Hours after the appearance of the god who permanently transformed and expanded Jasper, a solitary figure stood in the depths of a private dimension. The lone figure was a tall man who wore regal-looking purple robes and on he possessed a single black ring that he wore on the ring finger of his left hand. 

Both the man and the ring radiated power. The power the man radiated was strange. It surrounded him and in the depths of his private dimension, he allowed it to suffuse the air around him. The air that surrounded him was coated in his power and that was the power of love, lust, awe, and fascination. The jet black ring on his ring finger radiated a fouler sort of power. 

The air right around the ring was infected with the darkness of the ring. The ring was a powerful artifact, but at the moment the figure who possessed it did nothing with the thing. Instead of fiddling with the ring the deity who possessed it quietly gazed at the thing. 

Raul was currently located inside of his private dimension. As a deity, he possessed an innate "home" dimension that was utterly and totally his to control. This dimension was different from his seraglio, which was where he "lived" with the beautiful women whom he had enticed into his harem. That dimension was his by virtue of his nature as a grand adonis and was not nearly as customizable as his true home, but it was far more private and secure. 

Raul's left hand began to radiate a truly tremendous blue light as he stopped staring at the ring on his finger and instead began to play with his dimension.

At the moment I found myself standing on a small island in the middle of a vast and seemingly endless sea. My hand was radiating a potent blue light, even as I began to feel the heat of a generic and automatically generated sun beating down on me. 

The private, at the moment, dimension I was currently inside of was my deific home. It was the seat of my power as a deity, and where those who worshiped me would go if they died. And at the moment it didn't really fit me at all. I was alerted to the existence of this place in the wake of Zaria and I consummating our "marriage". I received several notifications when she and I had finished having sex, each of which related to gods and our powers. The first and longest notification I had received filled me with knowledge of this place, and after reading through all of the notifications I had received I quietly came here to customize my dimension. 

My hand was emanating blue light. I gazed at it for a moment before pointing it at the sun and unleashing a single potent "Ascendant blast" that took the form of a ray of darkness. The thin beam of energy shot out of my finger and cut through the sky for a few moments before hitting the light-emitting star in the sky. When it did the sun began to vibrate chaotically, and then shattered into a million pieces a few moments later. I immediately felt a chill and chuckled as I realized that the sun wasn't quite as far from where I was as I had originally envisioned it being. 

The light that the sun provided then vanished, leaving my solitary island in darkness. I was unbothered by this since I could see perfectly in darkness. As a sanguinarch and a deity, I was innately granted influence over the darkness domain, and that bestowed upon me a number of handy benefits such as vision that could pierce both illusions and any sort of darkness, and the ability to manipulate darkness itself. 

I allowed myself to soak in the darkness for a few moments, some of it even flowing into me and seeping into my skin. After a few moments of luxuriating, I rose my other hand and activated one of the handiest of my new abilities, my so-called "Giver of life" power. My right hand began to emanate bright, sun-like light as I felt my mind fill with the possibilities. 

My "Giver of life" power was a potent one that allowed me to both resurrect beings and also create new entirely new life. It was one of my highest ranked and most potent abilities because I had willingly invested a significant amount of my power into it. I was a creature of life and this power allowed me to truly act like it. 

I felt the power of the ability filling my mind as my brain filled with images of various different types of creatures and living beings. That said I wasn't here to create random beings to fill up my dimension, I was behaving with intentionality and purpose. 

Some of the notifications I had received filled me with far greater knowledge of religions than I had previously had. I had chosen to come here because of that very same knowledge. If I was serious about managing a religion, it was time that I began to act like it, and what I was doing here was part of that. 

I rose my right hand to my chest and closed my eyes. As my eyes closed I envisioned the faintest portion of my divine essence seeping out of my soul and onto the ground in front of me. As I envisioned the ground in front of me accepting my divine essence I actually felt slightly weaker, for the very first time since I had become a deity, but I steeled my nerves and chuckled. The light radiating out of my hand began to drip onto the ground in front of me, oozing down my hand like a liquid of some sort.

"Now I just need to create angels." I uttered, as the ground in front of me actually began to glow. The light was faint but in the total darkness of my divine dimension, it was bright enough for me to notice it. 

My mind was filled with questions from my iteration of the system. I allowed myself a chance to slowly go through them and answered them in precise detail. This was not a time to be impatient and to rush things. After all, I wasn't the only person going through and solidifying my deific power. 

