As I actually sat down and read through the notification I received for the fungi subdomain I realized something important. With the power given to me by the fungi subdomain, I had received a potent weapon in the fight against slavery that doubled as an appropriate method of punishing slaveowners.

  I was also keenly aware of the darkness of punishing someone with this power, but at the moment it was hard for me to care about that. Dark crimes would naturally merit dark punishments. If someone chose not to care about how their actions stole someone else's freedom, one could say that I shouldn't care about how my actions stole their freedom. And there was no guarantee I'd use this against them anyway.

  The "Parasitic spores" power opened up a whole new world to me, and it was also one of the few powers I possessed that could affect virtually any target. There was something incredible about that to me since plenty of my powers were currently restricted to working only on mortals.

  The more I thought about it, the more incredible that power seemed. All it took for me to win a battle against a creature vulnerable to this power was for me to get close and activate my aura. I didn't doubt that powerful enough creatures could resist the spores for a few moments, but with my powers, I could stop an enemy in their tracks if I wanted too and then just wait.

  I could also create new limbs for myself and use them to directly infect enemies. I could create the proboscis that some animals used and inject my spores directly into creatures I wanted to infect. This one subdomain gave me a wonderful new list of toys to play with. As much fun as it was to consider how to play with toys I had just been given, I focused on my current situation and wondered what I should do next.

  To best do so, I turned inward. I felt the world around me slow to a crawl as I mentally went to the place where all of the domains and subdomains lived, deep within my mind.

  "There are so many fun routes forward." I told myself, now fully inside my own head.

  The defeat of Ygaynth and the conversion of the gigantic dragon into an Althonian was a significant victory. It might not have been as cinematic as I was expecting to gain the dragon as a follower, but it was every bit as culturally and historically significant as I could have hoped.

  The world beneath Puerto Rico was already reacting to my declaration that the dragon had found religion. I was receiving dozens of prayers a second from creatures both skeptical and in awe of my powers. I wasn't surprised by the skepticism if I was being honest.

  "Since some creatures still cling to their ideas that my powers aren't as powerful as I say they are, and even appear to doubt the system, maybe it's time for a more dramatic demonstration..." I muttered, an arrogant smirk on my face as I did so.

  Of the domains that had offered me quests to acquire influence over them, there were still a few I had yet to complete. One of the most interesting ones was the domain of destruction. All I had to do was destroy an object or building that was over 5,000 years old. And one such building immediately came to mind. A certain dark-elven mansion.

  The mansion in question was an object dating back to the mythic age. It had once been the seat of power of the clergy of an ancient demon-lord and now served as the hub of a bureaucratic network that helped the city of Aronms function. The mansion on my mind was the Morothonian mansion.

  When I had first learned of the quest I needed to complete to acquire the first tier of influence over the destruction domain, my mind had immediately turned to the mansion. It was easily the most recognizable building that fit the criteria that I had come across to date.

  The only thing that had kept me from destroying it then and there had been the busyness of the next day. Thankfully I now had some free time with which I could focus on gaining new powers and followers. And I intended to do precisely that.

  I refocused my attention to the world outside of my mind and swiftly teleported myself to the city of Aronms. I chuckled as the mansion, an immediately recognizable and imposing landmark, came into view.

  I found myself floating in the air above the city of Aronms. I considered making myself invisible, but then quickly realized that I didn't really care if people saw me. I didn't doubt that in a matter of minutes people would recognize my floating form as that of their god.

  Off in the distance, I could see the dark mansion of the demon lord whose words had been enough to bring people to the side of evil. There was something admirable about being that persuasive even though his mansion itself was a bit of an eyesore. Thankfully I intended to fix that, today.

  I studied the imposing building for a few moments. My sensory powers were strong enough that even in mid-air and over an entire kilometer away from the gigantic building I was keenly aware that it was inhabited. More importantly, I knew how many people inhabited the building. And I chuckled.

  "I know the building is always inhabited. It's still annoying though." I complained, speaking aloud even though no one was close enough to me to hear me. That said, this did present me with a good opportunity.

  The purpose of the Mansion was to serve as the hub for all bureaucracy in Aronms. I didn't doubt that within its depths important documents were safely stored away. The part of me that was influenced by the domains I held some power over recognized the importance of those documents as historical records and as critical legal documents. I didn't want to destroy them.

  "How could I most swiftly see to it that the documents within the building are safely removed from it?" I asked myself, eager to get this boring part of the task ahead of me out of the way.

