A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse - 164 Mortal & Immortal Comba

I winked the portal behind me out of existence as I stepped through it. Doing so was as easy for me as releasing a held breath would be for a mortal, though admittedly less relieving. As the portal winked out of existence, a process that took less than a nanosecond, the surprisingly bright light it projected into the cavern also vanished.

I looked around the cavern and allowed my senses the instant they needed to adjust. I could smell rocks, gravel, and fungi all around me. I could see a flat expanse stretched out before me, that extended hundreds of meters upwards and was roughly as wide. My divine sight didn’t require light which benefited me and was not a trait that was shared by the other sentient being within the cavern: the adult ice-dragon Glacial Rimefrost.

Underneath me, the ground was surprisingly soft, not that it would have mattered since I was only here as a potent thought-form anyway. That said, my incredibly powerful senses allowed me to act and react as if I was truly and physically within this cavern, aside from the fact that unless I willed otherwise I was effectively incorporeal. I glanced around and then upwards and off in the distance I saw the creature I had come here to fight: Glacial Rimefrost.

Near the top of the enormous cavern, the dragon wailed in pain and clumsily descended towards me. I could see portions of stone embedded in its body, as a result of it crashing into the ceiling. Its icy-white eyes were filled with pain and fury, but the thing wasn’t facing me. It slowly and steadily descended down towards the cavern’s floor.

I chuckled and without even raising a hand towards the beast I turned my mind’s power towards it. My mind honed in on the monster and I steadily studied it. I focused on the beast’s draconic wings and then with the mental equivalent of a forceful tug I telekinetically grabbed the dragon’s wing and began to yank on it.

“Argh!” The dragon roared, agonized pain escaping from between its toothy maw as it began to descend faster. I chuckled and targeted it with a wholly different power than the one I had just utilized. I glanced at the dragon and forcibly shifted its gravity, empowering the phenomena on the beast and therefore easily increasing how quickly the lizard descended. The dragon began to fall towards the ground, not only able to control the speed of its descent anymore but also under the effects of a power that made it fall even faster. I sneered at the beast as it fell, and began to ponder how to best continue to fight it and harm the thing.

I silently activate an auric ability of mine, my “Poisonous aura”, and watch as the air around me takes on a distinctive purple tint. The color is eerie in this lightless cavern, and I chuckle as I feel the air around me thicken and become a thing that is wickedly dangerous for mortals. This encounter isn’t like my meeting with Ygaynth. I intend to hurt this dragon.

I pointed a finger at the cloud of dust and peered through it with my powerful eyes. I was able to pinpoint the dragon’s location and chuckled before sending a single, incredibly thin jet of azure-colored flames rocketing towards the beast. The flames were audible and filled the cavern with noise. The potent flames burned hot enough to distort the air in the cavern and I smiled excitedly as I heard the dragon begin to take in a deep breath. I knew what the creature was about to do and I knew I could handle it without any real problems.

An instant after I launched the thin but pointed attack at the dragon, a burst of ice shot out of the beast’s maw. The clump og frozen air tore through the dust cloud, and the dragon had managed to randomly guess my general location, possibly due to the sound of the fire.

The burst of cold air collided with the flames, but unsurprisingly my fire wasn’t at all bothered by some little dragon’s ice. I was a god of fire and my flames barely even slowed as they smashed through the ice. That said the dragon was now aware of me and was on the defensive, leaping deftly out of the way of the fire which proceeded past it and eventually collided with a wall on the far side of our battlefield.

In leaping out of the way of the flames the dragon had cleared the dust cloud. It could now see me and opened its mouth to speak. That said I didn’t intend to give it any breathing room. I rose a hand and the earth the dragon had just landed on almost liquified underneath it, causing it to suddenly sink and catching it off guard. Without skipping a beat I resolidified the ground that surrounded the dragon’s feet, and therefore captured it.

“What?” The dragon asked, as over the course of a single heartbeat the ground it had just landed on liquified underneath it and then abruptly solidified and therefore detained its movements. I wasn’t about to let up for a second then and using even more elemental overlord powers I snatched the air right out of its lungs, pulling it out of the beast’s open maw and dissipating it. I watched as the beast’s eyes widened, and it suddenly began to panic and hyperventilate, frantically needing to take in air.

I controlled the air around the dragon’s head, and I quietly muttered a single word. “No.” I swiftly prevented any air from actually entering its lungs and instead I commanded any and all oxygen around the huge creature to fade away and either move out of the dragon’s reach or cease existing. With the beast unable to move or breathe I took this moment to speak.

“I am learning much from our combat. If you wish to live, continue to provide me with valuable training.” I explained, before generating light and beginning to mold into the shape of a blade. A second after I began to work the light in my hands, the dragon gathered all of the force it could and managed to pull its claws and feet out of the ground and leap high enough to breathe in some oxygen.

