I lazily scanned the battlefield and chuckled as I noticed something odd. Positioned just above the bodies of the halflings that my forces had slain was more than just the lifeform that they had selfishly kept inside of themselves, but also bags of gold.
"Accio gold." I slowly and calmly uttered, causing the coins that littered the floor to float towards me. When they touched me and were teleported to the netherworld I began to smile in delight. It was strange to see... so many bags of gold, but I knew why they were appearing; it was due to the system that I now had access to.
The system had altered reality in a number of strange ways. One of the few ways it had changed the worlds I was in that was readily visible to other people who lacked the thing would always be that it caused my enemies, which quite powerfully was whoever I decided they were, to drop money when slain by my forces.
Less visibly to other people was the reality that my system had not only altered me but was now wildly spreading through the ranks of the beings I had blessed with Blacklight. All of my most valued servants were feeling their minds expand and be altered as they gained mini-maps, immunity to mind-control and mind-altering magic, and various other powerful boosts.
I was the provider of their access to the system and so I could sense how they altered their iterations of it. I could feel my minions make careful optimizations to their iterations of the system such as adjusting their mind's eye so that they could see from a "Third person point of view" instead of the default for their mind's eye which was a "First person point of view". I could also see them opting to "Turn on", as it were, certain settings that would help them pay more attention to the world around them like subtitles.
The choices they were making were intriguing to me, and proof of how boosted they were by my mere presence. Their elevated intelligence allowed them to make wiser choices and to boost the functionality of their systems which made me feel... almost proud of them.
That said, there was still a battle to fight and halflings to kill. I turned back in the direction of the halfling fortress and willed my blade and gun to enter my inventory. I would have more fun fighting these foes in a more brutal way than I had been fighting them until now, and I emitted another horrifying screech while hurling myself at the ground.
I dug my hands into the ground to catch myself and began to activate more "Cryptid" abilities, which were some of the powers I had acquired by virtue of extending my sickly tendrils into one of the universes surrounding Mareth.
The eldritch monster who had declared war on the people of Northos became decidedly more monstrous when he dug his hands into the ground right outside of the halfling fortress. His body began to darkly shift and contort into something very obviously inhuman as he began to crawl towards the fortress.
His eyes vanished from his face, leaving only his nose and maw visible to anyone who had the misfortune to gaze upon his visage. His teeth sharpened and began to jut outwards, growing in sharpness and in power. His nostrils flared as he investigated his surroundings. Despite lacking eyes, he could still see just fine, as his senses were divine and not so weak as to necessitate any sort of organ or body part to function properly. Nevertheless, the strange creature continued to noisily sniff the air, even as he trotted past the walls that led marked the boundaries of the fortress.
Just beyond the entrance to the halfling fortress laid a pair of paths leading deeper into the military installation. The overlord paused just past the wooden walls that had previously kept intruders out and now kept the monster's enemies in, and rose his gauntleted hand. In the area just beyond the entrance to the fortress a nether gate explosively surged out of the ground, complete with burrow holes fit for all four minion types.
The creature's minions began to laugh as they surged into the area, dashing past their overlord with their weapons drawn and blood on their minds. The horrifying monster turned his gaze away from the nether gate and began to slowly crawl, on all fours once more, deeper into the fortress.
He willingly entered the path leading into the fortress that was surrounded by dark trees. He did this because his minions had taken the other path, the lighter, winding one, whereas his path was a straight shot into the populated parts of the military base. He also did this because he could smell and see the halfling troops who had managed to hide in the darkness of the straight path, hoping to have a chance to ambush his minions.
The straight path was a narrow, untrodden dirt road that forced someone to rely on their ability to see in the dark. Unfortunately for the devious halflings, the god they were facing was a divinity of darkness and more than capable of fighting in even the darkest conditions without any sort of impediment to his skills.
The monstrous divinity dashed at the crowd of halflings and before he even reached them began to vibrate mid-dash and silently shuddered as two eldritch tentacles burst out of his shoulders. The tentacles were several meters long and nearly invisible in the darkness of the tree's shade. With a thought, the terrible spirit who had come to kill and conquer the halflings shot his tendrils forward like powerful spears, intending to use them to brutalize and devour his enemies.
No less than fifteen halflings silently hid in the trees and overgrowth that hid the exit of one of the paths leading into and out of the interior of their fortress. They all held swords and wore light leather armor. They also all held their breath, carefully working to keep their presence hidden.
The sounds of the invading minions grew louder and louder, and closer and closer, as the halflings waiting for their chance to ambush the invading army grew tenser. They were so focused on the invaders that had noisily supported the dreaded dark lord that they did not consider an ambush on them a possibility. Their arrogance was noticed by their enemy.
The silent divinity was able to sneak up on them with ease and when he reached an area just a few meters away from the one the furthest in the back of the crowd the creature began to silently cackle. The creature stood up, for the first time since it had begun to hunt down the halflings in the fortress, and rather than unleashing another deafening howl it silently transformed its shoulder-tentacles, willing the appendages to turn from fleshy numbs and into dark spears from which a sickening, venomous ichor dripped.
