his eyes flitting from devil to devil quite rapidly and confidently.


    The devils quietly endured the prying nature of the god''s vision, vaguely aware that as the god peered at them he was gaining intimate knowledge of them. They sensed his powers washing over them, studying them, examining their souls. None of them dared utter a word against it, due in part to the debt they owed the god but mostly due to their vague knowledge that he was capable of destroying virtually anyone he felt like destroying without even really thinking about it.


    They all remembered what it was like to be helpless in the face of Rok''s power. They felt the fear a god of chaos instilled in them on an almost genetic level and in the wake of Althos'' resurrection it took them everything they possessed to not tremble, even the devils that Althos filled with his spores or caused to fall deeply in love with him. The god himself learned this as he studied them, and he began to grin, menacingly, as he learned the cause of their fear and how he reminded them of their miserable fate from hundreds of millennia ago.


    ________________________________________________


    "Hello, devils. I am Althos, the god of empires." I proclaimed, channeling the pride that befitted gods, as I spoke to the devils gathered in front of me. This was one of the first times that channeling godly pride didn''t really require much effort on my part. Instead, in the presence of devils, I felt the pride flow through me quite easily.


    The devils in front of me, the ones who had approached me and knelt before me in recognition of my power and as a display of fealty, were a mixed group. I recognized the innate loyalty of both knight-devils and piety-devils and though I wouldn''t say it in front of a crowd like this I was quietly grateful that they were innately awed by me. It would make controlling the other devils easier, even if I recognized that acknowledging them publicly would probably run counter to my current strategy.


    I wanted to be recognized as an unstoppable, undeniably powerful, and supreme force onto myself. Devils were creatures that recognized and gravitated towards power, that was one of the many lessons I learned from the devils in the Order of the Heated Blade. The sooner they recognized my supremacy the sooner I would gain absolute control over this city and thus be able to expand my powers to the conquest of other cities and other locations throughout this dimension.


    I looked out at the other devils who had gathered around me, some in the air, some on the ground kneeling in front or around me. More were approaching even as I silently studied the crowd that had already gathered around me.


    "As the god of empires, I seek to build the greatest and last empire to ever exist. One that unifies all of existence under one emperor, one absolute ruler." I declared, my voice echoing across the city, effortlessly being heard by every single creature in the metropolis. I was met with silence, but my ability to detect any and all emotions felt by living beings of all sorts allowed me to sense the rising excitement.


    "I have begun to unify the Heart of Darkness and the Mortal Realm. The conquest of Duvessa marks the beginning of my conquest of Infernius. Devils... Join me, and let''s unify all of existence under one ruler... Me." I whispered, my voice both quiet and sinister as well as impossibly loud, echoing throughout the entirety of the city. My words were warmly received by all of the devils I had resurrected, but especially by two distinct groups.


    Devils I had resurrected through eldritch energies were invigorated by my words. I felt their excitement infuse the air around them. Of all the devils I had resurrected the ones I had resurrected through eldritch means were the ones who were the most changed by my actions. They all had eerily green eyes and unsettling grins. There were thousands of them too, which meant I now had a standing army of eldritch entities ready to be used against my enemies within Infernius.


    The second most changed kind of devils were the ones I had resurrected utilizing my powers over spores. They were all perfectly calm, identifiable only by their lack of emotion. For now, the spores within them, spores that I controlled, were working to sedate them and keep them in an unnatural state of relaxation.


    The two devils I had targeted with "True Resurrection" were not yet here. They were approaching me from the air, and they too heard my words. I felt their minds beginning to become changed by my words, something which brought a smile to my face.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the devils who had been chosen to receive a "True Resurrection" flew through the darkened air on matte black wings. The creature in question heard the words of the dark god responsible for his resurrection and shuddered, but in delight.


    The creature was a greater devil, a being who stood at the top of the infernal hierarchy that dictated the day-to-day lives of devil kind. He was in fact one of the last devils to be promoted to the remarkable ranks of the greater devils prior to the extermination of all of the last eight archdevils. This made him relatively young compared to the other greater devils, a fact which during his first life had bothered him immeasurably. But now... Well, now he was proud of his youth, at least in comparison to other greater devils.


    The devil listened to the words of the young god and began to smile. The more the youthful deity spoke, the more ambition was kindled within the vizier. And the more ambitious the vizier felt, the more he began to innately turn towards his savior, the creature who very literally gave him his life back.


    High in the air above the city, the devil''s mouth began to open. And words began to spill out. Words of piety, gratitude, and praise.


    "Oh dark lord, he who brought back Duvessa... Please, listen to my prayer." The devil began, his sickly sounding voice extending far from his body.


    "I humble myself before you and give myself to you. I shall endeavor to see your will made manifest and to see you crowned the fell-king of our twisted home." The devil told his new, dark master. His words were true, but he was curious if the creature he called the "Dark Lord" would take him up on them. And if so, the god didn''t reply, in the most direct sense anyway, immediately. That said, Salender shivered as he felt the god''s attention turn, momentarily, towards him. That in and of itself was a sort of reply, though one a bit more frightening than the devil had expected.


    The vizier devil was a large, almost reptilian thing. He stood several meters tall and was covered from head to toe in dark blue scales. His wings were a touch darker than his scales, and in the night-like sky above the city the devil blended in quite well with the dark sky that embraced him. He had two massive arms that ended in early human hands, which themselves ended in nails so sharp they served as claws.


    The devil''s face was quite draconic, complete with a long snout and vertically slitted eyes. His snout was filled with long, sharp, sharklike teeth, and there was a look of casual cruelty on his face idly as the vizier devil was more violent than the average member of his branch of the infernal hierarchy. He was also especially proud and thus his pride was his personal vice. Normally this would inhibit his ability to feel fealty, but when he came back to life this strong sense of pride latched onto the fact that he had been chosen to be fully resurrected, thus giving him cause to believe that maybe the dark lord had special plans for him.


    Eventually the devil heard something. A private message intended only for his ears. One that caused him to spring into action. He heard his god. His savior. His god whispered one word, powerfully, into his mind.


    "Come." The god whispered. The devil didn''t bother even trying to resist the command and instead gleefully obeyed it, beginning to fly towards his new master at an impressively speedy pace.


    ________________________________________________


    "Arise. We have much we need to do." I commanded, speaking to the few devils who had knelt already me. I chuckled and began to feel a bit excited. I was now presented with the opportunity to further expand my powers, and I could do so quite quickly.


    By working in Infernius, by lording over this city, I could easily advance some of my most intriguing abilities. Indeed, I was already beginning to scheme up a simple plot that would grant me the second tier of influence over the law domain. One I set in motion with a simple and empathetic declaration.


    "Devils! Tomorrow we will hold an election, an election to create a new government to lord over this city." I said, my voice echoing throughout the city. I was met with silence, which lasted for a few moments before a new sound began to resound throughout the city. The sound of cheering. Infernal, hellish, empathetic cheering.


    A smile crept across my face. I could feel myself inching ever closer to becoming a greater master of the powers of law and order.


    "Now... Now we celebrate! We celebrate the future! We celebrate life! We celebrate... Me!" I declared, almost shouting, my voice filled with excitement, as I felt the love and worship I had gained from the devils. They gravitated towards my power, towards my vision, and their fear of me was not enough to keep them from worshipping me.


    As I did that, I turned my mind elsewhere. I turned my mind to other places, ones where my power was felt and where Althonians were active.

 219 Experiments And Parasitism

    The creature traveled at speeds unthinkable to mortals from non-technological worlds. He effortlessly visited countless solar systems in a "day" relative to the world of the creature''s birth. Each twenty-four period that passed the god gained a significant amount of knowledge about the galaxy of his birth, but his galaxy of origin housed close to a hundred billion solar systems. Even for him, this process of gathering knowledge would take an incredibly long time.


    That said, the god had time. He had an unlimited amount of time, as much of it as he could ever want. And what''s worse is that every single second that passed he gained greater and greater power. For the last few hours, his power had been focused in two dimensions that were far from the realm of mortals. He had begun conquests of Infernius, the birthplace, and home of devil-kind, and the Heart of Darkness, the birthplace and home of demon-kind. But now he was ready to return, in a manner speaking, to the realm of mortals.


    The god''s focus shifted from Duvessa, the city he had just become the overlord of, to one of the several worlds he had dubbed a "test" world. These worlds had the misfortune of being ones that the god had opted to serve as testing grounds, where he could freely unleash his abilities that he was normally more hesitant to use. The first of these worlds was the newly created naturalistic hellscape named Ryths, a planet once dominated by humans that was now dominated by nature and by victims of Althos'' spores.


    The god''s mind, which was simultaneously both a physical thing capable of interacting with the world and an immaterial thing that was incapable of being truly interacted with aside from ways that it consented to, reentered the mortal realm with ease. The deity''s parasitic mind for the moment didn''t feel like truly materializing and so instead it chose a random home in a Htrae-sized world in the galaxy of its birth.


    ________________________________________________


    I found myself invisibly and incorporeally within a tiny home in the middle of a world that my system informed me was named "Oxenos". This world was the only planet in this specific solar system that had sapient life, and only two other planets in the system had any sort of life at all.


    He was a construction worker who was an employee of a small family-owned business in this community. He was also well-trusted and well-liked by his peers, particularly his fellow orcs. And for my intentions here, he was a perfect host. It was time I begin to experiment with my powers, and time that I experienced how it felt to possess someone.


    As the night began to draw to a close, I closed my eyes and hurled myself into the orc, "physically" entering him as an ethereal, incorporeal shade and effortlessly began my attempts to overtake his mind.


    ________________________________________________


    The unfortunate orc who had the horrifying misfortune of being the test subject for the dreadful god''s powers wasn''t going to just give up and allow the god to take over his mind, his body, and corrupt his soul. Even while unconscious the quiet orc railed against the god, his sleeping mind doing its very best to expel the parasitic, and corrosive influence of the god''s mental and spiritual tendrils.


    The god of parasites had violently latched onto the orc''s body, mind, and soul and was not going to be dissuaded from his prize. The god, an eldritch nightmare without any true form, chuckled as his prey attempted to free himself. Althos was not going to let the orc retake his body.


    The god began to silently drain the intelligence from the orc, metaphorically stabbing into the orc''s brain with his powers and eating away at it. He greedily feasted on the orc''s thoughts, memories, secrets, and feelings, all while muttering to himself that the orc''s body would be his. Blood began to steadily leak from the orc''s nose, staining his green skin and increasing in intensity as the orc began to frown and feel fear wrack his unconscious form. Even as Althos feasted on his intelligence, the unconscious orc''s sleeping mind felt fear.


    The orc''s body eventually stilled and his unconscious resistance began to falter. As the orc''s resistance began to crawl to an end, the god responsible for this began to chuckle. He himself was happily learning all about the orc, absorbing every memory and learning every detail about the orc''s relationships with his coworkers, his neighbors, his community, and his family. The orc''s body and soul continued to resist the attempt to possess the orc, but Althos wasn''t dissuaded.


    Althos'' efforts to put an end to the body''s resistance were easy. He inflicted the orc with a cruel disease that would afflict him with considerable pain for every movement, and for a few moments the body continued to try and resist the god''s will. It continued to move and to shudder, which was impressive since the man''s mind had already been defeated by the god''s ability and willingness to steal that which made a person a distinct individual. The quiet god watched as the man''s shudders slowed and then came to a complete stop. When they did he smiled.


    The disease he utilized was one he had acquired during the months he wasn''t extremely active. One of the minor things he had done was heal people with diseases he hadn''t acquired, and in doing so he gained more toys he could utilize on his foes and those he sought to subjugate. The disease had already proven its worth to him, just by causing the orc he wanted to use as a vessel to stop resisting him.


    After the orc''s body stopped resisting and pushing back against the alien invasion, the god quietly settled into the body he had successfully overtaken. As he did that he received a notification, one that intrigued him greatly.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert: Pushing This Body To The Limit


    You have a number of abilities, some of which you haven''t truly utilized, that are physical in nature. These abilities include the ability to move at the speed of light, and infinite strength. Would you like to utilize these abilities while you are possessing this orc? If you choose to use your powers while possessing a creature, you can do all you can do in your own body, aside from shape-shift. That too may change, in time, with the right tier of influence over the right domain or subdomain.]


    ________________________________________________


    The choice wasn''t hard. I informed the system that I didn''t want to be limited, and upon informing it of that I felt everything around me slow to a screeching halt, quite abruptly. It was... odd, to say the least. For the first time ever, I detected no nearby motion and no changes in the environment around me. The world was slow. Not quite stopped, not entirely, but slower than I had ever perceived it to be.


    "What is going on?" I asked, the orc''s mouth opening and uttering the words even as I telepathically directed them at the domains and subdomains that had seen fit to occupy a portion of my mind. I heard them begin to mutter to themselves, and for a few moments, none of the domains dared to answer me. Then I heard one speak in a small voice.


    "You are capable of moving at the speed of light, regularly, and chose not to. If you did, as your avatar does, you''d experience time at a much, much, much slower pace than you normally do. What is going on is that this new body is adjusting to your physical powers and is unconsciously entering what could be dubbed a ''Speed-of-Light'' mode." Explained the domain of light, its voice airy and soft, and its words rapid and revealing.


    The explanation I received made enough sense for me to understand the gist of what was happening. And it was quite intriguing to me. I knew that if I wanted too I could mix this with my other powers to a truly devastating effect. I could utilize this to be the ultimate assassin, or to kill entire armies by myself even more easily than I currently could. There was something quite exciting about this, and I intended to more properly experiment with it in the hours to come.


    I closed "my" eyes and focused, slowing myself or at least the orc down enough to feel the world return to a more easily perceivable speed. I had to focus for a few moments, though I suppose my perception of time skewed what I saw as "moments". I grinned as I felt my surroundings begin to come to life again.


    "What fun..." I muttered, as I rose up out of bed, in the body I had hijacked. I was going to get up to some mischief.

 220 Plagues, Parasites, and Pain

    I was currently in the body of an orc. The world I was in was akin to a mixture of traits from Htrae and from Mercy. This world had almost no magic to speak of, a trait that it shared with Htrae, and was inhabited by a plethora of sapient species all of which worked together in nations that were mostly pluralistic democracies, just like Mercy. The orc I was currently possessing lived in a community that was mostly made up of orcs. They weren''t going to be the victims of my actions today. I liked orcs. No, I had plans that I would set in motion but not here.


    I lifted the body I was possessing out of bed and began the process of searching for clothes for the man to put on. At the moment he was naked and his muscular body, in all of its orcish ruggedness, was exposed to me. I didn''t mind the view, but I had a role to play. And I suppose I ought to work on my acting skills, and to do that I needed to play a part. For now, anyway.


    The orc''s bedroom was a small space that was mostly occupied by furniture. The orc himself wasn''t a fan of that, but everyone had flaws and one of his was that he struggled with spatial reasoning, so he had organized his bedroom haphazardly. It wasn''t that big of a deal, even though the orc himself began each day minorly annoyed by it.


    I spent a few minutes lazily searching through various dressers before finding a suitable outfit. For the time being I wasn''t sure how aware I''d leave the orc of my presence when I was done with him. I may even decide to kill him, but I doubt I would do that. I was inclined to leave him alive, though in a rather... indisposed state so that if I wanted too I could return to this body and repossess it while being assured of its relative safety. Having a vessel that I could utilize would be handy in the future if I decided to continue to mess with this world.


    I dressed the orc in simple, yet comfortable pants, a loose-fitting shirt, and a jacket. It was quite cold outside for the orc and if he was going to get sick it''d be at my hands, not at the hands of the elements. I also put on plain but serviceable shoes that''d effectively do the job of keeping the orc''s feet warm and safe from cuts or any other sort of harm that might befall them.


    As I moved to leave the orc''s home I began to think about the state of my cults elsewhere.


    ________________________________________________


    The cult had grown immeasurably since their defeat at the hands of Morehammer, shortly after he killed Ava and before he and I clashed for the first time. I could see its membership, and upon taking a brief second to study it I noticed that the cult''s overwhelming majority of members were pain-bringers, followed by devils, and then the last tenth or so of members were demons.


    While thinking about them I spoke, mentally, to one of the domains I had a bit of influence over: the domain of faith.


    "In thinking about the Order of the Heated Blade I see that the cult has grown quite explosively. Why is that?" I asked, curiously. I heard and read a response almost immediately after asking my question.


    "The popularity of the Order of the Heated Blade is due to the nature of its members. Pain-Bringers are naturally pious and thus easily flock to your worship, devils like order and hierarchies and having a master to serve who allows them to continue to inflict pain and light fires is appealing to them, and demons, though chaotic and individualistic, appreciate serving a powerful creature of pain and flames." Said the domain. I mentally nodded as I heard its message.


    The cult was growing at an explosive pace. Its adherents in the strange realm known as Zenith, the home of pain-bringers, numbered in the tens of thousands, its adherents in the devilish homeland of Infernius numbered in the thousands, and in the demonic homeland of the Heart of Darkness numbered in the hundreds.


    Some mortal adherents of this faith also existed, but they were scattered throughout the dimensional and were an incredibly tiny percentage of the total adherents of the faith, totaling less than three hundred people in total across over half a dozen worlds. In every case of mortal adherents of the faith they were led by a pain-bringer who was an especially zealous member of the faith. These groups were of interest to me as in three of the seven cases were mortals in mortal worlds worshipped me they existed on worlds in solar systems I had yet to visit.


    The Order of the Heated Blade had become an intriguing resource for me, one I could use in a variety of ways. I was unsurprised to see that relatively few demons flocked to this faith, but its popularity among pain-bringers and devils gave me a fascinating new tool with which I could more easily exert influence over Infernius, at least once I delve into the true reaches of the realm, deep underground, and without my direct influence I had acquired a significant amount of cultural influence over the dimension of Zenith even though I had never visited there before.


    ________________________________________________


    While I was lost in my thoughts I began to move. I took a deep breath and then forced myself to move at the speed of light once more. All around me the world slowly came to a near-standstill. As it did I began to smile and chuckle, knowing that if I gained mastery over this power I''d gain a potent weapon that I could easily use to impressively annihilate even entire armies of lesser foes.


    When the world was nearly completely still, I began to move. I walked forward until I was in front of the bedroom door that led in and out of the room where my victim laid his head to rest every night. I opened it, stepped through it, and then closed it behind me. All of this happened silently, and as I did it I opted to enter a state of incorporeality, so as to lessen the chances that I would cause massive destruction while speeding around the world. My body, or rather that of the orc, didn''t appear to change but I knew that the instant I wanted to become incorporeal I had become incorporeal.


    In order to test my incorporeality I decided to run at the wall at the end of the room I was now located in. I found myself in a small living room, connected to the world outside of the house, a small kitchen, and another bedroom. I was still as I studied the house for a split second, or rather what felt like a second, and then I charged forward, dashing for a few steps until I entered and then phased through the wall that separated me from the outside world.


    I felt nothing as I phased through the wall, and once I was on the other side my eyes instantly adjusted to the darkness of the wee hours of the morning. I was now free to explore the world and to alter it however I saw fit. And I already had a plan in mind.


    My surroundings were those of a small town. To the left of the orc''s house was a tiny school, and to the right of the orc''s house were other homes. In front of the house, there was a small road made of concrete. I sensed dozens of sleeping families and today I would not be bothering them. I wouldn''t be corrupting them either. Instead, I was targeting another community or rather other communities.


    To reach them I stepped onto the road in front of me and I began to move. I dashed out of the town and nearly instantaneously onto a rural highway that connected the unimportant community with the grander world it existed in. Each time my feet "touched" the ground beneath me I was shot forward, dashing in the direction I was facing and so I got to see more of the world I was visiting.


    I ran over a shoddily maintained asphalt road. The road was hard on the feet of the orc I was possessed, but I would heal the orc whenever I ceased possessing him. Once I left the town the highway I was running on led me out into an incredibly vast plain where sporadic farms popped up and attempted to exert control over the fertile soil of the area. Human, dwarf, orc, and other rarer species numbered among the farmers who occupied the vast plain I was speeding through.


    Seeing the vast patch of farmlands reminded me of my humble origins as a god of agriculture. It reminded me of when I was a god who was content to not even rule over a single island. That feels like a lifetime ago.


    I would think about that all while traveling to the town closest to the one inhabited by orcs, and it would remain on my mind even while I made it all the way to the water reservoir that was made up of many distinct pools atop a large structure that served the town. The town which was itself inhabited by over 17,000 people.


    When I snapped out of my moment of introspection I found myself looming over an outdoor entryway into a calm, clean body of water. I admired it for a moment, well aware of the fact that under different circumstances I might well have been tempted to make it a temporary home.


    ________________________________________________


    [Agriculture/Famine Subdomain Passive Powers:


    Abundance manipulation: Your once active ability has become a passive one. This grants you the ability to become a deity of abundance if you so choose. You can also use this power more subtly if you wish and cause it to affect lands and bolster crop growth and quality if you desire. This power also enhances your degree of control over reproduction, making it easier for those whose fertility you enhance to have multiple births per pregnancy. Utilizing this power on food causes it to be more filled with your influence.


    This is also a strengthened version of the power, and with it you can increase the quantity of a harvest as much as you want rather than just duplicating a crop up to one hundred and fifty times.


    Botany and Fauna Intuition: Your powers over knowledge, nature, animals, and agriculture have fused into this. This is the definition of a passive power and all it does is increase your awareness of plants and animals and how to take care of them. This is an enhanced form of agriculture intuition, which would be specifically about plants used by farmers.


    Cooking mastery: You gain deific levels of cooking competence, and the food you cook causes those who eat it to feel your presence and they fall significantly closer to becoming totally influenced by you. The food you cook can also boost those who eat it or can inflict grievous harm on them, as you wish.


    Famine Causation: At will you can curse a land and render it unsuitable for crop growth. This is a subtle power and it doesn''t cause the afflicted land to become obviously unfit for crop growth unless you want it to. This is an excellent power for punishing those who refuse to acknowledge or obey you.


    Food Augmentation: This power allows you to boost the nutritional value of food as well as strengthen those who eat it.


    Food Wasting: You can reduce the nutritional value of food, reducing its ability to provide nutrients, energy, and health to those who eat it. This power works on all foods, and if you wish can ignore other aspects of food which means that eating food affected by it still causes someone to begin to feel your influence.


    Harvest Manipulation: You can induce the harvest, or prevent it from occurring for any crop you wish. This means you can choose whether or not a crop will ripen or even age.


    Infertility Inducement and Manipulation: Famines are associated with infertility in the minds of mortals across various universes. As befits this trend, gods of famine can induce and manipulate infertility even amongst humanoids or dragons.


    Agriculture/Famine Subdomain Active Power:


    Waste Inducement: Once per day you can affect an area over two hundred kilometers wide with an incurable condition that renders it completely unsuitable for any sort of plant or animal life. This poisons the air, and irradiates the ground. Life in this area will begin to die slowly and painfully unless it leaves. If living creatures in this area leave the area they will survive but will be infertility unless they ask you for atonement.


    Agriculture/Famine Synergistic Power:


    Disease and Symptom Addition: You can add infertility or hyperfertility to diseases you inflict on people or use them as symptoms even without diseases. You can also affect the digestive systems of creatures and affect their ability to process food.]


    ________________________________________________


    I peered into the reservoir and smiled. This body of water was untainted and I intended to change that. In doing so I would be able to infect an entire community with a devastating disease that would no doubt soon spread beyond this single community.