  I wasn't oblivious to the potential this moment had for me to make use of one of the newest subdomains to fall under my limited control. This definitely felt like a moment in which an army of people controlled by spores would shine: doing simple, menial labor. That said, there were permanent consequences to me using my newfound powers on mortals and I didn't intend to do that to them for so simple a reason.

  I was also cognizant of the reality that a horde of undead, led by a single, educated necromancer would shine here. And though this solution felt rather tempting as well, I wasn't sure I wanted a horde of undead just inside of the Mansion, at the command of a necromancer who knew this place well enough to order them to successfully clean it out.

  I spent a few minutes ideally hanging out in midair before coming up with a solution I liked. It was also, unsurprisingly, one that involved an ability I was growing increasingly fond of: my power to send alerts and notifications to non-higher-beings.

  I spent a few moments thinking about the sort of message I wanted to compose. It didn't take me long to come up with one that struck the right tone. Once I had the contents of the message just right, I targeted all of the people in the mansion and sent the message with a flex of a mental muscle.

  The next hour and a half passed by in a blur. Moments after I transmitted the message the first dark elves who had been within the Mansion dashed out of it, documents in hand and a look of fear on their faces. They placed the documents not far from the mansion, in some cases even placing them on the floor.

  The dark elves had wisely chosen to believe me. They had immediately moved to act when they received the eerie message I sent them, warning them of the Mansion's destruction. Their speedy decision-making had no doubt saved them valuable time and enabled them to be as successful as they'd end up being with regards to saving the assorted documents and other items within the Mansion.

  The next ninety minutes were filled with scenes like this. Dark elves worked in unison to empty the Mansion of valuables, opting to cooperate out of an understanding that the documents in the Mansion were worth saving. It was unusual behavior, but I didn't hate it so I silently watched it happen.

  In the end, the dark elves stopped entering the mansion just under seventy minutes after I sent them the message. They all waited around the building though, evidently curious to see if I would destroy it, and if I did, how I intended to do so.

  During the time that the dark elves were hurriedly trying to empty the building of valuables, I had given this some thought myself. Ultimately I had come up with a solution I liked. It was one that involved a power I had never used before. When I came up with the idea to use that particular power I immediately knew it was the right way to do what I sought to do.

  When the ninetieth minute passed, I immediately focused my vision on the building. I quietly activated a potent destructive power I possessed and chuckled as my vision took on a bird's eye view. It only took me a moment to center that bird's eye view on the Morothonian Mansion.

  When my top-down perspective was centered on the building I was able to activate the chosen power in full. And in doing so something never been seen happened within the dark cavern that housed the city of Aronms: luminous, white light appeared within it, and that light was centered on Morthos' most holy Torunian temple.

  The potent power I had activated was the mighty destructive ability known as "Disintegrating radiance". This incredible power was the first offensive ability I had been granted due to my influence over the light domain. And right as it began in full my vision went from being top-down, to my normal, impeccable vision.

  I wasn't near the Mansion when my attack struck it. I was actually quite far away, over an entire kilometer away in fact. That didn't change the fact that I could see the destruction of the imposing building.

  Due to its imposing size and centralized nature, everyone could see the Mansion from virtually any point in the city. Thousands of dark elves were able to see a thick pillar of radiant light that appeared out of nowhere and illuminated the Mansion itself.

  For the first time in its history, the Mansion was bathed in light. Anyone with sight would have been able to study the fine craftsmanship that went into making the ugly building. For a few moments, they would have been able to see every edge, every sharp corner, of the building's bizarre and unholy architecture.

  That only lasted a few moments though. After around five seconds, the light intensified so much so that it became blinding. As it did that, it also heated up and began to melt the building it was called upon to destroy.

  The people of Aronms who had been gazing at the illuminated building quickly turned away as the light began to glow brighter and brighter. I didn't. I was immune to the light's radiance and thus could safely watch it begin to destroy the building.

  The building's destruction started off slow, but somewhat sped up after the first bits of it began to melt away. For nearly a minute, entire floors of the manor melted and vanished before my very eyes, reduced to mere particles. In a matter of moments, the entire top half of the manor was completely gone. And that brought a wide grin to my face. My smile faded a few moments later though.

  The destruction of the building slowed to a near crawl after my light had consumed its top half. What was left of the building began to leak energy dark enough that some of the light I had created was consumed by it. The building also began to radiate a dark aura, one that pushed back against my all-consuming light.

