As the bomb began to drop I considered what to do. I highly doubted that the bomb could hurt me, I wasn't a physical deity so something like antimatter probably wouldn't do much if anything to me. Plus there was the fact that I had control over antimatter almost certainly ensured that it couldn't hurt me. That said I had a variety of ways to handle the bomb.

At this point in my life, I was an exceedingly powerful entity. I had acquired powers over nature, destruction itself, technology, death, life, and more. In many cases, I had not only acquired divine power over those things but also an oftentimes terrifying set of demonic powers over various things as well, My power and my durability were the real deal.

As the bomb began to approach the floor I began to smile. I looked at it and considered actually setting it off early, but after a split second of thinking I realized that the way to maximize the dramatic effect of the bomb's failure would be to let it explode unchallenged. When the bomb was but a few meters from the ground I tilted my head straight up and I smiled at Technos, to show him how unafraid I was of his weapon.

The bomb was a thick thing, packed with antimatter in the way that only something that defied reality could be. It was one of several instances I had seen in my life of a deific power defying reality, and it was the first time I had seen a vestige do something that probably shouldn't have been possible. Morehammer was a powerful vestige but he merely overwhelmed me physically, aside from that time that I overwhelmed him, he hadn't used reality-defying powers.

When the bomb was mere nanoseconds from reaching the floor and exploding I began to muse on the fact that this was one of the few attacks I was going to have received from a vestige thus far in my life. That was honestly quite intriguing to me since so far in my life I had only met two vestiges, Morehammer and Technos. Depending on how today went I planned to change that in the future, but I wasn't hunting Technos for the sake of hunting him, I was pursuing power.

I was more than capable of swift and brutal violence, and I had billions of worshipers who liked swift and brutal violence but I personally preferred nonviolent solutions. That said, one aspect of me that hadn't changed over the last three years was that I still valued and sought power. I wanted to become the ultimate emperor and that required obtaining ultimate power.

Now that I was an actual emperor I was a good deal closer to my ultimate goal, and I was going to move much closer to it by killing Technos' vestige which would grant me greater power over death and push me most of the way to a set of powers that I had been waiting for for a long time: those of an archdevil. Killing this layer's guardian would almost certainly either grant me authority over this layer of Infernius or allow me to figure out how to get it.

When the antimatter bomb made contact with the floor it burst open releasing a shockwave of kinetic energy that I absorbed without even thinking about it. The antimatter itself first made contact with the floor and began to consume it before spreading throughout the entire arena including underneath me.

The interior of the bomb was larger than the bomb itself thanks to the reality-defying powers of Technos as what amounted to a shade of a god. Antimatter could only destroy an amount of matter equal to itself, so normally the bomb wouldn't have been the most remarkable weapon unless the plan would have been to irradiate me to death, but Technos had been clever and overloaded the bomb with antimatter.

I felt the waves of radiation that the destroyed matter and antimatter had created rush into me and fill me harmlessly. I was immune to harmful effects from radiation and so the bomb had not hurt me at all even indirectly in the form of radiation. If anything it actually only served to strengthen me.

The radiation created by the bomb's antimatter payload was considerable. Not only was there a powerful wave of radiation that I immediately demonstrated my immunity to, but there was also the matter of the floor underneath me having been destroyed by the radiation. That said as a god, elemental overlord, and archfey of air, and a god of physics I merely began to hover in the air and chuckled. All this did was give me more space to move around in.

The antimatter continued to spread and as it did it annihilated more and more of the arena. That sent more radiation my way and I merely basked in it. If I weren't a god with power over radiation the radiation would have merely floated around the destroyed arena, but I was subtly using powers over physics to draw the radiation into myself.

The antimatter continued to spread for the next few minutes and as it did I continued to quietly absorb the radiation it generated. The bomb had not done a single thing to hurt me which didn't surprise me in the slightest. When the antimatter finally stopped spreading across the arena and all that remained of it was the walkway that I had walked across minutes ago I looked at the ceiling and began to laugh. As I did I heard the infernal P.A. system crackled to life.

"Well... I have to admit it'd have been anticlimactic if that bomb was enough to do you in." Technos confessed, pride and vanity still audible in his voice, but now to a much lesser extent.