    I was positioned precariously at the edge of a walkway. In front of me was a ladder that led into the body of water this community relied on for a plethora of things, from washing their clothes and other cleaning tasks to cooking and drinking. At the moment it was pristine, unsoiled and clear. I leaped from the walkway and landed in one of the many interconnected pools of water, each of which stored thousands of gallons of water and I closed my eyes.


    Upon closing my eyes I wasn''t greeted by the usual not-so-mini-map but rather by a notification that listed various diseases that I could call upon in this situation. Over the course of my life I had healed quintillions of creatures and whenever I healed a creature any diseases it was suffering from were added to my repertoire of controllable diseases that I could spread at will. That meant that I had a potent arsenal that I could utilize as I wished, one that I tended not to use but was going to begin to use at least in an experimental context.


    As an incorporeal being, I was momentarily residing within the pool without disturbing any of the water within it. Even my entrance into the water didn''t disturb the pool in any real physical way. And from within the pool, I began to enact a scheme which was quite foul. It wasn''t unlike a scheme I once used to force a slave-owning family to cease their practice of slavery: I would use diseases to get my way. It didn''t take me long to decide that rather than choosing a single disease to infect this pool with, I could choose multiple diseases. And so I did. Countless sicknesses with which to infect an entire community and to turn it into a playground for pandemics.


    I silently began to generate countless pathogens from within myself, all of which oozed out of me and settled into the pool. The pathogens were effortlessly resistant to water and they began to spread out of me, though they wouldn''t spread out until after I slowed myself down.


    The next few "minutes", or at least what felt like minutes, would be filled with me going from pool to pool, potently filling them with all manner of nasty diseases. I didn''t choose the most vicious diseases I had at my disposal, but I did choose some of the nastier ones. Ones that caused the infected to be riddled with sores, or to be covered in bloody rashes. The diseases weren''t even particularly dangerous, but they were quite spectacular. Those who were afflicted with them would learn of their misfortune quite quickly.


    I quietly modified the horde of pathogens I was creating to infect those they came into contact with with especially aggressive variants of the diseases they caused, ones that would go to work within hours of infecting various lifeforms. Normally the diseases I had chosen had somewhat lengthy incubation periods, but that wouldn''t do well for my needs at the moment. I wanted to be flashy and I wanted the diseases I infected this town with to be ones that let them know that they were sick. In time I would alert them to my presence.


    That said, for a moment my mind turned elsewhere. It turned to the possibilities given to me by one of the powers I had earned earlier when I acquired the second tier of influence over the subdomain of agriculture. The ability to induce infertility was an incredibly potent power, one which meant that I could take my time and I could more easily take control of entire planets or species. And conversely, the ability to induce fertility was a potent tool that I could use to help increase the numbers of half-demons and half-devils.


    But I wasn''t done with this test world. Not by a long shot. I wanted to go ahead and increase the number of parasite and vermin-based powers at my disposal, and to do that I needed to create life. As I allowed myself to slow down I opened a portal to a distant and small community on the other side of the world right over me, just outside of the pool. The world began to slowly move around me, and the pool I was in began to momentarily darken as the countless pathogens which surrounded me began to spread throughout it in such a great number that for the briefest instant they were plainly visible to the naked eye.


    I closed my eyes and willed myself upwards. I was still incorporeal so my movement didn''t disturb my surroundings, and after a "second" I went through the portal directly overhead. On the other side of the portal, I found myself standing atop a hill overlooking a small, sleepy town. I silently rose my hand and began to create a swarm of minions who would enact my will: a respectable horde of mosquitos.


    Time did begin to pass as I created an enormous horde of swarming insects, all of which were intelligent and loyal to me and me alone. The sleepy town began to slowly awaken as I created the swarming, irritating, parasitic army of minions that would serve me.


    At first the mosquitoes I created were simple albeit intelligent creatures. They buzzed and swarmed around me, shrouding me in a cloak of biting insects who''d harass anyone I commanded them too. Creating them was an easy task, one that took me just a few moments each. In a matter of minutes, I had an army consisting of hundreds of mosquitoes that buzzed around me and were eagerly awaiting their first task. One which I gave them all with a single utterance.


    "Evolve." I commanded the insects, demanding that they cease being the simple vermin I had created them as and that they become something stronger, more ferocious, and more intelligent. The second after I spoke the insects began to glow and they began to radiate the silvery light I was known for. My smile transformed into a smirk even as the insects began to grow significantly larger.


    "Arise my minions. And with you, I shall become an even greater god than I currently am." I remarked, feeling the power of the army of monstrous parasites I had created swell in response to my words. This terrifying legion would serve me well, and grant me greater power over a subdomain I was born possessing the power to influence: the subdomain of vermin and parasites.

 221 Verminous Friends

    The overwhelming majority of the mosquitoes I had created evolved into horse-sized mosquito-monsters, which were, in essence, the same as regular mosquitos but both more intelligent and more aggressive. They were enormous creatures, especially compared to what they had evolved from. I looked forward to watching them seize control of the community I was going to order them to take.


    The other type of evolution that occurred when I commanded my horde to evolve was far less common, taking place perhaps a dozen times across the few thousand mosquitoes I had created. When it took place the mosquitoes who were lucky enough to become this rarer type of creature were transformed into almost eldritch-seeming fusions of man and insect.


    The lucky mosquitoes gained a new form that was largely mundane looking. They acquired a human form that though beautiful or handsome in every case was not exceptionally so. Their new bodies were human, but they had additional features. They had wings, a proboscis, and a second, vestigial, set of eyes. Their evolution also took longer than the evolution of their cousins as they had to take on a whole new shape whereas their cousins just expanded in size quite rapidly over the course of a few seconds.


    I had usages for both groups in my newest horde and indeed once the final mosquito to complete its evolution into a human-mosquito-hybrid was done evolving I began to move. I smiled and launched a specific, efficient attack on the community I was overlooking. This wasn''t going to be a genocide, though I didn''t doubt that some death would occur.


    ________________________________________________


    I pointed one of my orcish hands at the town and began to create darkness. In order for my forces to be as efficient and as effective as possible, I''d need to take control of the basic situation the town was in. Currently, it was late in the day and though the sun was beginning to set I didn''t want to wait. Fortunately, I was a god of darkness and so I didn''t need to wait for night to fall to plunge a town into darkness.


    An umbral blanket fell over the small town, immediately smothering it in cloying darkness. The umbral blanket was quite thick in some places, and where it was the thickest it was also a solid, impenetrable thing that served as a wall restricting movement in and out of the town. Every road out of the tiny community was blocked off, making it impossible for anyone to leave the town or enter it.


    I began to telepathically command my mosquito-human-hybrids. My orders were simple, go into the town and capture its leaders. I had plans, ones that were quite sinister, for them, and I wanted to complete this mission as efficiently as possible. The eerie creatures didn''t say a word as they left to complete the mission their creator and god had given them. I chuckled as they appeared in my field of view, floating on nearly invisible wings as they moved towards the town we were set on ruining.


    ________________________________________________


    The mosquito-human-hybrid monsters flew as a pack towards the town beneath the hill their creator brought them to life on. Their master granted them vision, and he also began to telepathically speak to them. The monsters all began to grin when they heard their master''s voice in their heads and they felt the power and majesty of his presence enter them in a way that ensured that he''d never truly leave them.


    They split up as they approached the town, each silently deciding which of the town''s leaders they''d abduct. Their mission was all that drove them, and they each hoped that completion of the mission would grant them the approval of their creator. One of the mosquitoes went to the house of the town''s mayor, and that specific mosquito had a fascinating encounter.


    ________________________________________________


    Each of the creatures was being observed by their odd creator-god. And all of them would succeed in their mission, as their creator was prepared to silently help them if need be. Althos wasn''t about to take any chances.


    The mosquito who had opted to kidnap the mayor of the town arrived at the humble abode of the mayor and decided to begin by barging in uninvited. The creature, blessed by its god with knowledge as all of the elite-kidnappers had been, recognized the building where the mayor lived as a house. It had been directed here by Althos himself, who knew both that this wasn''t where the mayor was and also that this place was currently hiding a rather amusing secret; an intimate act of lust and betrayal that Althos had decided to witness for himself.


    The mosquito walked right up to the front door of the house and then began to flex and harden his muscles. He studied the door for a moment, quietly deciding whether or not to knock for a single heartbeat. He decided to knock, in a manner speaking anyway. The mosquito silently reared his fist back and then launched a single, devastating punch. The punch collided with the door, and sent it sailing inward, opening the path for the monster to enter the house. Unbeknownst to it, it had a guest who was alongside it as it took its first steps into the home.


    The house itself was a simple two-story building with everything for guests on the bottom floor and the bedrooms being upstairs. When the door crashed into the home, the sound it generated was muffled by the mosquito god''s timely intervention in the form of a custom-magical-effect that merely made everyone who would have reacted to the noise merely not perceiving it. This was an easy effect for the god to create as it was a simple enchantment.


    The mosquito, a silent creature, had been blessed with exceptional hearing. Because of this not long after stepping into the home the creature had invaded it was able to hear the sounds of passionate lovemaking, or rather what was more honestly described as fucking. The creature wordlessly set off to investigate the sounds, wondering if they were the sounds of the mayor. It remained eerily silent even as it made it to the stairwell that would lead it to the bedrooms where it would discover the truth.


    Its god knew the truth as a consequence of his powers over stars and knowledge, as well as his influence over lust and pleasure. As his monstrous "child", of a sort anyway, completed climbing the stairs the noises only intensified. The curious mosquito lumbered over to where they were coming from and knocked the door down with another of its potent punches, sending the obstacle sailing inward into the bedroom. The sight that it saw confused it.


    ________________________________________________


    Due to my powers over sloth and lust, as well as magic, I was able to intervene in the seconds before my minion arrived at the bedroom and ensure that the two lovers would not be disturbed by the abrupt appearance of my monstrous servant. Because of this the two continued to enjoy each other, even as my mosquito-minion not only entered the room but actually approached them.


    The bedroom was a big space with plenty of space for the adulterous couple to enjoy each other. At the moment they were enjoying each other orally, their mouths practically affixed to each other''s genitals. The man in the bed was a neighbor, and the woman was the wife of the mayor. The two of them were naked, and they had yet to react to the presence of the enormous man-mosquito who had rudely intruded upon their private-time.


    I quietly manifested next to my man-mosquito creation, a smirk on my lips as I did so. As I began to appear in front of the couple and my creation I activated a number of pleasant and unpleasant abilities, so that when I became fully visible I was a radiant vision of beauty and lust. That alone didn''t cause the couple to turn to face me, but when I chuckled they did in fact turn to examine whoever was so insistent on disturbing their amorous moment.


    The man in the bed was very pale and he had been facing away from myself and my creation. The woman was almost equally pale, and she had had her mouth full. The two of them were naked but parts of them were hidden from view by the blankets of the bed they were on. The man retrieved himself from the woman and turned to face me, even as she peered out at me from behind him. I smirked at the two, right as their eyes fell upon my divinely attractive form.


    I wasn''t here in the body of the orcish man I had possessed, I was here in my own form. I was only manifesting myself as a phantom-clone, but it was enough. I was a god of love, lust, and pleasure. Even as a baby god of those things I was more than powerful enough to overwhelm some adulterous assholes.


    The couple''s mouths fell wide open. As the woman''s did, some of the essence of her partner that was still in it began to drip out of her mouth, staining the bed she sat upon. Both of the humans were instantly smitten, quite powerfully, with me. I silently beckoned for the couple to approach me, and as I did I commanded my servant to do something.


    "Drink." I told it, telepathically. I filled the single mental word with a heavy-weight to make it impossible to resist. The couple got out of the bed, but when they dared to stand up I pointed a hand towards them and spoke for the first time.


    "Crawl." I commanded, my voice filling with the power of the domain of law. The couple didn''t hesitate and they began to crawl towards me. I found this amusing, and my minion found it convenient. The creature lunged at the couple, tackling the man first. For a split second his lover almost reacted to it, but I seized her mind to keep her from looking away from me.


    My minion''s proboscis shot out of his mouth and pierced the shoulder of the man it had tackled even as the pair fell to the floor. I smiled as I heard the man begin to struggle against the creature, but my minion was ravenous. The creature began to drink the blood of the man incredibly quickly and because of this the man''s strength began to decrease even as he began to try and resist the creature. I waved a hand in the direction of the pair and blessed my minion, increasing its strength, and cursed the man, decreasing his strength.


    It would only take a minute for the man to be drained of all of his blood. When he was, the mosquito-minion discarded his corpse and turned to glare sinisterly at the woman. He soon charged at her, right as she reached me and repeated the vile process he had done to her adulterous lover.


    Once she was deceased, which only took about forty-five seconds, I was content. Both of the corpses looked withered and I found them amusing to glance at. I took one more glance at them before I returned to the hill the orc I had possessed was standing on top of.


    ________________________________________________


    The next hour was a busy one. The minions I sent out began to return with their intended prey, and as they did I began to receive a number of new notifications. The notifications I received were universally quite exciting.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    You can now complete the quests to gain the second tiers of influence over additional domains and subdomains. None of these quests are necessary for you to become an intermediate god, but completion of them will greatly expand the number of powers at your disposal, as well as the ways you can interact with the universe around you.


    Darkness: To acquire the second tier of influence over the domain of darkness, plunge a nation into darkness and have it last for over 50 hours.


    Pain: To acquire the second tier of influence over the pain subdomain, inflict pain on an entire community at once.


    Life*: To acquire the second tier of influence over the domain of life, create a brand new species. The powers you need to be able to do this have been added to your life domain powers.


    Biology: Utilize your powers over biology to warp an entire community and leave each inhabitant looking however you desire for them to look.


    *You have met a god of a humanoid species before. Becoming a god of a humanoid species grants you great power over that specific species. To become one you must accrue more influence over the domain of life, among other things that tend to be specific to the species in question. Back when it mattered, only one god could be a god of a humanoid species at any given time. Morehammer was that, for his creations; the dwarves. Becoming a god of a species requires time and energy, but doing it confers immense benefits and is always worth the investment.]


    ________________________________________________


    I was quite pleased. I had just gained a chance to immeasurably increase my powers, and I had just gained the power to make a brand new species. Now that was exciting. I could sense the powers the notification mentioned resting deep within me, and I fully intended to make use of them right away.


    It was while I was preparing to do that, that the last of my minions arrived. They brought with them the humans I had told them to capture. And because of that, coupled with the notification I had just received, they had brought the first meal I''d give to the new species I was about to create.


    I rose a single hand and I did something I almost never did. I turned on my own minions. I released a directed burst of radiation that exploded out of me and swept over the minions I had decided to cull. I didn''t need them anymore, and the radiation that washed over them was in such a great quantity that it granted them a nearly instantaneous death. I, of course, didn''t kill all of the creatures, as I suspected that if I killed the humans I had captured I would not complete the quest I had come here to complete. That said even the dead would be used. I was nothing if not resourceful.


    I spared the human-mosquito-hybrids and I spared a pair of the evolved mosquitoes for each of the human-mosquito-hybrids to have as mounts. I needed them to be the ones who killed the humans I had abducted. I also ordered my shadow to consume the shadows of the fallen horde of mosquitoes, whom were crashing to the ground all around me. I fully intended to store their corpses for use at a later date as well. They''d make excellent undead monsters, but I didn''t need them to be alive and indeed if I left them alive they''d decimate this place. I had just ended up killing them sooner than I had planned too.


    My shadow detached itself from me and began to crawl towards the closest deceased monster-mosquito. When it reached the unfortunate thing the shadow greedily attacked the mosquito''s shadow, eagerly latching onto it and pulling it into itself. I chuckled and began to ready myself to make my first ever original species.


    To do that I reexamined the list of life-domain powers I possessed, excitedly taking in all of the new toys I had at my disposal.

 222 Genesis

    Non-Sapient Race Creation: This power is used to create species that are not sapient. Sapience is a measure of intelligence and by choosing to create a non-sapient race you would be choosing to create a simple species. Non-sapient races recognize you as their creator, even though they are not sapient and obey directives you engrain in them at the moment you create them and commands you give them through mental powers.


    Sapient Race Creation: This power is used to create species that are sapient. This would allow you to create a race that is at least as intelligent as humans are, innately. Sapient races you create recognize you as their creator and obey you, obeying both commands you give them yourself and directives you engrain in them at the moment you create them. That said sapient races you create can turn against you, as these are full sapient beings.


    *Newly bestowed powers you''ve acquired to complete the quest needed to acquire the second tier of influence over the life domain.]


    ________________________________________________


    Reading through the descriptions for the two powers I had just earned was exciting. They were brief and to the point, and told me what I needed to know.


    Behind me the kidnapped humans were shouting in anger and crying in despair. I had ignored them while I was reading through the descriptions for my two, new powers, but their continued outbursts were annoying so I did put them to sleep with a single wave of my hand. They tried to resist the power, but even the weakest gods had powers that easily overwhelmed mortals. A second after I waved my hand the mortals quieted down and slumped over, unconscious.


    "Silence... Finally." I muttered, under my breath. I turned to face my minions, the man-mosquitoes I had created earlier. They all straightened their posture when they saw me turn to face them, out of respect and fear alike. It was a smart reaction but not one that was needed. I chuckled and studied them.


    The man-mosquitoes were small in number, but thankfully so too were the leaders of the community I had decided to ruin in order to achieve my mission of acquiring the second tier of influence over the vermin subdomain. My shadow was still hard at work feasting on the shadows of the fallen, dire-mosquitoes. It was quite skilled at its work and thus it was more than capable of working silently, which it did.


    The man-mosquitoes were next to the fallen, sleeping humans and I studied the scene before me silently before giving my minions a single, grim order.


    "KIll the humans." I told them, speaking simply and directly.


    The man-mosquitoes had a disturbingly human mouth. They even had tongues! Their proboscises appeared from within their mouths in a way that was supernatural in origin, as if they were stored somewhere ethereally, in the same way that I could store things in a non-physical space or even use my shadow to hold items if I wanted.


    Almost simultaneously the man-mosquitoes revealed their proboscises and the needle-like appendages shot forward and pierced the necks of the sleeping humans. The appendages were long and thin and I could watch as the blood drained out of the bodies of the humans who had the misfortune of being leaders. Blood began to be vigorously drained out of the humans, and for the briefest of moments I could see that the proboscices of my minions turn a sickly shade of red. It brought a smile to my face.


    One by one the humans stopped breathing. Their hearts gave out, unable to replenish the blood they had lost at the hands of my minions, and they quietly perished. Their deaths weren''t particularly painful, a consequence of the nature of their deaths coupled with the fact that they were sleeping.


    I watched as the last of them stopped breathing. When they did, I felt and then saw the notification alerting me that I had completed the quest to gain greater power over the subdomain of vermin.


    ________________________________________________


    [Alert:


    Parasites have led to the ruin of a small town, Naples. Naples will collapse due to the assassination of its leaders, and as a result of that you have successfully acquired the second tier of influence over the subdomain of vermin and parasites. Congratulations!


    Vermin Subdomain Passive Powers:


    Greater Drain: Now you can more readily drain things from more than just mortals. So long as something is not a vestige, or, impossibly, another higher-being you can drain things from them.


    Greater Possession: A direct upgrade to the "Possession" power that allows you to possess anyone who isn''t a vestige or higher being.


    Limited Magical Disease Manipulation: You can now inflict and manipulate diseases that open up the infected to possession, such as demonic infection. This is due to your potent powers over possession, as well as your existing influence over magic and diseases.


    Parasitic Genesis: You can create a personal parasite that plagues anyone you choose in targeted, personalized ways. This could include tempting them to perform acts that run contrary to their alignment, or otherwise performing acts against their nature as well as gradually sapping their strength and urging them to make choices that would hurt them. This power does not currently work on vestiges.


    Parasitic King: You can, at will, exude an aura that subjugates even the strongest parasites. This aura causes parasites in its radius to recognize you as the parasitic king and god of all parasites. This aura also affects vermin. This is more than literal, it can also affect those who leech off of others such as sycophants and yes-people.


    Vermin Subdomain Active Power:


    Empowerment: Once per day you can cause someone to become incredibly empowered if they willingly allow a parasite to exist within them.]


    ________________________________________________


    I had received a potent, direct upgrade to my capabilities. I wasn''t disappointed by the lack of variety, on the contrary the new powers were quite entertaining to me, especially "Parasitic Genesis". And so I decided to utilize that power almost immediately.


    I closed my eyes as I willed away the notification and I targeted Agustino, annoyed by the foolishness of his choice to stand against me and cause me to be momentarily distracted from my larger goal of gaining greater power. I wanted to punish him, and so I targeted him with my newest quirky power. Almost as if he detects my efforts, I get a notification alerting me that the demon is talking about me. Or rather, blaspheming me. That got a slight chuckle out of me.


    I was happy that the power wasn''t limited by range, or by the ability to perceive a target''s location. That lack of a restriction meant I could use it on any target, so long as the target wasn''t a vestige. I activated the power, and a split second later I received a barrage of notifications alerting me that my efforts were successful. And that was positively delightful.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep in a bizarre and alien palace, sat a confident and angry demon. He looked deceptively mundane, almost mortal even, but there was a power he possessed that kept even the greater demons who sometimes visited him on-guard.


    He was angry because the war effort was going... badly was an understatement. At the moment he was just getting word of the loss of even more demonic troops and allies than he had thought he had lost when his general was slain. That caused his handsome face to scowl in anger and resentment.


    He curses the god he, in his proud insanity, has chosen to go to war against. This is not the first time that he has cursed the man he made an enemy of. As he curses the god, he suddenly winches, visibly, in pain. And then he begins to shout, to wail, in mind-bending agony.


    The sounds of his pain would normally delight even his commanders, Agustino is after all an utterly insane dictator and unlike devils he isn''t even skilled in management and governance, but something about this pain is different. It''s frightening even.


    Agustino wasn''t speaking as he screamed. There were no words or coherent thoughts he was trying to communicate. He was howling, as if he were a wild-animal that had the misfortune of coming across an armed hunter and underestimating him.


    Unbeknownst to anyone in the palace at the time that the hurt commander began to howl, their shared enemy had just acquired a significant power. This new power could target people even in other universes, so long as Althos knew about them. And this power had just torn across space and time to spawn a malicious Althonite parasite which existed to plague and doom Agustino, within the demon. Agustino himself was unaware of this, he was only aware of the perception-distorting pain he was in at the moment. And his suffering delighted Althos.


    ________________________________________________


    Shortly after launching my first attack directly on Agustino I refocused and quietly activated my power to create sapient races. As I did, I felt my body radiate tremondous power, more so ever had aside from the few moments I spent as a star when I was battling Agustino''s forces.


    When I activated my powers I felt the power of my abilities within me. Normally this was relatively unremarkable, but at the moment it was breathtaking. I felt more powerful in the second I was beginning to create a distinct species of my own making than I ever had throughout my entire life up until this point.


    I felt a heat so warm that even I felt hot and I was a god of fire and plasma. It nestled itself deep in my chest, near where a heart would be if I were a mortal, or perhaps even had a stable, true, physical form. And I liked it. I enjoyed the warmth in my chest. It excited me, as the longest notification I had ever received placed itself in the center of my vision.


    The notification was extensive. It asked me all sorts of questions, so many so that it took even me several minutes to finish filling it out. Some of the more amusing questions were related to reproduction and a chuckle-inducing questionnaire on how I wanted the creatures to react to a series of hypothetical situations. Until I was done answering questions, once I answered a question it vanished unless I deliberately wanted to go back to it and redo it.


