The second part of my plan related not to me, but to the enemy. Now that my supply lines were secure — or would be soon — I needed to figure out a way of destroying the enemy’s supply lines. As a god, Deia was under the same constraints as myself, but I had a small issue with targeting her directly as I didn’t know where she was. I couldn’t surround her territory with a wall and prevent life from entering, nor could I begin to plan for such an eventuality. The most I could do was target her believers and cut off that mana source.

That was assuming that Deia was indeed a dungeon-turned-god, and not an ascended human or some other nonsense.

I wasn’t some savant and didn’t have any real knowledge of how I could destroy the religious people's food, water, and shelter all at once. It nagged at me that my solution would have to be epic in proportion. With only sixty-odd creatures, I didn’t have the numbers to repel the entire human race. Even if my creatures were high-tier, I doubted I would be able to push back thousands or tens of thousands of coordinated soldiers. Especially ones motivated by a holy crusade.

As I thought, my attention gravitated toward Christina. She had shed her paladin armor ages ago and was curled up on a loveseat beside her fireplace. The sun’s setting light trickled in through the windows and merged with the cheery flames crackling in the hearth to wash the room in a golden glow. A cup of tea shed steam in lazy undulations on the end table as the young woman flipped the page in her book with a content smile.

Over her shoulder, three dozen extradimensional eyes scanned the pages of the book with single-minded intensity. Cortana the Eyelit Effigy and boss of my second floor flexed her upper branches, releasing additional hydrogen gas into the huge balloons supporting her weight. She bobbed up, using her free-floating roots to drag her main body just a hair closer to her charge.

"No Cortana. That's not what it's saying at all," Christina shook her head and flipped back several pages. She pointed at a particular passage and read it out. "'Inevitably, love is going to lead to as much sorrow and regret as it does joy,' right? Here Deia imparted upon the Seven a great warning. That love and hate are just emotions, and chasing love for the sake of it can lead to as much suffering as suffering itself."

Cortana’s branches rippled and fourteen more eyes joined the investigation of the book. She must have said something as Christina fell silent like she was on a phone conversation I was not a part of. Idly, I realized that Cortana’s conversations were the single thing in my domain that I didn’t have implicit knowledge of. For better or worse, her words were private.

“That’s just it, you can’t be so pessimistic,” Christina flipped to another page. “Deia does not mean ‘don't love’. She means that how you deal with the bad part of love determines your character. She is saying that we should love, but at the same time be cognizant that our love doesn't lead to more harm than good. You need to also remember that Deia is is there to listen if we slip and need help to rise back up.”

Christina’s face scrunched at something my eldritch tree said.

“Really? I didn’t think I prayed that often.”

She sighed as Cortana’s titanic form swayed above her. With gentle hands, Christina closed the book and set it on the mantle of the fireplace then moved to her bedroom.

“It’s complicated, Cortana. Deia might not always respond, but she hears every prayer.”

She slipped into a shift and slid under the covers of her bed. Dusk had fallen, leaving the room feeling cold and gray in stark contrast to how the sun had warmed things mere minutes prior.

“Not necessarily. Maybe it simply isn’t the right time to send me a message. Or perhaps I am on the right path and just don’t know it. Deia sees all that is and all that will be. It is the height of hubris to think I know better than the Goddess.”

She paused, then rolled over clutching the blanket tight to her breast.

“Well maybe Soulwrest isn’t a god, or maybe they are. Doesn’t matter. I trust Deia.”

I studied the girl as she fell asleep. Honestly, I preferred her assessment. Even if I was a god by this world’s standards, I didn’t feel up to the monumental responsibility of becoming one. Maybe it was a cop-out to shrug and say ‘I don’t know’, but for now, it was the path I was most comfortable with.

Regardless, this conversation showed just how ingrained Deia’s religion was in this world. The book Christina had been reading from was a worn copy of what I assumed was this world’s bible. It contained all the typical vague drivel that could be interpreted a thousand different ways, and I had lost interest after skimming through the first twenty pages. I had hunkered down and read it all — to learn of my enemy if nothing else — but the thing was useless all the way through. Great for motivation and ego-boosting, but it made no mention of where Deia was located, the size of her clergy, or any mention of the average level I would face.

That was fine but daunting. An ultimate solution to the religious humans would come in time, but for now, it would be more conducive to focus on other things, rather than spin my wheels endlessly. Perhaps once I saw my next creature choice upgrade something would click.

For now, I had a far more immediate problem to solve. It stemmed from my stationary nature, and how I could only exert my influence on areas within myself. Such a limitation would be trivial to exploit, and that would be an embarrassing way to lose. In theory, I had some mobility with my Treant-based minions — as they could leave my territory for short bursts with an infusion of mana — but using them in such a manner was untenable in the long term. Besides, I would need to reach out to the human cities eventually, and they were too far for the hundred minutes offered by [Fractured Augmentation] to be feasible.

