Ashlen and I continued to wander throughout the laptop section of the vast electronics store, spending several minutes peacefully wandering its aisles. I was content to take my time and to enjoy this moment of something like peace for a while. Her eyes continued to wander throughout the area's shelves while I allowed my mind to wander.
I thought of various things. I thought of the people of my divine realm, be they Isadora, Troik, Rachel, Drow, or the many other people I had met during the earliest days of my life, back when I was on the planet of my birth. Their lives hadn't ended during the time they had spent in my divine realm, and indeed the knowledge that not only were gods real, not extinct, and that everything around them was generated and even possible because of my power had brought about many changes to their lives.
The people who inhabited my divine realm were refugees from the world of Torus. Together we had fled the rage of the vestige of the creator-god of the dwarves, the tyrant-king Morehammer, and while they fled into my divine realm I had fled to Htrae, to grow in power and eventually gain the means needed to defeat Morehammer and take back our home. That was still my primary goal, but now I was armed with the knowledge of Morehammer's former power.
To defeat Morehammer I'd need to place everything on the line. I'd need every single power and advantage I could gain. I was nowhere near as strong as I needed to be to defeat him, and that was fine, for now at least. Morehammer was trapped on Torus, and I had the rest of the universe to explore, as well as a dizzying array of powers with which to do it.
That said, I could afford moments like this where I wasn't just working towards overthrowing Morehammer. And even as I thought that Ashlen detached herself from me and walked towards a laptop. I didn't need to read her mind to tell that it was the one she was the most interested in.
The laptop she had her eyes on was an electric blue one with high-end specifications and even as I assessed it with but a look I knew it was satisfactory. She didn't need an especially advanced one, but I liked that she was able to detect one that was quite a high-end laptop for this store. It was also one of the more expensive ones, but the price was no object here. I had given each of my chosen servants enough on their new debit cards to purchase a good portion of the store's stock before beginning to run out of money.
That said, I wasn't the sort to not work, in some way or another, for long periods of time. I had spent the last few hours of my life idling, casually enjoying my time with demons who were capable of moments of nonviolence, and it was unnerving to not be working in some capacity or another. Even while Ashlen began to converse with a nearby floor worker I began to "zone out", insofar as gods could "zone out", and I began to extend my mind and activate my powers.
The rush of power I had felt when I became an intermediate deity was incomparable to nearly anything I had felt in my life before. Nearly. I had felt similar explosions in power when I became a demon lord, and when I became an archdevil, but those were the only other times in my life I had felt my power so massively explode. And since then, hours ago, I had largely not utilized my powers.
For hours they had sat dormant inside of me. Well... Not completely dormant. My powers almost wanted to be used. I felt a keen desire to utilize my newly enhanced abilities and to further shape the universe to my whims. I felt it, but I had resisted, for the most part. I had used them in small, easy ways. I had created new fleets and commanded them to expand my empire, specifically to make it an intergalactic one by taking over territory in this galaxy, but that wasn't enough.
It also wasn't enough for me to simply upgrade my fleets and for me to enhance the technology my robotic warriors utilized. I had done that too, and inside of me, I felt my powers cry out to be used. Patiently not using them was difficult for me, but I knew that it was important that I diligently temper myself. And diligence was good for me, which I had learned when I selected it as my virtue, mere days after setting out to formally create and expand my empire.
Even my new technology powers were incomparable to the ones I had once had. I could now create eldritch, empathetic, divine, and even devilish and demonic technologies. I could also empower my vessels to fly faster than the speed of light. And I could clearly create megastructures like Dyson tech. That wasn't even all I could do either.
What's more is that the boost to my technological powers was actually smaller than the boosts to some of my other domains and subdomains, as well as the powers I had gotten for becoming an outer god, demon lord, archfey, or archdevil, not to mention the boosts I had gotten by becoming an intermediate, or true, god.
My upgraded domain powers were also incredibly powerful. The contagion court had succeeded in crafting a new disease a week before my ascension to intermediate god status, gifting me with powers over even magical diseases, and I had long ago utilized a random test world to acquire greater power over fungi. There were exceptionally few things I was stuck at the first tier of influence over, with one notable example being the domain of time, and another being the domain of goodness. There was also the spirit domain, which was one that greatly irritated me.