"That said I won't just let you in. You'll have to figure out how to advance on your own." He told me as if that were a challenge. In response to his words, I flew up to the ceiling where the bomb had been dropped from. At some point during the bomb's drop and then subsequent explosion the ceiling had closed again but that wasn't an issue for me. I reached out and touched the ceiling, placing my hand on the cold material that stood in my way. As I did I chuckled and began to generate antimatter.

The antimatter pooled in my hand and then began to spread onto the ceiling. As a deity, I could touch antimatter and even shape it without it hurting me. In the few fights, I had been in that were genuine fights and not me training my powers during the last three years I had utilized some of my destructive powers such as antimatter manipulation to defeat my foes.

As the antimatter that had been in my hands spread to the ceiling, it began to eat away at it. As soon as a hole was created in the ceiling I shapeshifted into a tiny, liquid-like form and squeezed through the hole while erasing the antimatter I had created with my mind. It was an easy task, especially since now I had taken the time to understand my abilities and hone them. I wasn't flailing about chaotically like I had been when I was younger.

On the other side of the hole, I reverted to my original form and repaired the damage I had done to the ceiling, which was now the floor I stood on, with a synergistic power from the domains of time, creation, and the subdomain of healing magic. I smiled and began to look around, taking in my surroundings.

I was standing in a grand chamber, one larger than the entryway that I had invaded earlier in the day. Off in the distance, I could see a grand door more imposing than the other doors I had seen so far. Unusually though, the ceiling wasn't that high above me merely a dozen meters up rather than dozens like it was elsewhere. That wasn't nearly the weirdest part of the chamber though.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

More so than anything else there were two especially odd things that drew my eye in this chamber. The first odd thing was that the roof was dominated by a vast conveyor belt that ferried antimatter bombs from some other chamber off in the distance until they were right above where I was. The bombs didn't drop and instead, at some point, they stopped moving and merely began to stockpile until they had formed a long line of bombs ready to be dropped on enemy heads.

The second odd thing was even stranger than the first. This chamber consisted of a long, narrow hallway but every few steps there were little nooks that contained glowing, one-way portals to strange destinations. I stopped and actually studied these portals, curiosity driving me to figure out where they led.

The places that I could see on the other sides of these portals were mostly the interiors of laboratories and factories, many of which were inside of spaceships. Some of these portals instead led to the deepest parts of palaces or other places highly critical to the infrastructure of empires. It only took me a second to realize what this place probably was, but even the possibility was enough to surprise me.

"These are portals to Technos' holy sites aren't they?" I asked inwardly, questioning the knowledge domain and the technology subdomain. My words were initially met with silence, a stunned silence at that, but a few seconds later the eerie, dispassionate voice of the technology subdomain answered me.

"They certainly appear to be... That said the only way to know for sure is to confront Technos himself and to kill him. When you do you shall gain many of the things that were his, including control over this place and all of its unique quirks and features. And of course, you shall gain control over his divine realm as well." The technology subdomain reminded me, restating some of the things that I knew I'd gain control over when I slew the remnants of Technos.

There were dozens of portals here, leading to all sorts of strange sites. The noises produced in those places was also audible to me, and hundreds of weird noises assaulted my ears all at once. I could hear the sounds of automated machinery putting together robots and other machines, the sounds of fel-experiments being conducted on unwilling guests, the noises of politicking, and even the explosive sounds of the engines of spaceships blasting through space, thanks to my divine senses.

The knowledge domain stayed silent, but at this point, I knew enough about the domain to conclude that this meant that it agreed with my guess and was just a bit surprised. It had told me about vestiges and their quirks before and it had never mentioned something like this so I had to assume that this was a bit unusual, if not totally unprecedented.

I took my first steps forward and when I did began I felt a surge of intense energy emanate from the imposing door off in the distance. There were no enemies between that door and myself and I suspected that the doorway was all that stood between myself and my target.

I began to walk and as I did I allowed myself to move at my true speed. When I did I surged towards the door, an unstoppable, impossibly fast blur of power. An instant after I allowed myself to surge forward I found myself staring at the gigantic door. Now that I was right in front of it I found myself unable to sense anything on the other side of the door, which was itself really strange.

