In the wake of the remarks made by the Heart of Darkness I was more armed with knowledge than ever before. Morehammer was a more dangerous foe than I could have possibly imagined. In life he had reached the maximum height of power accessible to the overwhelming majorities of gods and even in death he was capable of immense shows of force. 

None of this new information scared me. Nor did it make me rethink my long term goal of killing Morehammer. I was determined to slay the echo of the creator of dwarves. He would die by my hand. That said knowing that in life he was a nascent overgod did force me to rethink the hopes that I had had until this point. 

Until now my "plan" if could be called that was to wait until I had become an intermediate god and then begin to work from a distance to undermine Morehammer. I had carefully created the contract that Morehammer and I both signed months ago and now I was slowly beginning to enter into a position to be able to do just that. 

My plan wasn't to try and break the contract, though that was tempting. My plan was to take Morehammer away from Torus, which was ultimately the focus of the contract he and I had signed. I couldn't use my powers or command my followers, even extraplanar ones, to move against Morehammer while he stood on Torus but everything changed if I got him off of Torus.

He couldn't willingly leave Torus, but my plan wasn't for him to willingly leave so that was irrelevant. My plan was for powerful extraplanar beings to forcibly extract him and the Emerald Palace from Torus and when they were elsewhere I could swoop in and bring an end to my dreaded foe. I actually already had agents in place watching a number of critical locations relevant to my plans, angels in the solar system of my birth, and angels throughout the universe carefully searching for the perfect kinds of angels I needed to enact my scheme. 

Morehammer was actively scouring the post-apocalyptic remains of Torus for anything he could use to try and overpower me, but he was limited in his capabilities to search the world. His energy was limited and faded rapidly whenever he left his sanctuary, the Emerald Palace. The fact that I ravaged the planet in the hours before we struck our deal didn't help.

Nor did one of my other little surprises: the horde of demons I allowed to ravage the planet's surface. Incidentally the other end of the portal that was located in Aronms, the portal demons had flowed through throughout the last few months, was actually in the mountainous city I had conquered hours ago. 

My plan was a solid one, but I had hoped to enact it more or less the minute I became an intermediate god. Clearly with my newfound knowledge that was a bad idea. Morehammer was as strong as a god could reasonably hope to become in life, if I were to consider myself a god of wisdom and knowledge than I needed to at least have the mental clarity needed to realize that that meant that his vestige was probably as powerful as a vestige could reasonably hope to be. That certainly explained why he had the ability to escape the confines of his godly graveyard, the Emerald Palace. 

If I wanted to face Morehammer in direct battle then I needed to gain experience fighting vestiges. Currently I was guaranteed to eventually fight Technos, and if I won that battle and permanently slew even the echoes of Technos I would gain greater control over death itself. That said I needed to combat more vestiges, preferably ones like Morehammer, gods of blacksmithing, law, and earth. Technos was a god of law, and of technology, but he wasn't otherwise particularly like Morehammer from what I knew. And to do that I needed first to find them.

"Are there any vestiges hiding in you? In your layers?" I asked the Heart of Darkness, the powerful, dimensional entity that was in desperate need of a conversational partner. There was no hesitation and I received an immediate answer to my question. 

"Yes, there are vestiges whose divine gravestones are located within me. And not all of them are chaotic evil. Some of them were 'heroes' who were inside of me, slaying demon lords when they died. As a way to enact some small measure of retribution I trapped the dying sparks of their divinity here. Someday you'll cross swords with them." The Heart told and then promised me. Thus far it had been a forthright creature that rightfully saw no apparent purpose in lying to me. That said if I wanted specific information I'd need to be the initiator of the conversation.

I wasn't about to take the Heart of Darkness at its word, but I knew that it wanted to be entertained. There was a very real chance it was telling the truth and in time I planned to confirm its tales one way or another. However to be able to advance in power in a real and palpable way I needed to leave this place. But before I left I could do one minor thing. 

I closed my eyes and I conjured a portal on the surface right beside my sanctum that led to the depths of my divine realm. On the other side of the portal was one of my first legions: the Swarm. I telepathically reached out to them and asked that a 10th of their number leave behind my divine realm and come and serve the Dragonspears and Milene. My forces were obedient and eager to serve and a tidal wave of ants, bees, and wasps, as well as their evolved forms flooded out of the portal and immediately began to set up hives and nests in the area around my sanctum. 

I was satisfied with this and teleported myself from the interior of my sanctum into the depths of Duvessa, the fel city I had taken over and restored to a state exceeding its former glory. I swam through the portal and landed gracefully in one of the many tunnels underneath the hellish and sophisticated metropolis.

