198 Curiosity, Experimentation, And Empire Building

Even though I had proclaimed this planet's age of man to be at an end I was still surrounded by artificial objects. I turned my attention towards the large buildings that surrounded me. In every direction, my view was obstructed by at least one large building. It was annoying.

I hopped over the car in front of me with ease, landing behind it on a sidewalk, and placed my hand on the building that was closest to me. The building was made of a mix of concrete and brick and was hard to the touch. I shivered as knowledge and memories seeped into me, depicting the building's creation years ago and then the plethora of businesses that had since made use of the building. The memories that poured into me played out like something called "movies" from Htrae, and watching them was an easy and quick avenue to knowledge.

Many different memories seeped into my mind all at once, and they all played out at once as well. I was still as I watched them and during this time my worms began their assault on distinct portions of the city. My enhanced hearing easily picked up the sounds of their vicious attacks and occasionally the distant cries of the humans who had survived the end of their civilization only to be swept up in another calamity.

In time the memories ceased pouring into me and I withdrew my hand from the building. I glanced at it and considered what to do for a moment. And then I decided I would just destroy the thing. A soft grin spread across my face, a deceptively serene expression given the devastation I was about to unleash.

I didn't even bother to study the building. Instead, I just rose my hand in its direction and unleashed one of the powers I was given access too by the destruction domain. I looked at the building and began to manipulate nothingness, one of the more esoteric abilities I had been given access too through the destruction domain.

I shivered again, though this was due to the unpleasantness of the sensations I was feeling. And then I felt it, the total absence of existence I had called upon. It came into being, for lack of better verbiage, in my hand, like a ball of total emptiness. Somehow I knew I could touch it and no ill effects would befall me, but I also knew that it would destroy just about anything else it made contact with.

I glanced at it and saw that it had the appearance of empty air. Even with my supernatural vision, I couldn't physically see the object, the ball, I held in my hands. Or rather there was nothing to see. Perhaps the most frightening part of this power, now that I was utilizing it for the first time, was that it would be incredibly difficult to dodge due to how hard it was to perceive.

Everything was destroyed. The power worked perfectly. That said, the second the orb moved out of one place and into another oxygen and dust and other small things flooded back into the spaces the orb left eerily empty.

"So this is nothingness manipulation? That's fun." I mused, entertained by the power I had just utilized. I peered through the hole I had created and glanced inside the darkened building. The wall I had assailed was windowless and beyond it there was no light, aside from the light pouring into the circular peephole I had just made. I began to slowly push the orb in my hand against more of the wall, and thus widened the hole I had created.

I spent a few moments making an Althos-sized hole in the wall for me to walk through so I could enter the building. Doing so was a simple task that consisted of me merely utilizing my orb and making it delete more of the wall until enough was gone for me to effortlessly step through and into the building. As I did that I was able to peer into the inside of the building without utilizing any of my supernatural abilities. I also had a chance to further experiment with my powers, which I did so eagerly.

I studied the janitorial closet I was creating a hole into and spotted a broom. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on the orb in my hand, as well as the distant broom.

While my eyes were closed I effortlessly made the orb in my hands the object that now had gravitational pull over the broom and opened my eyes just in time to see the broom fly from the wall it had been placed on, on the other end of the closet, and into the orb in my hand. This of course destroyed the broom, the object vanishing as it reached the orb, and eliciting a chuckle from me.

At this point, I recognized this attack for what it was: a flexible, miniaturized black hole attack. And that was amazing. What's more, was that I could manipulate it however I wished. And now that I an awareness of how at least a simple orb of nothingness worked I quietly uncreated the orb, causing it to vanish. Oxygen and dust particles began to flow back into the space the orb had occupied.

A second later, I covered a single finger of mine with the dreadful power of nothingness. With it, I would be able to do away with anything that got in my way. I smiled, cruelly, at the thought of destroying anything that attempted to curtail my fun. Imposing restrictions or otherwise getting in the way of a god of chaos was ill-advised at best.

I looked around the interior of the building I had just created an entryway into, before sighing. The building was filled with corpses and with few other things of interest to me. After a few moments of careful consideration and clear-headed thinking, I ultimately resigned myself to the knowledge that I ought to probably leave this world for now. I had more to do and I knew for sure that I would be busy if I wanted to go ahead and become an intermediate god.

