My mind's eye was flooded with different notifications. In defeating Technos and claiming this layer of Infernius as my own I had truly stepped into a new level of power, even compared to my previous advancement into intermediate godhood status.

I now had several different, distinct, fonts of power within me. I had my status as an intermediate and outer god, I had my status as an elemental overlord, my powers as a demon lord, an archfey, and as of minutes ago my powers as an archdevil. I previously existed in a state of truly overwhelming power but this was on a whole other level. It was like I was now a being of pure power, of strength and dominance capable of manifesting a physical form at will.

As I took in the warmth of Infernius' sunlight I mentally went over the domains and subdomains I had just gained greater power over. First and foremost I had gained the second tier of influence over the domains of evil, death, and dragons, all of which were awesomely powerful on their own even with just the first tier of influence over them.

In slaying Technos I had also taken the faint echoes of divinity that lurked within him, which granted me greater power over the subdomain of technology, skyrocketing me to the second tier of influence over it which was no joke given that it was the subdomain most responsible for me being able to build and maintain my empire. That was a significant boost to my powers. Though that wasn't the only boost to my powers I was about to receive.

I mentally reached out to the "Final Factory" the ominous name given to Technos' gravesite and commanded that it give me the other grand treasure located in its depths. The Final Factory was under my control since I had slain Technos and I felt it begin to rumble underneath me, vibrating almost pleasantly as it dug up the secret treasure contained within the bowels of the factory. I was currently located on its roof and I had a wonderful view of the sun beginning to shine on Gehenna.

One of the two artifacts possessed by Technos wasn't one he had possessed during his life even as a vestige. It was instead something created when he was defeated. It was the gigantic wing I had torn off of his body when I defeated him, and it was the only part of him that remained. The rest of his body had faded into nothingness when I defeated him, which had been a strange sight to behold. That said, what passed for his soul, including some of his memories had been pulled into me as a consequence of one of my new death domain powers "Eternal rest", which worked even on vestiges.

The metal wing was on the floor of the roof, and I decided to go ahead and see what its powers were. I reached out and grabbed it with telekinesis, effortlessly lifting the thing into the air and then bringing it over to me. It was an enormous wing but when I ceased holding it using my mind the thing began to shrink even as it fell towards me. When the thing was the size of a wing adjusted to the height of a moderately tall human I reached out and grabbed it physically, or at least I attempted to.

I was surprised when the wing turned in mid-air and began to melt like it was turning from a solid into a liquid and then latched itself onto my chest, before flowing over my skin and surrounding my chest and arms, like it was a mundane shirt. As it affixed itself to me I felt my body adapt to its powers and realized that I had just become the artifact's new owner.

The artifact immediately manifested itself in its true form. I could feel the lone golden wing stretching from my back majestically, and when I tried to make the wing beat I was unsurprised that it did as I commanded. I chuckled while realizing that I must have looked like a one-winged, humanoid-type, angel.

A split second after my mental musings about one-winged angels the floor behind me began to open up. I turned in time to see a strange device begin to hover out of the hole that had been created by the floor opening up. The device, at a glance, was a sort of handheld computer, which was unlike any sort of computer, even mobile ones, that I had seen so far. It was a sleek black tablet computer, and it looked... surprisingly ordinary.

Once it was hovering in the air at roughly face-level from where I stood, the floor underneath it closed. The artifact was now mine for the taking and after staring at it for a moment I supposed the best choice for me was to go ahead and take it. I approached the thing and when I placed my hand on it I felt information about it flow into me, while it registered me as its new owner.

When I willed away the notification that informed me of the artifact's purpose I mentally willed the thing to transform into a silver ring and I used telekinesis to place it on my left hand's ring finger. I willed the armored wing to transform into an elegant "modern" outfit known as a "suit". It was the sort of fashion that was common for businesspeople and upper-class individuals on worlds like Htrae, Mercy, and a few other planets in my empire.

The suit molded itself to my body and fit me quite comfortably. It was nice to look elegant before going ahead and beginning to do anything else.