    When I was done I reviewed all of my answers, and by then a fair bit of time had passed. I chuckled as I read through the notification, reexamining my answers once more and then smiling in satisifaction at the creatures I was about to create. They were, in my eyes anyway, truly beautiful. And they fit my interests to a tee.


    I released the power from deep within me, and targeted some space directly in front of me, even as I activated a cocktail of auras and other abilities that would ensure that my creation was thoroughly awed by me. A few seconds after I released the power, the ground began to shine explosively becoming close to blinding before a silhouette materialized within the illuminated space.


    ________________________________________________


    Deep within the shining area, the quiet god''s power was assembling life from nothing. His divine power was on display even as he glanced at the area where his powers were hard at work.


    Within the aforementioned illuminated place the god''s energy was being spent creating life from nothing and also creating a sort of immaterial blueprint that would enter an ethereal datebase wherein it would stay safely ensconced forever, for future use by Althos and had there been any other deities would have been possible for them to use as well. The god''s power slowly stitched together the creature Althos had described in the notification he received.


    It started off by weaving together a central abdomen and also a cephalothorax. Both of these were large, fleshy spheres, but in the case of the equally nightmarish and beautiful creature Althos had created were covered in thick iron-like plated armor. Following the creation of these two thick spheres, the power set about creating the fierce legs of the spider-like creature the god was making.


    The legs were muscular, thick limbs that were built powerfully enough to allow the creature to move despite the enormous size and weight of the monster''s abdomen and cephalothorax, thanks to their natural armor. They ended in sharp barbs, which the creature could use to penetrate the ground if it needed too to resist knockback and efforts to push or pull it in a direction it didn''t want to be pushed or pulled in. The legs were also covered in harsh thorn-like growths that would slash and stab anyone who the spider knocked down with its legs or even leaped at.


    The creature was a spider, at its core, but it was also a creature far more fearsome than any ordinary spider could ever be. It was larger than a horse, with legs the size of some diminutive humans, and it had the natural defenses needed to withstand a small, somewhat slow-moving car ramming into it without it even being knocked back.


    The creature had eyes all over its body, which was a somewhat maddening thing to see. It also had enormous fangs at the front of its face, where its two largest eyes were located, alongside a full maw and antennas with which to better sense the world around it. It was a truly monstrous anthropod, but also one that was innately filled with admiration and love for its creator, who was also in awe of it since he was a monstrous spider deity himself who often clad himself in deceptive forms.


    ________________________________________________


    The light slowly began to vanish, and as it did I got to lay my eyes on my first original creation. The creature who stood where the light had once been was an enormous creature that was taller than me in the body I was possessing. Its main eyes were starring at me, and there was nothing short of adoration within them. I smiled at the creature, and then I pointed it at the corpses the creature would devour as its first meal.


    The creature turned in the direction of the corpses, and when it did it released a noise that was almost deafening. The sound was one of excitement, and hunger, and the creature dashed in the direction of the corpses, before leaping into the air as it closed in on the closest one. It was at this point that I received the notification alerting me to the reality that I had just earned the second tier of influence over the life domain, which was in all honesty the most exciting notification I had ever received up to this point in my life.


    My eyes went wide as I read the notification and I began to laugh, the sound a triumphant one of delight and excitement. The creature began to speak in a language unique to its species as it tore into the food. Its words were zealous declarations of the might and greatness of its creator, which filled me with happiness and delight, bolstering my already jubilant mood even further.

 223 Life

    Congratulations on acquiring the second tier of influence over the life domain! This is one of the greater domains that is the most affiliated with your soul, and you are now beginning to unlock its true power. As a consequence of that, this is a significant upgrade to your powers that bolster your abilities in many ways.


    New Primarily Life Domain Passive Powers:


    Chi Awareness and Manipulation: Chi is one type of lifeforce that can be found in all living creatures, be they mortal or not. This power not only allows you to be perpetually aware of chi, sensing even the most minute amounts of it but also manipulate it. You can manipulate chi to achieve a number of effects with some examples including paralyzing or empowering others and also hardening your own attacks.


    Enhanced Resurrection: This supercharges your resurrection ability, allowing you to perform up to fifty true resurrections per day. Resurrection is innately a life-domain ability, and thus each tier of influence you acquire over it awards you greater control and ease of use of the power.


    Flawless Restoration: You can heal anyone or anything of any damage so long as they are alive. This power takes from the healing subdomain, creation domain, and the life domain, and mixes them together allowing you to heal people, things, and even concepts.


    Life-Aura: With this aura, wounds heal faster in your presence, and life is more likely to be created.


    Life Bestowal: This power is specific for objects. You can grant them life, utilizing your powers over minds, souls, creation, and life. They come to life and begin to worship you, unless you make them unintelligent. This could be an especially powerful ability specifically with regards to art or technology. This differs from granting something consciousness, in that a living object can be killed by sustaining enough damage.


    Life Element Manipulation: With this power, you gain the power to manipulate energy that fuses life-force and elemental forces. As an example you can manipulate a variation of air that heals lifeforms and a variation of water that can produce life.


    Life Force Extension: You can infuse more life-force into a living creature to extend their life. One of the key uses of this is that this can increase the age someone can live too, but it can also be used creatively in a number of different ways.


    Lesser Life-Editing: With this power, you can more finely manipulate a mortal''s life. This allows you to directly interface with a mortal on a scale that magic can''t replicate. With this, you can edit someone''s appearance and other lesser things even without their consent.


    New Primarily Life Domain Active Power:


    ________________________________________________


    The new powers that settled within me were extremely significant. I felt them in my heart, in my soul, as I read through the first notification. I received a second one was a longer, more complex list of synergistic powers.


    Not far from me, the spider-like creature I had created was feasting on the corpses of the leaders of the town. It was a messy eater, and it was also having the time of its very short life. As the creature devoured the corpses I watched as it began to change.


    The more the creature ate, the more humanlike it became. At first it was a slow, subtle change, as it began by changing the pigmentation of the creature''s chitin. But the more it ate the more pronounced the changes became.


    The first real, indisputably noticeable, addition was that the creature grew distinctly human arms. And from there the changes only grew in intensity. By the time the creature was done eating the last of the corpses it looked as human as I had in my very first form.


    "So it worked..." I said, beholding the true nature of my creation. I hadn''t created any ordinary spider-monster. I had created a terrifying and quasi-eldritch monster-race of shape-shifters. The creature, now eerily human in appearance, looked at me curiously.


    The creature opened its mouth and a strange, clicking sound came out of it. It was speaking to me, in the language of its species. I smiled and listened to what it was saying.


    "Creator... I feel wiser now." The thing remarked, now possessing all of the abilities and knowledge of its victims. Despite the monster''s human-form there was something predatory in its voice. I remained silent for a moment, before opening my mouth and releasing a click-like sound of my own, which was me replying to it in kind.


    "You are. When I created you, my child, I bestowed you with a number of gifts. You are, in many ways, a creature like me." I revealed, while also speaking vaguely. The creature gazed at me curiously, its mind filled with wonder.


    "You are the world''s strongest predator and parasite. I not only gave an archnid''s base form, I also gave you a few other special gifts. The greatest gifts I gave you were the powers to shapeshift and to drain everything from those you devour. Those you eat do not become mere sustenance for you, they become inspiration for you. Their knowledge, memories, secrets and thoughts are absorbed by your mind." I explained, revealing why it was that the creature felt wiser.


    "You are a mortal. Your mind cannot process everything instantaneously as mine can. It takes time for you to absorb what you''ve learned. But when your mind is done processing the collective knowledge of your victims, you will suddenly understand an incredible amount all at once." I revealed, smiling as I spoke in the click-tongue of the spider.


    The creature fell silent, shocked by the weight of what I had just revealed. I had also bestowed the creature with other gifts, such as immortality, but I didn''t need to overwhelm it all at once. For the moment I contented myself with replying to its questions as they came, and not revealing everything to it at once.


    The creature opened its flawless imitation of a human mouth and once more clicked at me, after a few moments of silence. This time the click was longer, louder, more emotional.


    "Creator? Why was I created?" It asked, as a powerful emotion, curiosity, filled its voice. I looked at it for a moment, and sped time to the speed of light for the briefest of instants. That gave me space and time to internally debate whether or not I wanted to tell it the truth.


    The world around me slowed to a standstill. I felt everything freeze, everything but me. And then I chuckled and began to think.


    The truth was that I created an entirely original species to acquire more power. That was why I had made the powerful monster that I had just finished creating. I would do a lot to acquire more power, to gain more knowledge, and to spread my influence far and wide. But if I told the creature the truth it wouldn''t sound particularly godly. Nor would it make the creature want to serve me.


    I could lie to the creature. Lying wasn''t challenging for me. I doubted I''d even need to use any of my powers. I knew mortals. Many of them wanted to believe that they were a part of a grandiose design, that some architect created an elaborate scheme that would only work if they played their part.


    Truthfully telling them that I was that architect, or some approximation of that basic idea, was something I had before. I was powerful enough and intelligent enough to make it work too. Entire lawful cults of mine venerated me as a grand designer, one who had come to pick up the pieces and fix the broken worlds left behind by my deific ancestors.


    That said... There was also a middle ground. I could reveal that in creating this creature I gained more power, while also giving it a purpose. And what''s more I could make the purpose I was going to give the creature a real purpose, one worth basing it''s immortal life around.


    I quietly contemplated the situation before me. I stood still, in the silence of a nearly frozen world, and I carefully weighed the three solutions that I had come up with to answering the creature''s inquiry. After countless moments, ones that the spider-like doppleganger before me would never realize passed, I realized which answer I wanted to give to the creature. I closed my eyes and returned to my normal speed, the world returning to vibrant life around me and my creation.


    I kept my eyes closed as I began to click at the creature. I was once more speaking to it.


    "I created you and indeed your entire species as a means to gain an archivist in this world and others throughout the universe. Your ability to grow in intelligence and wisdom by feeding on other living creatures is invaluable to me, as a god of knowledge and manifests my other powers as a god of parasites and as a shapeless deity." I told the creature, in its anthropoid language. I wasn''t done speaking either.


    "I gained power when I created your kind, I want you to know that, but I created you first and foremost to help me in my real mission: gaining all knowledge." I explained, lying to my creation but only a little bit. And before my eyes the creature''s eyes widened and its body language changed.


    The monster before me, the very first of its kind, gained confidence and assurance thanks to my words. I had filled it with a holy purpose, a true reason to exist. I also bestowed it with a holy and zealous appreciation of the gifts I had bestowed upon it. I felt the creature''s overall attitude shift in a more positive, self-affirming direction. Before my eyes the creature all gained a class, a pair of them actually.


    ________________________________________________


    The assorted crowd that watched the gigantic man-spider was taken aback when after several moments of eerie clicking, the creature who had been created by the king of parasites began to glow.


    The creature looked human, for the moment anyway, but after hearing the parasite king''s latest clicks it was still for many moments. As it did an unusual silence filled the air as creatures atop the hill glanced at each other, confused by the clicking sounds their creator was making and many other events that had happened in the past few minutes.


    After a few moments, the strange human-like being who stood not far from the mosquito lord and creator began to glow. He radiated a faint silvery light for a few moments, before suddenly ceasing to radiate any light. When the light ceased radiating out of the creature, he was changed.


    The creature who had the form of a human, for now anyway, stood taller than he had before. He had denser muscles than he had had a moment ago, he stood up straighter than before, and he had a certainty in his gaze that he had lacked before now. He was himself, but a more confident version of himself.


    The creature''s faith in his creator, kindled by his creator''s words, had resulted in the creature gaining two classes spontaneously. The first class he had earned was that of a cleric, the most devoted and fanatical servants of the gods. The second class he had earned was that of a monk, devoted archivists and seekers of knowledge who served gods of strength, combat, discipline, and order.


    The mixture of those two classes in particular also strengthened the soul of the creature. It felt the confidence that it now displayed physically well up from within its heart and proudly displayed that confidence. Althos himself studied the creature after the light stopped shining and chuckled. He did not hate the changed monster, indeed he was quite fond of its newfound faith and discipline.


    ________________________________________________


    The spider-human-monster before me had the confidence of someone many years his senior. He had a purpose now, and he had some awareness of his abilities. He was far sharper than he had been before.


    His two classes complimented each other quite well, and they would no doubt enable him to pursue his goals far more effectively than he would have been able too do without them.


    The first few abilities of the monk class were related to physical improvements. They made those who received the class stronger, faster, and more skilled in hand to hand combat. The first few abilities of the cleric class made someone wiser and they gave them recovery abilities, such as the power to pray to their god and receive divine healing for minor wounds once per week.


    I was about to issue my first command to my zealous servant when I received a surprising, but not unpleasant notification.


    ________________________________________________


    [Notification:


    Your "God" class has just leveled up! Now you are a level 2 God.


    As a level 2 God, you gain double usages of all of your cooldown abilities, and you gain the ability to create a second avatar. You also gain these two greater powers:


    Spontaneous Miracles: Faith alone is now enough to cause miracles that will be attributed to you. If a creature has enough faith in you and either extremely desires something or is in desperate need, there''s an incredibly small chance that their desires will be fulfilled in the form of an incredible miracle.


    Rejection: When you gain the second tier of influence over something you may now look at a notification related to the thing you have the second tier of influence over and reject it. For instance if someone sought to heal an enemy of yours and you rejected it the attempt to heal them would fail. Normally this would require you to have more influence over something before you could utilize this ability, if you stayed at level one.]


    ________________________________________________


    "Rejection? What an ability..." I thought to myself, in stunned silence as I read over it. It was a truly reality-shaking ability. I possessed the second tier of influence over several different domains and subdomains, and with this I could alter reality in galaxies on the far end of the cosmos or in dimensions I had yet to visit since my domain-sense power worked on a universal scale.


    Indeed I had a chance to immediately utilize my rejection ability as someone was trying to heal Agustino. I wordlessly activated the ability, and thus changed the notification I had just received. I grinned when I read that the attempt had failed.


    I could see how incredibly powerful this ability could become as I tried to wrap my mind around it. Someone with this ability and the second tier of influence over the technology subdomain could prevent an intergalactic empire from building something as simple as a music-player ever again, if they were vengeful and angry at the empire.


    At the moment with this power if I wanted too I could permanently change the entire universe and only allow my worshippers to ever experience restful sleep. And with this power once I completed the quest to acquire the second tier of influence over the domain of magic I''d be able to shut magic down for anyone I disliked.


    I could also interfere with attempts to archive knowledge thanks to this power. In this moment I felt incredibly powerful. It took me a second to calm down and recenter myself. I glanced at my servant and began to click again, speaking to my creation.


    "Little one... From here on out your name is Espejo, and your mission is to archive all of the knowledge in this world. To do that more easily, accept this blessing." I declared, speaking authoritatively, and raising my hand in the creature''s direction. The creature smiled excitedly as I began to bless it.


    I gave it a blessing of knowledge, boosted its intelligence and wisdom, and in doing so boosted the rate at which it processed knowledge, thoughts, memories, and secrets from its victims. As I did that the creature''s eyes widened as it completed absorbing what it had taken from those it had eaten.


    As I did that I turned my mind towards the perpetually increasing number of notifications that filled my mind. And as I did that, I exited the orc I had been possessing. I left him in a rather dramatic fashion and to my servants the next few seconds were filled with the sight of a mass of spiritual darkness rapidly exiting the orc I had been using as a vessel.


    When I dramatically departed from the orc, I found myself or at least my astral body floating beside a collapsed, unconscious orc. He was sleeping on the grassy floor of the hill. I turned to my creation and I gave it a simple command.


    "Collect the orc. There is one more gift I wish to give you." I told the creature, who leaped to obey me. It effortlessly retrieved the orc, and a split second later I conjured a glowing blue portal right in front of us.


    On the other side of the portal stood an awe-inspiring view: an incredibly beautiful red-rock canyon. I was taking my creations to yet another part of the world, but this time I was going to set up a base. One from which my minions could get used to life in this world. I wordlessly stepped through the portal. Once my astral form''s feet stepped on the stones of the canyon I extended an arm through the portal and beckoned my creations to follow me.

 224 Power

    My newest power, this "rejection" ability was beyond a doubt the single greatest power I had in my extensive arsenal. This power was the best reason I had to pursue the second tier of influence over every domain and subdomain that I could, even more so than my desire to reach the second tier of godhood.


    I could only imagine how terrifyingly powerful this ability would become if I gained the second tier of influence over death. Would I be able to reject the death''s of anyone I didn''t want to die? Even now, with enough power over life to reject notifications related to it I could see how bafflingly powerful this was.


    Life-based domain notifications alerted me to the moment of conception of new life, to the moment someone was born, as well as moments when they made life. Creation domain notifications covered an incredible breadth of things, and even agricultural notifications were startingly diverse. They covered not just the stages of the life-cycles of crops but also the births and deaths of animals that farmers across the universe used, as well as the sensations of hunger and thirst.


    This newfound power motivated me to act decisively and quickly. I had the power to gain the second tier of influence over a few more domains and subdomains swiftly. I began by reaching out across the universe with my mind and targeting a single community with a combination of powerful abilities.


    While I did that, I also harnessed my innate nature as a deity of earth and reached out and touched the canyon with another part of my mind. Doing so gave me great power over the canyon, total power over it in fact. And that power was power I fully intended to use to begin to build a real base of operations in this distant world. While I was scheming and gaining greater power over a few domains and subdomains, I began to enter the canyon itself and descend down a path that would lead me into the depths of the canyon, hundreds of meters below my current elevation.


    ________________________________________________


    Thousands of light-years away from the planet the dreadful god''s potent mind was currently occupying and experimenting in, there was a small community of humans who lived in the world of Salifinos. This was a war-torn world where the god was effectively a god of apocalypses and death, and it was a world in the solar system of his birth.


    The god''s first blow against the community awoke the sleepy town. It was late night in the part of the world where the community was located, and the overwhelming majority of its residents had been fast asleep when the god blasted the town with two potent abilities at once. The first power he used was his ability to blast minds. The second was his ability to inflict pain. By mixing the two, and especially by mixing them and aiming them at targets who had been asleep prior to the attack, he created a truly devastating attack that caused each of the town''s residents incredible pain.


    As one the town awoke, reeling from the agonizing power of the god. As a consequence of this he himself had just gained considerable power, his distant eyes flashing an eerie blue as a notification filled his vision. And he wasn''t done either. The town was the perfect location for him to utilize another of his powers, which was also a power that he could use to gain further power in the exact same vein as he had gained greater power over pain just now.


    The god silently transmitted a notification to the people of the town, demanding that they allow him to use his powers to change their appearance on them. If not, he promised to subject them to pain unending, and he was telling them the truth. The god tended towards honesty when it came to pain.


    To their credit a few of the simple townspeople refused him. To his credit he was indeed honest about his threat. He immediately used some of his new powers on them, causing them to feel pain so intense that they couldn''t think about anything else for a few moments.


    He also stoked the hatred that their fellow townspeople felt, by utilizing his powers over emotions generally and hatred specifically. He kept causing those who were brave enough to reject him to experience agonizing pain beyond what they imagined possible for over a full minute. When the minute ended he repeated his question. This time they didn''t refuse him. That was a smart choice.


    The god utilized his powers over biology and alteration to begin to reshape and remake the human villagers. He wanted to do it all at once, which was why he wanted until he had all of the permission he needed to act. The transformation he inflicted on the mortals was initially going to be a lazy one, perhaps nothing more than the addition of a single finger to their hands but after he had to do a bit of work to be able to mutate and transform the mortals he decided that he should put a bit of effort into transforming them.


    The god''s powers washed over the mortals immediately. Mere seconds after the last of them acquiesced to the god''s commands they began to transform. Prior to his interest in them they had been normal humans, ones whose mutations were simple things like eye colors. As his powers washed over them their mutations were dramatically and permanently altered.


    Althos was transforming the humans into something that was clearly inhuman. The first and most dramatic aspect of their mutations and alterations was the sudden, collective, theft of their lungs. Their lungs were taken from them and replaced by gills. The rest of their bodies followed a similar and terrifying pattern of their features that were most suitable for life on land being taken from them and replaced with features that were suitable for life underwater. In a matter of moments they went from being ordinary humans to being creatures suited for life underwater, all while being above-water.


    That said, the god had a plan for that as well. Even as their mutations overtook them and transformed them into humanoid, human-shaped fish-creatures, the ocean beside their village abruptly increased in size and overtook the village, flooding into houses, shops, barns, and more. And in doing so it saved lives by giving the newly transformed residents water to breathe. That said, Althos wasn''t really done with Salifinos.


    He momentarily turned his awareness towards a kingdom of elves that existed on the war-torn world. Without any hesitation he plunged the entire nation into darkness, spawning and spreading it throughout the entire nation. And in an act of quiet maliciousness he informed his abominal servants of what he had done, all while blessing them with dark vision and cursing the elven defenders of the kingdom and stealing away their ability to see in the dark.


    The truth was that the god had plans for the world of Salifinos. He hadn''t acted on them just yet, and for now he was more focused on completing his war against Agustino, defeating Technos, and avenging Ava, but he had legitimate plans for each of the worlds in the solar system of his birth. And Salifinos was the world he was the most interested in. Which was why it was the world where he had gained three total tiers of influence over some of the domains and subdomains he was highly intrigued by.


    After he finished reading through the notification he had received in the wake of earning greater power over the biology domain he quietly inflicted maddening nightmares on a dwarven king who was locked in a war with a gug the god was fond of. He also infected the high-general of the king''s forces with an extremely contagious and slow-acting disease that would inevitably kill the general, after he infected dozens of soldiers with it.


    ________________________________________________


    During the time I had spent toying with lifeforms on Salifinos I was busy in the quiet and uninspiring world I had come too in astral form. I had fun remodelling the canyon before me while freely using my powers over earth.


    As an earth deity I could command the earth, stone, and soil, quite easily. They moved as I willed them, and felt delighted to be ordered by an elemental overlord and by a god, and even more so by a creature that was both. My absolute empathy power was so incredibly potent now that I could sense the feelings of nature and the elements, and they were all delighted that a god was now freely wandering the world.


    The earth itself was especially delighted that I was utilizing my powers over it, since I wasn''t here in my physical body. I felt the planet delight in my commands and I chuckled as I stepped deeper and deeper into the canyon, each step leading me closer and closer to the location of a future base of Althonians.


    It took me a few minutes of wandering to find a place I found suitable for transformation into my newest base. I smiled and began an impressive display of power in the form of transforming the cave I had settled on as a place to create a base and a new civilization. My powers washed over the cave I had selected and swiftly began to irrevocably transform it into a new home for Althonites.

 225 Temples & Sacrifices

    The luckiest of the creatures were the ones who were in the air. They were able to watch the god at work, at least an incredibly small fraction of the work he was doing, without having to endure the shakiness of the earth that the few mosquitoes on the ground had to endure.


    Beneath the feet of the mosquitoes the earth was shaking, quaking at the power of the god''s control over the very stones that made up the canyon. Despite the potent power the god was displaying here, most of the power he was actively using at the moment he was using to do things that they weren''t seeing. Not yet anyway.


    Despite the tremendous display of power that the god was responsible for, perhaps the most impressive aspect of its powerful show of geokenetic might was that it was hardly paying any attention to the circumstances around it. The deity''s eyes were closed and though he was present he was not talking or showing any specific interest in his immediate surroundings.


