"So, how much do you remember? Your memories should have mostly returned to you now, right?."

I nod my “head”. 'Yeah, they're all back, from early childhood to about an hour after my death. I don't remember having photographic memory though? Did you guys do something to me and enhance that?'

"Hm, ah no of course not. you have a divine spark now though and a divine name even. Of course, your memory is perfect and immutable now. How can a god have a poor memory? That simply wouldn't do at all, now uh I think I'm supposed to ask about what it is you remember. Can you tell me what your education level, job, favorite food, favorite show, things like that were to help your memories solidify a bit more."

'Hmm, I graduated college with a master’s in computer science with a focus on robotics. I was an inventor of sorts. I would invent parts or design parts that would let robots do things that were otherwise not possible without them. My favorite food? Can't really say, at one point in my life I had almost starved to death so I love all food rather equally. My favorite show. Hmmm… that's a tricky one but the anime Toriko? Maybe Yu Yu Hakusho? My favorite color was gold, I preferred to build things on my own rather than simply buy them from a market. In my last life, I did build mine and my wife's house. WAIT my wife… can… can I have her by my side here, please?!'

"Oh, about that. that would be a deal you have to make with the god of your previous universe. I can contact him for you if you'd like but most gods won't just give up a passed soul for free. You will need to be strong enough to trade something with them. I'm sorry but this one is out of my hands. Oh right, before I forget, if she’s still alive you’ll have to wait for her for a little bit. You don’t want to kill your wife just to bring her here, do you? I don’t see her being exactly okay with that one.”

‘That’s a challenge for the future then, I want to truly be able to spend an eternity with her. Okay right, so you said the only way to expand my domain is to gain faith by creating life and using that faith to grow my divine spark and eventually merge with it, right? Why don’t I merge with my divine spark now, and let it grow and develop slowly while it’s part of me so I don’t ever feel awkward having it?’

“Hmm, that’s… A good question actually, hold on let me check with the higher-ups real quick.

…

“Ah, here we go! Wow you must have had one heck of an intuition when you were alive huh? You're dead on with that one, they say that nobody is really allowed to tell you nor would anybody want to tell you to do exactly what you just asked about. Yes, you can, in fact it’s a closely hidden secret. Most gods that are promoted from a soul like you simply ignore the divine spark until they absolutely have to work on it apparently. They said that this will limit you later but didn’t say how. But they said you should absolutely merge as soon as you can, they wouldn’t tell me anything specific. All they said was that you should absolutely merge earlier and that it will only be good for you to do so.”

‘Hmmm okay, but who is “they”?’

“They are the high ranked gods, see god have ranks and each rank is a measure of the god’s faith and overall power. Gods don’t need faith to survive, but divine energy is hard to gather and replenish naturally. By having followers that pray to, your divine energy will feed on the faith and grow much faster. This will drastically increase the rate of growth and regeneration where divine energy is involved. Anywhooo I got sidetracked, ranks. Ranks are important, and even in a specific rank, there are higher and lower level gods. Like a master martial artist, there are different levels of masters.

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The ranks are as follows from weakest to strongest. Primitive god, spoken god, recorded god, worshiped god, true god, worldly god, universal god, and finally Creator god. Each name is a rough description of the milestone needed to accumulate enough faith and divinity. As an example, you are so low grade you aren’t even on this system. To become a primitive god, there need to be whispers about you in the early stages of a sentient race. They will pray to you in the form of cave murals and occasional carving. Some will even ask for blessings. The people are primitive and worship you in their own primitive ways.

So then some of the creator gods are in contact with me and will help me to answer your questions and guide you. That is the “they” I was referring to.”

‘Okay, good to know. Is there any way for me to communicate with them? If so, how, if not, why not?’

“I told you already, your soul cannot handle contact with gods yet. Once you merge with your divine spark and reach the rank of Primitive god then you can interact with other gods but only up to a weak spoken god. There is a natural suppression that occurs to lower-rank gods when they get near higher-rank gods. Right now you would be shredded and scattered across the void with only your divine spark left to be consumed or given to some other soul. So no you can’t talk to other gods just yet. Now then, since we have all of that out of the way how about you create some stuff, yeah? This dark nothingness is pretty dull, and can you at least put time in place. It feels stuffy in here without any temporal flow.”

‘Okay, I will, or rather I would if someone would tell me how. Just know if I had eyes right now I would be staring daggers!’

“Ah right, damn it, I always forget something important. Okay, to create you need to let divine energy from your spark flow through your soul and enforce your will. You should imagine a rough outline and the divinity from your divine spark will fill in the blanks to simply make it happen. Only if you have enough divinity though, also, the fewer details you plan for, the more divinity it will spend in order to fill in those gaps. So before you create carefully plan out even the most minute details so that you won’t spend too much divine energy.”

‘Okay, that makes sense, also why can you curse but I can’t? Do you not have divine power at all or something? Also no need to plan, in my old life I imagined this kind of thing quite often. I know what kind of world I want to build, and what kind of path I want the inhabitants of my universe to go down.’

“Oh, great! Do you know what kind of race you want? Are you going to go with humans or something less conventional? It’s rare for a god to just know what they want to do for creation, I’m looking forward to it!”

‘Race, that’s… Hmmmmm, race, race, race. Ah! I know what I want to do it’s this old concept that I fiddled around with a lot in my last life. I think it will be rather unique, to say the least. First, let’s go ahead and define time, space seems to be inherent in the domain so that’s already set. I want it to not affect the state of the world too greatly so I will set the time corrosion down to about 0.1 as compared to my old universe where it was a full 10.’

As I finish thinking this out, I will the thought to be done and I feel my divine spark quake as another ripple spreads out from me and I feel something in the domain change. I can feel the gentle flow of time affecting everything now. I smile satisfactorily and then pause for a moment to focus inwardly on my thoughts.

'The only thing I really want to do differently from my old universe is magic. Well, that and the afterlife system. Hmm since you said I should think everything out then…'

I focus my mind deeply and send forth a wave of will that my divine spark takes and puts into action. Soon my entire domain is filled with hydrogen. I feel tired after this, after all, I just put all of the laws of my universe into place for now and created matter to form stars and planets en masse. Next, I focus on my body. I decided to simply make one with the same design as the race I have in mind. I forgot about the old design entirely. It seemed cliche somehow now that I had my race all designed and picked out.

‘So, Miss assistant, can I speed up time in here, or do I have to wait the old-fashioned way for everything to develop? Honestly, I’m fine with either, the more time I have the more I can adjust to my new abilities I guess?’

“Well I mean you couuuld speed up time but I don’t recommend it considering how much you just did. You don’t want to expend all of your divinity and end up dying before even becoming a primitive god do you? Just wait for your divinity to build back up for a few hundred years before you fast forward that much. Before any more creation I’d wait about a thousand to two thousand years, that is before you have some followers to increase your divinity regeneration.”

‘Ah darn, okay then, I’ll do afterlife-based things after a little while. I guess in the next three hundred years of waiting I’ll work on fusing with my divine spark then? How do I do that anyway?’