There was something quite eerie about seeing an actual skeleton shambling about. That unsetting nature of the sight became far more visceral when that skeleton held a rust-covered blade and was charging at one of your friends. If you add in that all of this was happening in a moderately narrow tunnel well… 

If I had been the old me, I’d have been having a very bad day. I wasn’t the old me, and I wasn’t scared, though I had total self-awareness and I knew for a fact that I would have not been doing well in this situation as the person I once was. Nevertheless, now it was the easiest thing in the world for me to step forward and move to protect Almalexia. 

One thing I had to admire about skeletons, at least the skeletons of Abeir Toril, was their determination. The skeleton who was determined to gut Almalexia did not respond to me even when I stepped forward to stand beside my wife and rose my blade in her defense. The skeleton only turned its brainless skull in my direction when my flaming sword slashed through its rusty weapon. 

The skeleton’s jaw opened and it let out a magically charged screech as it fearlessly attempted to stab me with what was left of its blade. As the creature roared in anger at me I merely blinked and allowed my eyes to fill with the vast cosmic power I possessed while they were closed. 

Almalexia watched as my eyes opened and she let out a soft gasp as she stared at the red energy that filled my eye sockets and seemed to overshadow my eyes. My eyes almost looked like they were on fire, though they most certainly were not. I was channeling one of the most interesting, popular sort of super-powered energy fields I had ever seen in a comic; the mighty power of the omega effect, the potent power wielded by none other than Darkseid himself. 

I glanced at the skeleton who was about to try and push his broken blade into me and unleashed the power in my gaze. Energy beams the color of blood exploded out of my eyes and zipped through the skeletal monster who dared to challenge Almalexia and I. 

The skeleton froze for a split second after the energy I emanated pierced through it, cutting a gaping, burning hole in the middle of the thing’s skull. The skeleton then fell to its knees, and a second later fell apart completely. This, unsurprisingly, provoked the rest of its peers, skeletons belonging to both the dwarves who had guarded this place and the orcs who had raided it.

They focused on the four of us, all while radiating a palpable sense of killing intent. I could, in a very real way, feel the hatred they felt for my allies and I. Fighting them would be fun!

At the very same time that I defeated the skeleton who had been advancing on Almalexia the clone I had created for the sake of exploring the outer bonds of the territory that I had established found himself… found me, standing in the middle of a strange new world. Again. 

This time rather than facing a vast temple we found ourselves right beside a fountain that was idly spraying water high into the air in the middle of some outdoor marketplace. The air here was much warmer than it had been on the other world, and as my senses adjusted I quickly realized why that was… 

My expansive senses quickly revealed to me that the world I was on right now was a desert world. The place around me reminded me of the depictions of the ancient middle east that I had learned about while I was in Barnes and Noble and was absorbing the contents of various books before I first went to the simulation of Abeir Toril. 

My senses were rapidly expanding across the entire world, which was something that had not happened right away when I visited either the land of my shadow servants or my personal reality… Fortunately for me that was addressed by Ben almost as soon as I noticed it! 

“Relax. You are taking one more step towards becoming your truest self.” Ben told me, as he turned to look at me. 

“Your senses are expanding one final time to allow you to sense everything that is yours. This includes the dimensions which you haven’t yet visited, and even the interiors of properties that are tethered to you such as the Fortress of Doom.” Ben revealed, causing me to relax. 

“And your true final evolution will occur when you return to Earth. Now that… Will be fun.” Ben said to me, somewhat ominously. I chuckled at him and had a quippy reply ready to go the instant he said that.

“One more? Man… What a day.” I said, sounding more exhausted than I had intended. Ben quietly laughed at my remark. Though… If I were being fair, this truthfully had been a hell of a day. Despite all of this it wasn’t much later than mid-morning! 

Ben studied me as I examined the empty bazaar. There were no other lifeforms aside from the two of us on this Jupiter-sized, flat, dimension. 

“It’s weird how empty it is right?” Ben asked me, to which I silently nodded. He began to smirk at me. 

“You can fix that… Just create a homunculus!” Ben said, before laughing quietly. To be fair… I could certainly do just that! 

I rose my hand and pointed it at the air in front of me. As I did I mused my mental encyclopedia which focused exclusively on my nature as a powered being and had an extensive list of all of my powers and attributes. 

I mentally organized the list in alphabetical order and did the thought-equivalent of entering “H” in the thought-based search bar in my mind’s eye. When I did I dashed through the listed powers until I found ones pertaining to homunculi. 

Homunculi were basically advanced golems that, if crafted by a powerful enough artisan could pass for mortal, and were smarter than most golems. I could craft various types of homunculi with ease, thanks to both the essences I had imbibed and things like my domains as a divinity. 

In my mind’s eye, I could see various kinds of homunculi that I could create. The most basic homunculi I could create were servants of various kinds, such as storekeepers, whereas others were stronger and stranger still such as mages, guards, and even various kinds of advanced soldiers. 