The best solution would be to figure out a way to speed up my growth. Besides the physical limitations of being stationary, I would eventually need to locate and destroy dungeons to fuel [Chaos Untold]. A task that would require that I expand across vast distances regardless.

Currently, I only used mana to communicate, which was a criminal waste for a substance that had such vast potential. As far as I could tell, mana was a crystallization of the soul. A material that could be shaped and molded to any purpose as long as there was a will strong enough to guide it into its new mold. If my hunch was correct, I should be able to burn mana to increase the rate by which I generated cilia.

I turned inwards and grabbed a droplet of mana. It pulsed in my grip, compliant and eager to be shaped. Unlike artifacts or souls themselves, the mana didn’t give me the sense that it was alive. It just was. A manifestation of energy no different from electricity or heat.

I brought the mana to the edge of my core and infused it with my will. A desire for it to transform into a fresh strand of cilia that I could control as my own. The mana boiled, burning in an instant into a vapor that coalesced into...nothing. Not to be deterred, I burned several more droplets only for the result to repeat itself.

Perhaps, I was thinking about this all wrong. On earth, creating matter out of nothing was impossible, and while it was possible to convert between energy and matter, it didn’t have the best conversion rate. If I assumed that the mana worked as I intended it, I should have a new cilia but it would be so small as to be entirely undetectable. An atom or two at most and beyond my ability to detect without some serious time and concentration.

If the mass-energy equivalence held, then that had all sorts of interesting implications if I ever decided to research fission, but what interested me most was that it implied that my monsters were actually energy-based beings. They manifested out of nothing with much more mass than they should have through a process that used none of my mana. Either they were bringing mass into this world through a portal or somesuch or their forms weren't physical in a way that confounded my senses.

I sighed, giving myself a proverbial slap as I noticed myself falling into a tangent. I wrote down the idea for future research on the wall in my core room and set it aside. I would have time to delve down that train of thought in the future.

I had to be efficient.

If I couldn’t create cilia out of nothing then perhaps I could use it to coax my cilia to grow. I grabbed another droplet of the glittering stuff and moved it down and out of one of my cilia. It started boiling as it left the safety of my crystal. I struggled to keep it from vaporizing as all my cilia in the area attempted to drag the mana back to my core for safekeeping.

I willed the fiber to grow as I did all the time in the edge of my domain, but this time I shoved the rapidly diminishing droplet to it as a fuel source. The cilia sucked in the mana, but instead of funneling it to my core, the mana got stuck at the tip. Engorged with power the fiber twitched, shedding sparks as it lengthened at a phenomenal rate. As fast as it had begun, the transformation ended when the mana was consumed.

I examined the lengthened cilia with interest. Something fishy was happening here as I had used the same amount of mana as before and yet the strand had lengthened. By a significant 122 centimeters no less. It was far better than I had hoped for and solved my mobility issues hands down. If I burned every drop of mana I acquired, it would halt my level-ups but would increase my rate of expansion by several orders of magnitude. I could further increase the rate of cilia production if I installed a cilia razor in front of the growing strand. That would effectively double the number of cilia produced with only a minor decrease in tactile sensation.

Just this wasn’t enough to become huge, however. If I wasn’t smart about how I expanded I would quickly get shafted by the square-cube-law. No matter how fast I could summon cilia or how much mana I shoved into the fibers if I expanded in a sphere around me like Rockwood had, then it would take years to subsume all the human lands.

The solution for this was to go down a dimension. Instead of a huge volume, I would form a sheet of cilia only a couple of feet high. Humans were terrestrial creatures, and there was no need to have control of the sky or the depths of the earth. That was unless my upgrade options screwed me.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Since my Treant-based creatures could leave my domain for short periods, I didn’t even need to make my domain contiguous. If instead of making a vast sheet, I created a grid, my Treants could hop in and out of my domain with ease. It would cost more mana to maintain this type of infrastructure once combat began but until then it would optimize my mana usage. Especially with all the extra mana being funneled my way these days.

< You have received a Prayer: +5 mana >

< You have received a Prayer: +13 mana >

< You have received a Prayer: +8 mana >

Humans, after all, were an impatient species.

----------------------------------------

Far to the west, a human male and female snuck around the back of an old farmhouse. Peeling paint on sunbleached timbers served as a strange backdrop to the richly adorned mansion a mere hundred paces to the north. The pair froze just before rounding the corner. On the other side, a line of beaten men and women stumbled into the barn under the supervision of a bored taskmaster. From the pair’s expression, this was what they had been waiting for.