    The god was facing a wall of stones that for the moment stood firm against him. His eyes were closed, causing his shadowy form to look like a thin wall of shadows. After a few moments the earth ceased to quake, and for a single second the creatures Althos had gathered wondered if he was done trying to modify the canyon. The truth was that he was about to open up the wall in front of them.


    The deity stepped forward and placed an ethereal limb that was a cross between a tendril and a hand on the wall of stone that impeded passage towards the new base. And then he focused, still silent as he moved and acted but now doing so with far more intent than he had until now.


    ________________________________________________


    I impatiently placed a single hand-tendril on the solid wall of stone that stood between myself and one of the caves that this canyon housed. The earth beneath me had just finished quaking and as I began to touch the wall I willed it out of existence, my divine power washing over it as I wished it for vanish. I was utilizing my powers over flames!


    The stone that I was touching began to glow, becoming a darker shade of red than it had been previously. It began to radiate a faint aura of heat, distorting the air right around the wall. And then it began to sublimate from a solid state to a gaseous state due to my powers as a god of fire.


    I burned a small entry into the greater cave that laid just beyond the solid wall of stone that made up one side of the canyon. The pathway I had created was raw and still red-hot, so I used my powers over temperature to cool it down immediately so that my servants could enter it. It was a tall passageway, extending several meters into the sky, but it was also a thin one that was only four meters wide.


    The pathway led into the darkness of the cavern, a darkness which my servants were eager to enter and explore. I myself already knew what lurked in the darkness, as I had been modifying the cavern while I was walking over here. I was, after all, a deity of caverns already and this much was well within my capabilities.


    I stepped into the entryway and began to walk through it into the looming and welcoming darkness. My servants followed me, and as they did I sensed their excitement beginning to grow. They were curious as to what sort of secrets this cavern could be hiding. I smiled, though they didn''t see it from behind me. I knew exactly what sort of secrets this cavern was hiding.


    ________________________________________________


    We stepped past the entryway and well and truly into the cavern. As we did I beheld one of the things I had created; a beautiful temple made of white marble that was visible in the distance once one made it into the cave.


    The area before us was a vast courtyard almost a hundred meters long and about as wide. At the other end of it stood the temple I had made while seemingly distracted. Everything here was made by me, including the courtyard. The courtyard was filled with statues of various humanoid races, and each of the statues was one I had made using my powers while I led my minions here.


    The statues were life-sized and depicted humans, elves, orcs, and even were-creatures. They were mere statues, though with my powers they could easily be brought to life. Each one was built by "hand" so-to-speak, and I had enjoyed creating them. Doing so was quite simple, I created them in my mind while I was exploring the canyon and then I willed them into existence after deciding their size and the material I''d used to create them. They were each made of marble, like the temple I had made.


    Hundreds of them stood between myself and the temple, and even as I approached the temple more came into being. The newer ones depicted a more diverse range of life, including life-sized dragons and creatures infected by parasitic spores. My companions walked or flew more slowly than I did as I made my way towards the temple at the end of the courtyard. They were clearly awed by the statues and more than one of the creatures I had created stopped to admire the high-quality artwork that littered the courtyard.


    That said, the longer they took to reach the end of the courtyard and thus the exterior of the temple, the more time I had to work on the temple. After a few minutes of leisurely walking I eventually found myself standing in front of the ornate, multistory temple I had built to myself. It was a beautiful sight.


    ________________________________________________


    Upon reaching the exterior the temple I had created to my own glory as a multi-aspect god I rose a hand and cast a spell. Well... Saying I "cast a spell" is a bit inaccurate. I actually used my power over magic to create a custom-magical-effect which I then used to summon six faith-devils.


    Faith-devils were the leaders and organizers of faiths devoted to lawful-evil deities. They were the fanatical priests, priestesses, nuns, monks, and other clergy of ancient, tyrannical faiths. And they were totally perfect for the branch of belief in me that I was intending to support in this place.


    Upon casting the custom-magical-effect I had created the air around me began to change color. I heard a distinct "whooshing" sound, as an intense light winked into existence for a moment while the faith-devils were called from Infernius. The light was almost blinding to the mortals I had created and made my minions, but it didn''t bother me thanks to my extreme senses. Within the light six silhouettes came into being abruptly, an instant before the light dulled and began to die down.


    The six silhouttes belonged to the six faith-devils I had just summoned. They were all different sizes, with a few being wider than others, one having horns, and two having wings. They all fell to their knees as the light began to vanish and by the time they were plainly visible to my minions they were piously kneeling before me in a show of submission and deference. As the light finished vanishing one of them, the one with the horns began to speak.


    "Greetings oh magnificent tyrant''s tyrant and sultan of sultans! We humble and pious members of the Tyrant''s Hand offer to serve you and your glorious empire." The creature said, speaking in a stunningly sycophantic tone. That said it was sincere, and it was exactly what I wanted for the moment.


    The six faith devils I had summoned were all dressed in one of two ways. Three of them were dressed one way and three were dressed the other. Males wore ornate, white robes adorned with gold and red markings. These robes covered their whole bodies and hidden everything but their faces behind at least one layer of clothing.


    The women all wore an outfit that I learned upon giving them a close look were called "nuns habits" and my ability to study clothing informed me that they were the clothes worn by the religion of some deity who once existed in an alternate universe. This bit of information intrigued me, and for one of the first times ever I sent a question to the system about something beyond the universe of my birth.


    I retreated inward for a few moments to ask the system itself and the domain of knowledge a question. It was a simple, but open-ended question.


    "So what are these alternative universes? I''ve heard about them before, but now it seems some devils are able to get fashion advice from them?" I asked, hoping to glean some knowledge out of this situation. The voice that had the quickest reply was the domain of knowledge.


    "Well hello Althos! What an intriguing and wonderfully vague question!" The domain replied, sounding eager to teach me something.


    "In order to understand what other universes are, you must begin by defining what a universe is. A universe is a bubble that contains one... instance of creation, of a totality of existence." The domain began, explaining.


    "Some mortals foolishly believe that the universe represents everything that ever is or will ever be. They are incorrect. The universe you live in is one of many that exists. Each universe has different physical laws and histories with extremely few things connecting them. One of the things that connects them is that every universe felt the impact of the end of the Mythic age." The knowledge domain revealed.


    As this was occurring I did something of considerable importance: I went ahead and ordered my robotic servants in the Heart of Darkness to go ahead and perform a mass sacrifice to me. The sacrifice of some of the captured demons. A sacrifice which would significantly bolster my power.


    ________________________________________________


    Within the Charnel Plains, a layer of the dreaded dimension of the Heart of Darkness, a strange and mechanical city suddenly sprung into motion.


    The city was a brand new part of the plains, perhaps a few hours old. It was filled with deadly and fanatically loyal machines who all served a single master: an eerie and inhuman deity named Althos. At once the assorted factories throughout the city, opened and released their terrifying inhabitants: silver machines of assorted builds. Some of those machines were responsible for the proliferation of factories throughout the city, having been programmed to create new factories.


    Robots throughout the city began to turn on, in many cases for the first time. Circuitry fired on for the first time ever. Lights turned on, and metallic, robotic joints, limbs, and other body parts began to slowly move. Robots began to slowly walk out of their birthplaces, their eyes as it were were empty and filled with little more than a desire to serve their dark creator.


    Without uttering a single word the creatures began to advance to the locations where demons had been captured. They were an eerie sight, an emotionless, silent, inhuman legion that spread out from the city and advanced with a shocking speed towards an unclear destination. They had been given knowledge by their dark god of the locations of the demons the god had stashed underground and as they advanced on their foes a small number of them grew... excited.


    Some of the robots were smarter than others. These robots were the handful Althos had gone ahead and blessed with souls, and they were capable of independent thought. Out of the thousands of robots that had been created only five of them had souls. The five in question were all humanoid-model robots; robots with a bipedal and dual-limbed frame and a "head" that from a distance would have allowed them to fool a town of humans, especially if they were blessed by their god to be deceptive.


    Althos'' first robotic legion was made up of a number of different robot types. The most numerous were the humanoid-model ones, followed shortly by the vehicle-model robots.


    Humanoid-model robots had gleaming bodies made of a variety of metals. They had the basic shapes of assorted humanoids, and held glittering weapons in their hands. Althos had decided that these particular robots would have blessed weaponry and as a consequence of that these creatures held powerful weaponry that was lawful in nature and would be too painful for their demonic victims to endure. The weapons also did supernatural harm to their foes, given the chaotic nature of demons.


    Vehicle-model robots had the bodies of drones, tanks, motorcycles, cars, and other handy vehicles. The eerie and focused legion that existed to obey him walked, rolled, flew, and crawled, to where their unfeeling sensors told them their enemies would reveal themselves.


    As the first of the robots arrived at where Althos had designated them to go, their unfortunate victims began to appear. The earth at the feet of the robotic legions began to quake slightly and in some cases melted away just enough for demonic heads, buried now for a few hours, to appear. Just the heads. The rest of the demonic army the Althonites had defeated remained underneath the surface of the plains.


    Robots immediately sensed their foes and now that they were close they moved even more quickly towards them. The furthest demons were targeted by vehicle-model robots, ones who uttered quick prayers and who devoted their kills to their creator, before their long-distance weaponry unloaded on the demons. Powerful mini-guns and devastating laser-canons tore apart demons down to a cellular level.


    Humanoid-model robots also muttered prayers of their own and rose their weapons in the name of their creator. They swiftly struck at the demons who once thought that they''d be the unholy hellions who''d capture a god. As the demons began to fall to the axes and blades of the humanoid-model robots their last thoughts were of their hatred of Althos.


    The god himself began to receive a plethora of notifications alerting him to the successes of his robots, until he finally received the notification that he had long sought to receive: by the time the last demon was sacrificed to him by his robots he had become a god who was capable of exerting two tiers of influence over the soul domain.


    ________________________________________________


    Building my base in the strange canyon I had decided to make my home was a fun but surprisingly involved process. The temple I had constructed was an easy place to construct, due in large part to my experience building temples.


    The exterior of the temple was a courtyard and then the entryway into the temple. Nothing complex about it, aside from the statues I had mentally-made and then brought into existence through my powers over the art-domain.


    The interior of the temple was a far more complex affair. The temple had two public areas, each of which was on its own side of the temple. Both sides of the temple, the side visible from where I stood and the side visible from deeper in the cave, had a courtyard and a public area which was filled with things that were parts of normal temples that hosted regular services to praise the gods, or rather; to praise me.


    I was currently wandering about the interior of the temple, in its depths. Its depths housed a number of key features, namely archives designed to be where knowledge that my servants gathered, living quarters for the devils I had summoned to dwell within the temple, and a number of rooms for various rituals.


    The rooms were interesting places. Each of them housed a statue of me but none of the statues looked alike. That was a consequence of being a formless being whose appearance was decided by however I felt like appearing.


    The rooms were designed to accommodate various rituals my followers would perform. In one of the rooms there was a statue of a massive mushroom and at the base of the statue was a basin filled with parasitic spores. In another room was a statue of me as a primordial devil holding a cat o'' nine tails, and at the base of that statue was a bowl single, altered cat o'' nine tails, so that my followers could inflict pain on themselves.


    The exterior of the other side of the temple housed a beautiful courtyard filled with statues of dark elves, dwarves, dark dwarves, machines, and devils. A perfect representation of the city I was going to build, a subterranean metropolis populated by subterranean terrors and builders who''d fanatically obey me. I was going to build my very own lawful evil society right here, and right now.

 226 Interlude: Cities And Shortcuts

    A courtyard a few dozen meters wide and a few dozen meters long overlooked a vast city. The city was empty, impossibly silent and impossibly still. It was a beautiful, if haunting background for the temple which the courtyard guarded. The temple itself was built into a wall of stone, and owed its existence to the whims of a powerful, but inexperienced god, the same god who was hard at work creating new life.


    The aforementioned audience for the display of life-creating power consisted of a small number of faith-devils, infernal creatures who had a zealous, utterly insane and warped devotion to the deity who had brought them here. They stood behind their dark lord, metaphorically and literally. The six of them watched the air in front of the ethereal form of their eldritch deity, and gasped when something happened.


    The "something" that elicited a reaction from the devils was a display of divine might. The deity had walked to the courtyard overlooking the gigantic city he had created by hand and he had froze, several minutes ago. But now he came back to life right as numerous bodies came into existence close to him.


    The bodies appeared abruptly, with no special or obvious fanfare, but as they appeared so too did life return to the spectral form of the god who was the tyrant that the six members of the "Tyrant''s Hand" worshiped. They were over four dozen of them, and they filled up much of the once empty space of the courtyard.


    The bodies themselves were bodies of a number of different humanoid races. They came in all sizes, many dark colors, and universally had a nobility to them that was often at odds with what other humanoid races thought of the members of the races the bodies belonged too.


    The most numerous bodies were the bodies of dark elves, statuesque bodies that were universally attractive. The second most numerous of the humanoid races the bodies represented were of dark dwarves, small, dignified, and universally angry looking bodies that were filled with a plethora of negative emotions. The least numerous bodies created by the god were those of dwarves, a largely lawful and industrious race who tended to be talented craftsmen and craftswomen who just as often staunch traditionalists as they were craftspeople.


    The god gathered all of the souls he had created and for a split second they were safely ensconced inside of him. He closed his eyes as he allowed them to rest within himself, giving them a second of reprieve following the challenges that came with being created. Once the second passed he opened his eyes and released them, sending them hurtling into the bodies he had created for them to inhabit, each one flying into the body the deity had made for that specific soul without fail.


    The souls entered their destined bodies, and in doing so they began to truly awaken for the first time. The souls gave the bodies and the minds of the creatures the spark of true consciousness, true self-awareness, and one by one the bodies began to awaken, their eyes slowly fluttering open for the first time. Or at least most of their eyes began to flutter open.


    Some, or rather one, boldly chose to keep her eyes sealed shut, even as her other senses fully roared into life.


    ________________________________________________


    The very first thing I ever sensed was darkness. Intuitively I knew that I sensed this darkness as a result of my eyes being closed, but I didn''t open them right away. I allowed this darkness to wash over me. And slowly I began to feel a natural kinship to the darkness that was all I could see. I didn''t want to open my eyes. So instead, for now anyway, I chose to keep them closed.


    I had more senses than just sight to guide me. Fearlessly, I opted to build an understanding of my surroundings by using my other senses.


    I felt my nostrils flare as I tried to take in the things that surrounded me, without utilizing my eyes. The smells that filled my nostrils were astoundingly diverse. I could smell cobblestone, plants, rocks, and the assorted smells of other creatures nearby. I wasn''t sure precisely "how" I knew how things smelled, but I did. The knowledge was embedded within my mind, just like the knowledge of my senses and even parts of my body were embedded there, without explanation.


    I strained my hearing, trying to silence the quite noises I made such as breathing or the slightest shuffling of my feet to gain a sense of what was occurring near me. The sounds I could hear ambiently were the sounds one heard when many different creatures were bunched together in a small space. I heard the unmistakable sounds of surprised gasping, of quickened heart-rates, of creatures taking steps back in surprise.


    I also felt gazes upon me. Somehow I could sense that some creatures were staring at me in particular, even though such a sense was impossible to explain. That said, their gazes felt odd. I felt like one set of eyes in particular could see right through me, as if it belonged to someone whose senses extended beyond the physical and were more esoteric in nature.


    ________________________________________________


    The devils who had been summoned to the temple silently admired the creations of their deity. Althos had an eye for beauty, if nothing else. Not a single one of his creations was ugly by any standard, though many of them were quite short for the tastes of the devils, who in every case at least among the present group of devils prefered to cavort and frolick with creatures of roughly human height.


    Only one devil immediately noticed that one of his god''s creations had kept her eyes shut. Althos also noticed this right away, but he observed it stoically, not revealing how the oddity made him feel, one way or another. The creature in question, the one who refused to open her eyes, was a dwarf.


    She was a quiet brunette who had come into existence like the rest of her family: without any clothes. Her womanly body was on full display before the deity and everyone else whose bodies had been created at the same time as hers. Althos apathetically studied her, his eyes hiding his emotions as effectively as he hid his thoughts.


    Over the course of the next few minutes the creations of the god began to truly come to life. They animated, "coming to life" in a more metaphorically sense than was usually meant when referring to creations of gods, and began to converse with each other. Dwarves, dark-dwarves, and dark-elfs began to fraternize freely, speaking to each other without regrd for their differences in species, despite being aware that they were clearly members of different races.


    The sight of this was greatly amusing to the quiet god. He allowed it to proceed uninterrupted while he silently examined some of his newer abiities.


    ________________________________________________


    [Soul Domain Primary Passive Abilities:


    Soul Weapon: Your soul-weapon becomes an artifact of yours, including counting as such for quests. It''s properties are unique to you and your innate powers as a god. You can also cause others to spontaneously generate soul-weapons, which are invariably unique weapons that are difficult to damage and can only be truly destroyed by a higher being.


    Enhanced Soul Aura: You gain the power to manifest your soul as a shield that will protect you from harm from attacks that aren''t capable of at least destroying cities. Alternatively this power can manifest as a suit of armor-like energy.


    Empathetic Soul: You can inflict emotions directly onto someone''s soul, causing them to experience a life-changing quantity of the emotion. This allows you to overwhelm people with love, or other emotions you can manipulate.


    Mortal Soul Mastery: This power lets you create souls appropriate for any kind of mortal body. Souls for mortal bodies you create can also hijack corpses and as a consequence of your powers over memories and parasites even parasitize the abilities, thoughts, secrets, and more of the deceased, all while fooling those who grieve for them into thinking the deceased individuals have come back to life.


    Undead Soul Expert: This power lets you create souls appropriate for even the greater rungs of undead-kind you can create, such as death kings, liches, grim-reapers, and flesh-titans. This means that if you wish for it you can create greater undead without killing creatures.


    Soul Destruction: You can destroy souls, in the same way as you could before, but now as a passive power.


    Worship Swap: By targeting a soul of a creature who worships you, you can change what they worship for, or rather what they worship you as the god of. This is an extremely handy ability for managing cults.]


    ________________________________________________


    The new powers the god had acquired filled him with an immense amount of confidence. They were very potent abilities, especially ones like "Worship Swap", and "Soul Weapon", both of which gave him the means to take considerable shortcuts in his journey to acquire more power.


    The god quietly generated a single new power, one that syngerzied his power over both music and minds. He then immediately activated it, and the creatures he had just created fell to their knees as a variety of songs began to play directly within their minds.


    The deity was still as he allowed his power to wash over the creatures. He had given himself the power to create music that inflicted status effects and otherwise altered his targets, and was now allowing those tyrannical tunes to take hold of the minds of his creations.


    The creatures were stunned when music abruptly began to play in their minds, especially since even though the music was purely instrumental it still made them feel sensitive the powers and whims of their creator. His powers were akin to tidal waves that smashed against their wills, and weakened their ability to fend off his mental influence.


    The god, still in the form of solidified darkness in the rough approximation of a man, began to issue orders to his minions and worshipers. As he did his voice was loaded with authority, and washed over those who heard it. His voice effortlessly crushed any and all attempts to resist him, shattering wills and overcoming any hint of rebellion that anyone in his presence may have felt, deep inside of themselves.


    "I am Althos, your creator and lord. I have created you for one reason and one reason only: to take the world beneath the world of this little planet." The deity declared, his voice awe-inspiring and immediately causing them to fall to their knees. This was their god!


    The god silently utilized his powers over souls to ensure that every one of the beings in his presence worshiped him as a god of law and of one of the seven virtues. This would allow him to gain a shortcut that finally grant him the second tier of influence over the law domain and the purity subdomain.


    ________________________________________________


    Althos'' voice entered my mind and it was even more awe-inducing than the music that was ringing through my mind. It made me feel weak but in the most humbling of ways, and so upon being exposed to it I willingly fell to my knees. I kept my eyes closed, even as the god spoke once more.


    "You all are the nobility of this city. You are to be its leaders and those responsible for guiding it." My god and creator, the deity Althos, declared authoritatively. His voice was tremendously powerful. None of us spoke back, but I could hear excited hearts near me, their hearts pounding in the presence of our maker. I could also sense that Althos was telling the truth, and his words left me no doubt of his majesty.


    "For now my first true orders for you are simple: go to your homes and get dressed. When you do enter the portal that shall appear in your homes. When you do all of you shall taken to the same place. From there you are to elect a leader. The leader you elect shall be the leader of this community." Althos stated, speaking in his capacity as a god of law and empires. When he spoke in such a manner his voice was an indomitable force of nature that commanded obedience.


    I heard portals whoosh into being, including one that appeared right in front of me. I could feel the heat emanating off of it, and it comforted me. It was a gentle warmth. I considered the god''s words, but after a second''s consideration I stepped into the portal and began my life.


    ________________________________________________


    The next few hours were busy. That said, they were also productive. Althos succeeded in acquiring considerable power by throwing himself into his work.


    The dwarf who kept her eyes sealed shut was elected the leader of this particular community. Althos also built a magical academy in the city and staffed it with people from the magical planet of Retribution, acquiring their obedience by utilizing eldritch powers to drive them to insanity and filling them with a need to educate others in the ways of magic. This meant that over the course of a few hours Althos seamlessly acquired greater power over law, purity, and most importantly of all the domain of magic.


    Just as importantly was the fact that whilst he was busy driving retributioners to insanity he acquired the quest to earn the second tier of influence over the terrifying eldritch domain. And it was far from the only quest he earned either.


    When the god left the city he had created, he manifested the soul-staff-turned-artifact that was now his first true, personal-use artifact. It was in his hand as he quietly stepped through a portal that teleported him across dimensions and into the realm known as The Heart Of Darkness, where his body awaited him. He seamlessly reunited with his body, soul-staff in hand, empowered and ready to utterly dominate the war he was in with Agustino.


    ________________________________________________


    [Pain Subdomain Passive Abilities:


    Greater Pain Inducement: You can now induce extreme pain in anyone but vestiges. At will this pain can easily induce a painful state of unconsciousness. This can easily function as a greater form of your mental-blast power, if you desire for it too.


    Pain Suppression: You can cause anyone you want to not feel pain. You can also take away someone''s ability to not feel pain.


    Pain Generation: You can generate pain that you store for the sake of the pain-transferral ability you possess.


    Attitude Towards Pain: As per the active ability of the same name, but now it is a passive power.


    Pain Aura: Creatures who come within range of your aura begin to feel excruciating pain, unless you allow them not too.


    Pain Subdomain Active Abilities:


    None at this tier of influence.]

 227 God Of Might & Magic

    Eldritch Domain: Create a nation made up and led by eldritch abominations, or help your followers in destroying a nation made up of mortals.


    Poison Subdomain: Utilize poison or acid to inflict massive damage during a key battle.


    Art Subdomain: Have a follower create a masterpiece entirely unaided by your powers.


    Creation Domain: Have a follower create something that has never existed and dedicate it, publicly, to you.


    Physics Domain: Utilize your powers over physics to cause devastation such as by making two planets collide with each other.


    Spore Subdomain: Transform over 10,000 of your parasitized spore servants into true spore-monsters.


    Disease Domain: Have your followers create a new disease.


    Time Domain: Discover and begin to utilize an artifact related to time.


    Truth Subdomain: Have a vestige recognize an eldritch truth about your particular nature as a deity.


    Light Domain: Illuminate an entirely darkened area, the size of a new moon.


