The library I find myself in is a place of peace and quiet. It is a helpful sanctuary that I’ve been in for the last few hours, and the only constant sound that intrudes on the otherwise serene silence is the sound of distant strangers typing on the keyboards of public computers.

During this time I’ve adjusted to the bizarre supernatural senses that have begun to manifest themselves. With every passing second my city scale awareness of things like acts of love and lustful thoughts has grown keener, and I’ve also grown more aware of the potential of my own mind thanks to one of the two unlisted new essences that I possess: “The Essence of the Scholar”.

The essence is, in many ways, the least complex of my essences. It’s just an intelligence boosting essence, with a few small abilities mixed in, such as the ability to download the contents of a book to my mind simply by touching it and the ability to have multiple concurrent trains of thought running with my full focus on each one without straining my mind.  

The other essence is a… stranger thing, with a focus on lust and sex. It is named “The Essence of the Ultimate Chad” and it is a curious powerset to have attained, even though I certainly don’t hate the power it grants me. It almost feels thematically tied to my curious awareness of feelings of love, desire, and pleasure, as well as my awareness of acts of love, desire, pleasure and life, but I know that it’s actually a weird coincidence that I now have this powerset.

All the while for the last four and a half hours Carol’s transformed reflection and I have been diligently working, doing an array of small but important tasks while bigger, more ambitious work is done by my clones. I’ve been hard at work creating classes to bestow those who serve me superpowers, ranging from a “Cartoonist” class that allows those who possess it to use the abilities of cartoons and even to create them, to more traditional classes like rogues and clerics.

Carol, who is currently seated in front of me and feigning reading some paperback fantasy novel, has been a helpful assistant who will occasionally run off and grab some book for me to consult as I create a class. At the same time I have also used her as a target for practicing giving and taking away classes, so that I can more quickly master this particular essence.

This training has proven quite helpful as the sensation of creating and giving away classes is quite odd. It is both an incredibly handy set of abilities, and an odd collection of powers.

The act of creating a class is not a difficult one. I select the parameters of the class, including what abilities, and superpowers it confers to those who acquire it and how someone “Levels up”, and then I get an estimate of how long it’ll take me to make the class. These estimates have ranged from minutes to over an hour, but they’ve never been correct.

Once I start to make the class I am able to see a mental timer that ticks down with every second. This timer is meant to reflect how long my energy will be slightly drained while the class I am creating is being made deep within me.

The fewer the powers I select for the classes that I happen to personally possess the longer it takes me to create the class, but so far I’ve made several classes possessing powers I do not possess and it has never taken me very long to make said classes. So far every single time I’ve made a class something that I find fascinating occurs.

The mental timer that appears every time I begin creating a class ticks down at a rate roughly nine times as fast as it is supposed to. If it is supposed to take an hour for me to make a class it only takes somewhere between six and seven minutes to do so, and if it is supposed to take ten minutes for a class to be made it only takes a little longer than one minute to do so.

The reason for this is a perk that I possess. Its name is “Afarkaup Avarkostir”, and it is an “Amplifier” type perk, which either triples or divides by three everything I do and nearly all the costs I must pay whenever I buy something. My enhanced intelligence allows me to be certain that the reason my “Celestial” artifacts needed to reboot, as I gained energy three times as fast as I ought to have and each time I got any of the energy that powered the artifacts I received three times as much as I was supposed to was due to the potency of this perk.

In my mind’s eye I can visualize the power of the perk and in doing so I am provided examples of how it works. Those examples are small things, like how it effects training or how it would affect me if I made a sword. None of those illustrate its true potential, which is how it allows me to gain new superpowers whenever my celestial artifacts activate or how it has granted me three essences every time I’ve supposedly gained a single essence.

Of all of the essences I know that I own, [The Essence of the Magic Contractor] and [The Essence of the Virus] are the two that have the most ability to inflict widespread change. With these essences I could create a pandemic, and then proceed to give someone of my choosing the magical ability to cure said pandemic.

I could create a whole new faith centered around himself, give whoever I wish actual magical abilities, and then task them with spreading the faith or else they lose the powers I grant them. I could, effectively, bestow someone with one of my “Origins”, so long as I create a class centered around one. Even without the ability to give myself the classes I create, there are so many ways that I could mix and match my abilities to achieve all sorts of objectives, so long as I am creative.