On the surface, the pair appeared human. Their disguise was near perfect, and it would take the scrutiny of a truly monstrous being to identify what — if anything — about the pair was unnatural. Their eyes didn’t glow, nor did they possess strangely colored skin, or any other deformities that would reveal their alien nature. The only apparent abnormality was the strength of their souls. A feature to be praised as it placed them as paragons of their species.

It was only when observing the pair’s mannerisms were their peculiarities evident. The male crouched — frozen at the edge of the barn — and stared into the wood in front of him with a glazed expression as if his mortal eyes could pierce the old wood. Despite the lack of a clear line of sight, his gaze followed the taskmaster’s incessant pacing with barely restrained rage as the other man corralled the slaves into the barn.

“Come on, ya lumps of Troll dung. Get!” The taskmaster cracked his whip, drawing a single red lash onto the hindmost slave.

Kellar’s nostrils flared, breathing in the red scent of blood in the air. Black memories surfaced and suddenly every thought of stealth vanished like a cup of beer in a bachelor’s fist.

Not even fully aware of his own actions, Kellar rounded the bend and hurtled at the taskmaster. He used no skills but didn’t need to as the enhancements of his tier alone were enough to appear as a blur to the onlookers.

Before anyone could react, Kellar grabbed the taskmaster by the throat and slammed his knee into the man’s face. Skin ruptured, and bone shattered as Kellar’s knee didn’t slow at all as it passed through the man’s skull. A wave of clear fluid and gelatinous brain matter splattered the side of the barn and covered several of the slaves.

“Wait!” Gella hissed, catapulting out from her hiding spot just as several slaves wailed at getting doused in viscera.

A pained rictus revealed Kellar’s teeth as he rode the corpse to the ground. His right fist lashed out, puncturing the abdominal cavity and pulverizing the hidden vertebrae to dust against the packed soil. He pulled his fist out and slammed his other fist into the man’s chest. Ribs snapped in rapid-fire detonations as the meat ruptured, scattering blood, bone fragments, and internal organs across the packed earth.

Precognition slammed into Kellar’s psyche like a wrecking ball as his God’s gift informed him of a blurred entity approaching from behind. He snarled, kicking the corpse to the side and unleashing a blind punch behind him. The air sang a warbling cry as his fist passed harmlessly over his assailant’s shoulder. Before he could jump back and make some distance, the form slammed into him and...

Hugged him.

“Hey now,” Gella’s familiar voice whispered in his ear, both of her arms like iron bands around him, trapping his arms against her chest. “You’re okay. Just breathe Kellar. He can’t hurt you anymore and you are never going to be a slave again.”

Kellar’s pained grimace relaxed as sanity returned. The sticky warmth of blood covered him and had somehow oozed into his boots. He relaxed, leaning into Gella’s embrace and letting the nutty fragrance of her hair calm him. A single shiver of suppressed emotion rocked his frame, but he pushed it down.

“Come on,” Gella whispered, releasing her vice-like grip when she felt him stop fighting. “We’ve got a job to do.”

“Yeah,” Kellar hoarsely said, relaxing his closed fists and taking just another second to collect himself.

He could feel the gaze of the collared through his God’s gift. If he focused, he could picture each of their faces and count the hairs on their heads. It was a potent power, divine in nature, and yet it had no mercy. The unnatural clarity impressed upon him his people's silent terror. Not at their situation, or the fall of their taskmaster, but at him. It branded terrible memories of how the elderly were frantically shushing the young and urging the entire group back into the dark of the barn. Backing away from him.

Gella smirked up at him. “Feeling frisky, eh?”

“Huh?” Kellar blinked, realizing in an instant that both his numb hands rested on her chest. He flinched, drawing his hands back as if from a fire. “I d-didn’t me—”

“Gotchu again!” Gella burst out into a clear beautiful laugh at his horrified expression. She slapped him playfully on the shoulder and gestured towards the dark barn. “Well? Would you like to do the honors or me?”

“I...I can do it,” Kellar muttered, shooting her a frustrated glance. His True Sight pinged and he noted that the slaves had closed the barn doors and that there was a commotion near the ornate mansion. “Bloody hell girl. You need to stop doing that. I’m twice your age.”

“Pff, I’m three years younger than you.”

“Doesn’t feel that way...” Kellar grumbled, but his heart wasn’t in it. Gella truly was a gift from God.

“Cool beans, old man,” said the girl in question. She blew him a raspberry and skipped down the path toward the mansion. “I’ma take care of the guards who saw your theatrics.”

Midstep, Gella disappeared. It wasn’t a blur, or a movement too fast to be seen, but an activation of invisibility so powerful that even Kellar’s True Sight could hardly pierce it. He spent another second scanning the threat and concluded that none would be able to stand up to a tier-five assassin. They wouldn’t even know she was coming.