For a moment there was a smile on its face, but I lowered my empty hand and conjured a portal into being beneath it as well as a connected portal within range of my aura and directly in front of me. The dragon was only able to see the aura right in front of me, but the look of fear on its face was enough for me to tell it could tell what would happen next. When it fell it didn’t land on the ground where I had dissipated all of the oxygen but instead was neatly deposited right in front of me. I chuckled and pointed my sword at the dragon as I began to think about some of the skills I had acquired from the dwarves.

The dragon gazes at me fearfully, and poison begins to seep into the open holes on the beast’s body. Nostrils, ears, and even the gill-like organs on the side of the creature’s throat are all entryways for the poison that now completely surrounds the creature.

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[Assorted martial classes skill list:

Berserker’s Rage: You can fly into a rage that makes you faster, stronger, and hardier. This skill lasts up to an hour since you are a god and a level 20 berserker as a result of your theft of class-levels. In your case this skill also allows your attacks to completely ignore any resistances or armor your enemies may have or wear. Your melee attacks are also far stronger than usual, all of which operate as if you were perpetually using your infinite strength.

This ability causes you to become singularly focused on causing devastation, though you can still think since you are a god and can end the effect early if you want. The more powerful a god you become over the sin of wrath, the emotion of anger, and the domains of war and destruction, the more powerful this ability becomes.

Fighter’s Tenacity: This warrior ability allows you to recover health even in the heat of battle. It’s a useful ability that greatly increases even a god’s ability to survive the most pitched battles. With it you can recover even a quarter of your health at once, and as a god of healing and life, you have a particular variant of this power.

Your version of this power allows you to recharge another warrior’s tenacity, completely disregarding the cooldown that such an ability would normally have, you can also supercharge their usage of the ability, allowing them to recover all of their health at once.

Fists of Fury: As a brawler, your firsts and other unarmed strikes you perform are stronger than they would be otherwise. Your unarmed attacks are able to ignore resistances and the damage dulling effects of armor.

Weapon expertise: As a 20th level warrior you gain the ability to wield any weapon without training first. This serve serves as a quiet corrector that ensures that a lack of training doesn’t obstruct your ability to understand how to wield weapons.]

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The dragon, smartly trying to take advantage of the moment in which I appear lost in thought opens his mouth and begins to form another icy projectile. The beast even powers through the poison which floods into him even faster than it did before. As he does so, foolishly thinking I am distracted, blood begins to seep out of the other holes that line the creature’s body. None of this stops or even appears to concern the dragon who understands that my powers are considerable and that death is certain if I am not defeated.

I open my eyes and study the thing. In an instant, I confirm that it has total immunity to frost damage, and I immediately snatch this away from it using my powers over alteration. The dragon isn’t alerted to this and attempts to lob a frosty projectile at me. The object never leaves its mouth, as I immediately grab it with an invisible, telekinetic hand and cause the glacial sphere to explode in the dragon’s mouth, showering the interior of its jaw in razor-sharp shards of mind-numbingly cold ice.

The dragon’s head rears back and an explosive wail of pain fills the cavern. The sound is the single loudest noise I’ve ever heard, and is truly deafening. After allowing it to fill the cavern for a single moment I quietly target the beast with “Sound mastery” and silence the wail. I watch as blood begins to ooze out of the creature’s maw and I chuckle as I use a power I’ve never used before: “Hemokinesis”, to manipulate the blood that is seeping out of the pained beast.

I target the blood all over the beast and begin to animate it. The steady streams of the crimson liquid begin to feebly come to life, suddenly ceasing to flow freely and instead beginning to deliberately ooze out all over the dragon who I had decided to defeat. The second my power touches a bit of the dragon’s blood the life-giving fluid begins an unsettling imitation of life and it fills with the need to destroy the very creature from whom it came.

That said the dragon’s tenacity is itself admirable. I feel magic well up within it even as it begins to feel the blood oozes I had created begin to act hostility. Its magic abruptly seeps into the ground below the two of us. The magic snakes towards me, grabbing and momentarily animating any roots and other plant life it comes across but it just isn’t fast enough. Because I possess one uniquely devastating and instantaneous ability.

I point my blade at the dragon even as his magic nears me. And then I activate the most unique power given to me by my low level of influence over the alteration subdomain. I quietly create an anti-magic field exactly where the dragon is located, and the magic that was racing towards me immediately fades out of existence even as the roots and other plant life had begun to snake upwards in an attempt to strike me.