    Trickery Domain: Convince a vestige of something about you that isn''t true.


    Corruption Subdomain: Become a demon lord or an arch-devil of one of the seven deadly sins.


    Lies Domain: Convince an entire nation to believe in something entirely untrue.


    Evil Domain: Become both a demon-lord and an arch-devil.]


    ________________________________________________


    I stepped through the portal and went from a peaceful, newly established city, into another city that was currently being beseiged. That said, I had never been more powerful than I was at this exact moment, and so I was beyond fear or hesitation.


    The instant I stepped through the portal I closed it behind me and began to smile. I had brought myself to a battlefield, one where I could freely test my powers. I was still as I studied my surroundings.


    I stood atop a building that was slowly sinking into a stinking swampland. In front of me a small group of demons were panickedly trying to plan how to deflect a fleet of drones that were speeding towards my current location. This strange, sinking city was under attack by my mechanical legions. I chuckled, using my powers over sound to render the noise inaudible and began to walk towards the demons. They stood a fair distance away from me and were focused on figuring out a viable strategy to defeat the odd airborne machines.


    As I walked towards them I gripped my artifact-staff tighter than I ever had. The staff was stronger than it had ever been. And I was sure I''d get the chance to utilize it to it''s full potential today.


    The demon cried out a command, determined to strike down at least some of the drones that were approaching the beseiged city. Its companions were still frightened, but nevertheless they obeyed their stronger-willed companion and placed hands on its shoulders. I sensed them begin to transfer magical energy into their companion and I couldn''t help but smile at that. It was almost cute.


    The demonic "commander" or rather the demon who was the strongest of the group of five felt mystical power flow into him. I heard the soft sound of his eyelids closing as he attempted to cast a spell that he felt might just take out a drone or two. I approached him slowly, still undetected by his allies.


    When the demon lifted a finger and pointed it in the direction of the drones I felt the magical energy he had gathered within himself begin to race towards his finger. I chuckled. The second it left his body it took on the rough shape of a spear of sickly looking green flames.


    "Nope." I whispered, nearly silently, as I rose my staff and commanded the spell to stop. The magic that had managed to depart from the demon suddenly froze in mid-air, causing the demon to gasp in shock. That brought a smile to my face.


    With that I quietly activated the true power of my new artifact-staff. It began to take hold almost immediately, and the spell that the demon had cast began to scream.


    ________________________________________________


    The demon felt a variety of emotions wash over him at once. But the most primal of the emotions he felt as the magical energy that stirred within him began to not obey him was fear.


    The demon had just been paralyzed by shock when the flaming magical energy he had intended to unleash failed to obey him properly. That was one thing, as demons were creatures of chaos and thus their mastery over the chaotic powers of magic were impressive but sometimes their chaotic natures mixing with the chaotic nature of magic caused mishaps like this. However, the demon was not ready for what happened next.


    The demon sensed something strange a split second before something strange began to happen. The sickly green flaming spear expanded in size, and began to exude a heat hot enough that the demon began to sweat. And then it began to scream, the sound identical to that a grown human being tortured would make.


    For a moment even the demon felt fear. This was beyond anything he had ever experienced. And then it got worse. The spear of sickly green fire began to shift and change before the demon''s very eyes. A scowling mouth and set of harsh blue eyes began to appear on the portion of the spear furthest from the demon.


    It was at this point that the demons next to the demonic commander froze up. This was something none of them had ever seen. And that was before the eldritch spell began to emit a blood-curdling scream.


    ________________________________________________


    [Artifact Information:


    Name: Staff of the Life-Bringer


    Artifact Type: Personal, True


    Wielder: Althos


    Creator: Althos


    Staff Abilities:


    Parasitic: Capable of absorbing properties from other artifacts. Also capable of preventing artifacts from vanishing upon the slaying of vestiges, thus allowing its wielder to acquire artifacts.


    Vita: Can bring things to life. Can also create life.


    Amorphous: Possesses an ability to endure shape-changing without a loss of power.


    Magic-Commanding: Can warp or corrupt magic, as well as undo it or replicate its effects as per the "Custom-effect" power.


    Chaotic: This staff can be edited by its creator. Only by its creator.]


    ________________________________________________


    I grinned as the demons froze up. I wasn''t exactly the sort to empathize with my enemies, but I could understand their confusion at this moment. Chaos never failed to spice up life, but even chaos wasn''t likely to bring a spell itself to life in the same way that I just had. I studied the scene before me, before targeting the demons once more.


    Demons possessed an enviable set of resistances and immunities to all sorts of sources of harm. But that was nothing before me, and my ability to strip creatures of immunities or resistances. Without a moment''s hesitation I stripped the demons of their resistance to fire, and then I looked at the sickly, grotesque, living flame. I gave it a single command.


    "Burn them." I ordered it, the sound I made ignoring the distance between myself and the living, spear of flame. The spear began to roar, fury surging into its voice, as I fully took it from the control of the demon who created it. It sped away from them for a moment, surging into the open-air beyond the confines of the building we were standing on top of. And then it turned so that it was fully facing the demons. As this was going on it was becoming bigger and bigger, absorbing both more oxygen and more magical power, thanks to my decision to feed the thing.


    The flaming spear roared again, the sound more monstrous this time, and hurled itself at the five demons. It surged into and then through one of them, penetrating the man and then blasting out of him without any hesitation. The demon fell to his knees, shock numbing the pain, as I rose a hand and destroyed his soul, which fully killed him.


    The other demons turned so that they could keep their eyes on the spear, and in doing so finally saw me. I chuckled and smiled at them expectantly, while gently waving at them as if they were old friends. Upon seeing me they were able to momentairly shake off the fear they felt, as they now understood the basics of what had happened.


    ________________________________________________


    During the time I had been in Infernius, Agustino had better informed his minions as to my powers. He didn''t really understand the full scope of my abilities but he knew that I was capable of reality-bending antics and he informed his servants to be ready to deal with my bullshit to the best of their abilities.


    That was smart. Unfortunately it was also out of touch with reality. I was far stronger than he or his servants could possibly fathom.


    I immediately rose my hand and destroyed the soul of one of the other demons. This shocked the demons back to reality, and they felt fear wash over them again, even as they scowled at me. As I acted, so too did the fiery spear my enemy had created. It flew back towards the demons, hitting yet another one in the face, drilling through it almost instantly. The demon stumbled back a step, reeling from the force of the blow and then collapsed, dead.


    "Hello." I said, smiling at the demons even as the spear flew forward for a bit, after killing its target, before taking a sharp right turn and beginning to fly back. My words seemed to snag the demons out of their fear, and hate began to glisten in their eyes as they all took a step back, as if they were just on the outskirts of my reach. I sighed at their rather silly display and when the fiery spear reached me, I gave it a new command.


    "That''s enough my friend. You''ve done well, now return to your original state." I ordered the spear, turning to face the thing. Before my eyes the thing shut its eyes and then winked out of existence altogether, turn back into pure mystical energy. When the thing was done winking out of existence I turned back to the demons and merely stared at them.


    The demons fearfully kept their eyes locked on me, now fully aware that all it took for me to kill them was for me to desire to do so. I smiled at them, delighted that they were able to come to this realization at all.


    The drones in the distance were fast approaching, and the sounds of bullets beginning to impact demons and demonic buildings could be heard below us. The sounds didn''t sound pleasant, nor did any of them suggest that the demons had any sort of critical, victory-acquiring tools that they could use to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.


    The remaining pair of demons tried to look brave, but neither of them were courageous. That made sense though, it was hardly fair to accuse a demon of being cowardly if one was afraid after having seen three of its friends die at the hands of an actual deity.


    The demons were unsure of what to do, and for a noment I wasn''t sure what to do with them either. They looked like two differently colored humanoids, whose faces were a mishmash of chaotic, ever-changing features. All five of the demons had been the same "type" of demon and none of them possessed any particularly useful abilities.


    I continued to study them as the drones behind them drew ever nearer to the building we stood on top of. The machines were parts of my robotic army, a force which was currently spreading throughout this part of the Heart of Darkness, killing demons who served Agustino and allowing me to inch closer and closer to his headquarters, a palace where he commanded armies of demons.


    The robotic army I had dispatched to run rampant throughout this dimension had decimated a few different demonic settlements, and dispassionately worked to accomplish my goals. They were also quite effective, their orderly nature and ability to communicate making them good at disrupting the pathetic excuse for "tactics" that demons called their paltry attempts to collaborate, which almost always included threats of force from the strongest member of any demonic "teams".


    After a few moments of carefully studying the demons before me I chuckled at them. And then I began to activate one of my powers. It was one that guaranteed that I made new "friends". As I felt it begin to come to life within me I opened my mouth to speak.


    "War isn''t pleasant my friends..." I said, as I began to feel parasitic spores begin to stir within me. I felt the demons slightly shudder at my words, even as I opened my mouth and exhaled a burst of mind-warping spores and blew them in the direction of the demons. The demons froze up, confused by my actions and thus the spores were able to easily cross the distance of a few dozen meters that separated us.


    Spores too small to be seen by naked eyes, or at least demonic naked eyes, flew into the mouths of the demons. The mouths were only somewhat parted, and the spores lodged themselves deep within the unfortunate creatures. A second later the demons fell to their knees and began to cough as my spores began to infest their bodies in full.


    ________________________________________________


    The parasitic spores were perhaps the most terrifying power the dark god possessed. With it he could create organisms whose entire purposes were to rewrite life to his alien and often malignant whims.


    The parasitic spores were an extraordinarily aggressive form of spore that invaded lifeforms, seized control of their brains, and then went from their brains to the rest of their bodies. No non-vestige lifeform was immune to the especially vicious form of attack, and to be infected by them was to lose one''s own will to the will of their creator: Althos.


    In the case of the demons Althos infected this meant that they second they were infected countless spores invisibly surged from their throats to their brains. Shortly after infecting and rewiring the brains of their victims creeping fungi sped from the brain to every centimeter of the body, only leaving their souls unchanged and even then just for now. Sooner or later all a creature was would be subsumed by the fungi, and given over to the god.


    The spores themselves were alive and intelligent. They were an almost eldritch type of lifeform, whose intelligences were devoted to three things: finding food, serving their creator and god, and spreading. The minds of parasitic spores were simple, but dreadfully effective.


    The demons themselves were on their knees, and they were coughing up a storm. Their bodies were attempting to expel the spores, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. The display was watched by Althos, who glowered at the pair of demons.


    Fear was noticeable within in the pair of enemy demons, at least to the emotionally sensitive Althos. Althos, for his role in this mess, didn''t like that the pair of creatures were attempting to flee from him and the gift he had given them in their own, assuredly ineffective way. That said their fear began to melt away after the spores began to complete their conquest of the demons.


    ________________________________________________


    For a moment I considered planting a single kiss on both of the demons. My "True Love''s Kiss" power would permanently melt away their hesitation to serve me, and would ensure that they come to thank me for the wonderful gift I had just given them. That said I shook off my desire to use that power on them, and just watched as they stopped coughing.


    Before my very eyes the resistance to me that the demons felt began to diminish. I sensed their reluctance shrink and I sensed an alien but very real eagerness begin to radiate out of the creatures. The eagerness belonged to the fungi who were rapidly assimilating all of who the pair of demons had been into their memories so that the infected demons could better serve me.


    Both of the demons began to mutter pious prayers to me. I grinned, now amused by the display of zealotry by the fungal-demons. They were mine, and that was a fate that amused me so I didn''t mind inflicting it on other demons if they were to be obstacles who were determined to stand between me and greater power.


    Behind them the first drones were now officially within the demonic city, the first of a handful I needed to conquer, alongside defeating Agustino, to become a demon-lord and to gain the second tier of influence over the domain of war. In this moment I felt ascendant. I was winning, and I intended to continue my winning streak.


    And as I allowed myself to feel ascendant I also made a critical choice. One that further excited me and fueled my sensation of elation. One related to magic.


    ________________________________________________


    [Magic Domain Passive Powers:


    Spell Creation: You can create spells.


    Spell Editing: You can edit spells, even ones that have been cast.


    Spell Denial: You can prevent someone from casting spells.


    Spell Absorption: You can absorb spells.


    Spell Amplification: You can amplify the effects of spells.


    Spell Dampening: You can dampen the effects of spells.


    Mystical Vita: You can bring spells to life. This effect doesn''t yet work on spells that don''t create projectiles of some sort.


    Spell Bestowal: You can now grant spells to mortals that they can cast up to ten times before incurring an half an hour cooldown period. This is an immensely upgraded version of your "Magical Granting" power.


    Magic Drain: As per the "Magic Drain" active power, but now it is passive, allowing you to use it an unlimited number of times per day.


    Magic Aura: Creatures in the range of your aura can only cast magic if you allow it, and you can modify the magical energy cost of any spell cast in your presence.


    Magic Domain Special Note:


    As a reward for reaching the second tier of influence over the magic domain, would you like to acquire the first tiers of influence over voodoo and abjuration? Voodoo and abjuration are the two intermediate schools of magic. If you choose not to receive the first tiers over these schools of magic then you''ll automatically receive the second tier of influence over the basic schools of magic, or rather the ones you don''t yet have that tier of influence over.]

 228 Sloth & Poison

    I hadn''t often used true magic, the sort of magic that spell-casters could use, but many of my worshipers did. Worship of me was universally more common on primarily magical worlds than it was on Htrae-like or technologically advanced worlds. Acquiring greater power over magical schools I could already influence was more efficient than skipping universally easy introductory quests.


    I also had knowledge of the intermediate schools of magic and both were intriguing. Voodoo was a school of magic that among other things had spells that were "Sympathetic" in nature, meaning they could affect people or events with which they had ties, such as a "Voodoo Doll" containing someone''s hair and then being used to help or harm that person. Abjuration magic was defensive in nature, and allowed those who used it to create shields, barriers, and other defensive objects with which to better defend themselves and others.


    I was enormously intrigued by abjuration magic, but the first quests to acquire influence over subdomains had universally been easy so I was sure it''d be possible to swiftly accomplish when I was done here. I knew acquiring the second tier of influence over the beginner schools of magic was the right choice.


    I informed the magic domain and the system of my choice and felt the new powers I had just acquired wash over me. I was still standing atop the rooftop I had been on before, and as I looked out I felt far even more powerful than I had before. I had just acquired the second tier of influence over eight subdomains and in doing so become a not insigificantly powerful true deity of magic. And in time I planned to ascend to ever higher heights of magical power.


    ________________________________________________


    My drones, the fastest of my robotic servants, had begun to unleash their payloads on the city. I stood alongside the pair of spore-infested demons I had tamed. All around me I could see other buildings as they began to be hit by an astounding number of bullets and incendiary bombs.


    The buildings themselves initially appeared to be quite resistant to bullets, though many of them had windows that weren''t so well-built, but none of them could resist the power of the incendiary bombs. The flames of the bombs were also acidic, thanks to my active manipulation of them due in part to my relatively close proximity, so the least sturdy of the buildings quickly began to deteriorate due to the vicious attacks of my minions.


    Off in the distance I could clearly hear the agonized wails of demons who hadn''t realized that the flames my drones were capable of producing through their bombs were also acidic. That brought a macabre smile to my face.


    ________________________________________________


    The city the Althonians had invaded was a large place. It was comprised of dozens of buildings, all of which were very slowly sinking into the stinking swamp underneath and around the buildings. Each building housed hundreds of demons, and so too did the swamp itself.


    The swamp was a fetid place, and a gross one. The water was a sickly, bile-like shade of brown and all manner of flith could be seen floating through it. Equally disgusting demons slithered and swam through the plague-infested waters of the swamp.


    More powerful demons lived in the buildings themselves, making dens and nests in various parts of the buildings. Some of the buildings were one-story buildings where demons powerful enough to escape the swamp but not powerful enough to challenge their peers dwelled and hid. Other buildings were multistory skyscrapers with dozens to hundreds of floors that stretched into the sky. The building Althos was on was one in the middle of those two extremes.


    Althos began to move as he activated a number of his powers and used them to attack the city''s demonic defenders and occupants. The attack wasn''t particularly complicated but it was swiftly proven to be effective.


    All the god had to do was assail the wills of the demons. Their wills and egos were nothing compared to his so he was able to swiftly use his corrosive influence and power over sloth to drive all manner of demonic occupants of the city to apathy. It was a devastating power and though he hadn''t often used it offensively he had always known that he could.


    Demons who fell victim to this power were effortlessly robbed of even their desire to stay alive. They knew they were robbed of their emotions, but they couldn''t bring themselves to care. And so they were lost.


    ________________________________________________


    My powers over sloth were frightening. With them, and with my powers over minds, I was able to creep into the minds of my enemies and steal away their desire to fight me. And more than that, I was able to render their resistance to me virtually nonexistent.


    I had invaded the minds of the demons and infected them with apathy and numbness. This made them suggestible and so I proceeded to give them a single suggestion, while distorting their attitudes towards their own pain.


    "It''s time to surrender. Go up and walk into the fires outside." I told them, whispering insidiously in their minds. I smiled when I felt hundreds of demons move to obey my commands. They weren''t able to gather the willpower needed to successfully resist my commands, as they were victims of my powers over sin.


    I silently looked over at the nearby buildings and began to wait. All it took was a few minutes before the first of the demons stumbled onto the rooftops and threw themselves into the fire. They didn''t even scream, they merely stood in the acidic fires as their bodies were set ablaze and began to liquify.


    More and more demons began to join them, making their way to the top of buildings and also willingly throwing themselves onto the acidic fires. Once another five or so minutes had passed I received an alert notifying me that I had just earned the second tier of influence over the subdomain of poison, which was pleasant but entirely unexpected. That said, my acidic flames were killing dozens of demons so it made sense that I was "inflicting massive damage" as the quest asked that I do.


    I felt even more new powers infuse me, and I grinned as I acquired the power to negate damage done by poisons or acid to whomever I chose to protect. My ability to negate notifications was a potent one, and with it I could cause a lot of chaos throughout the universe, even more so now that I this sort of control over poisons and acids.


    I closed my eyes and thought about the subdomain. As I did the notification that was chock-full of details about it appeared in my mind.


    ________________________________________________


    [Poison/Acid Subdomain Passive Powers:


    Poison/Acid Immunity Bestowal: You can grant someone immunity to poisons, acids, and other similar things.


    Miasmic Mastery: You can generate, manipulate, and destroy toxic gases.


    Acid Rain: You can generate, manipulate, and destroy acid rain, including making it hyper acidic and capable of killing people and destroying structures.


    Empowerment: You can empower the deadliness of poisons and acids.


    Transferral: You can absorb damage done by poisons, undoing it, and then transfer it elsewhere. You can also generate poisons internally and transfer them to someone else.


    Corrosion: You can manipulate corrosion, the electrochemical oxidation of metals in reaction with an oxident such as oxyogen or water. A common example of corrosion is rust.


    Caustic Phasing: You can corrode solid matter with a touch and you can phase through solid matter while corroding it.


    Poison-Granting: You can grant followers of yours enhanced power and skill over poison and acid. This functions similarly to a blessing but is permanently. Those who have this power become expert wielders of poison. This is synergistic with the domain of knowledge.


    Spiritual Poison: You can generate and manipulate poisons that can affect intangible creatures.


    Corrupt Poison: You can generate and manipulate poisons that don''t inflict physical harm but corrode values and leave those affected by them extra susceptible to your powers over corruption.


    Poison/Acid Subdomain Active Power:


    Poison The Dead: Once per week you can target an area as big as a city and fill it with a powerful poison. This poison instantly kills any living creature that inhales it and reanimates them as an undead creature under your control.]


    ________________________________________________


    I immediately utilized my powers over miasmas to spread a potent cocktail of a toxic gas throughout the entirety of the city. For a split second the entire area around me glowed a vibrant and nauseating shade of green. I chuckled as I began to receive notifications alerting me that demons were suffocating, an unusual way for a demon to die since normally they were immune to toxic gases. That said, it didn''t matter at all before me and my ability to take away immunities and resistances.


    I also took away their jubilance to be in pain, just to see them suffer for a bit. I wasn''t doing it to be malicious, I was doing it out of curiosity. And also a desire to be efficient. This was one of a handful of cities ruled by Agustino, and even just killing all of the demons here would deal a real blow to the morale of his forces.


    Their deaths by miasma took much longer than their deaths by acidic fire, and the suffocating hurt them much more than burning did. During the time they spent suffocating I was learning a lot about them. I got to see them flail about in agony and even got to see a few of them almost muster the will needed to push back against my powers over sloth. They didn''t, but that some of them came close was curious.


    If they came close in their last moments then Agustino would probably be able to resist sloth, unless I used something else to help boost it. So this was an important chance for me to learn about the mental fortitude of demons, which was higher than I had expected it to be.


    That said, a few minutes after the cloying miasma descended on the city I received a notification alerting me that the city had been wiped out, aside from the pair of demons I turned into my spore-servants. They stayed beside me the entire time the city was burning and had eerie smiles plastered on their faces. I turned to one of them and gently patted its head. The demon began to smile even more at me, positively beaming in my direction.

 229 Necromancy

    Soul energy was invisible to mortals and even to outsiders, but it wasn''t invisible to me. Not anymore at least. As I began to pull soul fragments towards my outstretched hand, I began to see purple lines appear in the air around my hand. Soul fragments, the tiny chunks of souls left over when an extraplanar entity dies in the dimension of its birth were flowing into my hand. As they were I began to utilize another power.


    I possessed a number of nasty abilities that were tied specifically to theft. I could steal essentially anything from a target that I wanted, and today, atop the ruins of the depopulated city, what I want to steal were memories. As soul fragments flowed into me I began to steal their memories. And in doing so I swiftly began to learn.


    ________________________________________________


    One of my greatest abilities was my ability to learn. I possessed a number of ways to learn, and one of my personal favorites was when I learned at the expense of my enemies. In the moments after I began to drain knowledge from the remains of my enemies I felt an incredible amount of information begin to flood my senses.


    I was using "Greater Drain" on what was left of my enemies. As I did I ignored their class-levels and focused specifically on stealing everything they had ever learned. I was a gluttonous parasite, feeding on the lived experiences of others. Every memory of every sensation each member of the horde of demons had locked away in their minds were now being recalled and experienced by me, and it was a lot to take in.


    I experienced every sin even the lowliest member of the city committed. Every murder, every instance of adultery, every lie, every threat whispered, it all hit me at once. It was a lot, but it was also good. I closed my eyes and shivered in delight. I was also experiencing the taste of every mortal they devoured, and the sensations of every time they had sex.


    The collective weight of every memory, thought, and secret, possessed by over two thousands demons, many of whom were many millennia old, was immense. But it also wasn''t enough for my mind. The more I learned the more knowledge I wanted. The more sin I got to live through, the more sin I wanted to inflict.


    I witnessed vivid memories of cities, regions, countries, and even planets brought to ruin by the machinations of clever demons, ones whose intelligence apparently dwarfed Agustino''s. Demons who had succeeded in their goals. One day I planned to make them my servants as well.


    After a few moments, seconds after I absorbed the last soul fragment, I finished acquiring the last memory, last thought, and last secret of the final demon I had killed, I opened my eyes again. I felt... different, compared to how I felt before I began to absorb their memories.


    The oldest demons who had been in the city were over three quarters of a million years old. The youngest had still been several thousand years old. More than three hundred of the two thousand plus demons were old enough to remember the end of the mythic age, and a portion of my mind fixated on their knowledge.