I activated the powers within me with a twitch of mental intent and watched as the air in front of me began to ripple and distort. I felt my power search my mind for intent and pictures of people and sighed as what was found was used to shape the homunculi I was forming in my service. 

Homunculi of multiple types began to appear in front of me, soldiers, servants, artists, and other types were quickly formed utilizing my infinite arcane energy as the blood, bone, muscles, and flesh from which they were forged. Almost as quickly as they were formed they began to open their eyes and look up at me, joyously. They looked up at me admiringly, their eyes filled with reverential awe. 

I smiled as I looked at them, and I sensed my own power rising in minute amounts when they began to worship me as their god, lord, and creator. The very awe they felt was itself empowering me in very real but incredibly small ways. 

Nevertheless, my own sharp awareness of my power and my overall power level was sensitive enough for me to pick up even the subtle fluctuations their adoration caused within me.

As the skeleton before Almalexia fell, its companions eagerly moved in. Normally they would not be hostile to me, thanks to my lordship over death itself, but they had just seen me take down their companion and so their eyes were filled with hostility towards both Almalexia and I. Fortunately we were not alone. 

My draconic pets stepped forward and I could hear their muscles twitching and their jaws shifting as they grinned at my enemies. I wanted to see what they could do so I silently flexed the power of the essence of the space master and with a casual thought teleported all four of us to allow us to switch spots. 

Right as my pair of pets were about to lunge forward towards my foes, they switched places with Almalexia and I. We appeared behind the pair of excited pseudo-humans and as soon as Almalexia realized that I saw her own lips twitch upwards in an excited smile. 

As the dragons mentally caught up with what had just occurred I performed what I knew would be a rather traditional fusion of the essences of the matter master and of the space master by allowing myself to reach out and simultaneously touch the swords, axes, and knives of every single one of my foes and silently focusing on each of the instruments my enemies held onto. The essence of the matter master was an incredibly powerful essence and I was excited to flex its mighty power in front of my allies. 

With the same mental effort as I might have used to solve a simple addition problem, I focused on the weapons my enemies were wielding and began to utilize my essence of the matter master. The weapons in the hands of my foes were abruptly and radically changed from rusted weaponry into beautiful butterflies who proceeded to fly away from their wielders. 

The skeletons ignored this and instead dashed forward to swing their weaponless hands in the directions of the two dragons I had brought with me. My two pets began to let out cruel, haunting, and beautiful peals of laughter as they eagerly hurled themselves at our foes. 

The two powerfully built dragons were both quite dexterous themselves and they moved with the sort of eerie, serpentine grace that I might hav expected to see from a snake. They powerfully lunged at their foes and hurled blows at the first skeletons who approached them. Their blows, fueled by their potent natural instincts, smashed into and then through the skulls of the fearless skeletons who had come for Almalexia and I and ended up clashing with them instead. 

The skeletons crumpled as soon as their skulls were pummeled. The skeletons were brave warriors but they were not mighty foes and in the face of four creatures with real power, they were nothing more than a distraction if even that. 

As someone who had vast cosmic power, I had thousands of ways that I could have dealt with them. The truth of the matter was that I simply wanted to grow more experienced with my powers in this consequence-less trial period. As I watched the dragons pummel my foes I felt my experience with my powers rising steadily. 

Almalexia giggled as she rose her flaming sword and stepped forward. She silently strode towards our allies, blade in hand, and pointed it at the next set of skeletons who were raising their weaponless fists while stepping towards my pets. The creature brought its fists down ineffectually as if he were holding a mace of some sort. 

The gorgeous chimer who the skeleton had been ignoring kept walking until the skeleton was fully impaled on her sword. The creature ignored the magic and the fire of the spells interwoven on the sword and instead began to snarl at my wife, turning its empty eye-sockets on her. 

Almalexia sensed the sincere hatred towards life that fueled the skeleton since the thing was a naturally arisen skeleton and not a construct of some sort of potent necromantic spell. The hatred of the skeleton was a powerful thing, though nowhere near as powerful as any aspect of anyone fighting the skeletons were. 

I also stepped forward, walking towards my two pets while they continued to fight and kill skeletons who were near them. As I strode towards my companions, one of the skeletons noticed me still on the battlefield and roared at me, the sound eerie and spine-chilling. It rose its axe handle, blade still missing, in my direction. The creature’s eyes were glued to me.

I was empathetic enough, thanks in no small part to the empathy powers granted to me by my essences, that I immediately understood what the skeleton wanted. The powerful creature wanted me to fight it one-on-one! 

I chuckled and approached the figure, the skeleton standing a good deal taller than even me. As I approached it the thing waited for me and lowered the axe with which it had pointed at me to its side.

“That’s the spirit!” I muttered, my eyes filling with excitement as I readied myself to fight this RPG mini-boss.