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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.