    I mulled over that amazing reality, that such chaotic and evil entities could survive so long, while I summoned a loyal servant to my side. I sent my most loyal lieutenant a mental message calling her to my side, along with granting her permission to move through my shadow. A second later I shivered as I felt a creature pull herself up out of the ground behind me. She grunted as she did so, annoyed at having to exert so much effort.


    I silently grabbed her using telekinesis and lifted her out of my shadow, before gently placing her down next to me. Without even glancing at her I smiled and greeted her with a bit of warmth.


    "Hello Sombra. How are you?" I asked, my voice filling her mind and causing a healthy rush of shadowy, demonic blood to flood her cheeks. And elsewhere. Sombra shivered and momentarily bit her lips before gathering herself enough to respond to me.


    "Hello master. I am good. Thank you for calling me over to your side." She said, speaking softly. She looked different.


    ________________________________________________


    Sombra was a praereptor demoness. She was a demon of envy and shadows, and was the very first demon I had ever brought over to my side. She was also the first incorporeal creature I had ever given a form too.


    The shadowy demoness was given the form of a heart-achingly beautiful drider woman, just without the spider lower half that driders were known for. And at the moment she was wearing clothes, but she wasn''t wearing a top. Her dark breasts, including fully hardened, diamond-like nipples, were exposed to the damp air of the demonic swamp. She was wearing pants, and shoes, but the demoness did not like shirts or other clothes that covered the top half of her body and so she didn''t wear them.


    She had blemishless skin and was always happy to flaunt her body, given to her by the master she very literally worshiped and served. She wanted to inspire envy in those she felt were lesser beings, and that was everyone but me.


    The demoness was wearing makeup. She had applied a shade of lipstick to her full lips and when she smiled her darkened lips were extra desirable. As a creature of lust I was incapable of being truly distracted by lust, but even I had to admit that Sombra, whose body was modelled after the first creature I had ever been attracted too, was almost distractingly attractive to me at the moment. That said I calmly refocused and spoke once again to the demoness.


    "I am happy to see you, little one." I told her, causing her to smile radiantly at me, even as her scarlet eyes widened in shock at my words.


    "Master, do you have need of my power?" She asked, assuming I wanted her by my side because of her utility. I shook my head at her question before responding with words.


    "Sombra... I am the source of your power, why do you think I would need you for your power?" I asked curiously. I was a creature of potentially infinite power, and to date the only creature I had met who could challenge me was a vestige, an almost undead remnant of another deity''s power that comes into existence when a god perishes. I chuckled after asking her my question and began to speak again.


    "I have called you here to be by my side. Nothing more... Nothing less." I informed the shadow demoness. These words brought a smile to her face. And then she began to study her surroundings. I watched as she did this, while mentally ordering the infested pair of demons I had seized control of to stay away from her.


    Upon seeing her the demons had been filled with an urge to infect her with the spores I had infected them with and thus subsume her will. My spores were in all likelihood my most dangerous power, as they could infect anyone and anything, even the undead and extraplanar entities. And what''s more is that the spores that infested people were filled with a powerful urge to spread spores to most lifeforms that weren''t also infested.


    ________________________________________________


    "Althos... Spread us!" A voice whispered in my head. It was a friendly voice, and judging from the tone of the whisper it appeared to believe that subsuming more creatures into the super hivemind it and I ran was doing something kind. I gritted my teeth, and sent a mental message right back to the creature who had spoken to me.


    "Not to her." I whispered, sending a message back to the bizarre, mind-subsuming entity known as the subdomain of fungi. The creature was one of the subdomains I ignored more than others, as the entity had a strange fixation with absorbing entities into the interplanetary and interdimensional hivemind that was mental network of minds linked by my parasitic spore power.


    The fungal subdomain and I commanded the super hivemind created by my "parasitic spore" power. To date I had only really used this particular power on a few demons and on a test world that I was willing to wish my more apocalyptic powers on. I wasn''t eager to spread it rampantly throughout the Heart of Darkness. Maybe someday, but not now. Not yet.


    I heard an annoyed sound within my mind, but for now I chose to ignore it. That said, I did offer the subdomain something of a consolation prize. I quietly spoke to specific members of the fungal hivemind I was tied too, the inhabitants of the ruined test world I had taken over, and I ordered them to infest other creatures. My absolute empathy power picked up the shallow surge of excitement felt by the fungal subdomain, and I mentally sighed.


    For now I had to content myself with this. The truth was that a small part of me was happy about this as it meant that soon I''d be able to acquire the second tier of influence over the fungal subdomain, since at the moment even if I wanted I couldn''t acquire the second tier of influence over the subdomain. I needed to infect more creatures with parasitic spores to be able to do that, I just didn''t want to subsume all of the Heart of Darkness.


    My powers over spores were fascinating but also frightening. They were devastating powers which could allow me to infect a single person with a parasitic spore and decimate a city, or take existing fungi and transform them into beings of considerable power. If I wanted too I could easily take over damp caves that tended to be the homes of thousands of fungal lifeforms. Eventually I would do this, but for now I worked to focus on my present situation. I needed to tackle challenges one at a time.


    ________________________________________________


    I closed my eyes and began to do something I had never done before: I began to use higher tier necromantic magic. I focused and gathered the dreadful unlife energies which infused the undead and allowed them to come to unlife.


    All around me the temperature of the swamp began to drop. I was gathering and generating immense amounts of necromantic power, and there was a cruel smile on my face as I did so. I teleported myself and my servants, the infested and the uninfested alike, down to the sickly waters of the swamp. This was easy for me to do, especially with my enhanced powers over conjuration and alteration.


    As my servants visibly reacted to the abrupt change of location, I began to gather all of the bodies that my violent conquest of the city had created. With the exceptions of the infested demons I had let there be any survivors in this city, and as I began to teleport bodies from their final resting places to the murky water at my feet they began to pile up.


    Over the course of the next few minutes as I gathered power and activated abilities, both old and new, I created a mountain of corpses. The mountain before me featured a diverse assortment of demons, who I could now create from nothing thanks to the synergistic powers I had. And what was even better was my ability to make this dead horde into an undead horde.


    When the final corpse appeared atop the mountain of bodies I had gathered, I rose a single hand and flooded all of the corpses with powerful unlife energy. I watched corpses begin to twitch as unlife energy infused them, and I flooded some of the bodies with powerful souls I created to turn into undead beings such as "death-kings", "liches", and even dreadful "flesh-titans".


    ________________________________________________


    The swamp was now a macabre location. The god who conquered the demonic city did so through a bloody genocide of the city''s inhabitants, and in doing so he created an abundance of bodies for his powers to be used on.


    The bodies were piled high and thanks to the funk of the swamp they were difficult to smell, for the time being anyway. The god himself was busy watching as the first of them to resurrect, banshees and other simpler beings, and because of that he didn''t notice the powerful pungency of the swamp.


    The god''s power was illuminating the swamp and filling it with an eerie, icy blue tint. The blue color was the power of unlife that was so abundant in the swamp it was directly, physically visible. It also chilled the air, causing the swamp to begin to freeze in the areas close to the mountain of corpses the god had created.


    Althos'' powers allowed him to raise up female demons in the form of banshees. These women had unsettlingly beautiful appearances and phased through the mountains of bodies that surrounded their corpses so that they could greet their creator.


    They bowed before their master and smiled at him, their new souls now suffused with both his necromantic power and the intoxicating effects of being in his presence. They had incorporeal forms and glowed with the same fel power that their murdered reanimated them with.


    Other undead also began to arise, slowly. Death-kings, potent and corporeal undead who in unlife tend to be fanatical servants of their creators and in the ancient past were infamous for being loyal war-priests devoted to gods of necromancy and death, began to arise and push bodies off of themselves.


    Flesh-titans, horrific and ghoulish works of art that formed from multiple bodies congealing together and forming disgusting looking frames that resembled a shambling humanoid, also arose from the mountain of bodies the grim, conquering god had created. These hill-like undead were simple-minded creatures of immense power and they were incapable of being commanded by mortal necromancers but they obeyed and worshiped deific necromancers.


    A pair of the demons the god had slain with his powers over acid, flames, and apathy even transformed into liches! These powerful undead were potent spellcasters, veritable masters of necromantic magic that had arrisen from a pair of corpses who were among the city''s few necromancers.


    ________________________________________________


    By the time the city had been fully reanimated into powerful undead beings only a few of the undead were of any true interest to me. I immediately ordered the flesh-titans I had created to go and patrol the city. In total their were almost one hundred of the dimwitted beasts, and I had created them to be the protectors of my newly acquired territory so once I commanded them to leave my presence and they obeyed me I lost interest in them.


    The death kings were more fascinating to me. Each of them came to life with levels in classes, despire the fact that many of them weren''t made from bodies that had class levels. They were among the undead who arose, came to me and then fell to their knees in a show of fealty in front of me. They resembled hallow versions of their old selves.


    The banshees were also intriguing to me. They were the reanimated spirits of demons I had killed, or rather the newly created spirits I had created to inhabit empty demonic bodies that I could reanimate and convert into undead beings.


    I had absorbed the souls of the demons into myself and devoured them to gain the power to create demons freely even while not being a demon-lord so I created souls that were perfect for transformation into undead life-forms and filled the demonic corpses my attack had left behind with them. The scheme had worked better than I had dared hope and banshees were one of the clearest examples of that.


    The liches were enormously interesting as well. Both of them came from demons of greed, massive sluglike demons who had tenaciously clung to life until acidic fire finally burned them into motes of dust, that were only restored by my power to take a single fragment of a corpse and use that to create undead. As I gazed at the demons of greed that my powers had transformed into fearsome liches I used my ability to assess creatures and learned of the powerful magic the demons were capable of and sighed.


    That explained their ability to come back as liches, powerful spellcasters who had overcome death and acquired a sort of immortality and limited invincibility rolled into one by taking their souls out of their bodies. I also received a notification alerting me that the phylacteries of the liches were now stored in my shadow and if I wanted too I could use them to cause the lich to experience pain.


    The pair of liches did not resemble humanoids at all. They were some of the few demons I had seen to date whose forms bucked the norm of being at least a little humanoid. The pair were enormous slugs, or at least slug-like beings, with slightly more humanoid facial features such as hair and a nose. The pair of them slowly crawled over to me, secreting a gross mucus as they moved in my direction.


    Their eyes shone a bright blue as they made their way towards me. I sensed an intense fanaticism in them as they drew nearer and nearer to me, and I chuckled as I felt the powers of the domains of emotion, law, and the subdomain of enchantment wash over them. I now radiated an aura that left all manner of creatures fascinated and infatuated with me if they were in my presence for any period of time, especially if they were focused on me while in my presence.

 230 Knowledge & Intuition

    In my experience the undead tended to be highly fanatical. Of all of the various sorts of creatures I had met to date they were in all likelihood the most innately zealous, aside from maybe angels. Though I hadn''t spent much time with angels directly my powers and domain-senses allowed me to understand that the thousands of angels I had recruited to my side and instilled with my power were in almost every case extremely pious entities.


    I was fond of angels as well as the undead. Both groups were made up of surprisingly powerful individuals with simple, amenable values that suited my purposes quite well.


    Sombra watched the undead that oozed in my direction and she shuddered. I could understand that reaction. The undead liches were quite a sight, especially since many of my other undead had come from humanoid bodies, or in some cases the bodies of noble insects like spiders. To see a deceased slug ambling in your direction is off-putting. That said though they were off-putting they were also powerful creatures.


    The greed demons were powerful creatures in life and to be reanimated as an undead by me was often empowering. The pair of demons I had opted to reanimate were now filled with even more potent mystical energy than they had been filled with in life and an even sharper hatred of life than they had previously possessed. When the creatures finally reached me they bowed before me and placed themselves at my mercy. I ignored them for now and turned to face Sombra.


    "Sombra... The time has come for another apotheosis." I told the demoness of shadows and darkness. These words intrigued her and she looked at me expectantly.


    ________________________________________________


    I was on the verge of becoming an intermediate god. That was the next major upgrade to my powers. Long ago I had quietly theorized that each upgrade to the next overall tier of the divine hierarchy would bring with it an ever greater upgrade to my power. I knew that I was not far from finding out.


    The only domain I still needed to acquire the second tier of influence over was the domain of chaos. It was exciting to be so close to becoming an even greater deity, one with further reach and with further power than a lesser god, my current level of power, could even imagine. In fact becoming an intermediate god had become my most immediate goal. I was determined to become even more powerful than I currently was.


    In order to faciliate this improvement to my powers I quietly closed my eyes and began to upgrade my own existing abilities.


    ________________________________________________


    I swiftly built new "Intuition" based abilities which gave me encyclopedic knowledge of a wealth of subjects, ranging from alchemy to torture, to technology, and more. I also built new powers that made it easier for me to give knowledge to my worshipers, knowing that such a power would help me recruit scholars and allow me to begin to establish myself quite fully and quite truly as a god of knowledge.


    During this time I busied myself by ordering my demons to begin to fortify the city I had taken over. Once that was done I ordered my machines to return to the city of their birth. Finally Sombra and I went back to Htrae so that I could plunge a city into anarchy where it''d be easiest to do so: a mortal world without magic.


    ________________________________________________


    Hours after I began designing new abilities for myself and taking on a series of important tasks that felt like busy work I found myself sitting in the forest not far from where I first entered Htrae. Sombra was sitting in my lap, in a new form I had designed for her to help her blend in on this world.


    Sombra''s new appearance was that of a fair skinned human woman with vivid red hair. She was dressed in a comfortable outfit made up of jeans and a loose shirt that was too big for her. I idly ran a finger through her hair and she signed in contentment.


    At this moment Sombra was perfectly happy. I knew that. I knew why. It was because she was both obsessed and in love, or rather as in love as a demon could be, with me. And right now she didn''t know that I was still working. She thought that she and I were spending time together. That was a lie I didn''t mind her believing.


    I had one arm wrapped around the demoness and I was actually genuinely enjoying this particular moment. I wasn''t exactly the most warm or affectionate sort so intimacy was not something I experienced often. Sombra was cool to the touch, as she was still a demoness of shadows and darkness.


    The lithe woman rested her head on my chest, enjoying the sensation of my muscles. She felt safe and secure for the moment, extremely unusual sensations for a demoness, especially one of envy, to feel.


    "Master this is... quite nice." She said, speaking freely. I chuckled and nodded even as I bent down to kiss her hair. It smelled like the forest we were in. Had Sombra not already been in love with me my kiss would have made her fall for me, but since her heart was already mine the kiss was just a kiss. Sombra sighed in response to my actions, the sound airy and relaxed.


    Right now the demoness seemed quite well-behaved and not at all evil. In fact though when I had first met Sombra we met as enemies she quietly became one of my most loyal servants and worshipers, and though she hadn''t given up evil or renounced it it''s true that most of her recent evil actions have taken place outside of my direct supervision. That said I fully intended to use Sombra and to see her behave evilly. She was a part of my plan to plunge a city into anarchy.


    The demoness got up and turned to look at me. Her disguise as a human had piercing blue eyes and she stared at me coyly. I could see a mischievous glint in her gaze, and I could sense what she wanted. When she moved to kiss me I allowed it, welcomed it even. As she and I spent time in the forest my mind was at work in many different ways all at once.


    ________________________________________________


    In creating all sorts of new knowledge based powers I had unintentionally allowed myself to undergo a limited sort of apotheosis. My mind was racing even while my physical form spent time with Sombra, one of the most fanatical of my servants.


    I had greatly enhanced my own knowledge and understanding of everything from primitive examples of technology, to biology of species found on other worlds. I had also given myself knowledge of all manner of powerful mystical spells, and even knowledge of tons of sorts of buildings I could create. My mind was running a kilometer a second, as I processed incredible amounts of information.


    It was at moments like this that I fully realized both how different I was from mortals and how much enjoyment that brought me. I couldn''t imagine having as little power or knowledge as they did. I was months old and yet I had the memories of events from almost a million years ago, and I had the power to bring entire planets to ruin over the course of a few minutes if I were so inclined. I was months old and if I wanted to wage war on a galaxy I bet I could win.


    I did not particularly care to bring any particular part of the world to ruin which was probably the sole reason why Htrae remained relatively unchanged by my presence. The oceans were my domain, and now something I had gained lordship over as a consequence of acquiring the second tier of influence over environmental magic, but these humans weren''t technologically advanced enough to do much with their oceans just yet. That was lucky for them since at best I was neutral and at worst I had destroyed civilizations for the sake of accruing more power.


    ________________________________________________


    There were a lot of differences between mortal capabilities and divine capabilities. Hells, there were also a lot of differences between extraplanar capabilities and divine capabilities. That said of all of the differences between divine beings and other beings, there were three areas where we were truly exceptional.


    The first area was our awareness. Our domain-sense ability left the awareness abilities of mortals, extraplanars, and even other higher beings in the dust. Even with my newfound knowledge, knowledge I had given myself utilizing my power to create powers, I didn''t know of anything that came even close to giving someone the sort of knowledge that domain-sense gave me.


    The second area was our potential. In another instance of my newfound knowledge letting me know much of the nature of the multiverse I now knew that the deific ability to create powers is also unique. We could design our own unique powers and utilize them however we best saw fit. Since our potential power was limited by extremely few things that meant that if a god saw fit to exist as a uniquely destructive force and they had the right domains under their control they could design enough powers to destroy a solar system or even a galaxy unchecked and even to me that was difficult to wrap my mind around.


    The third area was our raw capability. As deities we had the power to utilize our abilities even if we weren''t physically present where we used our abilities. If I wanted too I could manipulate gravity anywhere my senses were active and detecting things in real-time. I could create buildings on dozens of planets or stars even ones I had never been too.


    To date my greatest power was my ability to reject notifications pertaining to any domain or subdomain I had the second tier of influence over. With this I could prevent all manner of life from coming into being, all sorts of natural disasters from occurring, and the destruction of anything I didn''t want destroyed. This power was reality-bending and for now I had opted to not use it recklessly.


    After mulling over the nature of my powers and what few limits I had I began to do something I had never truly done before. I decided to carefully study the world of Htrae, and devise a strategy to most efficiently throw a city into chaos.

 231 Relaxation, Strategizing, & Chaos

    I was in my conventional human form and my shirt was ripped open. Sombra''s hands had torn the thing to shreds so that she could have unfettered access to my chest. Her hands were gripping onto my shoulders, her fingers digging into my muscles. Her eyes were locked onto mine, never looking away as she continued to kiss me.


    I utilized my powers over pleasure and lust to enflame desire in the demoness. Sombra moaned in animalistic desire and delight as my powers washed over her and I warmed my body in response to her kisses. For a moment she stopped kissing me, retracting her lips from my neck and gazing at me. As she coyly did that I sighed in annoyance. This made her smile and she lunged back at me, this time aiming kisses at my neck.


    I wrapped my arms around the demoness and surrendered to her. Sombra continued to kiss my neck sending warm pleasure coursing throughout my body, and in response to that I lightly touched the loose shirt she wore. The thing went up in flames that didn''t hurt her but did expose her sizable breasts. She giggled as her shirt was reduced to cinders.


    She abruptly hugged me, her hardened nipples brushing up against my chest. The demoness was having the time of her life at this moment and it was almost a challenge for me not to lose myself in the pleasure she was providing me.


    ________________________________________________


    While I was being pleasured by my pet demoness I was allowing my mind to analyze the world of Htrae. This planet was certainly the strangest one I had visited to date.


    It was one of the only planets I had visited to date that had a handful of sapient species. Most of the worlds I had visited had twelve or more sapient species, whereas this world had humans and a handful of animals such as dolphins and whales as well as a handful of great apes on the world of Htrae that were also sapient species.


    It was certainly not particularly special for humans to dominate a world I had seen. Even on Torus, the world I began my life on, humans were one of the dominant races. That said these humans, the Htraeans, were among the most technologically advanced humans, indeed one of the most technologically advanced civilizations regardless of race, I had met to date.


    They possessed technology that harnessed nuclear energy, a few satelites, and were even capable of instantaneous, non-magical communication across the entire planet. What''s more is that last one was even ordinary, not just something reserved for their elites! Their technology was certainly amazing and was one of the greatest features of their world.


    Many of the planet''s civilizations were democracies. And perhaps more importantly, with very few exceptions their most powerful nations were also democracies. Only a few truly noteworthy non-democratic societies dotted the lands of Htrae, and those were invariably totalitarian societies led by humans who had constructed what were essentially cults devoted to themselves that warped the beliefs of the humans in those particular societies.


    The democratic institutions were easy enough to control, and also not particularly difficult to plunge into chaos. All it would really take, even without violence, was the simple conversion of a few key people into cultists of mine. After all the quest specifically stated that it had to be a cult of mine that plunged a community of at least 25,000 people into chaos.


    "When I first came to this world I expressed interest in attempting to be a god of goodness. Perhaps it is time that I truly take that to heart." I mentally muttered, a smile on my face as I recalled that thought.


    The only way that I was "good" wasn''t even an expression of goodness, it was an expression of neutrality. I wasn''t hostile to living creatures unless they were hostile to me. I also didn''t relish causing pain but I did so without hesitation. If I was even remotely sincere in an attempt to be a god of goodness it would be a change and a challenge for me. One that could be quite fun. There were a few societies in this world that could use a hero, and a god of heroism.


    ________________________________________________


    On the other side of the planet laid the most technologically advanced dictatorship in Htrae. It was a small country, perhaps a seventh of the size of New Sol, but its cities were dense and the total population of the nation numbed in the millions.


    This nation was ruled by the great grandson of a long-dead dictator who had unified disparate families many generations ago and stoked hatred against their neighbors to the point that she was able to motiviate her allies into declaring independence from a larger empire that had once claimed lordship over the nation-to-be and earned a pyrrhic victory against it. Ever since then she and eventually her descendants had kept the "free" nation under their thumb, relying on the very hatred they had stoked and slowly warping the beliefs of their citizens until they believed that the dictatorial family were themselves superhumans.


    People have been escaping from the nation for generations, and the world at large had some understanding of what the country was up too but it''d also prove a strategically difficult target for enemies of the state to go after, due to geography and the annoyingly state of it''s military.


    Due to the nature of that particular society... It''d actually prove to be quite an interesting and poetic target for a god of chaos and freedom. I gave it a bit of thought, and then mentally nodded. I had at last selected the nation I was going to free: the nation of Silverok.


    ________________________________________________


    The first thing I did in my attempt to be a god of goodness and freedom was begin to assess the current state of the nation. Due to my immense sensory abilities this was not at all a difficult task for me to do.


    As far as my strongest strengths went the area where I was the strongest was probably my ability to sense things. I had truly immense sensory range and could detect things going on in real-time occurring in other corners of the universe, due to domain-sense but even without domain-sense just relying on my other sensory powers I could detect things in real-time planets or even galaxies away with my power over stars.


    By using my sensory powers I was able to detect events in real-time as they happened in Silverok. I could hear the sounds of men hard at work doing their state-mandated jobs, be they soldiers or farmers, and I could hear women doing jobs this planet''s societies considered more "feminine" such as teaching and food-preservation. I could hear individual conversations Silverokians had amongst themselves as if they were right next to me.


    Every single one of my senses was immense in its reach. The nation of Silverok was on the other side of the planet, yet I could hear every conversation the people of that country were having. My ability to detect things from this far away was actually pretty new, but it was still fairly immense. Until the point where I settled on freeing Silverok my mind had absorbed the information I was learning from the conversations Silverokians were having and then largely filtered the actual conversations to the back of my mind but now their voices were at the forefront of my thoughts.