Zaria had also entered her divine realm in the minutes after her apotheosis. The moment that we had sex her innate spark of divinity was fully and violently awakened and she became a goddess of life, fertility, psionic power, and dreams.

When we had finished our time together, she asked me to allow her to enter her divine realm and to spend some time there, working on organizing her own believers. I, of course, allowed it since her few followers were going to exponentially increase in numbers in the days to come. She was going to need to organize her faith before then. 

I myself needed to more actively organize the religion that worshiped me, but that was part of the reason why I was creating angels. Angels would come into existence here, and then serve me as some of the heads of the faith that sought to worship me. They would help teach clerics, paladins, and others who sought to honor me and to be a part of the empire I was going to create, and could be trusted to help lead the lighter societies I was inevitably going to annex into my empire. 

I had no illusions about the nature of running an empire. Empires were expansive things that were built and led by conquerors, and I wasn't going to pretend that I was different in that respect. Where I would differ from other emperors was that I was going to give those who joined my empire utopian, happy existences and free them from the shackles of wicked rulers who sought personal power.

When possible I'd expand my empire peacefully, and make alliances and deals with friendly, benevolent governments. And when I couldn't do that I'd wear the helm of a warrior and liberate civilizations so that they could experience the delight that came with being a part of the... Raulian Empire. I had already seen firsthand the potential of my immense power when I blessed the city of Jasper with prosperity, I was going to do that for entire galaxies. And eventually, for entire universes. 

For a few moments, I was lost in thought. I imagined my empire expanding beyond one city, and eventually taking over countries. Then continents. And then entire planets. I was brought back to the present when the light in front of me suddenly expanded and shot upward into the sky. The sudden expansion of the light made me open my eyes so that I could gaze at it curiously. The ground in front of me was aglow with potent, life-creating, deific power. My power. The power of a... super Anael. The power of a grand adonis. 

I felt my own power begin to seep out of me and into the glowing ground for a few moments. It felt strange and unpleasant but I also knew that it was necessary. I quietly spent some of the stores of essence that were currently inside of me and felt the strange power source burn away inside of me, while it sped up my recovery from the unpleasant sensation of the taking of a small spark of the divine fire raging inside of me.

If I focused on what was going on inside of me I could sense the different power sources I relied on. As a deity, a sanguinarch, and an archdemon, I could sense the piety of my worshipers, I could feel the strange and ocean-like body of power that I knew of as "essence", and I could sense the strange and sinful power of lust. 

Each of these fonts of power felt different. The piety of my worshipers felt firm, solid, and unyielding. It was like a skeleton. The power of essence felt like blood flowing through my metaphysical veins. The power of lust felt airy and gaseous inside of me, but not in an unpleasant way. If anything lust felt the best of all of the fonts of power that existed inside of me. It was also above and beyond the most common. It filled my lungs, my head, my muscles. I could feel it suffusing me. 

There was a reason why lust was the most common and abundant of the fonts of power empowering me. When I ascended and became an archdemon of lust I had gained mastery over lust, and my unconscious mind was filled with the knowledge of every instance of lust in the omniverse, and every one of those instances supplied myself and every other greater archdemon of lust with a tiny sliver of power. That reality, combined with the abundance of lust in the omniverse, made myself and every other greater archdemon of lust surprisingly powerful which I didn't doubt that foolish archdemons of other sins wouldn't realize until they had made disastrous mistakes and challenged us. 

Even as I felt my deific power suffusing my realm and allowing it to birth angels I mused on the true nature of my powers, including my conceptual connection to love, lust, and joy. Among the vast notifications I received on the nature of my divinity came the news that my powers over love, lust, joy, and the other things I had connections to as a grand adonis and, eventually, an anael, was the news that my real powers as a deity had awakened. That included the ability to manipulate my domains. And also an awareness of them. 

What interested me more than the ability to manipulate love and lust, was the ability to be aware of them. There was power and potential in knowing, with but a glance, who someone loved and who inspired lust in them. And that was one of the numerous powers I had just unlocked within myself. I also gained the incredible ability to manipulate, instill, or even remove, the emotions of love, joy, and the sin of lust.

