After looking at the notification, I realized that I had survived the Ritual of Apotheosis. I had also apparently joined the System Lord Pantheon. More than likely, I was in that pantheon because of the system which I had been given. It was probably created by one of the gods in the pantheon. Hopefully, I would find out more about the pantheon soon.

Either way, I was a god. I couldn’t resist doing a little jig, which was quite interesting considering I was dancing in my draconic form. Wondering what changes had occurred, I asked the system to display my information sheet.

image [https://i.imgur.com/2gNQFWU.png]

One of the first things I noticed was that I had some attributes to spend, which I immediately spent. I threw every point into my Intelligence. While I was annoyed that there was an uneven number, I was quite pleased to see that every one of my other attributes had been raised to the normal maximum a mortal could possess. My intelligence, however, was far beyond what morals could possess, even after gaining possession of an artifact or special magic item.

As for all the powers I possessed, I couldn’t imagine how I was considered the weakest god in the world. Even though I was ecstatic that I was a god, I was also offended that every single god in the world was more powerful than me. My disappointment didn’t last long when I considered that I was also probably the youngest creature to ever become a god, at least one that wasn’t born as a god.

I was amazed by the new abilities. I now had a divine body that didn’t need to eat, drink, sleep, or breath. I could even charm or frighten people with my divine presence. While those were amazing, another power was even more spectacular. It was the domain sense.

If there was a large amount of death in an area, I could sense it now. I could see and hear everything that happened around the site where there was death. Unfortunately, it was sort of like hearing a lot of conversations in a crowded stadium at the same time. The closer or louder the conversation, the better I could sense it. The same was true for the domain sense.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work quite as well as twilight. What I picked up from that domain was creatures who were slowly dying. Weirdly, I could also sense distant locations that were experiencing twilight at those times. It was a strange combination. Of course, most of the time it was just background noise until I decided to pay attention.

As for the immunities and resistances, they were the cherry on top of the ice cream. If someone didn’t have a magic weapon, they could attack me forever and I would never get injured. Of course, I doubted that was completely true. A ballista was a nonmagical weapon, but I was pretty sure that it could injure me.

My spells had also changed. The biggest change was that I could cast my domain spells as often as I desired. I could also allow my clerics to learn those spells. I could even allow them to learn cleric features based off of my domains. It was incredible. All of these factors combined with my increased health points made me feel like a powerhouse among gods, even if I was the weakest god in existence.

Another change was a deeper understanding of faith and believers. Since gods depended on believers for faith, as a lesser deity, I gained a greater understanding of how they affected each other. For example, even though my information sheet said that I had 471 believers, I also knew that those believers could be separated into categories. I decided to test this theory. Sure enough, after clicking on the believers, I was given more information.

image [https://i.imgur.com/t5jwvTQ.png]

After looking at my current faith points and remembering how many I possessed before, I realized that the ascension had used up 100,000 faith points. Despite using so many faith points, I still had almost that many faith points still left. However, after thinking about it for a moment, I had to chuckle and once again thank my lucky stars that I had been born a kobold. Every single one of my kobold followers was at least a devout believer. The only exception were the seven kobolds who must have arrived at Sanctuary while I was gone.

As for faith points, they could be used in a lot of ways. Gods used faith like currency. Faith could even be used to supplement magic spells or even use faith points instead of magic points. Faith to make changes in their divine domain. There were just as many ways to use faith as there were ways to spend gold.

Despite the many ways faith could be used, three methods of using faith were the most important. The first was that faith could be used to upgrade a god’s divine rank. It was the fuel used to make the changes. If I gained enough faith, I could use that faith to advance to a rank two god. The second main usage of faith was empowering the god’s clerics with power.

Unlike wizards who memorized their spells or sorcerers whose magic was part of their bloodline, clerics gained power through faith. It was true that clerics could gain the ability to cast divine spells without needing to worship a specific god. However, most theologians agreed that this ability was still granted to the cleric by a divine being. For example, maybe a greater god or an overgod, who no longer needed worshippers, gave them the ability.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Often, the cleric might not even know they are calling upon a divine being. They might just think they are calling upon the power of nature.Instead, they would be calling upon a greater god who had actually merged with their domain. When a cleric needed to “memorize” a spell, the gods would provide the faith their followers had provided to learn the magic spell. The more clerics a god possessed, the more faith points the god would need to use to answer the cleric’s prayers. Each time a cleric used one of the cleric class features, their god would have to spend faith points.