    Sombra''s kisses continued to sensually assail my body but now I was focused. Now I had an objective in mind. I wanted to send off a strong message to the Silverokians who sought to rebel against the grim dictatorship that had fed upon their people for generations. And to do that I began to act in a number of rather fun ways.


    The first thing I did was silently construct a new symbol. A scarlet triangle which would serve to inspire and invigorate those who sought to free others from bondage and injustice. This was my first ever chaotic-good symbol. This symbol would serve me in a number of ways but the first thing I did with it was flash it before the eyes of the men and women of Silverok I knew to be chaotic and good in alignment and who sought to free Silverok from its dictator.


    Dozens of mortal men and women, chaotic and rebeliious heroes who had proven themselves in ways both big and small were momentarily frozen as their dreams were filled with an image of a scarlet triangle. In their eyes this symbol was enormous, and awe-inspiring. It was my symbol, for rebels such as themselves who would clash against tyrants and traditions. And it was frankly one that I had quite liked. It was simple.


    The next thing I needed to do was perform a series of miracles while marking them with the same triangle the dreamers had seen. That said, as a god of life there was a perfect and undeniable miracle that I was always capable of performing: resurrections. And now I was capable of performing more true resurrections than ever.

 232 Creation Of Chaos & The Passage Of Time

    He and his pet demoness played in the woods like they were nothing more than a rebellious couple living out some fantasy of running away from the modern world and becoming hermits. Physically the god did little more than hunt, cook the spoils of his hunts, give the food away to spirits he created deep in the forest, and then spend nights with Sombra in his arms. The two made love for hours, thanks to their existences as tireless, sleepless beings. When the sun arose Althos would again set off and hunt some more.


    Mentally the god did a number of things. His mind was perpetually at work, constantly reaching out and manipulating global events as well as focused on the target of his scheme to acquire more power: the nation of Silverok.


    ________________________________________________


    [Gender and Sexuality Subdomain Passive Powers:


    Omnisexuality: Those who are capable of experiencing sexual attraction will be sexually attracted to you. This doesn''t mean that they lose themselves in their attraction, at least not immediately, but it is something they notice. Especially if they aren''t normally attracted to the gender they perceive you as. This affects creatures regardless of their species, and very importantly regardless of the form you are in at any given time.


    Sexual Orientation Control: With the exception being asexuals, you can manipulate the sexualities of creatures. You do not need their consent to do this. This means you can take a heterosexual person and make them pansexual, homosexual, or any other sort of sexuality aside from asexual. You are not yet strong enough in this subdomain to use powers related to asexuality. You can also cause things that wouldn''t normally have a sexual orientation to have one that you can manipulate.


    Sexual Performance Manipulation: You can ensure that a creature always performs well during sex or sexual activities. This functions as something more direct than a blessing.


    Orgasm Inducement: You can induce orgasms in those you target with this power. These orgasms can be as subtle or as intense as you wish.


    Enhanced Pleasure Inducement: You can cause anything you can bring to life to experience pleasure. This includes technology and objects.


    Unholy Radiance: As per the active power but now readily available as a passive power.]


    ________________________________________________


    That being said, having such an emphasis on technology was a brilliant opening for me. Technology was easy for me to exploit thanks to the powers I possessed over even the most advanced tech someone could find throughout this world. One of the things I set my mind too while I was killing time and beginning the first stages of my infiltration of Silverok was to enter and corrupt all manner of Htraean technology.


    This proved an easy enough task for me to do as I had a manner of means of entering technology and manipulating it, especially since the most important bits of technology on Htrae invariably involved computers. I sneakily entered computers and began to mess with them.


    Computers on Htrae proved to be fascinating bits of technology that humans throughout the planet used regularly. This made them invaluable to my efforts to begin to mess with the world I found myself in. While I was out and about exploring the forest near the town I had first stumbled upon in the rural New Sol wilderness my mind was exploring technology that Htraeans used to feel safe.


    This fun exercise had the unexpected end result of allowing me to begin to learn how it was that the planet might respond to an alien invasion. They wouldn''t have the organizational structure in place to defend themselves from a fully armed and organized alien invasion, partially because it''s not commonly agreed upon that aliens probably exist somewhere in the depths of space. Htrae is the only planet in its solar system with any sort of life and they''ve only just recently become a space-faring civilization so their skepticism doesn''t come out of left-field.


    I allowed my mind to bond with computers all over the world, some in homes but many in places like banks and government buildings. I wanted to begin to build my own network of information that I could use to readily acquire even more knowledge and also to subtly begin to influence the world. This planet was destined to join my empire, and I wanted to begin to point it in that direction. Slowly.


    ________________________________________________


    The nation of Silverok began to feel my influence in subtle ways. On each of the seven days that passed between the time Sombra and I started living in the forest and the present I did something new to begin to exert my influence.


    On the first day that passed, I didn''t do anything that would be immediately noticed by the people of Silverok. Instead I did something I hadn''t done in a while: I selected members of an animal species and elevated them out of their current existence by transforming them into something new. I selected snakes living in a forest near the middle of the nation and I forcibly evolved them into humanoid forms, giving them new bodies and a new purpose.


    I also gave my new serpentine servants a new home: a temple I built instantly in the forest they were born and had lived in. I spoke to them mentally and informed them that they were now naga, a mythical evolution of serpents that took serpentine features and humanoid features and fused the best of them together. My new servants profusely thanked the voice that they were heard in their heads and swore to serve me faithfully for the rest of their lives.


    While this was happening I began to fill the deeper parts of the temple with the resurrected bodies of Silverokians who had once died and were the family members of prominent members of society. Those people were promptly put to sleep and given temporary immortality so I didn''t need to worry about them for the time being. Each day I would fill the lower reaches of the temple with more and more people.


    On the second day, I sent angels of chaos to infiltrate various cities and towns throughout Silverok. Some of these angels had humanoid forms, while others did not, but regardless they obeyed me and effortlessly traveled to where they''d be able to inflict the most chaos in the days to come. I also continued to resurrect people.


    On the third day I officially began my infiltration of Silverokian society. What I did was quite simple: I invaded the dreams of countless people throughout Silverok and began to make my presence known. In some cases, I was a rampaging monster who stole sanity and began to forcibly drag people towards chaos, and in other cases, I was a gentle, unseen voice that was heard throughout the dreams of those whose minds I had invaded.


    It was on this day that I fully indoctrinated my serpentine servants, fully immersing them into a sinister, anarchistic cult that sought to liberate Silverok from its dictatorial government. I transformed select naga into priests, priestesses, and witches and warlocks. I also named one of them a high priest and elevated him to level 20 using my weekly level-modification ability.


    On the fourth day I began to awaken those I had resurrected, slowly waking them up and having them begin to become indoctrinated into a new cult of mine in the eerie temple they had been resurrected within. My naga servants began to immerse the Silverokians in anti-government propaganda that I had made up and thanks to the state of confusion that the humans were in this proved to be an effective tactic, especially when combined with a new darkness-based power I possessed that weakened the ability of creatures to combat the influence of my words when immersed in darkness.


    The temple was a dark place. It was perfect for my serpentine servants as I gifted them flawless vision while in the dark and it weakened the abilities of humans to perceive their surroundings.


    On the fifth day I began to lay the groundwork for the chaos that was to come; I infected a handful of government officials in one of the smaller cities with a relatively harmless plague that would do little more than leave than bedridden for a week or two. Long enough for my forces to do what they needed to do. And for me to acquire the power I wanted: the second tier of influence over the domain of chaos.


    On the sixth day I was much more aggressive within the dreams of those I had targeted. If they had nightmares their nightmares were far more primal and terrifying, featuring massive serpents taller than buildings and eldritch terrors that loomed in the distance. Those who had pleasant dreams had dreams of passions fulfilled and of a world free from the tyrannical edicts of the government. They had dreams of a courageous new world and of fulfilling lives where they pursued their own goals, not ones assigned to them by bureaucrats and a terrifying big-brother-like government.


    On the seventh day the people I had resurrected were freed from the temple. They were told to go back to their old homes and to reunite with their families. They were told that their families would be confused, but to tell them that the dreamer sent them, the same one they had heard in their dreams. Their families would accept them back with open, eager arms.


    I protected those I had resurrected while they left the forest the temple was in. None of them were hurt nor did they experience any pain, thanks to my power to suppress it. When they left the forest I began to use my newer powers over illusions to cover up portals that led them from the areas outside of the forest to wherever in the country their homes happened to be. They weren''t all from the same town or city, but within an hour of leaving the forest they were all back in their homes, safe and sound.


    On the seventh day my angels also began to move. The times were about to be a-changing in Silverok. It was going to be very interesting to be sure.


    ________________________________________________


    [Light Domain Passive Abilities:


    Disintegrating Radiance: As per the active power, but now a passive ability.


    Sunlight Generation and Mastery: You can radiate light, as per a sun, at will. You can also manipulate light generated by stars.


    Esoteric Light Manipulation: You can manipulate light in such a way that you can invest it with supernatural properties.


    Smite: A direct, offensive ability that lets you use a powerful surge of energy and light to inflict incredible damage to neutral and evil beings. This manifests as an attack at the speed of light.


    Absolute Light Generation: You can generate total light that refuses to dissipate. This light has all the same properties as sunlight. Once generated this light lingers until you will it to vanish.


    Lightside: You gain the power to force creatures to see goodness and hope within themselves. This makes them remorseful and hesitant to commit evil acts. This also empowers creatures and people who lean towards goodness.


    Light Domain Active Ability:


    Inner Light Release: You can manifest someone''s inner light, once per year. This manifestation is of a person''s inner goodness and it is empowered by every good act and every good thought someone has ever had, even secret ones. There are extremely few creatures who lack an inner light, even demons and devils possess an inner light.


    Darkness Domain Passive Abilities:


    Miasmic Mystery: As per the active power, but now passively available.


    Hostile Darkness: As per the active power, but now passively available. Also, now the pain can kill and is real, thanks to your powers over pain, destruction, and death.


    Darkside: You gain the power to force creatures to see darkness and evil within themselves. This fills good and neutral creatures with self doubt and fear, while evil creatures are empowered by it.


    Absolute Darkness Generation: You can generate darkness so intense that it could even smother a star. This power is just as absolute as "Absolute Light Generation". Things within the darkness this power generates can be destroyed by you with but a mere thought, as if they were instantly sucked into the depths of a black hole.


    Inverted Smite: This power works as per "Smite" but it affects good and neutral creatures and manifests as a cloying cloud of darkness that smothers and disintegrates those it falls on.


    Esoteric Darkness Manipulation: You can manipulate darkness in such a way that you can invest it with supernatural properties.


    Fog Of Darkness: This power renders those shrouded in darkness susceptible to your words and causes them to slowly become more influenced by you over time.


    Greater Shadow: Your shadowy guardian is now fully sapient and capable of using minor versions of your powers to manipulate darkness. You are also capable of investing the shadows of your servants with greater sapience and using them as guardians.


    Darkness Domain Active Ability:


    Darkside Release: As per the "Inner Light Release" but inverted and targeting someone''s inner darkness.]

 233 New Perspectives

    The miners were decked out in standard-issue safety gear. They all had helmets on, their headgear being the source of the light that enabled them to study the wall in the first place. They also had on brightly colored security vests which enabled them to stand out against the darkness of the mine they entered daily and had to brave five days a week. They also had toolbelts wrapped around their waists, which were outfitted with the tools of their particular trade. Their hands were protected, somewhat, by the thick gloves they all wore.


    A few minutes passed, and during that time none of the miners spoke. None of them were especially chatty, and so they all waited for their shift-boss to come to a decision about whether or not to try and mine the wall. Their boss was the tallest and oldest member of this particular crew. He was also one of the few men to have a full beard.


    There was a rather difficult to read expression on his face as he studied the wall. Eventually, the man lifted his pickaxe, grabbing the thing from his toolbelt. He took a step forward, aimed at where many of the beams of light were focused and began to swing his pickaxe at the brightest spot on the wall.


    ________________________________________________


    In a forest located not far from the mine where the miners labored, hoping to finish their work swiftly, another group of individuals were performing a different but far more important sort of labor. They were gathered in a single chamber in a newly constructed and unusual temple, and they were prostrating themselves before a silent and still pool.


    The creatures resembled a cross between humans and snakes. They had the sinuous tails of serpents where their legs should have been, and their skin was hidden beneath a layer of thick scales. They had the upper bodies of humans, complete with arms and even human-like heads. They were dozens of them and they were all hissing a quiet hymn to their master.


    The sibilant sound they made filled the chamber with a haunting and glorious noise. They had been making the sound for a few minutes now, and this was a daily ritual that they performed as they began to end the day.


    The serpents-turned-nagas were Althonites, worshipers of the ophidian overlord himself. Each of them had individually felt the divine touch, the divine potency of their creator, and upon evolving into mighty nagas they had felt a compulsion fill them and bring them to the temple. Upon arriving here days ago they immediately joined together and devoted themselves to the service of their maker, hoping to divine his will and enact it however he demanded.


    Their creator had not left his will a mystery. Within hours of their arrival in the temple he had told them what he wanted. He informed them that they were to be a secret society devoted to advancing the Althonite agenda amongst the people of Silverok, and that for now they were to begin by tending too and indoctrinating the resurrected humans he had placed within the bowls of the temple.


    For the past few days this had been what they had done. They cared for the humans, while slowly introducing them to their master and then telling them a surprisingly honest account of the creature they served.


    The humans who had temporarily lived in the temple learned of Althos. Their serpentine caretakers told them of the mysterious, otherworldly entity who possessed the power of resurrection, the power to enter and control dreams, and even the power to create life from nothing. The humans were told of how the god had resurrected them and hoped to inspire them to take on the tyrannical government of Silverok.


    The serpentine priests, priestesses, warlocks, and witches, were blessed by their god and received immense boosts to their charisma and intelligence. The humans swiftly became putty in their hands, easily becoming fervent worshippers of the strange deity who invaded their dreams and whispered hypnotically to them even when his ophidian missionaries were not filling their heads with secondhand messages from the god of lust himself.


    The humans had left the temple earlier today, mere minutes ago, and were now back in the homes of their families thanks to Althos'' divine interevention. That said the homes would otherwise be empty for a few more hours. Althos was unbothered by that, as the god had gradually begun to become patient, a trait that would serve him well in the days to come.


    The serpentine cult devoted to the sinister lord of shadows continued their unusual form of prayer. The high priest of the cult was a rather plain-looking naga dressed in ornate robes made by Althos himself. The robes were a stunning shade of green that was unusually vibrant given the nature of the darkened chamber the cult found itself in each afternoon.


    The finely dressed naga was also the serpent closest to the small, circular pool that the cult was momentarily situated around. It was a small body of water that resided within an artfully constructed marble basin. The basin, like everything else in the temple, was handmade by the deity. None of the serpents knew the precise purpose of the basin, though they knew that their god was also a creature of elemental power, and so they suspected that perhaps their creator was himself intrinsically tied to water in such a way that this basin was a sort of small holy place to him.


    Perhaps fifteen minutes after the serpentine hissing had begun the noise began to die down. As the noise began to die down the greatest of the assembled naga, the high priest himself, began to cease his prostrations. He slowly and boldly began to lift his head and then the rest of his long and snakelike body up from the floor. As he did he looked up at the basin, the small marble pool that he directed his prayers towards.


    The small marble pool was still, as undisturbed and as calming to behold as it had always been. The snakelike creature was still for a moment, before he heard a quiet voice in the back of his mind let out a pleased whisper.


    "Come Silverfang. Speak to your congregation." The voice whispered. Silverfang, the high priest of the small temple, let out a pleased hiss. The sound filled the serpents closest to him with relief, and they almost inaudibly also let out soft sighs of their own.


    Now "standing" as tall as Silverfang could he slowly slithered over to the foot of the basin. As he did that more and more of his spiritual disciples, the congregants he had gathered, began to rise up from their own prostrations and silently watched him. Their silted, serpentine eyes were filled with curiosity as this was a new action on his part, not something he had done before.


    When he reached the foot of the basin he turned to face the snakes Althos had gathered. The number of naga before the high priest numbered in the dozens, all of whom wore clothes given to their them by their god. They all wore differently colored robes and different pieces of jewelry that accentuated different features of theirs.


    The scene was strange, as none of them knew why their god had behaved the way he had. And yet each of them was uniquely grateful to their god, and delight and pious gratitude was visible on their reptilian faces. Silverfang studied them for a moment, before opening his mouth to speak, inspired by his god to give a speech to the congregation.


    "I am standing before you after having received encouragement by the Sibilant Serpent himself!" The naga priest began, speaking powerfully. His words elicited a soft gasp from the gathered nagas, as their god had only spoken to them directly in unison until this point. Aside from dreams if the Sibilant Serpent had had something to say he would have spoken to them all, not picked and chosen one of them.


    "I know the truth is shocking, but nevertheless it is the truth. He who elevated us from complacency whispered in my mind to come and speak to you." The naga confessed. As the assembled nagas took one collective breathe, the quiet god they worshiped whispered into Silverfang''s mind once again.


    "I reward those who serve me well. Tell the serpents that you are hereby infused with my authority. As a result of this, your words are my words. So long as you serve me and see to the duties I assign to you, you shall have a place of authority and respect amongst your peers." The voice whispered, conferring a reward to Silverfang.


    This caused the serpent to begin to smile, something which he immediately tried to rein in and get under his control when he realized it was happening to him. The naga did his best to contain his smile as he began to ready himself to repeat what he had just been informed.


    ________________________________________________


    Over two hours later night was falling as a lone man made his way home. He was an inhabitant of the city of Rockvale, the city closest to the mine that the group of laborers he was a part of had just finished working in for the day and for the week. It was the end of a long and physically challenging week.


    The man was sore all over as he slowly trodded over to the home he owned on the outskirts of the city. Stars twinkled in the sky overhead and the man did his best to keep his eyes down and be ignored by anyone who might be watching. The streets weren''t safe and the man knew that. All he wanted to do was get home and lay down so that his muscles might recover before his next shift in roughly 60 hours.


    The man''s body felt light without the weight of the safety gear he often lugged around as a part of his job, but the exhaustion he felt was the sort that lingered in his very bones. He struggled to keep going, but each step brought him closer and closer to where he wanted to be so he managed to pull off the impressive feat of getting close enough that eventually he could see his home in the distance.


    When the man''s home appeared in the distance his eyes widened in delight, even if he had seen the sight of his home for many, many nights over the course of the last year. He quickened his pace and began to close the distance between himself and the meek, one-story, two-bedroom house the government had commanded his family live in a long time ago.


    The man walked, at a somewhat speedy pace, for a few minutes until eventually he stood right outside of his home and began to fumble with the keys. As he grappled the keychain he kept on his person at all times his mind turned towards the distant past.


    He recalled a childhood wherein many early memories were of this city''s alleyways and dead-end streets. He was a native of this city, which was unsurprising since travel was strictly restricted and difficult to execute safely. He also recalled the warmth of his family, something that didn''t often cross my mind as the last of his family members had perished a long time ago.


    As his fingers landed on the key he knew corresponded to the locked door that separated him from dinner and then probably bed, he felt tears well up in his eyes for some reason. The miner and general laborer was not the most empathetic sort, but even he found it unusual to feel a minor rush of emotion out of the blue.


    For the briefest instant the man''s grandmother appeared in his mind''s eye, the image of him speaking to her filling his mind. As it did he ruminated on how much he missed her. That said such thoughts proved to be a distraction. They only increased the difficulty of the man attempting to unlock his own door and enter his own home.


    Eventually though the man succeeded in unlocking the door and pushing it open. As it opened he took his first steps inside his own home, fully suspecting that the day would be normal until he saw none other than his grandmother patiently and happily seated in one of the few chairs that he possessed. His grandmother was facing the door as it had opened, having heard the thing swung open and turning in time to face her grandson, who almost immediately dropped the keychain that he had been holding.


    He took one step into his home, skeptically, logically doubting that his deceased grandmother had returned to life. That said he couldn''t hide his emotions either. Not entirely, even while his analytical mind attempted to make sense of what were happening in front of him. There was a shocked smile on his lips, even as tears welled up in his eyes and he had to fight the urge to dash towards the woman in his kitchen and ask her if she could possibly be who he dared hope she was.

 234 Expanding Influence

    While it wasn''t something that truly bothered me, it was something that left me annoyed when I thought about it. And now more than ever I had the power to change it. In fact changing it would be easy. Now more than ever I had the ability to spread my worship exceedingly quickly among anyone I wanted to make my worshipers.


    The source of my confidence hailed from some of my newer powers, powers that I had over law and over enchantment. Both of them were tremendously powerful spheres of influence whose true power hadn''t really begun to manifest until I acquired my second tier of influence over them. They were far from the most powerful abilities I had acquired, but they were still incredible, life-altering powers, and they were perfect for me to utilize to expand my influence.


    As midnight rolled around and brought an end to the seventh day during which I was being comparatively inactive, I began to finally move once more, in ways that would spread my devastating influence throughout the world of Htrae.


    ________________________________________________


    One of the aspects of a vastly interconnected world that was the most interesting to me was how important the lives of celebrities were. As a deity with power over all aspects of the arts and technology I received all sorts of notifications about the lives of celebrities on Htrae, as well as elsewhere but Htrae was where I was presently located and was my current focus.


    Humans in this world, at least ones that lived in moderately technology-heavy societies, were incredibly fascinated by the lives of those who were richer and better known than themselves. This was most noticeable with people such as actors, especially the sorts that starred in fancy movies. I myself had never seen a "movie" but my powers over knowledge, technology, and the memories I had taken from the Htraeans I had interacted with allowed me to not only know what movies were but also have memories of movies I''d never seen.


    Personally, I wasn''t super into movies, but I suppose in a fairly peaceful world without magic or monsters movies could be seen as a safe way to experience excitement, danger, adventure, romance, and other things that might be lacking. I couldn''t imagine movies ever becoming an especially popular way to kill time in a world like Torus.


    For the sake of experimenting with my powers I went ahead and designed a new toy that would serve as a symbol of sorts, the Rainbow Emblem, and gave it a few unusual properties. And then I snuck into the dream of an actor who was a rising star.


    [Symbol Table:


    Name: The Rainbow Emblem


    Description: This is a multicolored symbol in the rough shape of a man. It resembles many different acting awards and is actually based on them. The symbols are mobile, and though their innate form is that of a trophy, they can just as easily attach themselves to clothing and be carried by those who possess them without taking up an entire hand.


    Properties:


    Obsession: This symbol, taking from the subdomains of corruption and enchantment induces obsession in those who possess one. This obsession isn''t instantaneous but it is impossible to resist. Those who possess this symbol will want others to see it and will want to proselytize to them about you.


    Blessing: This symbol greatly improves the charisma of those who hold it, whether they were gifted one by you directly or by someone who possesses one. Those who possess one are also able to build them by hand, though the effect on their charisma isn''t quite as intense if someone received one created by someone else, unless you consecrate the symbol.


    Sentient: These symbols are alive and intelligent. Even ones created by your servants. They even have a goal; to be owned by every moderately famous actor or actress and convert them into Althonians. They themselves are pious worshipers of yours, and seek to ensure that everyone else is as well. They won''t interfere with other living beings who worship you, but unless you say otherwise they view everyone who doesn''t worship you as an Althonian-to-be and will target them.


