As I sat in the office and waited for the elderly man to notice me I took my time and I glanced at some notifications I had received via domain sense. Every single second my mind was inundated with a number of notifications that were well and truly uncountable, at least to mortal minds.

My domain sense was thus far one of my greatest powers. With it, I inched close to omniscience, especially now that I had become a deity of so many things. And what's even more impressive was that as I gained levels in the "God" class I had gained greater and greater powers over domain sense, including the ability to modify notifications and thus quietly twist reality.

I took a few moments to sort through notifications that were disease-related, and I had some fun modifying them. One of the interplanetary empires that existed in a solar system in the galaxy of my birth was in the beginning stages of dealing with a pandemic, which I decided to make a little bit worse, but not fatal. So few people would die but lots of people would get sick, which would in its own way be quite devastating.

After having my fun for a little bit I used my vision, which allowed me to see everything around me, to study the room I was in. I quickly saw that this man kept his office obsessively clean, a curious trait which clashed, or at least seemed to, with his personal vice: sloth.

The man was thinking hard about responding to the non-work-related email that he was staring at. I sensed his sloth manifest itself in a form that I wasn't particularly experienced with: his hatred for his job specifically. As I read his mind I realized that the email he was replying to wasn't work-related.

I audibly chuckled at that, and the sound alerted the man to my presence. I heard his heart rate spike for a second before he regained his composure and turned to face me, a scowl on his face as he moved. I silently activated my powers over anger, which were on equal footing with my powers over love, and divinely removed the anger the man felt in the nanoseconds it took him to be facing me.

He was an elderly man, dressed in jeans and a casual button-up shirt. His face had thick lines on it, from laughter and from frowning. He had silver hair and both of his eyes had large, visible cataracts. He had a number of chronic health conditions, none of which were particularly serious but each of which managed to be inconvenient in unique ways.

He looked me up and down, studying me as best he could. His hand twitched and I sensed him considering making a move towards the phone and calling for me to be escorted out of his office. That said I wasn't about to let that happen. I smiled at him and spoke, for the first time since arriving here.

"Hello, Andrew. I am a friend. I am... your dearest friend, actually." I told the man, speaking gently. I didn't bother using any powers, as I didn't need to. Not on him. Not yet. My words threw him off, and he looked at me in confusion and to a small extent curiosity.

"Listen... You look like a freshman so I'll let you off with a warning. The best way to approach a staff member like me is to use email and schedule an appointment. That said, as you can tell I am quite busy." He said, chiding me. I smiled and leaned forward, confidence visible in my gaze.

"I'm worth canceling appointments over, but also I know you didn't have any scheduled for right now so it's fine. That said, your time is valuable and so I suppose I should get to why I came here today." I told the man, the curiosity in his gaze becoming even more pronounced when he realized I knew his schedule. He was about to speak when I cut him off.

"I know more about you than you know about yourself, Andrew. That comes with being what I am." I said to him, not quite revealing my true identity but inching towards it while metaphorically taking his hand and guiding him towards the realization that I wanted him to have. I also subtly placed knowledge inside of his mind.

The ability to subtly place knowledge in minds was a new synergistic power that integrated trickery and knowledge. I could see this power becoming incredibly useful in the days to come, especially since the "knowledge" that I used didn't have to be true. I could just as easily implant false but believable knowledge that leads someone down a dark path, or that causes an evil creature to repent.

"How can you know more about me than I myself know?" He asked, brazenly. I looked at him and allowed my eyes to shift. They were previously a warm, human, shade of brown. Now they were entirely black, the sort of black that absorbed souls.

I grinned at him and opened my arms wide as if about to hug an invisible figure. "Because I am a god. Specifically, I am a god of knowledge, life, and souls, and by fusing those things together I can know the entirety of your life simply by studying you for a moment." I said, honestly and simply.

I also followed up by targeting him with a new power and made him believe me since I was telling the truth. Incidentally, I also had an equivalent power for lies I told. For a split second, the instant after I spoke the man felt doubt about my words. He couldn't believe me. When my power activated he felt his doubts die, and instead he felt questions, curiosity, and awe take their place.

I was being honest with him and since I was I didn't feel bad using a power to persuade him of the truth of my words. It simply saved me a few sentences and a pointless back and forth.

It took his face a second to catch up with the thoughts in the back of his mind. When it did he was beaming at me, a look of awe, joy, and reverence on his face. My very presence caused him to be filled with religious zeal. When I next spoke I took his newfound fanaticism into account and channeled my own innate pride to speak to him as many mortals once imagined gods would: filled with pride and purpose.

"Andrew... I have come to you for a reason. I seek to give your life a new purpose, new direction." I told the teacher, channeling my pride to speak to him with the power and authority innate in me as a deity. As I spoke my eyes changed again, filling with a potent inner light, one so intense that it gave off the impression that bright, white light was radiating out of my eye sockets.

"I seek to make you the guardian of this place, its protector, and to give you the skills to aid this world's other, newer protectors," I told him, smiling as I spoke of things like protectors and hinted at a grand destiny and design in place that involved him.

My place was far more complex than I was hinting here, involving the usage of portals here and elsewhere to see what happened to this world if I steadily introduced it to my servants over the course of years. I already had a cult in place that was quietly working to fill part of the world of devils, but it was here where I planned to send out demons to different places, with different missions to fulfill. But Andrew didn't need to know that.

"Althos... Why me?" Andrew asked curiosity and hope visible in his gaze as he spoke, curious to learn why I had singled him out. I looked at him and considered his question for a moment. Internally I sighed and opted to fuse fact and fiction into one clever deception.