Satisfied, he glanced down only for the tiny smile that had crept onto his face to freeze as he noticed the carnage at his feet. It was a gruesome sight with all the gross bodily fluids leaking everywhere. His enhanced sense of smell hated it. Christina had said something about a ‘generalized density increase’, though all that meant to him was that shit still smelled like shit only it felt like it had been stuffed up his nose.

With a disgusted sniff, Kellar jumped back a dozen feet to make some distance between himself and the corpse.

He would confront his people soon, but he had an image to maintain. With a reverential touch, he placed his hand on a glass shield stitched to the shoulder of his tunic. Another gift from God, and further proof that even a material as fragile as glass could be made indestructible through God’s will.

Kellar smiled, closing his eyes and focusing to access the greatest gift of all. He breathed deeply. In, and out. Slow and steady.

Seconds passed like hours as a bead of sweat trickled down his brow. It seeped into his eye, stinging, but Kellar refused to budge. He had waited all his life for this moment and he would get it even if he had to mediate an hour for just a glimpse.

A strange blue box blurred into his vision through his closed eyes. He suppressed his rush of excitement lest it banish the heavenly box.

With devout patience, Kellar opened his eyes and beheld his status screen. He located a particular skill and — like a child — poked at it to activate it.

[Clean]

A rush washed over him as the magic activated. Blood dried and peeled off him in layers as all the oils that had built up over the last few days evaporated to nothing. Within seconds he was completely devoid of all grime. At tier five, the skill was strong enough to clean his clothes as well, and if he had any hair on his head it would have done that too.

“I’m ready,” he murmured to himself, examining the huddled slaves through the closed door of the barn. With a huff, he stepped up to the rickety barn doors and nudged them open.

“Be not afraid, my fellows in chains.” He intoned, each word slow and clear from endless rehearsal. “I was once like you, slaving away in the fields only to receive the barest scraps in return. Unjustly imprisoned since birth for no other reason than it was convenient. You must only look at my throat to see the remnant of my oppression.”

“So strong...” A soft voice, quickly shushed, came from the corner.

“Hush Ashley!” said the eldest slave. A matted gray beard covered his downturned lips as he glared at Kellar. “Please leave ‘fore we get punished for your actions, escaped slave. Let us all leave here safe and sound, Goddess willing.”

Kellar smiled benevolently at the young woman who spoke then turned to the elder and breathed out. Even in the dim light of the barn, every person could see the tiny vortices his exhalation induced in the air. A sign of his tier.

“I was once like you, shackled not just to my masters but to a false Goddess as well.” Gasps came from the gathering, but Kellar bulled on. Speaking over them in a tone that brooked no interruption. “I believed with all my heart that Goddess willing I would one day be free. I believed that Goddess willing my prayers would be answered. That Goddess willing I would become free of the accursed collar to gain access to her gifts. Lies! Deia never answered me when I needed her most. She never answers any of our pleas.”

Kellar paused, letting his True Sight calm him back into a state of tranquility.

“Then my eyes were opened and I saw the truth. A new God smiled down upon me and Spoke. No more shall there be master and slave they said and I heard them. Man shall be equal to man they said, and I listened. I have come here not to murder your taskmaster, or make your lives harder, but to invite you to be free. Away from pain and servitude. Away from the constant chaff of silver. I invite you to come with me and live in peace with your family. To, at long last, pull up your interface and enjoy the God-given right of magic.”

With a far quieter tone that had the slaves leaning forward to hear, he continued. “I invite you to a land... where your prayers will be answered at last.”

“And how do you plan to free us from the collars?” The elder blustered. “What? Do you happen to have a bishop hidin’ in that utopia of yurs?”

“I am neither bishop nor priest and I shall never be either. I scorn such labels. I am simply a man who believes in—”

A shadow manifested into the shape of a woman at Kellar’s side and everyone in the barn gasped. Kellar sighed, dodging the casual slap to his butt as his partner in crime reappeared.

“Oi!” Gella said, throwing him an offended look. “What did you tell them? It feels like a funeral in here.”

“I simply venerated the Lord—”

“Come on old man, how many times have I told you to chill? Oh!” Gella interrupted his stiff response as she noticed one of the slaves. “Is that you Ashley? It is, isn’t it!”

The small girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen peered up at Gella through her bangs in confusion. “Do I...know you?”

“Nope, but I knew your brother,” Gella replied with a cheerful grin.

“Gella please,” Kellar said. “There is a proper order to th—”

“Nevermind that,” Gella waved him off and stepped up to the central elder with a predatory grin. He gulped, his eyes flicking to the sides in fear, but he held his ground.

“Sup sister,” Gella said, her tone uncharacteristically deep and threatening. She held up her right hand where a stygian ring glinted darkly in the limited light of the barn. “Wanna be free?”