I close my eyes for a second and I focus on my clones. As I do I feel the darkness I see subtly and slowly change until I can see two distinct sets of things at once. One of the fields of view I can see is a mostly empty parking deck far from where I am seated, and I can see the field of view moving on its own as my clone walks somewhere of his own accord. The other field of view shows me a suspiciously empty room in some warehouse.

One of my clones is searching for a specific vehicle, a vehicle that “We” know to be ours. It is a “Cartoon vehicle”, and has several powerful enhancements over human cars. It’s also one of several “Native” items, items from this world, that aren’t in my inventory but that are placed somewhere in the world. These items know that I am their owner, and they will respond to me when I find them, I just have to put in the legwork and actually track them down.

My other clone is busily rummaging through the least visited rooms of a warehouse, in search of goods to absorb. My first clone looks just like my current form does, and my second clone is a refrigerator sized cat-shaped cloud of darkness. The second clone I created has been hard at work absorbing any items it has been able to get its hands on.

Despite the fact that my true body is the one through which I perceive reality, my true form is that of the inky cat currently “cleaning” a room in the warehouse it has invaded. The curious creature methodically explores the room and in the distance I can hear the heavy footfalls of someone angrily stomping towards the room.

My strange cat-like clone body is currently having the time of its life as it hones my strangest set of abilities. I don’t have any doubt that the most bizarre powers I possess at the moment are the ones given to me by “The Essence of the Unnamed Darkness”, a collection of loosely related darkness and black hole type powers.

Whenever my cat-like clone body reaches an object smaller than itself it paws the thing and the object vanishes. The object is not destroyed, not in a way that manners at least, and my clone grows just a little bit larger and wider. The objects that vanish reappear inside of me, but not inside of me in a way that makes sense.

The moment that I first made a decent number of objects disappear, perhaps ten separate boxes worth of things a few minutes after my clone invaded the warehouse, a mysterious place that is quite literally inside of me made itself known to me. This empty pocket universe has begun to be less empty with every object that I’ve made disappear, but the first and only living inhabitant of the place is me myself, as I possess a body that is currently relaxing in the empty, onyx black dimension.

That body has tended to the new objects that appear in the dimension and has been quiet as it doesn’t possess a mind of its own in the same sense that the clones do. I think about it for a few moments until the door leading into the room where my cat-clone is located bursts open and a powerful looking man steps into the room from the hallway adjacent to it. He flips on a light switch and sees the cat and the empty room.

“What the FUCK!?” He roars as he takes in the fact that all the merchandise in the room, much of which was various types of expensive contraband, is gone.

His rage is felt by me but in a rather strange way, as a mysterious Norse perk named “Rett-ligr” comes to life for one of the first times since I first gained these odd powers. This perk has been passively active in the background, since Carol’s transformed reflection feels love towards me and that emotion also triggers the power but her status as a doll dulls the benefits of the perk to some degree.

I can feel myself growing stronger as I sense the rage that the man feels towards me. The broad shouldered man is not consciously sure that the cat is the source of the deep rage he is feeling, but it turns out that so long as I actually am the cause of the negative emotion in question that is enough for the power to activate. I can subtly feel power coursing through my muscles, and I sense my mind sharpening itself… My cat-like clone watches the man as he reaches for a radio.

I consider stopping him before he can turn on the thing and report… something to his allies, but then I darkly recall that “The Essence of the Unnamed Darkness” is so powerful that it is useful even on dead people. In fact… in some ways it’s more useful on dead people than it is on non-living objects. The sheer variety of things that I gain is much greater when I am absorbing a recently slain body than when I absorb an object, and if I actually want to hone these powers I need to be indiscriminate in how I go about increasing my might.

“I’m in room 12-B. I found something… weird. There’s a sort of black cat here? The damn thing is the size of a refrigerator. The cat must have been eating the merchandise?” The man says, his voice a hateful but also confused whisper. No one responds right away, but after a few moments of tense silence there is a crackle as the radio comes to life.