The anti-magic field surrounds Glacial in a strange pink halo, as it strips the beast of its ability to use magic. I had other ways I could have achieved this, but this felt like the most dramatic way to do so. It’s also not quite as despair-inducing as one of my other magic-related abilities which is the power to just outright take away the ability to use magic from creatures I target for an entire day.

“Hmm… I suppose that’s enough training for now. Or at least all the training you can provide me with.” I explain, a cruel grin on my face. I have the perfect power to bring this encounter to an end, one that would strip away all the fake drama of this clash and forever demonstrate just how powerful I truly am, cementing my superiority over the defeated dragon in every way.

It is at this point before Glacial can even fully realize what is going on that I target the dragon with my most powerful combat-related ability: “Death inducement”. Utilizing this active power, I glance at the dragon and the beast instantly perishes. I am a few meters from the beast, close enough that I can hear its heart shut off and I watch the life leave the beast’s pained eyes, even as its head drops and crashes to the ground. By the time the dragon’s head is on the ground, its eyes are shut. But not forever.

The fighting is over, but I am not done just yet. I reach out and target the beast with an array of abilities all at once.

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The dragon’s death would normally release its soul to head to the afterlife the dragon merits based on its alignment and actions in life. That said, the creature was killed by a god, and the god snatches the soul out of the beast’s body even as the spirit of the creature attempted to escape from its body.

Althos’ hand shot out and sucked the soul into his clutches instantly. He held the thing for not even a second, before mercilessly absorbing it and shivering as he pleasure wracked him and he absorbed a significant portion of the creature’s power. The blade in his other hand faded out of existence, and he pointed the now empty hand at the dragon’s corpse, even as his mind filled with words and alerts from absorbing the dragon’s soul.

The god, with chilling casualness, created a soul suited for an ice dragon, and then targeted it with one of his more sinister powers: “False resurrection”. Life energy and a dark spark of necromantic energies seeped into the dragon, even as Althos flung the soul at the body and watched as it faded through the dragon’s milk-colored scales and seeped into the beast.

Glacial was in the process of being reborn, and as this happened, Althos opened another portal behind him and called Sombra through it, while also willing his physical form to step through. The god’s body and mind were abruptly reunited, the god’s body stepping into where his mind-form was located, and allowing Althos to regain his corporeality.

The dragon’s eyes, closed in the throes of his death, began to slowly open once more. And the dragon would never be the same again, having forever lost his sinister soul and the soul that filled his body being one that was infinitely more evil, also being incredibly loyal to Althos, filled with the need to worship the dark god as the god of death, dragons, and fate.

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[Death and Time Domains Passive Powers:

Afterlife Denial: You can use your powers to deny recently deceased creatures access to the afterlife, even without snatching the soul out of their bodies. This power causes them to become terrifying creatures known as phantasms, who roam the cosmos and seek to be granted access to the afterlife by serving you and fulfilling quests you give them.

Death Aura: Your attacks take on a new quality, rendering them impossible to heal from unless you are the one who heals them. You are also surrounded by an aura that fills foes with the fear of death.

Death Visage: You can cause creatures who glance at you to see the exact moment they shall die. This power fills them with indescribable fear and despair, often paralyzing them.

Death Strengthening: The more you yourself kill the stronger you become. This differs from the death empowerment power you possess as that power strengthens others, not you personally. The stronger your targets the greater the boost to your power you experience.

Deadly Disease: You can turn any disease or illness into a lethal one. You can target the disease or illness itself, or you can cause specific creatures who have a disease or illness to die, at will.

Rewind: You can target a creature or object and rewind time on them. This causes them to cease to be affected by anything that was affecting them before. If you use this on a dying creature whose imminent death is about to be caused by a recently acquired wound you can prevent them from acquiring that wound. Inversely, if someone was healed by a healer minutes ago you can undo that healing. You can also use this to fix things or to rebreak what was once fixed.

Currently, this power only allows you to revert something or someone back to the state it was in two minutes ago. This power is great for removing the need to do resurrections since you can heal any sickness or wound anyway.

Subjective Time Experience: You can subject targets, be they objects or creatures to a unique temporal field that causes them to experience time twice as quickly or half as quickly as other creatures. This means that they age twice as fast, or half as fast, and also that they lose energy twice as quickly or half as quickly as other creatures.

Time sense: You have an innate clock that is always perfectly synced to wherever you wish for it to be synced in any universe you have worshipers in.

Death And Time Domain Active Powers:

Chronal Anchor: You can freeze a creature in time for up to a week. This twice a day power allows you to completely and totally freeze any sort of creature, aside from a vestige. They cannot do anything when they are trapped in this effect.

Death Knowledge: This synergistic active power allows you to learn the easiest way to kill even entire civilizations. It is a once a month power, indicating just how powerful it is. It is not to be underestimated.]