I had tools I could utilize if I truly wanted to speed my ascension into intermediate godhood. Potent tools, both living and not, that would happily aid me as I made power-plays across the universe. It was time I began to use them a bit more strategically. After all, I had an empire to build.

With as much effort as it took to take a breath, I teleported from the janitorial closet to an old and familiar place: my tower, atop my island home in my divine realm.

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One second I was in the darkened janitorial closet and the next I found myself in what passed for a throne room in my tower. The difference in the overall atmosphere was night and day, and in my divine realm, the sun was beginning to set.

I quietly walked towards the throne, and warily sat upon it. An instant later I reached out to all of my angels, extraplanar entities who served gods in exchange for immortality and a set of godly powers of their own. I reached into their minds and spoke a single word, mightily using my holy voice to command them.

"Come." I commanded, my voice entering their minds and in many cases overpowering their wills outright. Half a second later they began to appear, instantaneously teleporting into the throne room and I received a chance to look at the beautiful creatures, the first chance I had gotten in months.

Angels were intriguing creatures to look at. Many of them were looked like idealized humans with fantastical features such as a halo, multiple sets of wings, or even visible auras, but more than a few simply didn't look like humans at all.

The very first angels I had ever laid eyes on, Lahar and Pagsabog, on were not humanoid in appearance. Instead, they looked like insects, but ones that lived in volcanoes. They were among the first angels to appear in the throne room, dripping lava onto the stone floor beneath their butterfly-like wings. The creatures were magmic angels, potent angelic entities who apparently tended to serve as either guardians of nature or weapons of mass destruction. I greeted them with warm smiles, heartened to be reunited with familiar faces after all this time.

Other angels took on other, sometimes more fantastical forms, and at other times more familiar forms. Angels in my employ included angels of nature, love, faith, law, nobility, lies, truth, war, life, dreams, and even creation. Of those types of angels, the ones who took on more humanoid appearances included the angels of life, love, creation, law, and nobility.

The other angels took on an assortment of forms. The angel of nature who worshiped and served me had a humanoid-shape but wasn't that different from my Cosecha-forms in that it had a body composed of various elements and materials. The angel of war was immaterial and was the sole immaterial angel of the angelic host I had assembled to date.

That said, angels had bodies that could be changed dramatically. I could force them to change, or they could change their own appearances, all at will. Angels who had agreed to serve me forsook mortality and even death altogether and in exchange, they gave me power over them. It was, in their eyes anyway, an even enough exchange since I legitimately hadn't coerced them into serving me they opted to do so willingly.

I waited until all of the few hundred angels who served me appeared before me. It took a few minutes for that to happen. When they did I began to speak.

"It has been too long my angelic servants." I began, a smile on my face. It had indeed been months since I had seen them. A mistake on my part if I was being honest. This remark was met with soft chuckles and murmurs of agreement.

"I have been a bit too independently minded, taking on things by myself and doing things directly that I hadn't needed too." I confessed, smiling a bit sheepishly. This remark was met with braver, louder chuckles. I chuckled as well. I didn't mind being frank at the moment. But then my eyes narrowed and I began to consciously radiate more power than I usually did, suffusing the air around me with my intense energy and divine might.

"That said... I am beginning to think more clearly. And I am beginning to organize my thoughts. It's... a bit hard for a god of chaos to do that. I admit I am inclined to be scatterbrained and distracted from my grander objectives. But that is changing." I told the assembled host of angelic entities. This time my remarks were met with awed, cowed silence. I was a god after all. But eventually, one angel spoke up.

"Lord-god Althos, we are your angelic host. We exist to serve you. We have made ourselves available to you to use as you see fit. That said, please enlighten us. What are your goals?" One of the angels, an angel of law asked. The angel had the appearance of a boy in his teens with his eyes closed and a blank, stone tablet in hand. Its voice was soft, and I could tell it was legitimately curious as to what I would say. I studied it for a moment, and the creature shuddered as it felt my gaze fall upon it.

"That is a good question. You know my major goals, but not my minor ones. Not my immediately achievable ones. That is but one mistake I have made. Allow me to correct that. I seek to build an empire. It need not be the most intimately connected one, but it'll be an empire all the same. An empire that serves me and worships me." I told the angel.