“Is it a cartoon? It’s got to be, right?” Some distant voice asks, causing my true body to smile through my shut eyes.

“If it is it must be one of those digital ones that some people were trying to create. I’ve never seen anything like it.” The enormous man replies, as he keeps his eyes locked on the cat.

“Alright, stun it and bring it in for an examination.” The voice from over the radio states, causing the man in front of my clone to chuckle. He reaches into a holster strapped to his pants but before he can do anything of any substance my cat-like clone taps the floor in front of himself with one of his paws and seizes control of the concrete floor beneath himself using our powers over earth.

Our elemental abilities are frightening, and fast, and the man discovers this when the ground between the cat and him falls under the cat’s power. The concrete is turned into a nasty, semi-fluid slushy mixture and the man feels fear when a bunch of it suddenly rockets towards him.

The concrete between the two is turned into a weapon as it goes from being part of the floor to being a spear-like weapon that at a speed not far below the speed of sound impales the guard. It doesn’t hit his heart or otherwise immediately murder the man, instead impaling his massive arm, but thanks in part to potent perks it nevertheless draws a sickening amount of blood. The blood sprays out of the man and coats the floor behind him.

“Nope.” The cat suddenly, and loudly, states. The man’s eyes widen when he hears the cat speak and he groans in pain as he feels more twisted and sinister emotions towards the cat. These feelings are detected by the creature and I watch, allowing my clone’s instincts to guide it, as the beast smiles darkly at the man. These feelings also trigger “Rett-ligr”, and every second that they are felt by the man he is unknowingly contributing to my growth.  

“Sorry man. Nothing personal.” The cat states, quieter this time, as the creature seizes control of the blood that the man shed when struck by the concrete-spear. The blood lifts into the air, psychically controlled by the cat, and then speeds towards the man’s head as he opens his mouth to speak. The blood is turned into something loosely approximating a number of shotgun shells and hits the man’s head with truly incredible force.

Blood and viscera are sent flying outward as the man is turned into a headless corpse. Some of the blood is sent flying with such force that it actually hits the cat but the creature merely absorbs it the instant it touches him. That said, the act of killing the man does not leave the cat, or my true self, unchanged even before he steps towards the corpse to absorb it.

In the attoseconds after the man is turned into a body I feel… something awaken within me. I feel myself absorbing something because I slew that man but without touching and absorbing his body. What I am feeling is not a part of any essences or even any origins and perks that I know that I possess.

---

The act of murder is a powerful thing. This universal law is true even for non-powered beings like mundane humans, but for beings with powers like Santi it is even more true.

No sapient being is left unchanged when they first take the life of another sapient being, but not every being can benefit, biologically, from the act of murder. Some creatures can draw more out of the act of killing, even when the victims are not sapient, than others can and sadly for the omniverse Santi is one such person.

At the core of his very soul dwell a few fonts of power. It is these dark fonts of eldritch power that are truly responsible for the seemingly absurd might he possesses given the often light-hearted nature of the universe he is a native inhabitant of. One of these fonts is a cosmically mighty essence, and the moment that Santi takes the life of another sapient being this power source finally begins to stir within him.

This power, in its totality, gives Santi many abilities but only some make themselves known to him in the immediate aftermath of the murder he has just committed. One of them is a morbid power that Santi feels as his mind expands and fills with the knowledge once possessed by Rodrick Andrews, the man he has just slain.

Every memory of Rodrick’s, every stray thought of his, every emotion the man ever felt, is succinctly absorbed by Santi’s breathtakingly powerful mind. The nightmarish genius that has just killed him purposefully creates several trains of thought devoted to unpacking and contextualizing the contents of the man’s mind, all of which begin to work at a breakneck pace. Immediately a decently well-developed mental profile of Rodrick forms in Santi's mind.

The picture, made up of facts about Rodrick, indicates that he is a "Made Man", a fully initiated member of a mafia family. That in and of itself is of interest to Santi, but it's only part of a complex tapestry of the life of the man the young entity has just slain. Other facets of the man that has just died are things of less interest to Santi, such as the fact that Rodrick was a big fan of Asian food and he liked rock music. All of these things, and more, fill a quiet corner of Santi's mind.  