Over the course of my time expanding my empire I received countless quests and completed many of them. I hadn't rushed to complete them, but I had refused to be held back by a lack of power while expanding my empire and so to acquire greater and greater means to conquer the multiverse I had diligently used my powers and my followers to complete dozens of quests, especially with regards to animal, plant, and a single magical subdomain: necromancy.
I kept walking alongside Ashlen and supporting her as she discussed the laptop she was increasingly hell-bent on purchasing. The more she heard about it, the more she liked it, and I was fine with that. I quietly backed her up whenever she needed it, but I rarely took the initiative to speak. Even in my "zoned out", introspective state I was more than capable of paying attention and being aware of my surroundings.
Ashlen was quietly grateful to have my support, something I sensed inside of her. It was funny to sense such a normal emotion from such a strange, warped mind. She was fully insane, but apparently, that didn't render her unaware or indifferent to her surroundings, which it often did to mortals.
When she was given the laptop, in a solid box, I grabbed it and opted to hold it for her. For the sake of convenience, since she wasn't physically powerful even if she was deceptively strong. The box had an easy to handle, handle that was made for holding it easily and convenience.
Now equipped with her laptop, she was content to explore the rest of the store. As she did, she had no way of knowing just how active I was being.
Intermediate gods were beyond lesser ones. Every single one of my cells felt like it was radiating power, and my mind was beyond supercharged compared to how it had been before. Even my senses, already absolutely beyond those of any other living being, were now at such a level that I knew if I stepped on a planet I wasn't already tethered too I'd be able to sense what was happening all over that world and then the ones closest to it, on raw sensory power alone.
My mind could reach out across the cosmos, and by combining my mental powers with my other abilities I could do things I hadn't been able to do before. Now if I wanted too I could easily reach out across the universe, utilizing a domain-sense notification, and interfere with events on the other side of this iteration of existence. Especially since now, I had two tiers of influence over hefty domains like law, chaos, and even death.
Thanks to domain sense and the sheer number of domains I had influence over, my mind was never not racing with notifications. I could, of course, make sense of them extremely easily even before now, but it was annoying to perpetually be receiving so much information. It was one of the very small burdens that came with being a deity.
The second tier of influence over the death domain was considerably powerful compared to the first tier. I reread the notification alerting me to the powers I had received, and smiled. The first tier hadn't really granted me many means to cause death, only ways to affect what happened after it. That had changed when I received the second tier.
Most of my death-related powers were entirely new, but one of them wasn't. Death inducement, a power that had once been a twice per twelve-hour power restricted to mortals was now a passive power that could affect anything short of a vestige or higher being. And curiously I could now use true resurrections whenever I wanted, with very few restrictions, though I still couldn't recreate souls this way, nor could I resurrect higher beings.
One new power was especially fascinating. It was called "Necroscience" and it wasn't "Necro-science", it was something else altogether. With it, I knew the names of almost everyone in the universe of my birth who had ever died, as well as how they died, the state of their souls, and whether or not I could resurrect them. The "Almost everyone" in this instance is annoying, as it, unsurprisingly, didn't let me know things about higher beings.
That said, the true power of this power was that I could now resurrect... an uncountable number of beings. And most importantly with this power I had the power to far more easily lay claim to the universe. Of all of the powers I had access to, this was one of the ones that felt the heaviest. And for now I knew the perfect place to begin to utilize it.
Even while my body stayed with Ashlen inside of the electronics store, I mentally entered the newest place I had become a lord of; Technos' divine realm.
In order to enter perhaps the greatest reward I had earned for slaying the echoes of one of my kin, I momentarily created an invisible projection of my consciousness, an astral body, and projected a portal into the divine realm that was invisible and directly in the air over me. The portal led to the realm of Technos, a place his echo was too weak to be able to maintain control over and also a place that was too powerful to simply disappear when Technos was slain.
My astral body parted from my physical one and silently entered the portal. When I entered the portal I found myself floating in the middle of a vast, ruined metropolis made up of powerful-looking and immense technology.
The city was long dead, something I knew because the instant I entered the portal I immediately gained a sort of localized omniscience, an instinctual, almost genetic, understanding of the entirety of the dimension before me, and it was an immense one that was entirely composed of this single, truly vast city.
The city was cold, and the air was dry, and I supposed this made as fitting a place as any to begin to research death and utilize powers over it. I rose a single hand into the air before me, and in the depths of my mind I pulled up the unspeakably vast table of every death of every non-higher-being that had occurred in the history of this universe. This was an incredible power.