As I spoke my words after "Allow me to correct that" began to appear on the blanket stone tablet the creature held, before vanishing immediately after I spoke. I began to grin as I watched that, amused to see that the angel's tool could record messages.

"I seek to build an empire that stretches not only from one end of the universe to the other but into and throughout every dimension. It is my intention to be worshiped by every creature in this universe. And then... in every universe." I told the assembled host of angels. And then I smiled at the angels I had already drawn into my service.

At the same time as I smiled, I activated an especially useful power I possessed. I turned "Absolute beauty" all the way up to the maximum, aware that it was one of my few abilities which could affect creatures greater than mortals. I felt their hearts speed up in response to the heightened beauty I was showing them, and I felt, in some of them anyway, another sort of reaction. A surprisingly physical one. It made me chuckle, but I did so internally.

"I intend to save every angel and to give your species purpose again. In time we shall gather every angel in existence, in every universe in existence, and the whole of your kind shall serve me. But first, we shall gather more angels to our side." I told the assembled creatures. I closed my eyes and clapped, utilizing my power over my divine realm for one of the first times ever.

Divine realms were, to my knowledge, places were gods were at their absolute strongest. They were cosmic strongholds for divinities, where a divinity could rest and recuperate from injuries and from boredom as well as perform feats of exceptional strength even for gods. And I intended to begin to truly use mine.

When I clapped my hands my angelic host and I were teleported out of my tower. We were taken instantly from the tower to a clearing on my island. Above us, we could endlessly gaze at a rapidly darkening sky. That wouldn't be the case for long. I rose a hand and created a vast portal that connected the skies above us with various points throughout the dimension that mortals dominated.

It was after that that I quietly crafted and then transmitted a message to every single angel I could detect in each and every solar system my "Stellar Awareness" power allowed me too. It was a message I was quite proud of as well, one I constructed easily and proudly, utilizing both my godly pride and my knowledge of angels. And to ensure my success I fully unleashed a quiet and dangerous combination of abilities all at once.

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[Alert: The Destiny Of Angelkind

Angels throughout the cosmos, listen to the voice of your new god and come to him. A new god has come to life and he is intent on unifying the angel race under a single banner. His name is Althos and he is inviting you to his home so that you may bask in his power and be restored to your true, resplendent, immortal glory.

Althos is an empire-builder who is working to build a universe-wide empire and he is in need of your power, your loyalty, and your faith. Join him, embrace your collective destiny, and come together so that as one a new divine force in service to a true ruler may sweep over the universe and usher in a new age of glory, piety, and wonder.

Portals are opening near you. They lead to his divine realm. Enter them and embrace the future. Never again fear mortality, death, or even suffering. Come home and you shall experience that which you lost so long ago, the power and purpose that came from serving a god.]

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Throughout the cosmos, the words of the powerful god entered the minds of over three hundred thousand angels. This number comically dwarfed the paltry host the god had assembled so far, but that was because the god had been small-minded before. He hadn't even spoken to all of the angels in the solar system of his birth, a number which was around twenty-five hundred. He had opted to recruit exclusively the angels of the world he came to life on and that had limited the number of angels he could reach out too.

The minuscule portion of the cosmos that Althos had an awareness of wasn't even one-hundredth of a single percent of the universe and yet in it, the number of lifeforms he had awareness totaled several septillion assorted entities. Incredibly not even one million of those lifeforms were angels.

Angels of all sorts received the notification. Angels who held powers over domains as great as death, and as minuscule as specific animal and plant subdomains, alike heard of the god at the same time. And yet that wasn't the only thing that happened to them.

At the same time as they were learning of the existence of a god their minds and hearts were under a certain kind of attack. Althos was unleashing his ambition and to do so effectively he realized that he needed the most powerful possible angels. To maximize the chances he had of recruiting the angels he had quietly unleashed a potent combination of abilities.

The first thing he did was utilize his powers over relationships to subtly make angels indifferent to those they had previously loved. The second thing he did was make each and every angel apathetic towards their existing responsibilities, activating dangerous sloth-based powers throughout the cosmos. And finally, he activated an old favorite of his, "Religious fervor" in areas surrounding angels throughout the portions of the universe he was aware of.

