As time began to slowly flow around me, or rather the specific "me" that was in my room on Earth, I smiled and felt my senses creeping outward. I could feel them expanding my awareness of everything in every direction around me, including above me and below me.
Every second of subjective time that passed was a fraction of a second of objective time and with every passing subjective second I felt my awareness of reality increasing. Deep within me ancient powers were stirring and they were supercharging my vast might.
I was actively undergoing my final apotheosis. I could feel my overall power skyrocketing as I looked around the "living room" of my apartment.
The room I was in was quite dingy and small. It had been that way before, but now that my eyes were open and opening further still I could feel how poor my living conditions here had been even more keenly than before. I had basic, cheap furniture purchased long ago, scattered throughout the room.
With the sort of energy and effort an ordinary person might need to use if they were unlocking their phone, I reached out with my mind and began to interact with the furniture. I touched it, with my psionic abilities, and began to change it. Ill-maintained furniture was given new life and new luxury by the artistic capabilities of my mind, edited as if they were drawings I had hand-created and simply felt like changing.
This was considered a usage of my powers and as I did it to various pieces of furniture around me I felt my powers growing. I could sense my mastery over my ability to edit and warp reality around me growing, which made me smile.
One of my greatest assets in the future would surely be my ability to be a supernatural master of my own skills. Thanks to the litany of training boosters I possessed even the simplest usage of my powers counted as potent training.
"Feels… Good." I muttered, mostly to myself as I felt my powers flowing into me. My powers swelled within me as things like my mental awareness of myself and the number of entries in my "Powerpedia" began to skyrocket.
I could feel everything from my domains to the potent powers granted to me by various "Setting-specific" essences, flowing within me. I especially enjoyed the vast powers granted to me by things like the infinity gems within me, and the various "Forces" from the D.C. omniverse that were even now becoming a part of me.
"So this is what power unending feels like, huh?" I asked, as I shuddered and let out a quiet sigh. I was feeling better than I had ever felt right now.
In my mind's eye, dozens of alerts and menus were popping into being. They wanted me to make choices that would influence my future. These menus included things like a list of "words" for me to choose three of in my capacity as a godbound, and of course a list of domains for me to choose from to make my own.
Some domains, and even a few words, were already chosen for me. Domains like death, music, technology, minds, magic, and art, were already selected, and the words of "Death" and "Apotheosis" were mine, fully mastered already. I could feel the power of the domains and the words deep inside of me, an inextricable part of myself that I had as much awareness of and mastery over as my own memories.
As I considered which domains and "words" to give myself my senses continued to expand. The thing that was both odd and handy about my particular senses was that the various things empowering me all stacked together. Funnily enough, in one particular case, it didn't need to stack for me to eventually hit the point of hearing everything on Earth.
I had all of the powers of a Kryptonian. That came with super senses, most notably super hearing. With every passing second, my sensory range was increasing sharply, and that was especially true as far as hearing went.
The thing with the essence of the Superman/Kryptonian, the potent elixir which gave me my Kryptonian abilities was that it was focused on the full potential might of the Kryptonian species. It gave me the abilities of both every Kryptonian to ever be documented in the comics, and every variant of Superman to ever appear in the comics.
With my perfected knowledge of things like the D.C. comic setting I was happy that the essence noted the distinctions between Kryptonians and the various versions of Superman. Not all versions of Superman were Kryptonians, in fact several stranger versions of Superman were humans!
That said, the Clark Kent version of Superman, especially the mainline iteration of Clark Kent, was himself an impressive figure. And I possessed not only his powers but also the powers of the Omega Effect, and the very powers that the Presence had granted to Lucifer and Michael!
As far as D.C. powers went… I was on a scale that mundane enemies would fail against me and the only foes I could imagine it'd be hard to fight against would be creatures on Perpetua's level of power.
I allowed my expanded senses to take in the world around me. I could hear slowly uttered parts of phrases in languages like English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Russian. As the words were uttered, my mind adapted to the utterances and I swiftly began to understand what was being said.
Omnilingualism, an ability possessed by a number of heroes but perhaps most notably various iterations of Superman, was an incredible quality-of-life power. As my senses expanded and reached further and further lengths I began to hear even more languages.
All it took for me to be able to speak a language with the same level of fluency as a native speaker was for me to hear one utterance of it. Even a part of a word was enough.
I spent a second appreciating the potency of my supercharged senses. And as if that wasn't enough, I began to feel some of the greater effects of a handful of my essences coming to life on their own. My right hand began to glow, and I felt the supernatural-destroying nature of the mighty "Imagine Breaker" ability coming to life.