  I huffed in annoyance and quickly came up with a hypothesis. It wasn't hard to piece together what was going on.

  "So I have a theory, and I suspect you'll be able to confirm whether it is right or not." I mentally muttered, turning inward faster than ever and approaching the domains and subdomains that dwelled within me. They all closed in and waited for me to talk.

  "The dark energy that the manor is radiating is demonic energy, isn't it? I've never used that energy myself, but Morthos was a demon lord and this place was his most holy site in this world." I told the domains, confiding in them my suspicions. The domain of evil immediately began to chuckle.

  "You are correct. What you see before you, pushing back against your light, is indeed demonic energy." The domain told me, speaking arrogantly about the matter. I chuckled, a bit surprised by this development but at least confident that I was able to identify it. And that led me to my next statement.

  "So if it's demonic energy then I can push back against it right? Because I can control all sorts of energies, including holy energy. If I infuse the light illuminating the manor with holy energy that should allow me to finish this, shouldn't it?" I asked, fully intending to destroy the manor here and now. And this remark made another laugh. The voice of the subdomain of healing. It began to laugh wildly, before regaining its composure and speaking.

  "Sorry, I apologize. That was just such a great response, so quickly that I lost it for a moment. Yes, if you infuse the light with holy energy that will give it the push it needs to complete the destruction of the manor. Holy energy and demonic energy are opposed forces, and you possess more holy energy than the building possesses demonic energy." The subdomain revealed, speaking confidently.

  This brought a smile to my face, and I activated another of my rarely used powers: the ability to create and control holy energy.

  The light that I was controlling took on a less white and more of a golden hue, and proceeded to be bolstered by my powers. My decision to infuse the light with holy energy took effect immediately and gave the light more weight and more power, and it proceeded to immediately vaporize several more floors of the manor, floors that had been stubbornly clinging to existence thanks to the demonic energy that infused them.

  The darkness the building was radiating didn't cease, but it also didn't grow. The building stubbornly clung to existence, trying to resist the advance of the holy light I intended to destroy it with. It didn't succeed, and even though the lower buildings seemed to be better protected by the dark powers of the lingering demonic presence, it wasn't enough to stop the inevitable advance of holy light.

  It took perhaps ten minutes, but by the time those ten minutes had passed the last bits of the building were wiped from existence. Over the course of ten minutes, I had destroyed what was both a symbol to an ancient religion that worshiped an insidious demon-lord and its greatest global holy site. And by the time another five minutes had passed, the light I used to destroy said symbol and site was gone, and darkness reinvaded the cavernous city.

  The area where the manor was once located was now just an empty depression like it had been at some point in the ancient past. I chuckled as I considered what might happen to it now since another god lived in the city. A part of me was tempted to order some dark elves to build a grand temple to me and place it in the same spot the manor had once occupied. But I knew that I had all the time in the world to do that. And for now, I had other things to focus on.

  When the last of the light faded and the darkness native to the gigantic cavern had retaken the city I received a special notification. Its contents were surprising enough to bring a smile to my face.

  I stayed in the air above the city of Aronms for a few more moments. I surveilled the city, quietly composed another mass-alert, and then transmitted it. All it was, was an explanation for why I had done what I did to the manor. As soon as I transmitted it to the inhabitants of Aronms I felt that my business here was complete.

  I didn't hesitate to teleport out of the city. I went from one darkened place to another. The instant I was done with my self-assigned task in Aronms, I teleported from the dark-elven city to the unholy undead city my reanimated horde had built which was now located within my floating island.

  I went from floating freely in the air to standing in the heart of the undead metropolis my undead worshipers had created deep underground, only for me to move to my floating island sanctuary. I teleported to the heart of the metropolis, and quickly found myself surrounded by the same horde that had attacked and successfully defeated the reptilefolk encampment, a week ago.

  The settlement I was now within was populated entirely by Althonians. And more than that it was made up of a distinct sect of Althonians: undead beings who worshiped me as a god of death, and the undead.

  I was standing in the middle of a bizarre, macabre marketplace. All around me milled thousands of undead creatures, from simple and uncommanded zombies who idly roamed the marketplace, to fully sapient vampires who in life had been members of dozens of species but were now united in undeath and who carried themselves with pride and purpose.

  The marketplace was pitch-black but that didn't bother me or my undead servants. All of us could see in the dark, unaided by any additional magic. I could see the assorted sorts of intelligent undead I controlled milling about in a fascinating imitation of life.