“This is… astounding.” Santi mutters, both his clone and his true self speaking at the same time. Their smiles are radiant and unmistakable, which is rather grim given what is causing them to smile in the first place.

After a few moments pass wherein the clone and his true self are luxuriating victoriously, both manage to regain their focus. The clone walks over to the body and effortlessly absorbs it.

This act causes the clone to grow significantly larger as the man’s mass is added to the total size of the true form of the amoral being. Other facets of the man’s might have already been absorbed by the creature, thanks to the terrifying death-related power he has just manifested but the mass of the being matters a great deal for a creature like Santi, who relies on a loose interpretation of physics to be able to absorb objects of a certain size in one instant.

The second that the body is absorbed, an act which only takes a single instant thanks to the potent nature of the absorption ability possessed by Santi, Santi’s true body opens his eyes and smirks. In front of him are several text boxes which contain messages related to his true nature. One is especially long and prominent.

[Alert: Shadow Servant Power Available

At the core of your being lies several fonts of cosmic, reality-warping power. The spontaneous, and in some cases partial, awakening of some of these fonts of power is what allowed you to begin to undergo the potent apotheosis you are currently undergoing. This has manifested in the form of you gaining the plethora of powers you possess, and you gaining the ability to gain even more essence than the ones you innately possessed.

The strongest of these fonts will not awaken on their own and require you to awaken them through your actions. The act of murdering someone, particularly when not done in self-defense but purely selfishly, is a powerful act that has begun the process of awakening the font of power at the very core of your being. This is far from a complete awakening of that essence, but it is not nothing and the results, as you well know, are nothing to scoff at either. The powers conferred to you by this essence are within you, but until you discover them yourself they are not active and visible to you in the same way that your other powers are.

This font of power confers several death-related abilities to you, one of which is active right now. This power has no particular name but what it does is allow you to transform a bit of the abstract essence of foes you’ve defeated and slain into your absolute loyal servants and worshipers. This essence is referred to as one’s “Shadow”, hence explaining why this power is referred to as the “Shadow Servant Power”.

You can immediately activate this power after slaying a foe, or after one of your shadow servants or specially empowered servants and minions, slays a foe, and there is no limit to the number of shadow servants you can possess or even have active in the world at any time.

Shadow servants are copies of those you’ve slain but whose powers and strengths are magnified by the intermingling of your power and theirs. They will do your every command and can innately possess two weakened copies of powers of yours that you wish to grant them. In time the number of powers of yours that you can grant them will grow.

Whenever you slay a foe bits and pieces of the essence that make up their shadow are transported into you, into a universe-sized pocket dimension under your control. This is where they persist unless/until you summon them, and will also serve as an afterlife for those who worship you. Here shadow servants will busy themselves by creating a civilization devoted to you along with those who worship you and passed away but not by your hand, that the shadows will lead, wherein they will worship you in any manner you see fit. You can also teleport to and from this place at will.]

As soon as the notification is read the thing vanishes from view and the empty universe inside of Santi abruptly morphs around the version of him that exists inside of it. The empty, onyx-black dimension that that particular body of his exists in instantaneously transforms into a dark and gritty cityscape utterly devoid of life aside from the shadowy reflection of Rodrick which suddenly appears in front of the body of Santi’s in the universe.

The two of them are standing in the middle of the street, and as soon as Rodrick opens his eyes Santi feels a rush of powerful energy flow into him. At the same time Rodrick begins to almost glow in Santi’s eyes, and it takes Santi’s supercharged mind, even a little high on the energy of worship, a second to realize that Santi is seeing the power of pious zealotry manifest in Rodrick!

This is the power of worship when given by a true living being, not by a doll like the corrupted reflection of Carol. It is a powerful font of energy, one which bestows any divine or cosmic being who receives it a considerable amount of power provided they receive it from those who mean it and for a sufficient amount of time…

---

I visibly shiver as my speedy mind pieces together immense amounts of information in seconds. I am grateful for powerful, intelligence boosting perks and for my essences as I process the information I have just become privy to.