I paused for a moment, and took a deep breath. I sensed that when I opened the door I would be beginning the next stage in this confrontation: actually encountering Technos in the flesh. I closed my eyes and focused on the reward I'd gain for taking out Technos: the second tier of influence over the death domain, an incredibly powerful domain that was absolutely necessary for me to master if I sought to become an eternal emperor who ruled over all of existence.

I steeled my nerves and I placed a hand on the door while I opened my eyes. As I opened them I watched the door not open but simply cease to exist. On the other side of the door was a thin barrier that even at a glance I could tell would allow things to enter but not leave.

In the space beyond the portal there was what appeared to be the roof of the strange factory I was within at the moment. It wasn't actually the roof, but more a space modeled after it. The air beyond the portal was ashy, and the sky beyond the portal was dark and cloudy. The floor itself was much like the floor I was currently walking on. There was also a vast array of robots at the end of the space, hundreds of meters from where I was on one end of the barrier.

The robots were all gigantic, each the size of fully grown giants at least and the sizes of fully grown dragons at most, aside from the largest dragon-bot. The single largest robotic body beyond the portal was truly enormous, it was the size of a skyscraper and made of what appeared to be solid gold but was obviously, to my divine eyes at least, something else altogether. And it was also the only robot that seemingly wasn't powered on.

The massive dragon-bot was totally still and where its eyes would have been there were no lights. The other robots were mostly still but they weren't totally inactive and they made small but noticeable movements. Where their eyes would have been there were instead flashing lights of various colors. The giant-bots also held different sorts of weapons.

I chuckled and rose a single hand, before I activated one of my light domain powers. "Disintegrating Radiance" was one of my more potent destructive abilities that wasn't actually a destructive power. Upon activating it I was able to enter the birds eye view I entered whenever I used this power and I willed my mind to hover over where the army of robots was awaiting me. I didn't think this power would destroy every single robot but I did think it'd destroy the insignificant robots who would have been distractions.

When my mind was hovering over the robots I activated my power and for a single second the dark area was illuminated by an amount of light akin to that released by a sun on a daily basis. I watched the robots as the light began to shine and when it began to intensify I watched all of them but a single robot vanish from existence. They simply faded into nothingness, utterly annihilated by my powerful ability.

Unsurprisingly the robot that remained and was unfazed by my power was the truly enormous dragon-bot that had been powered off. That said the thing did begin to power on, its eye-sockets beginning to fill with a powerful, rage-filled blue light.

I stepped through the barrier and examined the dragon-bot. A multi-part notification filled my mind's eye alerting me that I was now trapped in the area with the barrier until I killed Technos, and the second part of the notification alerted me to the fact that the dragon-bot in front of me that survived my destructive power was indeed Technos, and also that he was trapped here.

I stood an enormous distance from the very creature I had come here to hunt and kill. At last, it was time to do or die. To kill or be killed.

The dragon's large metallic head slowly began to move and turned to face me. As it did a portal appeared in front of it and a portal appeared in front of me, the two portals being obviously connected. The dragon's mouth was about to open and spew fire, but I chuckled and slowed time down by once again re-engaging my true speed.

As I did I watched the dragon's motions slow to almost a complete halt, and I merely walked through the portal and found myself face to face with the beast. The beast's speed was too slow to comprehend me in real-time and so I decided to begin this with a show of force.

I took a few steps forward until I was right in front of one of the dragon's gigantic feet and I threw a single, solid punch at the beast. As I did I slowed myself down again so that I could watch the dragon's reaction. The beast roared in pain as it was blown back, despite its utterly enormous weight, by the sheer, overwhelming force of my blow which I had thrown at my true speed. I began to grin, even as the beast managed to regain its composure even while sailing backwards.

It began to beat its gigantic wings and even while sailing backward managed to somewhat gracefully began to fly. Now the beast was in the air, and there was a sort of fury like that only a god could feel visible in its gaze. I heard the sounds of something happening within the beast's body until its enormous chest began to open up and revealed an arsenal of advanced weaponry it was now eager to unleash and attempt to destroy me with.

"And so it begins." I muttered, as I rose my staff in the direction of the robotic god.