  Skeletons, ghouls, vampires, and other corporeal undead performed the various roles needed for a marketplace to function successfully. I could see skeletons in one part of the marketplace bartering for spare bones, and skeletons in another selling spare limbs.

  The shopkeepers here were curious to me. I listened to the thousands of deals being struck in the marketplace and noticed that the majority of the deals involved a special kind of currency. I had half-expected the undead to create a sort of pseudo-currency, but they hadn't. This boney marketplace, merely one of several in the city, seemed to accept a peculiar currency: the promise of favors to be repaid later.

  Incorporeal undead floated in the open air above us. They moaned, their loud wails providing a creepy, ambient auditory backdrop as other, more physically present undead pursued a number of businesses.

  The marketplace had a distinct, deathly, odor to it. It smelled of death, of rotting corpses, and of bones buried shallowly in the dirt. The smell would undoubtedly have grossed out a mortal, or even a more kindly god than I. Even I didn't revel it, but it didn't bother me either.

  No undead noticed me, because I didn't feel like being noticed. My powers over them, just like all of my other powers, had grown recently and I could now control their perceptions. If I had wanted too, I could blind them to me or even to each other. Even when I touched an undead creature that alone didn't cause it to notice me.

  I proceeded to walk forward, silently observing the ghoulish undead, many of whom were themselves actual ghouls. As I studied them I took in the haunting atmosphere of the strange city and allowed my mind to wander a bit.

  The atmosphere of the city of death and undeath was an unsettling and gory one. As I explored the city's central marketplace and took in the sights and sounds of the city, a part of me wondered about the nature of undeath. It was a fascinating state of existence, and I wanted to discover more about it.

  It was precisely when I was mulling over what little I knew about undeath that a voice I had never heard before whispered into my mind.

  "You could use me to find out you know. Use my powers I mean. It's been so long since you indulged in me, even though I was and am your personal vice." The voice whispered.

  This voice was strange, androgynous, and spoke breathily. There was a luxuriousness and laziness to it that I hadn't expected. There was also a bit of feigned pain in its whispers as if the thing was putting on a show and didn't mind that I knew. The voice belonged to the vice of lust. I was silent for a moment, as I hadn't even known that the personal vices and virtues themselves were also conscious enough to have voices. But after a moment of silent contemplation, I replied to it.

  "What do you mean I could 'use you'?" I asked the voice, curious to hear lust expand on its thoughts.

  "Althos... I am hurt!" The voice replied, feigning distress once more.

  "Isn't what I mean obvious? I mean that the assortment of powers and upgrades you've idly earned pertaining to me allows you to learn all about a creature's desires. Even an undead being cannot hide its desires from you. Just use me." The voice whispered, asking me to make use of the strange powers I possessed over desires, in the form of my influence over the corruption subdomain.

  The corruption subdomain had so far provided me with powers I was often on the fence about using. I quickly rechecked the subdomain's listed powers and mentally poured over the upgrades to the corruption subdomain that I had received for perhaps the second time in my life.

  For the sake of simplicity, I mentally filtered the list that I perused and was able to slim it down so that it was only the powers I had gotten as a result of the upgrades I had earned to date and the synergistic powers I had access too.

  Some of the powers now classified as within the subdomain of corruption were powers that had belonged to the subdomain of sexuality and gender but were now upgraded and stronger. If I had to share my thoughts on why I suspected they were situated here now because lust refers not just to desires for sexual activity but intense desires for a range of things.

  These new powers were intriguing to me. They were all fairly powerful too, the product of several upgrades and my speedy acquisition of worshipers. I closed my eyes and proceeded to activate one of them: "Desire detection".

  I willed its secondary function to go off and felt the wave of corrupt energy seep out of me. The wave radiated out of me and an instant later I felt an immense wave of potent, palpable desire enter me.

  This desire hit me like a tidal wave and was infinitely darker than tidal wave could ever hope to be. I felt an incredibly misanthropic and vast hatred towards all living entities, with the sole exception of myself radiating out of my servants. My undead servants hated life, and they felt two immense desires.

  The first desire they felt, the one that was the simplest and purest was a desire to kill all life. What they were after was simple: omnicide. The undead sought to kill every single lifeform in existence. The other desire they felt was one that was equally powerful.

  The second desire they felt was a desire to serve me. This desire was equally as powerful as their other desire and held their desire to attempt omnicide in check. Curiously, they also felt that I wasn't a lifeform, and thus didn't need to be exempted from their omnicidal desires since to them, I wasn't alive in the first place.

