The sluglike liches continued to crawl towards me, moving quite slowly. At first they were silent as they oozed towards me, leaving behind a viscous trail, but after they noticed that I had turned to face them they began to quietly murmur words of praise and devotion. They also radiated an air of zealotry.
In my experience the undead tended to be highly fanatical. Of all of the various sorts of creatures I had met to date they were in all likelihood the most innately zealous, aside from maybe angels. Though I hadn't spent much time with angels directly my powers and domain-senses allowed me to understand that the thousands of angels I had recruited to my side and instilled with my power were in almost every case extremely pious entities.
I was fond of angels as well as the undead. Both groups were made up of surprisingly powerful individuals with simple, amenable values that suited my purposes quite well.
Sombra watched the undead that oozed in my direction and she shuddered. I could understand that reaction. The undead liches were quite a sight, especially since many of my other undead had come from humanoid bodies, or in some cases the bodies of noble insects like spiders. To see a deceased slug ambling in your direction is off-putting. That said though they were off-putting they were also powerful creatures.
The greed demons were powerful creatures in life and to be reanimated as an undead by me was often empowering. The pair of demons I had opted to reanimate were now filled with even more potent mystical energy than they had been filled with in life and an even sharper hatred of life than they had previously possessed. When the creatures finally reached me they bowed before me and placed themselves at my mercy. I ignored them for now and turned to face Sombra.
"Sombra... The time has come for another apotheosis." I told the demoness of shadows and darkness. These words intrigued her and she looked at me expectantly.
I was on the verge of becoming an intermediate god. That was the next major upgrade to my powers. Long ago I had quietly theorized that each upgrade to the next overall tier of the divine hierarchy would bring with it an ever greater upgrade to my power. I knew that I was not far from finding out.
The only domain I still needed to acquire the second tier of influence over was the domain of chaos. It was exciting to be so close to becoming an even greater deity, one with further reach and with further power than a lesser god, my current level of power, could even imagine. In fact becoming an intermediate god had become my most immediate goal. I was determined to become even more powerful than I currently was.
In order to faciliate this improvement to my powers I quietly closed my eyes and began to upgrade my own existing abilities.
The first thing I did to improve my own powers was improve my knowledge. To do that I designed a number of new knowledge based abilities, both giving myself actual knowledge and improving my ability to share knowledge to my worshipers. This turned out to be easier than I had dared think it would be.
I swiftly built new "Intuition" based abilities which gave me encyclopedic knowledge of a wealth of subjects, ranging from alchemy to torture, to technology, and more. I also built new powers that made it easier for me to give knowledge to my worshipers, knowing that such a power would help me recruit scholars and allow me to begin to establish myself quite fully and quite truly as a god of knowledge.
During this time I busied myself by ordering my demons to begin to fortify the city I had taken over. Once that was done I ordered my machines to return to the city of their birth. Finally Sombra and I went back to Htrae so that I could plunge a city into anarchy where it'd be easiest to do so: a mortal world without magic.
Hours after I began designing new abilities for myself and taking on a series of important tasks that felt like busy work I found myself sitting in the forest not far from where I first entered Htrae. Sombra was sitting in my lap, in a new form I had designed for her to help her blend in on this world.
Sombra's new appearance was that of a fair skinned human woman with vivid red hair. She was dressed in a comfortable outfit made up of jeans and a loose shirt that was too big for her. I idly ran a finger through her hair and she signed in contentment.
At this moment Sombra was perfectly happy. I knew that. I knew why. It was because she was both obsessed and in love, or rather as in love as a demon could be, with me. And right now she didn't know that I was still working. She thought that she and I were spending time together. That was a lie I didn't mind her believing.
I had one arm wrapped around the demoness and I was actually genuinely enjoying this particular moment. I wasn't exactly the most warm or affectionate sort so intimacy was not something I experienced often. Sombra was cool to the touch, as she was still a demoness of shadows and darkness.
The lithe woman rested her head on my chest, enjoying the sensation of my muscles. She felt safe and secure for the moment, extremely unusual sensations for a demoness, especially one of envy, to feel.