To some those powers would be seen as more desirable than the ability to sense whom someone loved or lusted after but the power to manipulate emotions was one of those "dark" powers I knew I'd need to be wary of. Such powers could easily corrupt the careless, especially since I now possessed an innate "darkness" that allowed me to more easily deal with demons, vampires, and other beings associated with darkness. 

That said, as fascinating as my powers over love and lust were the ones that most excited me were my other powers. I was a deity of nature and that was incredibly powerful. When I had read the notification about the nature domain it filled my vision and was several paragraphs long. The nature domain was a powerhouse of a domain and being a god of it was exciting. 

Even as the ground in front of me continued to glow, and as my power turned into aetherium, the substance from which angels were made, I felt my connection to nature. As a deity of nature, I possessed an unbelievably powerful connection to it. I was tethered, in very real ways to trees, to rocks, to oceans, to the sky, and even to the void between stars and galaxies. I was also tied to animals. I hadn't been able to feel it better, but now I could. 

I could sense the primal might of creatures such as gorillas and lions in myself. I could sense the grace and speed of creatures like cheetahs within myself. I could feel the connection to life that rabbits had within me.  I was now a true deity. And I was going to act like it.

The light before me was glowing beautifully. It was like staring into a fire, including the fact that it radiated warmth and heat. The entire island was glowing now, a lone font of light in a sea that walked a fine line between being literally and metaphorically a "sea of darkness". I gazed at the floor at my feet and watched silently when the light suddenly shot upwards into the sky. 

I was now surrounded by light, and I felt it wash over me. As the Anael, I was also a being of holy, joyous light, in addition to the powers over darkness that I innately possessed as a sanguinarch. Right now the light that surrounded me was light born from my own divine fire, the roaring inferno of holy power and energy that counted as my "soul". Being surrounded by it felt good. It felt safe. I was surrounded by my own soul. And that same light, that same fire, was transforming into the birthplace of a new angelic host. 

I watched, silently, as the first angel in my own host began to form. I watched, awed, as a roughly human-shaped silhouette, aside from the shadowy outline of wings, began to form in the incredible light of my deific fire, the very first being born in a holy furnace of my creation. Over the course of roughly two minutes, the silhouette began to become more and more defined, slowly becoming a masculine being before my very eyes. 

I examined the silhouette and its gradually solidifying features with a proud and satisfied smile. The being was tall, taller than Zaria or Fara, but not quite as tall as me. He had two pairs of wings, and the expression he was formed with was a smile. He had plum-colored skin and his wings were covered in white feathers. Before he was even fully formed he began to gaze back at me, a confident and joyful smile on his face as he began to radiate pious joy and gratitude to me for creating him. 

It would take about ten minutes before he was actually fully formed. When he was he stepped towards me and then fell to his knees in prayer and joyful submission. He wasn't silent in his prayers, and his voice had a surprisingly rich timbre that I could both hear and feel. His voice was deep, and there was a certain power to it that even my own voice lacked. After he finished praying, to me, he gazed up at me and began to speak, directly addressing me this time. 

"Oh glorious creator, knowledge of your power fills every fiber of my being. Praise be to you and your majestic might! I am delighted to have been artfully sculpted by your hand and to be an instrument of your will. Please command me as you see fit, and if you believe it would help you advance your goals inform me of your agenda and my purpose. I am an instrument to be wielded by you as you see fit." He told me, speaking piously and zealously. 

I felt the sincerity of his words, and his love and piety flowing into me. He was being honest, and I appreciated that. In his eyes his purpose was to serve me, and I felt his desire to be useful to me. I also sensed that it was his way of thanking me for creating him.

I smiled at the angel and was silent for a moment. I knew that I needed to behave as deities did in this moment, even if that was not something that I was still fully used to doing. I was growing increasingly comfortable with acting with some sort of glorious purpose but it wasn't second nature quite yet. When I began to speak, I allowed my eyes to glow with power and my body to radiate the potent power that burned just beneath my skin.

"Rise, oh created one. I have created you to lead, and in doing so to be of service to me. Yours is a glorious destiny. I have need of an angelic host, and you are the first angel I have created to make up that host. Stand, Magnus, and be the first and the wisest of my angelic servitors." I commanded, my voice exploding out of me.

The angel nodded, meekly, and slowly got up. When he rose and gazed at me, I allowed some of my power to touch him and to fill him. His eyes began to glow as he felt the gentle touch of my energy, and his lips softly turned upwards in a gentle grin. As my power filled him, so did knowledge.