  This secondary desire also gave them a nonviolent purpose and I was grateful for it. It was perhaps because of that that these hate-filled monsters hadn't tried to rid the world of life. That said, their collective desire to commit omnicide was immensely powerful. It was so strong that even I couldn't expose myself to it without some of it seeping into me.

  Each undead member of my horde felt exactly the same towards the living. They felt a simplistic emotion that was fairly easy for me to identify and understand. Violent hatred. There was no nuance, no hope for change, no possibility of the emotion ever changing barring anything less than eventual divine intervention.

  The hatred that every member of my horde felt was a sinister, surprisingly passionate sensation. It infected their hearts and made them sincerely view the living, not as a complex set of enemies of different powers, beliefs, or goals but as something else.

  My undead horde saw the living as a single, monolithic, and innumerable enemy to kill and eventually reanimate. They hoped to assimilated the living, making them undead and thus placing them on "our" side.

  There was something enviable about that view. I suspected it was its simplicity. It was a binary worldview, one that gave the undead a mighty and possibly even inevitable purpose: omnicide.

  What I had learned about their views of me were intriguing. They hadn't exempted me from the forces of the living, rather than doing that those of them with the intelligence to think deeply about me saw me as one of them.

  Their perceptions of me were skewed and gave me a unique position I had never asked for. As far as I could tell they viewed me as the supreme leader of all undead beings, and that I was myself an undead god.

  The horde didn't see me as a god of undeath, but a deity who was itself undead. This perception wasn't reflective of reality, but it did reveal why the undead held me in such high regard.

  As I thought about that and mulled it over, a voice interrupted my introspective monologuing. The voice of the necromancy subdomain.

  "Are you having fun?" It asked, curiously. I chuckled and responded to it in the affirmative. It giggled, the sound oddly innocent given what I knew about the subdomain.

  "That's good. I'm surprised it took you so long to try and discover more about the undead." It remarked, sounding almost disappointed in me.

  "Well the way undead beings were described to me was... I was given a specific perception of them. And frankly, that perception was largely correct." I told the subdomain.

  "Oh? Tell me more about that perception." The subdomain remarked, curious to hear me expand on my initial perceptions of the undead.

  "I was led to believe that undead were powerful but simple beings. Creatures that hated life and sought to end it. And those things have thus far proven to be true." I told the subdomain.

  "I've seen the undead in battle. They are fierce opponents. And that was them as a roving horde, an unorganized and ill-equipped mob. There is a not-so-small part of me that wants to equip and train them. I would love to see my multitudes of servants transformed into a proper fighting force." I told the subdomain, the thought growing more and more intriguing to me the more I considered it.

  After I shared my insights with the subdomain it fell silent, equally interested in the thought of the undead as an organized, well-led, and well-armed force. I was mildly amused by the fact that the subdomain was so easily distracted.

  I would spend the next two hours in the undead metropolis. While I was there I would silently observe the city's strange inhabitants and watch them go about their business. The undead and their fascinating facsimile of business and life could have entertained me for days. But soon enough I sensed other things that merited my attention and were of interest to me.

  The Ardors were engaging in another sinful celebration. And honestly, I couldn't blame them. They had much to celebrate. And so did I. The sin of lust audibly cheered as I readied myself to teleport from the strange city of the undead to the sinful, secretive chamber in which the family was preparing another of their dark and twisted revelries.

  I was externally silent as I phased out of my underground city and took myself to the strange chamber in which one of the first families to worship me was gathering its senior leadership. As I teleported from one place to another I smiled. And as I was crossing from one place to another I heard an intriguing suggestion. It came in the form of a bit of unsolicited advice from my personal vice.

  "If you're gonna go and witness the fun the Ardors are having, why not partake? You know some of the dark elves are beautiful. If they see you there, and you invite yourself to their celebration as the lord of sin, they'd surely invite you to join in the bacchanals. Perhaps you should accept their offer. Rid yourself of your inhibitions as readily as they do theirs." The sin whispered.

  I didn't pretend to be immune to the suggestion. I did opt not to audibly or even mentally reply though. An instant later I found myself within the chamber that the dark elves had used earlier that day to celebrate their new lifestyle. It assailed my senses, but I welcomed the array of sensations, opting to try and become a "Lord of sin" in body and mind as Lust had suggested I do.