The third way was the afterlife that many gods promised to their followers. If they promised a heaven for their followers, they had to use faith points. The more followers that were in that heaven, the less “miracles” the god would be able to produce on the material plane.

Most gods had thousands of believers with superficial or passing faith. They might have some faithful followers, but probably only had a few devout believers. One reason for this was because the better a person’s life, the less likely they were to need a god. However, kobolds spent their entire lives serving their dragon masters. They toiled away long hours every day to dig up precious gems and ores to offer to their god. This automatically made the kobolds devout believers. Because of the kobolds, I had been able to gather enough faith in just a couple of months that other gods would need years, or even decades, to accumulate.

After ascending to become a minor god, I realized several ways that I could use faith points. One way to use them was to bestow additional spells or powers. Another was to bestow my favor, much like I had gained from several of the Pantheon of Darkness. Of course, the stronger the favor or blessing, the more faith points it would cost. In fact, most gods were reluctant to bestow their favors upon mortals. Faith points were valuable and could be used in many ways. Also, the god’s faith points would be used every time the person used the favor.

Although I hadn’t really given it much thought, I realized that was the reason why I had lost several of the favors that had been bestowed upon me by the gods. I hadn’t really cared at the time because the benefits of the titles rarely helped me. Once I became a demigod, the gods must not have wanted to use their faith to support another god.

What actually interested me was the reason why I was allowed to keep the other divine favors. Who exactly bestowed those titles upon me? Was it the system? Was it the Planar Will? I didn’t like the feeling of not knowing. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I sighed and dismissed useless questions to the back of my mind.

All gods had a domain of power that defined their role as a god. Mine were the God of Death and the God of Twilight. I could only assume that I had there had been no God of Twilight before and that when I ascended to become a god, my twilight bloodline had allowed me to create a new domain, or at least one that wasn’t already claimed. I had also somehow become a god of kobolds.

I was confused by the fact that I had become a god of kobolds for several reasons. One reason was because kobolds already had a god. Although it was true that he hadn’t been heard from in years. Another reason was that kobolds viewed dragons as gods. Was my becoming a god of the kobolds going to cause a problem for me where dragons were concerned? Also, why didn’t I have a domain for kobolds? I had a domain for my other two titles. Maybe I needed to gain more kobold followers or wait until I could claim that domain. Maybe there was a limit on the number of domains a god could possess at each divine level.

Either way, I needed to think of a way to increase the number of my followers, especially among kobolds. Aftering discovering just how amazing kobolds were as believers, I definitely needed to invest in improving the God of Kobolds title. Being able to convert kobolds into draconic kobolds would be my biggest advantage. With my improved pool of health points, I could easily convert hundreds of kobolds every week.

However, even though I was now technically a god, I didn’t have a divine domain. Therefore, if I died, I would probably stay dead. While it is possible that some of my believers might eventually manage to resurrect me, I doubted it would be anytime soon. This was especially true since I didn’t have a single cleric among their ranks as yet. In fact, that was probably one of the first things I needed to do when I returned to Sanctuary.

After that, I needed to think of a way to gain followers among the other races. While it was true that I could gain an amazing amount of faith just from the kobolds, one reason I was able to do this was because these followers were in my city. If I tried to gain followers among the other kobold tribes who had a dragon as their god, I wouldn’t gain nearly as much faith. I also needed to find a way to use not only kobolds, but the other races as well, to increase my power as a god somehow.

What I needed the most was believers, faith points, and souls. Because of this, I needed to give potential followers something that would prove beneficial to both of us in the long term, even if it cost me a lot in the short term. However, I also needed to be careful not to cross any lines that would make me the enemy of another god.

One of the first gifts I had considered giving my followers was a contingent Death Ward spell since it wouldn’t cost much to give them such a favor. In the future, the next time they “died,” they would instead only be critically injured instead. However, if someone was saved from certain death, but left with only a sliver of their life, more than likely, they wouldn’t live long anyway.

The believer would probably die again almost immediately. Whatever killed them the first time would just end up killing them again. As for this gift, it was even more useless to the clerics and necromancers who were likely to believe in the god of death. Many of them would be able to cast the spell upon themselves once they grew strong enough. They might even possess a magic item that would have the same results.

I started searching my memories trying to find something I could use. Considering all the fantasy books, the comic books, light novels, manga, and anime I had watched or read, I should be able to come up with something. Finally, I remembered a certain serialized novel I had read. Considering who my followers would be, I realized there was one certain serialized novel that I read that would work, although with a few modifications.