The twin tendrils shot forward at a speed that neared the speed of sound and brutally impaled two of the halflings who were viscerally lifted off of the ground by the inhuman appendages. They were murdered so speedily that they didn't even have time to actually react and instead simply died at the hands of the vicious being who was hunting them down.
Fohion emitted a cruel laugh as he received notifications alerting him that he had just put down two halflings. He felt the experience he had just earned seeping into him. He was also delighted to see that these actions had granted him experience that was specific for the "Assassin" class, a handy class for a creature of deception like himself.
I continued to laugh as I read the curious notification I had just received. The sounds of my laughter made the halflings around me freeze in fear, which was great for me.
My prehensile tendrils were a part of me thanks to my nature as an eldritch being and as a dark divinity. They were also enhanced, significantly, by the strange places I had extended my consciousness into. They were capable of being shaped as freely by me as any of my limbs were, and I had as much mastery over them despite their bizarre anatomy as I did over my more decidedly humanoid limbs.
I towered over the halfling warriors that I had scared stiff. I could feel their hearts hammering in their chests. I turned my head towards the one closest to me, right as my minions began to scamper past us, and simply turned on my Kryptonian-sourced heat vision. The halfling's shirt burst into flames for a split second before the creature himself actually vanished, having been fully disintegrated by my powerful sight.
The sight of the creature's shirt on fire, and the sudden disappearance of both the being and its clothes seemed to put the fear of... well, me, into them and they immediately screamed before turning from me and attempting to run away. I allowed them a few moments to put some distance between themselves and myself before I turned my vision on the halflings affixed to my tendrils.
I then wordlessly and simply rose a hand over my head and activated the powerful power of another essence I had imbibed; "Essence of the Black Hole".
The halflings that had attempted to run away suddenly found themselves slowing down, their bodies beginning to betray them as I distorted gravity around us and redefined it. The halflings were slowly being dragged back to where I was, and I watched with an almost apathetic look in my eyes as they began to come closer and closer to my all-consuming hand.
The diminutive beings closest to myself were the first to feel their feet be pulled off of the ground and when that happened they were almost immediately pulled into the empty space above my hand. The very nanosecond that they reached the area above my hand their bodies were stretched and compressed, turning them into long, yet horrifying spaghetti noodle-like shapes with only the vaguest colors of their clothes visible to anyone who lacked my superior vision. Then they vanished, their lives mercifully ended before they could really feel the pain of what spaghettification would have done to them.
The reason they vanished was that I had absorbed them, my new black-hole powers converting their mass into energy and power for myself. Since I had absorbed their mass I had unmade them on a subatomic level and taken them into me. The "Black hole" powers I possessed were really on another level as far as destruction went since with them I could effortlessly destroy all sorts of foes or obstructions to my goals.
Annoyingly, for now, it appeared that if I unmade my foes through methods such as "Ex Nihilo" and my "Essence of the Black Hole" powers I wouldn't gain any experience. That was actually a real shame since my system was a powerful one that packed some mighty blessings which made any and all experience I gained worthwhile... Fortunately, they were so many worlds for me to explore. That meant that there were so many chances for me to find victims to prey upon in a creative array of ways.
At the very same time that the divinity was feeding on creatures using his new powers, his true form's greedy eyes gazed at the cornucopia of worlds he had just extended his unholy tendrils into. His truest manifestation, the one in the white void, felt mighty as he quietly fed upon countless things from the worlds he had quietly invaded.
The entity was a creature of unfathomable power and he was capable of growing in power in some frankly unfair ways. Whenever he entered a world he not only changed it by virtue of his unusual powers he also became a linked and important part of it, gaining power from its inhabitants even if they didn't know who he was. Their sin nourished him. As did their lives, loves, and even their peace. Everything they were fueled the unholy divinity and made him greater still.
When a villager felt despair at the hands of a zombie, their pain could fuel Fohion as readily as the muttered verses of a small handful of cultists who awaited the return of their god and master. Tragically, for everyone who wasn't a Fohionite, the god was not a merciful being. When prayers were heard they carried power, especially if they were granted. The evil spirit had no interest in answering the questions or in helping the poor and destitute, but he would greedily continue to soak in the power of prayers, all the while denying himself the greatest part of prayers.
Nevertheless, as the divinity watched the litany of worlds continue their lives only somewhat touched and negatively affected by his corruptive presence he began to smile. He knew that he was going to invade those far off worlds someday and so, for the moment, the god did not misbehave.
No... When the time came for him to first truly enter whole new worlds that he had yet to visit he would corrupt them in their unique ways. Today, the second day of his life as he knew it now, was not that time. Instead, he'd content himself with his existing, ambitious plans. Plans that required clever perk use.
The true form of the divinity silently activated the most important part of the system he now possessed with a grin. He was going to go ahead and activate the "Party" and "Guild" functions on his system so he could begin to truly organize his forces.
As he did, he was delighted to see more speech and text bubbles appear in his mind's eye, both subtitles and narration for the next few moments while he worked to create his very own formalized faction.
