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.
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.