As I scanned through the table I noticed that it was difficult for me to resurrect mortals after they had been dead for a few thousand years. That made sense, as I knew that mortals, upon their deaths, began a process that ultimately led them to a number of fates from which resurrection was difficult with the most common fates being either becoming a part of a dimension or becoming an extraplanar being.
If a soul became a part of another dimension I could easily yank it back and force it back to life as a mortal, but only due to the chaotic power I possessed, on the other hand, if a soul became an extraplanar being even I, at my current level of power, couldn't revert it back. However, despite that limitation, I could resurrect extraplanar beings, which was immensely useful. I could even resurrect faeries, the most difficult extraplanar entities to resurrect. And that power was one I fully intended to abuse.
I spent a few minutes messing about the table and discovering that I could utilize something akin to a search function to search for specific people and I could also filter out results I didn't want to see, which was remarkably handy. Once I had spent a few minutes doing this I made the snap decision to test out the synergy between my new power and the new loosening of restrictions on one of my key abilities. And to do that I needed to find the perfect figure to resurrect.
"What sort of figure should I resurrect first? There are a number of ways for me to abuse the synergies between my various powers so if I really want to maximize the unearthly potential of this power I need to figure out how to most easily take this power to its limits." I muttered to myself.
I could just resurrect everyone who could be resurrected, which was surely one way to utilize this synergy to a reality-changing degree, but that didn't benefit me. I wanted to use this power in a way that advanced my agenda of gaining true omnipotence and omniscience, which this power was an aspect of.
The ability to know everyone who has ever died, or almost everyone, and to be able to resurrect them, is absolutely one of those powers that is part of omniscience. Being able to resurrect people was part of omnipotence. The death domain's upgraded abilities pushed me significantly towards my ultimate goals, but I hadn't reached my goals just yet.
So that left me in a position where strategic thinking was critical. And so I decided to think of what was the simplest route for me to gain a new power set and undergo another explosive rise in power.
To become a greater elemental overlord I had to begin to acquire territory within the elemental dimensions. To become a greater god I had to complete more domain and subdomain quests until I received the alert notifying me that I could progress to the next tier. To become a stronger demon lord I had to conquer more layers of the Heart of Darkness. To become a stronger archdevil I had to delve deeper into Infernius and conquer the remaining layers.
So in the short term that left a single font of power. The power of the archfey. In order to become a greater archfey, I had to establish more courts, which required more faerie followers. And since that was all... I could do that quite easily. I had acquired all the powers I needed to become the strongest archfey in history, and beyond that to learn about every past archfey. All I needed to do was be patient, and to embrace the immeasurably power I had been earned.
The astral form of the deity was still for many minutes, hovering in the empty air above the dead city. As he hovered he had been making mental calculations and scheming so that when he moved it was with maximum efficiency. And after several minutes had passed, the stoic god began to move and unleash his power.
The deity's increasing influence over death granted him powers that he sought to abuse. One of them he had abused for several minutes while still. But now he was in motion. He released a vast wave of cosmic, divine, death-defying power, and his signature, restorative powers reached out across the cosmos and into the Wildlands. For now he was only grabbing a single soul, one deep in the long untamed wilderness of the bountiful Wildlands.
Althos' reality-warping powers grabbed the soul he sought and repaired it even as it pulled the soul to his current location. The soul was taken from its grave, deep in the depths of the Wildlands, and brought into the forbidding, once ownerless, realm that had belonged to Technos and now belonged to Althos.
The soul, an opaque outline of a body, was released from the grip of Althos' powers on an empty street beneath where Althos floated in the air. Althos moved, lowering himself so that he was closer to the ground but still floating in the air. The god was currently mixing and matching powers with a fluidity he hadn't possessed before, but the powers that he knew would be the most useful ones here were a diverse bunch.
The god had selected the soul of a powerful, primal elf. The elf whose soul he had retrieved was one of the ancient ancestors of modern elves, one so ancient that he was a faerie, not a humanoid. Althos activated an array of his powers at once, even as he targeted the outline for a true resurrection and activated his life-restoring power.
The outline of the body began to kneel, even as it solidified and the elf began to be returned to life. Althos watched all of this, excitedly, even as the assortment of powers he activated took effect and began to change his appearance. As the elf's life was restored and as he began to become a real, living, breathing being again, Althos' array of powers took effect.
The instant the elf was restored to life, as his mind began to become conscious again, it immediately felt the weight of a dizzying, impossible to resist, array of mental assaults. Althos' powers wasted no time and he himself was considering this a repeatable experiment.