The combination, put together, was an insidious psychological assault that made it impossible for an angel to resist the idea of meeting with a god. It caused the angel to feel apathetic and indifferent towards their lives as they were, and then made them even more suggestible towards meeting gods than they were innately.

Thanks to it the god's scheme was a grand success, and the skies above the tower were filled with angels within minutes, the creatures filling every available spot easily as more and more poured in and found themselves in the presence of an ambitious, crafty god. When every single angel the god's message had gone out too, night had fully fallen within his domain, and he began to feel well and truly victorious.

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As angels from almost every conceivable domain and subdomain filled the skies above my island home I began to laugh, the victorious sound filling the air around me as my own angelic host turned to examine their once lost siblings who had finally come home. I stood up and stretched out my arms as if for a hug, an enormous grin on my face as I did so. And then I began to glow a divine light, my entire form subsumed by the radiance I was emitting. At that point I spoke, channeling my divine power into my voice so that I could do my best impression of a god of old.

"Welcome home angels. I am Althos, your god, emperor, and the destined ruler of angelkind." I said, speaking arrogantly as I once again channeled the pride that I had heard the gods of old possessed and was a quality I held deep within me myself.

"I am overjoyed you have embraced your destiny and have come to join me. Together we shall usher in a new, golden age, one that lasts forever." I said, as I continued to channel that pride that I usually tried to keep hidden, out of view and notice from those who surrounded me. As I did that I took my first detailed glance at the creatures who filled the skies above me.

I could see good, evil, lawful, and even a few chaotic angels, in the skies above me. I could see angels of healing, necromancy, and other schools of magic, and even ones of time, disease, pain, life, death, all seven vices, and all seven virtues. I knew that these angels lurked throughout the portions of the cosmos that I was aware of, but to see them all gathered in front of me at once was a breathtaking sight. I was silent for a moment, a proud smile on my face and then I began to speak again, channeling the domain of law, as well as the sin of pride, into my words.

"Welcome to the Althonite empire. Together we shall conquer every corner of the universe and bring the glorious knowledge of my existence and my power to every single mind that exists. Every nanometer of this universe shall know my name and every lifeform shall whisper it in reverential tones or in fearful cries." I told the assembled angelic host.

I felt more pride than I had ever felt before as I gazed at the sky above me. Seeing a force of mine improve in power so considerably and so immediately filled me with pride and with awe at my own powers. At the same time as I was gazing out at the crowd before me, I effortlessly filled them with love for both me and for the Althonite empire, the new and official name for the collective empire I was creating.

A second after I did that, I silently created a new language, words of which began to flood into my mind, and transmitted knowledge of it into the minds of every single angel in front of me.

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The vast and incredibly powerful angelic host the god had assembled in a moment of unfettered ambition had angels of nearly every single domain and subdomain. In fact the only domains that lacked representation were the domains of fate, reality, and luck, themselves the final three greater domains that Althos lacked access too.

The angels themselves felt replenished and renewed in the presence of their new god. Some of them were kilometers away from him, only barely able to perceive him, and even though distance weakened how strongly they felt his power it wasn't enough to completely nullify it. They too felt his power wash over and seep into them, restoring their own energies, lifeforce, and might.

For an angel, being in the presence of a god was an otherworldly, whole-body experience. Their souls were the souls closest to those of gods and so they resonated strongly whenever a god was close. And the more powerful a god, the greater the resonance.

Althos was a lesser god, but in his divine realm his power was comparable to that of an intermediate god and it suffused the very air in the place, filling his worshipers and servants with greater power than they'd feel elsewhere. In his presence, it was impossible for the angels to be filled with anything but awe and loyalty to the god who was giving them purpose again.

What's more, is that Althos' angelic host included angels of all levels of angelic might. Althos had recruited three thousand seraphim, the strongest possible kind of angels aside from the mythic angelic-kings, higher beings who had served as the second-hands of gods themselves. He also had regular angels, the lowest members of the hierarchy. He also had members of every other segment of the hierarchy. Althos, of course, knew this and it filled him with joy and pride. This knowledge made him lose any shred of doubt that he had made the correct choice.