After clothing myself using my new artifact I was still for several minutes. During the time that I was still I was sorting through the notifications and taking in the details of the more important ones. Some of them included enormous revelations including the quests to gain influence over the final four domains I couldn't influence: luck, fate, reality, and neutrality, as well as the true function of the strange room of portals I saw when I was invading the fortress. The remaining notifications were small updates that weren't extremely useful to know but weren't bad either.

When I was done with that I chuckled and began to shake my head. The domains were quite excited for me to do one specific task, and frankly, I couldn't really blame them. That said I had a lot to do before I did that task, so much so that it was probably years in the future before I made it my active mission to defeat Morehammer. He had once been a nascent overgod and to take him down I needed to be ready to risk my life and I needed to have mastery over all of my powers, which at the moment I simply did not.

Gods were beings of colossal power and in the unspeakably distant past had been the single strongest lifeforms in existence. Althos was by no means weak for his kind, and he was capable of all of the almost unimaginable feats they could. Which was something he immediately began to demonstrate the instant he acquired even greater power over the subdomain of technology.

The subdomain of technology was an odd subdomain in that in the beginning it didn't bestow a tremendous amount of individual power on the deities capable of influencing it but it did tremendously empower their servants. In the ancient past gods of technology built intergalactic empires and were capable of marvelous feats such as instantaneous communication or travel from distant corners of one galaxy to the furthest reaches of another galaxy.

In the distant past, those gods had nothing more than the second tier of influence over the subdomain of technology, as well as varying levels of influence over other domains and subdomains. Althos, due to spending so much time honing his own power, had reached their level of might. A feat which he demonstrated when he reached out into the realm of the mortals and did something to test his newfound powers.

Althos' first mission was to prepare the worlds in his empire for what he sought to do. In order to do that he silently put entire worlds to sleep all at once, as he didn't feel like being disturbed by their thoughts, panic, and other negative emotions. An uncountable number of beings immediately fell asleep, unable to resist their reality-altering emperor as he set about improving his empire. The god's next action was to pause his avatar.

His avatar had been dutifully mapping the mortal realm, exploring the galaxy of his birth using his ability to travel faster than the speed of light to travel from star to star and activating "Stellar awareness", his star domain superpower that let him instantly map and understand entire solar systems at once. This power was easily the single most powerful power he possessed with regards to detection and empire building. The instant his avatar was commanded to pause the lesser body of the god came to a halt, stopping in space mere moments after having just used "Stellar awareness" on a star.

The god himself smiled, enjoying the powers of his avatar as well as his power over the thing. He could now create more avatars, many more actually, if he had wanted to, but he was content with one. He only wanted one for now, as even as lofty as his ambitions were he didn't want to overextend before he understood just how unimaginably immense his home galaxy was. That said he was about to become busy.

I ruled over an interstellar empire, despite my incredibly young age due to my powers as a higher being. As a deity, the single greatest type of higher being, I could ignore the concerns and limitations that made creating and maintaining interstellar empires difficult for mortal or even extraplanar entities and organizations.

One example of my ability to ignore limitations placed on mortals and extraplanar entities was that I could create things instantly. Even the most well-supplied and efficient empire that lacked either the support or the outright leadership of a higher being would not be able to create infrastructure by itself instantly. The creation of even simple infrastructure like a city's roads or a well would take at least minutes for them but not for me.

Thanks to my having recently acquired the second tier of influence over both creation and technology I had the power to create entire megastructures by myself, instantly. It was a truly mind-bending difference of scale but I had figured out by now that some domains and subdomains increased in power exponentially, and wasn't fully surprised by this difference of power, especially now that I was a true god a being who existed on a different scale of power than a lesser god did. Thanks to the star, knowledge, creation, and law domains, as well as the technology subdomain I even knew what different kinds of megastructures were and what they did which was immensely handy. 

I instantly went ahead and targeted the hundreds of stars that were within the territory occupied by my empire. Upon targeting them I put my newfound ability to create megastructures to work by creating various types of "Dyson spheres" around the various stars that were located within my empire.