Althos' form distorted and shifted and ceased being his entire body but instead became something else altogether: a strange, mistlike being in the loose shape of a humanoid man. And as it did so, a combination of outer god powers activated at once, which amounted to an attack on the elf's sanity and sense of self.
Althos was channeling the powers and attitudes that had allowed him to become known as "The Eternal Emperor", a powerful being that filled those who served him with powers and also garnered their loyalty and obedience. "The Eternal Emperor" was a potent title of his that he had earned while building up his empire.
One way that he earned the loyalty and obedience of those who served him was by making them feel small, something which he had only gotten better at when he became the archdevil of pride. At the moment an aura was seeping out of him that manipulated the feelings of those around him and made them feel small in comparison to him, causing them to see him as awe-inspiring, even if in a terrible way.
"Aringoth... Rise." He commanded, his voice invading the mind of the primal fey-elf. His voice resounded throughout the elf's mind, preventing lesser thoughts from entering his mind. The elf unsteadily rose to his feet, even as his skin began to regenerate, and as his senses began to return to him.
"Aringoth... I am the god of death. And you are my servant." Althos said, his voice speaking with the pure, untainted, unbelievable pride only a deity could possess. A pride that was so potent that it could rewrite reality and change history. A pride so potent that only the truly strongest wills could resist it when it was channeled properly. Gods were beings of power and dominance, standing atop a cosmic food chain and their words were law.
Aringoth's mind, even at the height of his power, was not enough to resist the powerful words of Althos, spoke with pride, honest conviction, and sincere belief, which only empowered them further. And at the moment, his freshly resurrected mind was not as strong as it had been in its prime.
"God of death..." Aringoth whispered, awed by the being in front of him, the one that a notification in the primal elf's eyes alerted him had brought him back from death. Tears formed in the eyes of the elf, and a weak smile appeared on his face.
"Why have you resurrected me? Why do you claim to be my master, oh mighty stranger?" He asked, his words belonging to the ancient, primordial language of the Wildlands. Althos was silent for a moment, judging the elf, studying him, and learning his memories with but a single, thoughtful glance.
"Please, speak oh powerful stranger! I understand that you are beyond my power, but why have you chosen me to bring back from death's embrace?" He asked, his words formal and old-timey, reflecting the ancient, formal age he was from. Althos did not speak, not yet.
Althos was silent, merely studying the ancient elf's life and his memories, which he claimed easily. One of the reasons why Althos wanted to bring back the ancient creature was to gain his memories since Althos had purposefully selected Aringoth because of the fact that Aringoth hailed from the mythic age and had memories of archfey, gods, and other higher beings. It was almost a full minute after Aringoth spoke that Althos opened his mouth and spoke as well.
"I have brought you back because you are to be a soldier in my army. I have liberated you from death, and I shall keep death from you, so long as you serve me. Hear me and obey, as I am the eternal emperor, the king of spring and summer, and you shall lead an army of faeries that I shall give you to conquer the Wildlands. And in exchange, I shall give you that which your heart long desired... A wife befitting your nobility." I told the elf, after having learned the entirety of the elf's life.
The elf froze and considered my offer. Even now I didn't want to merely crush his will, and subjugate him that way, I wanted him to join and serve me willingly. I had the power to make a wife for the elf, if he would serve me. He was lawful neutral in alignment and I would craft a contract to show my sincerity if it meant that I could garner his sincere, serious support without crushing him entirely. I wanted him to join me of his volition.
"You... Do you know me?" He asked, confused as he studied me and I could hear his thoughts, comparing me to other gods he had met as if attempting to ascertain whether or not I was pretending to be someone he hadn't met when in actuality we knew each other. I chuckled at his attempt to understand me before replying to him.
"I do know you, but no, you do not know me. I am a god of many things knowledge and death among them. One like the one you once knew named Yslous, goddess of knowledge. Now, it is time for you to choose. Will you accept your fate and serve me, or shall I return you to the endless darkness which you have surely grown familiar with, the darkness that awaits you and all other dead faeries?" I asked, smiling as I spoke. I was sure he could hear the smile on my lips.
Aringoth remained skeptical of my words, but he looked at me and spoke. "You have brought me back from death... A feat that is difficult even for the gods. You claim that you grant me a wife... But even if you can't, you can surely return me to the dark. I don't want that." He said, considering my words.
