Fungal Friendship & Decisions

The sight of the creatures caught my human companion and worshipper off-guard and he slowed to a stop as he first saw them. There was a flabbergasted expression on his face as he quizzically studied them for a few moments, his mind and senses far sharper than they had been before, and thus allowing him a chance to study things in detail more easily. Eventually, he spoke.

"Althos... What are those things?" He asked, curiosity and a bit of fear audible in his voice. He had never seen anything like them before and it was clear by his facial expression that he found the tiny fungal entities more than a bit unsettling. I chuckled and motioned for one of the little creatures to come close to me. The thing began to stumble towards me on tiny legs. As it did I began to speak.

"These are fungal folks. They are evolved creatures. They arose from simple, immobile, and often unintelligent fungus." I told Geoffrey, speaking truthfully. There was a smile on my face as I spoke. The one I gestured towards make it to me as I spoke.

"I quite like them if I'm being honest. They are simple creatures, but they are so much more than the ordinary fungus they arose from." I told Geoffrey. I reached out and touched the one that had approached me. As I did I transmitted feelings of love and joy to the thing, and it began to shiver excitedly.

A few spores left the fungal cap of its head and drifted down to the dirt beside us. I turned to face the thing, smiled at it, and altered it slightly.

Altering the entity took a split second and when I was done altering it, a thin mouth appeared on its face. The creature could now speak, using magically created vocal cords and the thin mouth which appeared over where a gill had once been. The creature opened its mouth to speak, and as it did I taught it the language Geoffrey spoke using my "Tactile teaching" power.

"Cr...eat...or." It rattled out, speaking like someone who was unfamiliar with a language and was just waking up spoke. I happily gazed at the entity, delighted to hear its voice. Geoffrey watched this and I could sense, through my empathetic powers, that he found it odd. I chuckled without turning to face him. I began to speak to Geoffrey again, though I didn't turn to face him. Instead I repeated the alteration I made to the fungal folk near me to the ones further away.

"These little creatures are your new friends. They are going to help you on the farm." I told the man, having made them for that specific purpose. Without motioning for the other creatures to approach me I continued to alter them though not in so literal a sense. Even as I spoke I quietly infused the other fungal folks with knowledge of farming and agriculture, mixing in both my own knowledge of agricultural processes with the knowledge given to me by the system and informed by Geoffrey's own memories.

"They are more capable than they appear, and I have instructed them to spread fungus where they can, and where it would best grow." I quietly told the human I had converted into my worshiper days ago.

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I reached out and touched the minds of my fungal children. I did so gently, touching their thoughts with warmness and kindness, purely adding to their incredibly limited knowledge of the world. As I did so I sensed the love and awe they felt towards me, even more keenly than I had before.

Their emotions were pure and intense, undistracted by more complex thoughts. I enjoyed that, and a part of me, the part that carved the love of mortals and of other entities, desired more of it. I luxuriated in it for a moment, the way a human might luxuriate in a bath, before refocusing.

Without hesitation, I granted the fungal folks access to the druid class. Doing so increased their stores of spiritual energy and also allowed them access to magic that would help them help other, less evolved, creatures like basic plants and fungi.

I felt them shiver as the powers and abilities at their fingertips expanded greatly thanks to the powers I infused them with. I chuckled as I sensed their excitement.

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Outside of their minds, I was still active. I quietly activated a number of potent "Divine presence" powers, choosing to activate the art & creation effect, and the life and nature effects, causing the area around me to explode with plant life, as well as naturally bolstering all sorts of life around me independent of the type of life it happened to be.

Activating this power made me shiver as I felt my powers expand over an area roughly a kilometer in length. It felt nice to expand my powers once more. My powers washed over the area, including Geoffrey's farmland, and caused plants to blossom to life almost immediately. Beside me, both Geoffrey and my fungoid creations sighed as they felt the potent powers waft over them and their eyes widened as they took in the enhanced beauty of the farmland around us. I closed my eyes and began to speak, a serene smile visible on my face as I did so.

"I am a god of life. Being a god of life means being able to do this much quite easily." I said, speaking arrogantly even as plants began to creep and spread towards me, flowers blossoming beside my feet and grass twisting towards me. As I watched the plants around me grow in my direction and make their way towards me, at least in the limited capacity that they could, I relaxed and continued to speak.

"This is a beautiful world. I shall fill it with life, of all sorts." I proclaimed, speaking boldly.

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The god stood at the edge of a tilled field and relaxed, speaking boldly but also honestly.

"I seek to turn this world into a verdant paradise. And I shall be acknowledged as the one who made this paradise possible." He declared, finally settling on an alignment to behave as, in this new world. He opened his eyes and the grin that was on his lips was visible on his face.

"I shall behave in ways that aid people and work to move governments towards hope, forgiveness, and peace." He explained. In his heart, he knew what this meant: in the world of Htrae, he planned to behave as though he were a lawful good deity. One who valued order, tradition, governments, and systems, while seeking to guide societies in directions that uplifted all lives and helped as many people as possible.

Behaving in good ways, and in lawful ways, was difficult for the god. He was not familiar with true kindness or good intentions. Ultimately the deity had spent much of his life behaving in ways that advanced no agenda but his own, and he had committed incredibly evil acts in the past. And what's more, he wasn't repentant for the evil he had done. To call Althos malicious wouldn't exactly have been a fair characterization of most of his actions, but he certainly wasn't kind.

Even now the god was doing this to advance his own power. He sought to gain greater powers over goodness, life, and law, and doing so would ultimately require that he built cults that worshiped him as a god of those things. He would need to be worshiped as a life-bringer, paradise creating, god of order, and structure. He recognized that. He was willing to become those things, in the eyes of some of his worshipers. The god was nothing if not ambitious. He wanted to be worshiped in every single way he could be worshiped.

"I am a god of goodness, joy, love, and life." He stated, smiling at his worshipers as he did so. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotions, and yet his followers didn't notice, as they were too enthralled by him to be able to realize that their master felt very little as he put on this performance.

"I shall spread goodness, joy, love, and life, wherever I go." He told them, his face hardening as he spoke. This was an act he wasn't used to performing and thus it was challenging for him to maintain it.

As he spoke his mind turned inwards so that he could begin to think of how to advance this goal of his.

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"How can I do this?" I wondered, to no one in particular. I had a few ideas in mind, ways that I could go ahead and take a short-cut to more quickly become acknowledged as the god of this world.

My healthy abundance of abilities left me with a number of tools at my disposal through which I could manipulate the world around me. I wondered if repeating what I did in Torus would serve as a handy shortcut since on Torus it resulted in me gaining billions of worshipers at once. But even as I considered it, I realized I didn't need to rush things.

I didn't gain anything by rushing. I had all the time I wanted and needed to take over this world, so I ought to be patient instead of making brash decisions out of a wrong-headed desire to try and be quick.