I found myself alone in the depths of the city I had taken over and rebuilt. It had been many days since I was last here, and in that time the city had begun the process of rebuilding in full as well as slowly attempting to establish communications with other cities and layers of Infernius. Clearly that hadn't worked. 

That said, armed with a plethora of new powers and new knowledge I decided to try something new: to hunker down and build something from the ground up. It was time that I settle down and begin to work on my empire. I was in a position where I could actually begin to tie together the various cults and forces that worshiped me but for me to do that I'd need to momentarily sacrifice my mobility and utilize the vast forces I had built up throughout the universe. As annoying as it'd be to sacrifice mobility for a while I knew that it'd be worth it in the end and so I didn't hesitate. 

After being alive for months I would spend the next three years in an extremely small handful of places: the infernal city of Duvessa, my sanctum in the Blackened Boscage, in Dunkelheit, and in my divine realm. During this time I busied myself in countless ways. And while I was busy life went on for people and creatures throughout the universe. That said, they definitely felt my presence in very real ways. 

The Althonite empire was once more of a concept than anything else. For months it had existed almost exclusively in the mind of its self-proclaimed emperor and god, Althos. That said, Althos had the power to change that incredibly swiftly thanks to a considerable number of powers that he had put to good use. 

The very first place to directly feel the power of the Althonite empire was the solar system of Althos' birth. It was here that entire planets quite willingly and eagerly joined the empire with only two targets showing any real resistance: Salifinos, where the war between the mortals and the Althonian abominations took a dire turn for the worse as Althos further empowered the abominations who served him and in doing so acquired the second tier of influence over the eldritch domain, and the planet of Haxor where some of the giants who inhabited the world initially resisted the empire. 

Haxor was the first planet to feel the sheer power of Althos in his capacity as a demon lord. He plagued the resisting giants with starvation and he inflicted a severe famine on them. They resisted him for a pathetic two and a half months before giving in and willingly joining the empire so that he would give them food to eat.

The empire left the world of Torus alone, aside from enacting a ban that made travel there impossible for anyone who was a citizen of the empire. That said all of the other worlds in the solar system became key worlds, which were planets that were full members of the empire. 

The Althonite empire was also an expansive one. It didn't restrain itself to just one solar system, instead it expanded almost as swiftly as Althos' perpetually busy avatar explored the galaxy of his birth. Hundreds of solar systems became Althonite territory, protected by powerful armadas of robots who were unswervingly loyal to their creator and god. Planets where no Althonite cults existed became worlds teeming with Althonites as easily and as commonly as planets where multiple different types of Althonite cults did. 

Althos was also a suprisingly generous emperor. He rewarded planets that joined his empire, even ones his robotic legions conquered. Althonite planets became stable planets ruled over by intelligent leaders of various different alignments, good, evil, neutral, chaotic, and lawful alike. They experienced reliable harvests, and wars were invariably brought to an end. 

The god didn't seek to change governments and where he could get away with it he didn't even bother deposing existing leaders. Instead he further empowered them and he gave them new laws to incorporate into their existing legal frameworks. In instances where he met especially skilled leaders who willingly sided with him he even made them nobles to show them the wisdom of their decision. 

One of the most interesting occurrences that took place regarding an Althonite planet was the evolution of the small, highly magical planet known as Retribution. Of all of the thousands of worlds under Althos' control and influence Retribution was able to undergo the most extensive transformation. Retribution was an extremely mystical planet, but when they joined the Althonite empire Althos gave them the gift of technology. 

Ascendance, the primary civilization which ruled over the majority of Retribution was able to swiftly understand and quickly gain usage of the technological innovations of the Althonite empire, a process which Althos himself watched with much interest. He rewarded the key figures responsible for leading the efforts into understanding technology to the extent that they became zealous Althonites out of gratitude and even created new arcanotech that didn't exist anywhere else and thus caused Althos to acquire the second tier of influence over the domain of creation.

This also dramatically empowered the planet of Retribution, from a militaristic point of view and caused them to become immensely pious. They swiftly became the first but far from the only planet to worship Althos as a god of both of technology and magic. They erected massive temples to him and nobles from this world became the first to send missionaries out into the depths of space, in an effort to both curry favor with their god and to spread Retributionary philosophies throughout the universe. 

Some of the most fascinating changes that occurred on a cultural level were due to actions done by Althos. The deity was fond of his powers over a number of domains, namely the domains of law and knowledge, as well as the conjuration subdomain.

He finally began to recruit the lawful extraplanar creatures known as leyes to his empire actively and in great numbers. He was fond of their perfect memories, their dedication to law, and their neutrality. They didn't scheme like devils did, and they weren't as zealous about good causes as lawful good extraplanar creatures were. They were perfect for his empire.