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I continued to glow but I finished speaking. As I did, I created a simple throne behind me by combining my powers over blacksmithing and creation. It was a beautiful, but an easily replicable thing. I sat in it and smiled at the assembled host, but I also knew they couldn't see my face.

I was, basically, light itself at the moment. I had shed my usual form so that I could take on a form that conveyed my all-reaching might. And in doing so I was also able to be easily identified by my servants. And as I sat down I studied more of them, looking for the more unusual ones.

Some of them stood out physically. I had thousands of angels of disease at my disposal, and they had a number of forms. Many appeared as obviously diseased men and women. Others appeared as diseased animals, or even blackened clouds representing various plagues.

Thousands of angels of life served me as well. In truth, I had thousands of angels of every domain and subdomain I could influence, and beyond. The angels of life in my service all had the forms of idealized humanoids, with a number of wings that corresponded to their relative level of power. The greatest angels had six wings, like my angel form, and the least powerful had two wings.

In some cases, angels of domains and subdomains that were opposed to each other flew in different parts of the skies above my tower and island home. Angels of truth and angels of lies ignored each other, and angels of life and death occasionally glared at each other. Angels of creation and destruction didn't seem to mind each other, curiously. Angels of nature and angels of technology were visibly tense around each other, but they didn't seem to hate each other like angels of truth and angels of lies did.

I studied the relationships between countless types of angels for a few moments before raising a hand and transforming my island home into something new, instantly.

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The instant after I rose my hand my island home was totally reshaped. The island widened, becoming several hundred times wider than ever before and filling with new things. The biggest of the new things was a massive city, or rather a massive fort. It was the easily biggest thing I had ever created, and I created it effortlessly thanks to the amplification to my own powers I received within my divine realm.

The rocks and earth that formed my island home and then extended it came from nothing and easily allowed the widening of my truest home. The materials used in the construction of my fortress were simple things like iron and silver, divinely empowered to withstand any blow. And at the center of it all sat my tower.

I incorporated existing features such as the prior biomes that had existed atop my island by creating parks for them, parks that would also house angels of nature, animals, plants, and elements. I also incorporated the horde of the undead and their odd city that had been destroyed within the island itself into this new design.

To do so I simply created a grander city of the dead then they could, warping reality around them and creating my vision for a city of the dead effortlessly. This caused them to fill with awe towards me, even more so than they usually did. I also extended my tower again, extending it underground and in doing so nearly quadrupling its height, though above-ground the tower looked unchanged. In doing so I connected it both to a hive of The Swarm and to the undead city that existed deep beneath the surface of my island.

The final thing I would do for the day, the thing that would take the longest, was that I divvied up the fortress and assigned angels to their respective areas. I would do this by speaking telepathically to angels of each domain and subdomain, commanding them to go to their new homes and then await orders from myself or an angel of nobility.

The fortress-city was built with this order in mind. It was admittedly unusual for me to do something like that but for angels, I felt like it was necessary to create an orderly place where they could be the best possible versions of themselves and that required that I create areas where their talents could be allowed to shine.

Examples of these areas included vast and empty archives where angels of knowledge could sit down and fill tome after tome with their shared wisdom, barracks for angels of war, orderly apartments for angels of law, vast forests for angels of nature, chaotic slums for angels of chaos, maddening sewers and asylums for eldritch angels, monasteries for angels of goodness and darkened temples for angels of evil. Every single domain and subdomain, even animal subdomains, had a place in the fortress-city I created with but a commanding thought.

Finally, in creating a home for my host I had created something unanticipated: a home that may actually have been worthy of a god. No longer a tiny tower more befitting a magician, but a glorious demesne that was truly godly. A place inhabited by angels, the lesser beings most close to the gods, where they wandered divine streets in the thousands.

It was when I was finally done assigning angels to their new homes that I received an abrupt notification. One that caught me off guard and filled me with delight.

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[Alert:

The domain of nobility is a special domain. It is like the domains of luck, fate, and reality, in that it has quirky conditions before it can be unlocked. You have just earned the right to begin to rule over the domain of nobility. You have been awarded the first tier of influence over the domain of nobility and all of the pertinent powers that come with it.

To do so you must have built a realm worthy of the god of nobility, earned the loyalty and service of a worth-while angelic host, and have ambition befitting someone who deserves to rule over nobility. All of which you've done, handily. Congratulations.]