"Master this is... quite nice." She said, speaking freely. I chuckled and nodded even as I bent down to kiss her hair. It smelled like the forest we were in. Had Sombra not already been in love with me my kiss would have made her fall for me, but since her heart was already mine the kiss was just a kiss. Sombra sighed in response to my actions, the sound airy and relaxed.
Right now the demoness seemed quite well-behaved and not at all evil. In fact though when I had first met Sombra we met as enemies she quietly became one of my most loyal servants and worshipers, and though she hadn't given up evil or renounced it it's true that most of her recent evil actions have taken place outside of my direct supervision. That said I fully intended to use Sombra and to see her behave evilly. She was a part of my plan to plunge a city into anarchy.
The demoness got up and turned to look at me. Her disguise as a human had piercing blue eyes and she stared at me coyly. I could see a mischievous glint in her gaze, and I could sense what she wanted. When she moved to kiss me I allowed it, welcomed it even. As she and I spent time in the forest my mind was at work in many different ways all at once.
In creating all sorts of new knowledge based powers I had unintentionally allowed myself to undergo a limited sort of apotheosis. My mind was racing even while my physical form spent time with Sombra, one of the most fanatical of my servants.
I had greatly enhanced my own knowledge and understanding of everything from primitive examples of technology, to biology of species found on other worlds. I had also given myself knowledge of all manner of powerful mystical spells, and even knowledge of tons of sorts of buildings I could create. My mind was running a kilometer a second, as I processed incredible amounts of information.
It was at moments like this that I fully realized both how different I was from mortals and how much enjoyment that brought me. I couldn't imagine having as little power or knowledge as they did. I was months old and yet I had the memories of events from almost a million years ago, and I had the power to bring entire planets to ruin over the course of a few minutes if I were so inclined. I was months old and if I wanted to wage war on a galaxy I bet I could win.
I did not particularly care to bring any particular part of the world to ruin which was probably the sole reason why Htrae remained relatively unchanged by my presence. The oceans were my domain, and now something I had gained lordship over as a consequence of acquiring the second tier of influence over environmental magic, but these humans weren't technologically advanced enough to do much with their oceans just yet. That was lucky for them since at best I was neutral and at worst I had destroyed civilizations for the sake of accruing more power.
There were a lot of differences between mortal capabilities and divine capabilities. Hells, there were also a lot of differences between extraplanar capabilities and divine capabilities. That said of all of the differences between divine beings and other beings, there were three areas where we were truly exceptional.
The first area was our awareness. Our domain-sense ability left the awareness abilities of mortals, extraplanars, and even other higher beings in the dust. Even with my newfound knowledge, knowledge I had given myself utilizing my power to create powers, I didn't know of anything that came even close to giving someone the sort of knowledge that domain-sense gave me.
The second area was our potential. In another instance of my newfound knowledge letting me know much of the nature of the multiverse I now knew that the deific ability to create powers is also unique. We could design our own unique powers and utilize them however we best saw fit. Since our potential power was limited by extremely few things that meant that if a god saw fit to exist as a uniquely destructive force and they had the right domains under their control they could design enough powers to destroy a solar system or even a galaxy unchecked and even to me that was difficult to wrap my mind around.
The third area was our raw capability. As deities we had the power to utilize our abilities even if we weren't physically present where we used our abilities. If I wanted too I could manipulate gravity anywhere my senses were active and detecting things in real-time. I could create buildings on dozens of planets or stars even ones I had never been too.
To date my greatest power was my ability to reject notifications pertaining to any domain or subdomain I had the second tier of influence over. With this I could prevent all manner of life from coming into being, all sorts of natural disasters from occurring, and the destruction of anything I didn't want destroyed. This power was reality-bending and for now I had opted to not use it recklessly.
After mulling over the nature of my powers and what few limits I had I began to do something I had never truly done before. I decided to carefully study the world of Htrae, and devise a strategy to most efficiently throw a city into chaos.