    Hypnotic: This takes from your power over enchantment. These symbols are hypnotic and can mesmerize those who possess them. They quietly whisper into the minds of those who possess them and don''t seek to disrupt their professional lives, but will seek to corrupt their personal lives to some extent.


    Channeling: You can channel your powers through these symbols, allowing you to use them to target and direct your abilities. This can allow you to demonstrate your divinity to those who are in the presence of one of your worshipers but aren''t actually worshipers of yours yet. You can also speak through the symbol, but you can already speak directly into the minds of every other being if you want too so that''s not very necessary.]


    ________________________________________________


    Upon entering the dream of the B-list actor whose mind I had infiltrated I immediately activated a pair of my newer abilities. The powers I activated were entitled "Hypnotic Presence", and "Hypnotic Voice". They were powerful enchantment abilities that turned even extraplanar entities to putty in my hands, causing my very presence and even my voice itself to become potent weapons that could erode wills.


    The dream I had infiltrated, one of several I was in concurrently, was taking place inside of a fancy penthouse suite. I found myself sitting on a luxurious couch, and I was shirtless. Behind me the dreamer himself was making himself a drink. I heard his lithe and uncalloused hands lightly touching the glass as he poured himself a scotch. It was as he was pouring the drink that I decided to speak.


    "Hello there. Can you make me one too?" I asked, teasingly, my voice catching the man off-guard which only amplified the effects of my new powers. I heard his heart begin to pound in his chest, or at least that''s what he dreamed. Physically, or rather in the physical world, he didn''t really react to my words.


    He stopped moving, and I felt him try to resist. I sensed the struggle he was putting up with every fiber of his being. I chuckled and admired his resistance for a moment, before targeting him with a sloth-based mental attack. I transmitted a spike-like spear of mental sloth and did away with his efforts to resist my voice. I felt his resistance shrivel up and die, and chuckled inwardly.


    I almost felt bad for the man. Almost. But I didn''t want to spend time dealing with his concerns. Plus I wasn''t going to hurt him, nor was I going to do anything bad to the man. All I was doing was making him my worshipper. I wasn''t even really planning to lie to him. I was going to tell him the truth, that I was a god and that he was my worshiper.


    A few moments after I discarded his resistance to my voice using my powers over sloth the man walked over to me and he brought me my drink. He placed it in front of me quietly, like a waiter serving a glass of water to a couple who were in the middle of a big and dramatic fight.


    It was the same sort of scotch he was drinking, which was unsurprising. Nathan was not known for being especially creative, and upon actually examining the man and activating one of my other, newer, knowledge based abilities, I learned that that rumor was accurate.


    ________________________________________________


    Days ago I had given myself an array of new powers. One of them was the ability to read a soul, and in doing so learn every single detail that there was to be learned about lifeforms that weren''t extraplanar, vestiges, or other higher-beings. I was annoyed by that limitation, but even just being able to use this power on mortals or undead was a powerful asset in and of itself.


    Nathan Pendergrass was the human whose dream I was invading. And I knew everything that there was to know about him. He sat down in front of me and his eyes were wide as he beheld me. In fairness to him I was the embodiment of beauty, a creature whose appearance was so stunning that nothing could behold me and not feel some part of them stir, even if they felt no romantic or sexual attraction to me, I was at least aesthetically pleasing to them.


    I studied the man and I took the drink he offered me. Of course me "studying" him was mostly for dramatic effect. He was silent, his facial expression one of awe and delight. My hypnotic abilities were too powerful for him to resist and so he was fully enraptured by my very presence. After a few moments of silence I took it upon myself to speak.


    "Hello Nathan." I said, speaking gently. My voice washed over him and I felt him lose more of himself in me. It was amusing to so easily disarm a man. I felt powerful right now, but it was a different sort of power. It was a sort of power that felt intimate. I knew if I wanted too I could simply declare that I was this man''s whole reason for existence, and in merely uttering those words I would become what I said I was. It was fun to hold such power, even if I had no reason or desire to use it.


    "My name is Althos. And I am your god." I declared, continuing without really skipping a beat. The man in front of me began to smile, which was an amusing reaction. It was at this point that I took a sip of the drink he offered me. It tasted smokey, which was intriguing to a god of fire. I took another sip, and this time I let it linger on my tongue, in my mouth, before I swallowed it.


    While I was swallowing the drink Nathan began to speak. At first he spoke excitedly, speaking in a rapid-fire sort of way, asking all manner of questions, but then he got a hold of himself. When he did he took a second to be quiet and then began to speak again.


    "Hello Althos. I have... Many questions." The man began. He was not the smartest man, but he possessed a childlike curiosity. One that was quite fascinating. It was indeed why he liked being an actor, it gave him a chance to slip into new lives and to learn new things in each role that he assumed. I was silent in response to his statement, but I gave him an approving look and to the energetic human that was apparently enough.


    "How do you know my name?" He asked, apparently quite content to start off with a simple question. I chuckled and replied to the man an instant later.


    "Nathan... I know everything there is to know about you. I know your favorite color. I know that the last time you saw your mother you two got into a heated argument. I know that you''ve always wanted a cat but you were afraid that one day you would forget to feed it. I know that you are afraid that no one will accept the real you. Though you don''t need to worry about that anymore. I am here. I accept you." I said, speaking sincerely. Every word I had just spoken was the truth. Nathan''s eyes widened as I spoke, as I revealed bits and pieces of his soul.


    The man felt naked, but also seen. He felt accepted. He felt loved. My words comforted him and made him feel happy. I felt happy as well, because I could already see this man eating out of the palm of my hand. Him feeling seen was one of the biggest things he needed at the moment. He had a decent standard of living, in terms of economics, but he didn''t have the sort of connection he craved. I gave him that. He was going to become an excellent cultist of the arts and of emotion. I knew that too.

 235 Birth Of A Cul

    Perhaps the most powerful domain I had acquired influence over to date was the domain of emotions. And by sheer, dumb luck when acquiring power over emotions I had also acquired power over the emotion of love. The real reason why the domain of emotions was so powerful for me was that I had started it off by coupling it with love rather than another emotion like sadness or anger.


    Love, in my hands, was the sort of power that I could use to change countries or even entire planets. However, the real reason why love was worth mentioning in the context of the magic was that it gave me an assortment of abilities that were quite fun. One of the most immediately useful powers I possessed, at least in the context of the dream of Nathan was having that those that I summoned were called to me and automatically fell in love with me, as well as becoming loyal to me.


    In the moments after I told Nathan that I had seen everything he had ever been and that I had accepted him I quietly sent a spark of power into Infernius, specifically into a tiny brothel in the city of Duvessa. The brothel was populated by a cabal of devils who had offered themselves and their building to me. And now I had need of the services of two of the pleasure-devils who inhabited it. I utilized one of my new abilities "Spontaneous Summoning" and I pulled their souls from their comfortable brothel to the dream of this burgeoning celebrity.


    I felt my power disregard space and time and traverse a distance that was truly incalculable. When it reached the pair of extraplanar entities it struck their soul and coursed through them, bathing them in my power. The power they had been washed in was so immense that it effortlessly overwhelmed their minds and caused them to feel a number of things.


    That said, this power wasn''t just the sort that changed how a creature felt. My power also conferred new powers. And as it wrenched the two devils from their comfortable home to a new world it also bestowed them with new powers. And in an instant, the two devils appeared sitting on the same couch as me.


    ________________________________________________


    Ariel and Jezebel were sisters. And the two of them had once been popular consorts and escorts in the city of Duvessa, in the time before the mythical apocalypse that destroyed the entire surface of Infernius. Upon the revival of the city of Duvessa the overseer of the brothel they lived in, a powerful greater devil, had offered both himself and all of his possessions, including the brothel, to the literal god responsible for the salvation of the city.


    Each day more and more devils were resurrected and were able to return to work, filling the city with more and more creatures and resources. Some devils, the smarter of the bunch, immediately began to theorize that this was the work of Althos. It was. The god had not been as silent as their less intelligent ilk had suspected.


    Althos had quietly begun to unleash robots and other such resources that could explore the ruined, irradiated landscape of the surface of Infernius and he used those resources to find bodies in the wastes, and bring them to Duvessa. No devil to date had correctly guessed that this was how he was doing what he was doing, but because of this there was a perpetual influx of new arrivals to Duvessa. The god quietly planned to return to his city, soon, but for now he was quietly building it up and restoring it to its former greatness.


    Ariel and Jezebel were two natives to Duvessa, and they were the first of the devils who''d be able to serve the future tyrant-king directly. At the time that they were summoned by Althos they had been smoking devil-grass, a cheap, Infernian, recreational drug, and they had been seated on a pair of silk cushions in their own private chamber.


    The pair of devils were both strikingly beautiful, as befit devils of their type. They both had milk-white hair, surprisingly tanned skin, and were lithe women. At the moment they had been called neither had been wearing clothes, their fully naked bodies on display for any with the power to gaze into their inner sanctum.


    Althos'' power rocketed into their souls and forcefully grabbed a hold of the two entities. His power over conjuration, having exploded in potency when he acquired the second tier of influence over the domain, coupled with his powers over love, seized and distorted the souls of the devil.


    For the women themselves, this felt positively euphoric, as though someone who possessed skilled, speedy, dexterous fingers were caressing every centimeter of their souls. Althos'' power wasn''t based on his ability to cause pain, but as befit a god of lust, was centered around causing creatures to experience mind-bending amounts of pleasure. Althos'' magic seeped into them, causing both women to be unable to hide their pleasure and release erotic moans.


    The two devils felt the power of the master they had sworn to serve wash over them, and they basked in the sensation of his power crashing into their souls. The two women began to blush furiously as their god''s invasive powers flooded their minds and stained their very essences with divine, reality-bending, power. And then in a furious snap of light the god whisked them from their comfortable home and teleported them across the cosmos.


    ________________________________________________


    As the beautiful sisters were whisked from one dimension to another, the god''s powers began to change them. During the course of the last few months Althos had grown in power, and one power he had gained was especially relevant here, as he sought to drag the pair of devils into a dream.


    The god utilized one of the newer powers he had acquired in his bid to become an intermediate god. This ability, entitled "Dreamwalker''s Dominion" was one that gave him the power to allow his worshipers to dream walk, as he could. To date, he had never used this power before, but his mind was running at many kilometers a minute and was planning ahead. He knew that in the very near future he''d want this pair of minions to be able to sneak into dreams as he could.


    Power over dreams seeped into the souls of the devils, empowering the two as they were willingly dragged through the cosmos. As their souls were whisked closer and closer to the tyrant-god they worshiped, they were blasted by the deity''s powers over love, which was so powerful right out of the gate that even extraplanar entities stood no chance of resisting them.


    Their hearts were filled with love for their master, and more so then that his powers over love were so intense that the love they immediately began to feel for him wasn''t comparable to the love for they felt for anyone else, even each other. Althos'' powers over love were absolute and he could effectively summon any willing creature to his side, which when mixed together were an extremely potent mix.


    ________________________________________________


    The two lust-devils appeared by my side in a flash. They surrounded me on the couch, while Nathan was blinking. When his eyes reopened he gasped at the two naked beauties in front of him.


    The two women were beautiful, naked, and stared at him coldly. After studying him silently for a moment they turned to me and as they did they visibly warmed, their eyes widening and fawning smiles pulling their ruby red lips upwards. The smiles were genuine, and I could feel their joy at having been selected by me to come here and serve me directly. I smiled and spread my arms around the two women. They giggled and snuggled up closer to me.


    "Nathan... It''s time that you met some of the others who worship me." I explained, allowing Ariel and Jezebel to learn Nathan''s name, though neither of the women cared. I knew what the women liked and it wasn''t Nathan, who was a handsome man but was a bit too scrawny for their tastes. And curiously enough it was a pure coincidence that I was actually far more their preferred type of man, someone large and with powerful muscles, even without my powers aiding me.


    "The two gorgeous women beside me are Ariel and Jezebel. They are two angels of beauty." I told him, lying. The women heard my lie, but they didn''t register any surprise despite what I had just said. That was handy for me, as I was busy elsewhere and my full attention wasn''t on the scene before me.


    "Angels are direct servants of the gods, incredibly powerful beings who are blessed by the gods and bestowed with immortality and a number of other powers related to both the god they serve, and their own spheres of influence." I explained, speaking surprisingly honestly despite the lie that I had started this off with. Nathan''s eyes widened as he absorbed what I said. He was silent for a moment before asking me a pair of valuable questions.


    "Althos... Why are they here? Why do you want me to meet them?" He asked, earnestly curious, even though he was visibly humbly by their presence. At this point my devilish worshipers began to run their hands along my chest, finding it far more interesting than the insignificant mortal whose dream they had been brought too. I allowed the two to have their fun.


    "They are here, Nathan, because I seek worshipers. I seek worshipers... everywhere, which includes on this world. And I intend for you to create a cult devoted to me. And these two angels are going to help." I revealed, speaking gently. This was news to the devils, but neither of them objected. I knew they wouldn''t. I was at least capable of reading them to that extent.


    I was a god of many things and I didn''t love forcing people to do things against their wills, but I was more than capable of reading someone to the extent that I needed to read them to know what my worshipers were willing to do. Ariel and Jezebel would have been happy serving me however I wished. And Nathan wasn''t dissimilar, though he lacked the fanaticism that devils were capable of and were known for, and that the lust devils exhibited felt towards me.


    That made sense as he had only just met me, but I had resurrected Ariel and Jezebel. They actually owed me their lives in as real a way as someone could.


    The two beauties were listening to me and I felt their acceptance of my commands in their hearts. My empathy was powerful enough that I could understand the truth behind the emotions of every being, even extraplanar entities, without any doubts or concerns. I knew that to them, in their hearts, I was a tyrant-god and that was what they wanted me to be. Devils innately sought to serve the strong, and a god of tyrants as powerful as anything that they could imagine.


    "Nathan... I am going to make you someone important. You are going to be one of my head priests, and I will give you power and powers that fit you and allow you to serve me more effectively." I told the human, whose eyes widened in awe at my words. He was extremely willing to serve me, and I knew that that''d persist even when he left this dream.


    I pointed at the human and began to boost his charisma. His charisma was, rather unsurprisingly, his highest stat, and I went ahead and boosted it significantly to give him a serious increase to his ability to recruit people. He shivered as his soul was touched by my powers, and as his stats were buffed thanks to my ability as a lesser god. I also went ahead and boosted his intelligence, not his lowest stat but one of them, which would do many things but most notably it''d give him an improved ability to remember his lines as intelligence and memory were linked.


    Tears began to stream down the eyes of the mortal man. It wasn''t a deluge of tears, but it was a constant stream. The man was overwhelmed, and he was grateful to me. I chuckled and also continued to speak.


    "Nathan... As a god I possess many powers. And I possess a far greater number of servants than you could ever imagine. I seek for all to worship me. I seek to be known to all. You will help me achieve my goals and in turn I shall help you with yours." I tell the man, smiling at him.


    "You shall lead and create a cult that worships me as a god of creation and the arts. And in exchange for your worship and service, I shall make you a truly legendary actor." I tell Nathan, not actually thinking that I''d just take over his life. I had the power to elevate his skills in his chosen field and I could easily utilize my abilities to make him the best actor in this world. If he served me faithfully I''d be more than happy to use my powers to make him better at his job, which would help me anyway since the more famous he was the easier it''d be for this cult to infect the Htraean art community.


    My hand was still pointed at Nathan. And a second after I finished speaking, a symbol appeared on his shirt. This was the Rainbow Emblem, the symbol I created mere minutes ago. The symbol warmed him and when he felt it first appear he gasped. I chuckled as he looked downwards, where he felt the warmth emanate from.


    "That is the symbol of the cult you shall start. I am bestowing you with the power to create copies of it, and it itself is not without... Power. But that is for you to discover." I tell the man, speaking cryptically all while smiling.


    I don''t speak for a moment, but I am not silent either. Instead my next messages are for the siblings beside me. I don''t turn as I speak, instead I merely lean back and begin to ready myself to teleport the siblings to Nathan''s home.


    "Your duty is to seduce the man and to appear to the public as a doting wife. I want you to keep Nathan under control and to keep him focused." I tell Ariel, my mind connecting with hers and forming a link through which we can speak.


    "Your duty is to manage the cult. When it is fully created I shall send you all some funds, among other things. Your true duty however is more important than that of either Nathan or Ariel... I am going to create a portal to Infernius in a place you shall purchase. When I create that portal you and a few other devils shall be tasked with managing it." I explain, speaking to Jezebel.


    ________________________________________________


    I am going to become an archdevil soon. And before I do I want to begin to place devilish infrastructure in the worlds I can influence. A portal to Infernius is the perfect piece of devilish infrastructure for me to begin with, because I have territory in both the mortal dimension and Infernius, as well as followers in both dimensions who can guard and manage such portals. Even in other dreams I''m currently in I''m laying the groundwork for portals to Infernius.


    A portal to Infernius is also perfect because devils are loyal and fierce enough to protect such places, and the devils under my control as of right now are also happy to enter the dimension of mortals and have a chance to begin to sway souls towards being lawful evil. It''s time that I begin to connect the different dimensions I have influence over.


    I would continue to speak to Nathan for a few more minutes, at least minutes in the dimension of dreams. Time in the dream dimension wasn''t quite the same as time in the mortal plane. But eventually the man began to awaken, and as he did I teleported the devilish siblings I had recruited to his apartment in Htrea. They''d wake up quite soon. I bid the man adieu and I told him I''d watch him carefully. He smiled at me as he awoke.

 236 The Beginning of the Final Day

    In an instant I went from residing within Nathan''s dream to once more unifying with the portion of my mind that was within my body. My body was in the woods not far from the community I first stumbled upon in the world of Htrae, Glendale. Sombra was next to me, smiling faintly as she laid in post-orgasmic haze.


    The demon''s mind was simple, and she was content. She enjoyed the days of relative peace we spent together, and when she was here the urge she had to commit evil acts was easily controlled. She was with me, her master and the god she worshiped, and that was enough for her. Her personal virtue was patience, but from what I saw when I was with her it seemed that her personal virtue could have been humility or even satisfaction.


    She was naked, but at the moment her body was hidden from view by a few layers of blankets. We currently resided inside of a small house that I made using magic a few days ago. The house had a kitchen, a bathroom, and a tiny living area which was where she and I were, resting atop a small bed.


    I was also naked, and I could still feel the last throes of pleasure running through me. I felt exceptional the instant I returned to my body, and I could see why Sombra was so content. For the last few days she and I had killed entire nights playing with each other and having sex. As two tireless beings who didn''t need sleep we''d go at it for hours, constantly exploring each other and writhing together. Even now I wanted go under the blankets that covered us and continue to play with her as I had while I was in Nathan''s dreams. Instead I allowed myself to have fun and to tease the demoness.


    "Sombra... Come rest your head on my chest." I said, as I opened my arms to the shadowy, shape-shifting demoness. She turned to me and smiled, before slowly and lazily moving towards my open arms. It took her a few seconds of slow, catlike movement before she crossed the distance that separated us and I wrapped my arms around her lithe, nude body. As I did I began to run a single hand through her hair and I kissed her forehead.


    Sombra''s current human form had long red hair, and it flowed freely at the moment. The hair framed her face and was also long enough that it was able to touch the top of her back. The demoness shivered excitedly at my kiss, and as my hand explored her hair I utilized my powers over pleasure to transmit pleasant sensations to the demoness.


    "While playing more would be fun... Tragically, it is time that we prepare ourselves." I told her speaking seriously for a moment. She sighed in annoyance, and then began to speak.


    "What is it that we are going to prepare to do?" She asked, looking at me curiously.


    "We are going to spend one more day here, in this world, and then we are returning to the Heart of Darkness. It is almost time that I become a demon lord. And to do so... I need to kill Agustino, among other things." I revealed casually. She looked at me in shock, her eyes wide and her "heart" beating quite quickly. I chuckled softly.


    "So it is true then... You can become a demon lord?" She asked, being one of the few creatures in whom I have confided some of the details about the ways that my powers worked. Many of my closer worshipers had some knowledge of the fact that I was more than a deity, but only a few understood in even the vaguest sense my "More than meets the eye" ability, and Sombra was one such individual.


    "It is." I stated, bluntly. Sombra smiled at me, in awe of that news. I sensed her acceptance of it and also her excitement. I pointed at the demoness and in an instant she was clothed, dressed in a casual dress and a coat.


    "Whoa." She uttered, as she felt the clothes appear on her skin. I smiled as I looked at the yellow dress and light green coat. It was at that point that the two of us vanished from the tiny house I had built in the woods, my powers instantly whisking us away in a flash of light.


    ________________________________________________


    I and my pet were teleported, from the cabin that I had built into one of the rooms of an expensive apartment owned by one of my first acquaintances: Andrea. We were taken to the apartment silently, my powers facilating the travel without any difficulty. I was capable of moving from one dimension to another without difficulty, moving to another place in the same world was as easy as actually walking a short distance for me.


    We went from being in a bed to being seated at a small table in the dining area of Andrea''s apartment. Andrea herself was awake, and was actually in the food preparation part of the kitchen within line of sight from where I was seated. She hummed to herself as she washed one of her dishes in preparation for her breakfast. She was absent-mindedly humming a simple tone.


    Sombra turned around and looked at her. Sombra had never actually seen the human before, since this was a wildly different planet from Torus, and Andrea had had virtually no exposure to magic. I had also largely kept Sombra by my side whenever the shadowy demoness was "loose" in the mortal universe.


    I was here to speak with the mortal and establish the terms of our agreement. A few days ago Andrea had indictated her interest in a business proposition I had approached her with that, but she wanted to negotiate the finer details either in person or while in a dream. This was me meeting her conditions.


    Andrea continued to work on her dishes, and after a while I sighed and turned my attention towards her television. It was off, but with but a thought I changed that. The thing crackled to life, and I chuckled when Andrea jumped in response to the thing turning on. The t.v. was behind where I was seated, and Andrea turned to look at it, which was when she finally saw me and my pet. I winked at her, and shape-shifted before her very eyes, going from my default human form to that that I had back when she and I first met.


    The shapeshifting process was instantaneous and the instant that Andrea fully saw me she saw me in the form she recognized.


    "Hello Andrea. I have come to continue the discussion we began, days ago." I told her, chuckling. Sombra also smiled, her eyes wide in the wake of my display of powers. The human, her eyes still wide, nodded at me and I decided to take the initiative.


    "You could call me something of an inventor. I have many technologies that I can build instantly." I told her, while demonstrating that by utilizing my powers over creation to instantaneously build a golden watch. The device came into being in my hand and shone brilliantly. I rose it up so that it could be inspected by the woman. Her eyes followed it, still in shock of my powers.


    "I''ve already told you what I want. I want to be the actual head of a business that you are the public face of. All you''ll have to do is what you already wanted: be a famous scientist." I told her, speaking the truth. I could have easily lied to the human, but the truth was that we shared goals. For now my goal was to make her famous, and have it happen by having her be a world-class "inventor" who advances this world''s technology. I used telekinesis to give her the watch, allowing her a chance to better study it. The object floated into her hand.


    "This watch... It''s not a trick is it?" She asked, having received evidence of the reality of my powers and their abilities to do more than just alter how she looked. The watch in her hand was a real object, one constructed by the reality altering powers I possessed.


    "It''s not a trick. It is, however, merely an introduction." I told her, speaking auspiciously.