When the empire first made contact with a world Althos would grant that world's leaders the ability to speak Althonian, the official language of the empire. His robotic scouts and the handful of leyes diplomats who were on each of the massive ships the empire used to travel through space were also capable of using his ability to speak to anyone and anything, including animals and plants and they made frequent usage of that power.

When a planet formally joined the empire Althos granted every creature in that world the ability to speak Althonian. This also eased one of the challenges of interplanetary travel and made it possible for people from low-tech civilizations to actually travel throughout the stars. 

That said, all of that was occurring in the dimension primarily inhabited by mortals. Althos' eerie empire wasn't constrained to a single dimension, in fact he was more aggressive when it came to his actions and activities in other dimensions than he had been when it came to his actions and activities in the dimension inhabited and dominated by mortals. 

His single biggest personal achievement and the thing that granted him the most personal power was that relatively early on during the three years he spent establishing his empire was that he became an archfey. He took one hundred of the few thousand followers he had who were fey and he established a seelie court in the world of Mercy, and in doing so he began to introduce that world to real magic, as well as become a new sort of higher being. 

He also began to delve into the birthright of the elemental overlords: power over the elemental dimensions, places like Deep-Stone and the Eternal Sea. Elemental overlords were more than just elementals of reality-shaping power, they had been the monarchs of elemental dimensions, and Althos had largely not tapped into that aspect of their power until he was over a year old. When he did he swiftly gained new types of followers, powerful elemental creatures of fire, earth, water, and air, similar to the inhabitants of Anthem, as well as vast territory in each of the four dimensions. 

As an archfey he automatically gained territory in the WIldlands, the dimensional home of the fey. The Wildlands was a primal dimension almost entirely composed of unfettered nature with exceedingly few civilizations making their homes in it. It was home to billions of fey creatures.

His territory in the Wildlands was a simple forest at the foot of a massive tree that stretched dozens of kilometers into the skies above. He welcomed good aligned fey creatures from all over the dimension and greater universe to come and make their homes in his territory. 

The god didn't expand his territory in the Heart of Darkness. Instead he fortified what he already had, and took true control over the Blackened Boscage. Countless different sorts of creatures flocked to join him in many different dimensions, even ones that he had not visited yet like Zenith, where pain-bringers orginated from, and the shadow dimension where undead creatures ruled. 

That said, he and his followers did indeed explore Infernius. Halfway through the three years he spent fortifying his empire he acquired the first tier of influence over abjuration and he used that to send devils throughout the surface of the dimension to retrieve dungeon cores and restore cities. They found and revived five cities together before Althos finally discovered the location of Technos' divine grave, the place where, presumably, his vestige was lurking. That said Althos was in no rush to confront the vestige, as he wanted to be as powerful as he could be before taking it on. 

Almost three years into the time he spent hunkering down and building his empire his loyal servants in the dimension of dreams finally persuaded him to become active there as well. He ordered them to find a suitable place to build him a palace and when they completed the task he would begin to give them more orders.

As a Great Old One he had been given a few kilometers of territory in that dimension to call his own and to lord over. He hadn't spent much time there though. 

He also leveled up all of his classes to level twenty during his time fortifying his empire. And in doing so he became personally far more powerful than he had been before. He finally felt like a god of knowledge, for the first time ever.

It was the day after the three year anniversary of his decision to hunker down and make his empire a reality that he finally became an intermediate god. At long last his schemes involving Silverok had produced palpable results and allowed him to evolve and become an even more powerful entity. 

At the moment that he felt power begin to surge into his soul Althos was sitting on a couch in the penthouse suite he called his home in the dimension of Infernius. And the god, now far more experienced, knowledgeable, and powerful than he had ever been began to smile brightly. Not only was he becoming an intermediate god he was also becoming an outer god, one of the nightmarishly powerful deities that were tremendously empowered by the eldritch domain and that had waged war on the universe in the unspeakably distant past.

He had been relaxing in the living room of the suite when he began to glow incredibly brightly. As his mind filled with a notification alerting him to his new abilities and traits as both an outer god and as an intermediate god he began to chuckle manically. 

"Now this is what I call power." He muttered as his physical form struggled to stay together. It was being infused with so much power that it was difficult for it to contain his divinity. Inwardly the last shred of doubt that the god had felt regarding confronting Technos was gone.

The god knew, in his heart, that it was time for him to face the echo of the minor god of technology. When he finished sorting through the notifications that filled his mind, he got up off of the coach and wordlessly teleported to the entrance of the divine grave of Technos, so that at last he could gain greater power over death, and become an archdevil.