"Andrew, you are quite good at your job." I told the man. I wasn't lying, there was a reason he was the man in charge of resident life at this university and why he had worked here for so long. And only part of it was that he never quit. He was actually quite good at his job.

"You, as a skilled professional, and as a senior member of the staff are able to operate with a bit of freedom. By empowering you to act in my interests and filling you with knowledge of my odd objectives I am giving my other agents, who are themselves students at this university, an ally with a fair bit of power and who doesn't report to many people." I explained, now speaking a bit more honestly.

"My servants, more direct agents of my will than you are or will be, will require strange things, such as a room in one of the dormitories where they can perform rituals that advance my interest. They are performing such rituals here, in a place of learning, because I like places of learning. I often protect such places, and am fond of those who inhabit and staff them." I explained, revealing to the curious man why I would be interested in universities before he even thought to ask.

"Part of your role, as a guardian of this place, is to help my servants acquire the things they need. I am a god, a busy being who even now is in very real ways in more than one place. I do not wish to always have to expend my attention here when it could be spent elsewhere." I told the man, also satisfying a question he would have asked but hadn't thought to yet: why a deity would even desire servants in a place like this.

"I... I believe I understand, oh powerful one." The man said, humbly revealing his inner virtue: the ability to be satisfied. He was curious, of course, but he wasn't the unreason sort of curious whose curiosities became restless obsessions. Instead, he valued knowing what he could, and when he realized that for the time being he may not learn more he was able to accept that. I nodded at him, appreciative, in my own way, of a humble man.

"I reward service to myself. I also give you various benefits, boons, and blessings, since you have accepted, in your heart, my decision to use you as an ally to my servants." I said, speaking powerfully again.

I extended a single hand and pointed it, broadly, at the man. As I did I silently healed him of all of the conditions that inconvenienced him, as well as did away with all of the minor, residual pains he felt as a consequence of growing old. He gasped, softly and in delight, as he felt the weight of aging be listed, slightly, from his shoulders. He was an elderly man, in his upper fifties, so while he wasn't ancient he was certainly beginning to feel the weight of age, or at least he had been until now.

My ability to play with age was one of my greatest tools in regards to manipulating mortals. I could also do more than just remove the aches and pains, the wears and tears of age, I could even manipulate it all together. Which was precisely what I did when I opened the hand of the arm that I had outstretched towards the man.

The man straightened as my divine energies poured into him. I felt my powers over entropy surge into him, easily infusing every cell in his body and empowering them, even as they warped his body and began to effectively drag it backward in time, leaving only his mind and soul untouched.

Before my very eyes, the man's body visibly de-aged, regaining lost vigor, endurance, and youth. I watched as his muscles grew firmer, his vision grew sharper, and felt his mind increase in sharpness as he regained some of the perceptiveness his advanced age had begun to subtly steal from him. His hair regained some of its natural colors, and his eyes regained long-lost intensity and sharpness. 

"Whoa..." He said, breathing out a shocked sound as even his voice changed. I visibly smile and brighten, literally beginning to exude a soft light as I chuckle at how well his body has taken to actually, physically de-aging. I intend to always reward and in my own way mark those who become my servants. My ability and tendency to de-age my servants is but one manifestation of that.

I glance at him once more and instill more knowledge in him, this time bestowing him with knowledge of me as a god of knowledge, fate, and secrets. The knowledge is automatically absorbed by his brain and for a moment he freezes as he takes in the enormity of it all. It is in that moment that I vanish, teleporting myself from his office and back to the Final Factory. I know that he'll serve me faithfully, if a bit slothfully from time to time. 

There is a single instant in which I am between dimensions. It is during that time that I utilized my powers over my appearance to shapeshift and take on the appearance I had decided to use as an archdevil. 

My height increased enormously, and I gained a powerful new appearance. My facial and body structure changed unrecognizably, my muscles increasing even as I grow in height and allow me to take on the appearance of an incredibly skilled and well-rounded warrior. My skin became metallic, gleaming like an artfully cut gemstone and reflecting the pride and greed I embodied. 

I rose in height until I was over three meters tall, towering over the form I had taken on before. I was also inhumanly handsome in my current form, in a way that inspired artists and was remembered by those who beheld my form for years. My beauty was a reflection of my powers over pride, as well as envy. I also had traditionally devilish features, such as wings, horns protruding from my head, and monstrous, horse-like feet. 

When I found myself in the Final Factory, I again found myself in the strange portal chamber that I had momentarily been inside of prior to my battle with Technos. The chamber of portals was lined with many portals that I now knew led to the most technologically advanced empires in this universe, several of which possessed technology that had once been blessed and developed with the aid of greater gods of technology than Technos. 

The portals were one-way entries into various places of importance to such alien empires. One day... I'd step beyond them and into the hearts or secret laboratories of such empires, and in doing so be able to study their technology first hand. That said, for now, I was cautious and opted to study the portals themselves. Or I would have had I some time to be idle. I did not, at least not right now. 

Now that I was back it was time for me to begin to become an archdevil that the devils could rely on, and in turn, truly seize the hearts and souls of billions of lawful-evil beings. This would expand my empire well and truly further, as well as beginning to attract the attention of the devils who lurked within Infernius itself, not just those who lurked on its surface. 

I immediately began to use my civilization and law-based powers on the Final Factory itself, immediately beginning to transform the enormous place and redesign it. This was but one reward for my victory over Technos: the ability to seize and redesign his gravesite. I would transform this place of death into a vibrant place of life, infernal life. 

My powers began to warp reality around me, effortlessly seizing hold of the gravesite and beginning to reshape it, and transform this holy site into something more than it ever was: from a place of death into a site of hope.