Even more text boxes are visible at the corners of my field of view that contain enigmatic phrases like “Cosmic God”, “Archdemon”, “Anael”, “Grand Adonis”, “Omega Lord”, and “Nova”. These words are all related to me, I can tell that much with as little as a glance, but I am allowing my endless number of trains of thought to pick out the precise details of the text boxes around me.

Annoyingly, the more that I learn, the more that I become attuned to things around me… Every bit of knowledge I gain from reading text boxes causes me to gain sharper supernatural senses which are quite distracting. My, initially very limited, ability to detect love and lust, pleasure and even life itself, begins to expand and continues to do so with every passing second but it’s far from alone. I have gained an equal sense for other things, other domains, that I am connected to.

My central train of thought remains focused on the big picture. In seconds, thanks to the number of things affecting me that bolster my intelligence, I manage to gain a loose grasp on the big picture.

The long and short of it is that I am a baby cosmic being who is tethered to the sins of lust, despair, envy, and wrath, and cosmic “domains”, or spheres of influence, like “Love”, “Lust”, “Fertility”, “Life”, “Death”, “Knowledge”, “Light”, “Darkness”, “Creation”, “Magic”, “Science”, three of the four classical elements, and “War”. All of this, in its own way, explains how I could attract the celestial artifacts I attracted, since I am both a demon of the highest order, and a divinity of the highest order. Nevertheless while the scale I exist on is large, I am a newborn in the ways that matter and so my stamina and experience is lacking compared to lesser beings vaguely like me.

Most gods and demons may not have the breadth I do, for the most part, but they would possess millennia, if not millions of years of experience, while I have none. If I want to become as grand as I have the potential to, I need to hone my powers to their finest possible edges.

I can sense and draw power from instances of these things at a range that grows with every passing second, and I have powers related to these things that I can use a few times a month. I can also draw power from worship, from any souls that I possess, from any treasure or artifacts that I acquire, and from a few other activities or sources as well.

My cat-clone morphs his paw into an approximation of a human hand and snaps his fingers. As soon as the sound rings outward I see a small alert in the corner of my mind’s eye that tells me that the humans who were listening to Rodrick on the radio have died. I am certain that what I did affected only the four of them and only them thanks to my knowledge of Rodrick and my eerie supernatural awareness of death.

I feel a sharp rush of energy fill every centimeter of me as their shadows appear in the empty universe beside the shadow of their friend, as well as from the fact that I have just gained the knowledge and the power of the people I just slew. My powers build on each other extremely effectively, and I can feel my overall power growing as I take in the worship of the creatures I have just slain.

“How delightful.” I mutter, even as I close my eyes and I look at the final alert that remains unread. It is a simple thing that asks me to select which two of my non-divine abilities I wish to give to my shadow servants. I quickly select a thoroughly weakened version of my ability to clone myself, and an ability I possess to speak every language that comes with a boost to how charming someone is, and the alert vanishes.

As soon as the thing goes away I will the shadow servants back into the universe of the living and I watch as they manifest in front of my clone. The versions of them that appear in front of the clone are themselves clones, and I chuckle as my clone gives them a command.

“Go to your loved ones and begin to tell them that you found… well, not one of the goddesses, but religion, and that you endeavor to be better people. And really make them believe it.” The creature tells them, even as I use its eyes to form a telepathic web of connections that will allow me to speak to them and see through their eyes when they return home to their wives, partners, and families.

The men leave, and I quickly command my clone to go ahead and finish up the act of absorbing the contraband in the back corners of the warehouse, as well as the bodies of the men. In almost no time at all my cat-clone finishes up, and I elect to take a few hours to adjust to the curious litany of senses I possess.

“If I am not fully active when the library is almost closed, stir me from my state of half-consciousness.” I say to my companion, the transformed reflection of Carol, who nods at me.

I close my eyes and focus fully on my senses for the first time since I gained supernatural awareness of myself and my surroundings. As I do I begin to truly see and appreciate the vast scale of information my divine mind picks up every second via the esoteric nature of my divinity. I take a deep breath and I begin to try and sift through the information for the sake of growing used to what surrounds me. And I begin to do so, even as I feel my concrete awareness of what time it is around me slip away so I can devote myself to mastering my more esoteric senses.