In each case, I selected the most appropriate type of Dyson structure to place around any given star by instantly considering a number of variables which included the types of worlds that were located in any given star system relative to my empire, the needs of the assorted civilizations that inhabited the selected star system, and other variables.

In most cases, I didn't want to place something like a Dyson shell around a star due to the fright that would or could cause local civilizations but within my empire, there were several solar systems where no planets sustained life. In those cases, I freely created and utilized Dyson shells and long-range solar-energy transmitters to distribute the excess energy to other solar systems under my control where the energy would be useful. 

Even lifeless planets had their uses in the Althonite empire. Lifeless planets tended to be where I placed factories for robots and other technology, an effort which I redoubled thanks to my ever-expanding array of powers. Lifeless planets were now an even more valuable resource thanks to the astounding array of new things I could create and the hundreds of uses I had for any natural resource.

At the moment the majority of structures I created to harness stars were Dyson swarms, which were collections of different orbital structures that redirected solar energy to local solar-energy collectors and transmitters. This also gave me a terrifying new degree of control over my empire: the ability to control the distribution of energy and to be the sole decider of where the energy created by stars went. That knowledge brought a smile to my face, as it gave me a handy tool to deal with rebellions just in case any of my subjects ever decided they didn't want to be a part of the Althonite empire anymore. 

The next thing I did was create facilities where stellar energy would be sent and then distributed throughout the various solar systems I was manipulating. I did this by creating simple solar energy farms in space, which I manned with independently powered robots given vast artificial intelligences that were fanatically loyal to me, their creator. These facilities immediately began transmitting solar energies where it was needed.

In the cases of worlds with very little civilized technology or presence but that still had life I created technological institutes where the energy from various stars could be transmitted and then released in whatever form was appropriate for local life and for the local climate. I also staffed these institutes and stations with advanced robots and A.I.'s that could be trusted to regulate the planets without altering them unless I commanded them to do so.

These worlds existed throughout my empire, with an example of one existing in the solar system of my birth: Anthem, the first world to be inhabited entirely by Althonites and also the planet closest to the solar system's sun. I decided to dub these planets "Reserves" as they were for the moment, worlds where I would be minimally invasive. 

I had unintentionally become a potent god of technology. I used my technological powers extremely frequently and my empire's strongest force, especially in the mortal dimension, were its robots which were a perpetually expanding force since I could create the resources needed to use them without limit forever.  

The organic race that most piously served me were the Mi-Gos. Mi-Gos were amoral scientists who created eldritch technologies and performed immoral experiments on themselves and other organic lifeforms, oftentimes against the wills of the creatures being experimented on.

They were one of the only races that served me outside of the galaxy of my birth, and through them, I had the ability to expand my empire into other galaxies when I felt comfortable doing so. That said the instant I felt ready to gain more abominations as worshipers I had a simple means to do so.

As an outer god I had enough control over the eldritch domain that I could contact abominations throughout the universe. That power, combined with newfound powers over evil and pride gave me a surefire means to begin a speedy advance of my empire and to even go to any galaxy I wanted to in the universe.

As a deity of knowledge, law, and nobility, I also had an encyclopedic knowledge of every single planetary, interplanetary, stellar, interstellar, galactic, and intergalactic empire that existed in this universe. Now that I was actively utilizing my powers over knowledge very little escaped my notice, and in time my empire would be ready to take on and absorb the other empires that existed throughout the universe. And in order to begin, now was as good a time as any to make my empire intergalactic in scope. 

I silently created a phantom copy of myself and deployed it to a solar system in the galaxy where Htrae was located. I commanded the copy to head to the local star and activate "Stellar awareness". When it did I chuckled and immediately created a Dyson swarm around the star, while simultaneously creating an extremely advanced fleet of robots who were under my orders to annex the solar system's four planets, two of which had life, into my empire and then begin to spread throughout the galaxy where Htrae could be found.

I myself teleported from the Final Factory to one of the devilish cities that was being repaired and whose inhabitants were being resurrected. As I did that I silently reviewed the most important notifications I had received as a consequence of defeating Technos.