Even my eyes felt this power as I possessed the power of six hundred and sixty six evil eyes within me. My eyes were transforming as I attuned to the potent "Blankest Eye of the The Great King of Normalcy", the first of the evil eyes. My eyes actually changed as this was occurring, becoming heterochromatic as if to symbolize the powers within them.
I began to blink and allowed myself to flit through a few of the evil eyes under my command. They all had… rather dramatic names, though as I felt myself attuning to more and more of them the power I had over my own powers and the meta-knowledge I knew made me realize that despite the chuunibyou-like nature of their names their powers were the real deal.
I paused my shift for a second to allow myself to fire off one of the eyes. As I did everything in front of me began to burst into flames, intensely hot scarlet red flames that quickly began to spread from item to item in my living room. I smiled at the sight before me and allowed the flames to dance for a fraction of a second before raising my hand and willing them to die down before me.
A second later I was staring at the red-hot remains of an array of furniture. I pointed my hands at the objects that had been burned and let out a loud snap. The instant that I did the furniture that had been scorched by my display of power rewound itself to the state it was in before I burned the stuff. I chuckled and allowed myself a second to grow accustomed to these new powers.
Beyond the raw changes occurring to my body I could also sense expansions occurring to the mini-universe I lorded over that was all part of my incredibly vast personal reality. I sensed the emergence of new things like a copy of "Academy City", my own version of Latveria, and various other mighty expansions to the section of the multiverse that I was the supreme lord of.
One of the biggest changes was that some of these new places in my expanded personal reality had organic lifeforms who had souls! Those individuals, without exception and without question, worshiped me. While there weren't gigantic numbers of them, there were enough that the innate worship energy flowing into me made me feel quite godly.
I sensed their adoration, awe, and fanaticism filling me with both pride and power. It felt good to be worshipped, and I gained an intimate awareness of the state of those who worshiped me. I could see the world around them, hear through them, and even activate my powers wherever they were, if I so chose.
My inventory was also packed with an array of fun items. Some of these items were fairly basic, such as a greatsword I had been awarded due to my new nature as the horseman of war, others were far more interesting. I had items like a sonic screwdriver or even a TARDIS in my inventory, which were far more fascinating than a simple greatsword.
I also possessed the legendary Longinuslanze Testament… The weapon known as the Holy Spear of Destiny. It was a weapon that was perhaps the greatest such item forged in its native universe, the Shinza Bansho universe. It was comparable ot such epic items as Soul Calibur, and the Chaos Emeralds as mighty, mystical items with blood-soaked histories.
I knew I'd be able to wield it, but in my current state it almost didn't feel right taking such a mighty item and actually using it. I wanted to take a beat and make my power truly my own, or at least begin to, before I claimed something with such a history for my own.
"And so this… is freedom." I uttered, with a smile on my face.
I began to quietly select domains and words for myself. I turned, first, to words since I already had a pair of fun ones under my command.
I contemplated the options before me and with a slight smile I decided to mimic some of the aspects of Hades himself. I added Earth, and Wealth to my list of words which had the effect of granting me a domain-level of awareness over them. Hades was not the god of death, though he was the god of afterlives, wealth, and the dead. Thanks to my power over death, the dead, wealth, and the underground, I was now a creature on his level.
For my third word I decided to add in something else that I could have had fun with. I decided to invest in my charisma by giving myself innate mastery over one of the trickiest words, that of Deception. I instinctively felt my charisma, perhaps my most useful statistic, increase in potency. The knowledge I now possessed of my mastery over lies filled me with confidence.
I also went ahead and began to change the locations of where I had positioned charges with regards to the handy essence of the polymath. I took all of the charges out of the section marked "Monster taming" and freed them up for usage elsewhere. As I did that I also selected more domains for myself.
As far as my role and responsibilities as a divinity went, determining domains was very important. Domains were things I was granted incredible power, influence over, and immunity to. I was immune to instant death effects due to my power over death, for example. I was capable of making utterly heart-enthralling music with ease thanks to my power over the music domain.
Some domains were easy to pick. I selected ones like life and time due to how powerful they could be. Other domains weren't as easy to select. Those ones included things like artifice, law, and destruction, but they were all important enough that I only hesitated for a second before selecting them. As I selected them I audibly muttered something, a witty look on my face as I did.
"I think it's time I take my new essences on a test drive…" I muttered as I planned who I'd visit to test out my new abilities for the first time.
While I was planning what I'd do for my tests of my own power, I quietly allowed the part of my mind devoted to mental maintenance to go ahead and finish making the relevant choices before I opened a portal to my next destination.
