A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse - 202 Cosmic Power

[Star Domain Passive Powers:

Astronomical Object Physiology and Creation: This is a distinct and key star domain power. With it you can become or create an astronomical object, though with your current level of influence you can’t become planets, or black or white holes, but you can become comets, meteors, nebulae, asteroids, and stars.

This power can be used to wipe out entire planets or to help alter and configure star systems to your liking. Becoming a star doesn’t necessarily mean becoming as big as the biggest or smallest star, but it certainly could. You could also become bigger than the biggest or smaller than the smallest stars in the universe.

Astronomical Combat: A power derived from “Astronomical Object Physiology and Creation” this power allows you to attack utilizing the energies and properties of astronomical objects. This means you can attack using solar energy, lunar energy, and more energies related to the bodies found in space. Unleashing a small solar flare, something you can do now, is probably the easiest unique attack you can do with this power but this also means you can unleash things like solar beams and lunar blades at will.

Corona Aura and Manipulation: This grants you an aura of plasma, exactly like the one possessed by stars. You can also attack with this aura, and you can manipulate the coronas of stars you control.

Cosmic Element Manipulation and Generation: You can manipulate cosmic elements. These elements are often supercharged compared to elements found on or in planets. An example of this includes the fact that cosmic winds, which move at super-sonic speeds and ferry particles throughout the cosmos.

Cosmic Ray Generation and Manipulation: You can grant and manipulate cosmic rays, high-energy protons and atomic nuclei which move through space at nearly the speed of light.

Cosmic Weather Manipulation and Generation: You can manipulate and generate cosmic weather, which includes things like solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and even the ambient temperature of space.

Nebulae Manipulation and Generation: You can generate and control nebulae, enormous clouds of dust and gas tens to hundreds of light-years across that can be the birthplaces of stars and planets. You can become a living nebula if you so wish, spreading yourself hundreds of light-years out and becoming a living being of gases and dust.

Stardust Manipulation And Generation: You can generate and manipulate stardust, refractory dust grains that condensed from cooling ejected gases from individual presolar stars and incorporated into clouds from which solar systems condensed.

You can also destroy stars and moons, which would decimate life on local planets and send the planets themselves flying out into space.

Star Domain Active Power:

Localized Black Hole: This once per month attack allows you to create a miniaturized black hole with a range you set. This will suck up just about anything that isn’t magically protected by magic cast by divinities.]

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“This… This is power.” I muttered as I mulled over the newest powers I had acquired. I could feel my body more efficiently absorbing lunar energies even as I considered the powers that now lurked within me.

I glanced at my fist and closed it. There was a grin on my face as I did so. I could feel the power of space settling within my soul. As I quietly adjusted to my new powers and power I felt my mind synchronizing with the stars I had visited. Without words I could feel my connection to the stars themselves and I shuddered as I felt it wash over me. I now possessed power beyond what I had imagined possible even in my wildest, most ambitious visions of glory.

I could create or destroy stars themselves! I had the power to become a star within my soul, and at will could take on forms larger than planets. That was the sort of power that expanded my conception of what was possible even for a god.

Even as I mulled over what was possible, a new icon appeared at the edge of my vision. It had been a long time since I had really needed one of them, and this one was no exception to that: it was a symbol for star manipulation. It was an icon in the shape of a six-sided star. A part of me was curious as to the raw destructive power such an ability would grant me, but for now I was content to ignore it.

These new powers made me a cosmic entity in the most real sense possible at the moment. I would only become an even more cosmic entity as I gained greater power over the star domain, other domains such as the physics domain, and subdomains such as the technology subdomain.

I closed my eyes and willed actual sunlight out of myself as a test for my solar and stellar capabilities. When I opened my eyes a heartbeat later I was pleasantly delighted, but not surprised, to see the forest floor brightly illuminated, even as pure sunlight exuded out of my very pores.

Unfiltered, abundant, but thankfully not hot sunlight escaped from me. It lit the forest floor that surrounded me in a natural and divine glow that illuminated every single corner of the area around me. And as it did I studied the area that surrounded me.

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The god was silent as light began to flood out of him. It was raw sunlight, sunlight that blindingly lit up every blade of grass and every nanometer of tree bark that surrounded him. The light fed the plants or at least the ones that used photosynthesis, as efficiently as normal sunlight fed them. The majority of the floral lifeforms that surrounded the god were almost grateful to the deity as they basked in his light. He was so excited that he quietly grew in height, becoming an entire meter taller over the course of forty-five seconds.

This was the first time the god was unleashing actual sunlight even though it wasn’t the first time he had unleashed light. Back on his homeworld, where much of the planet’s continental crust was hallow, he had frequently unleashed light to illuminate caverns and to create safe spaces within the planet’s underground regions. That said, the god himself felt the difference in power and capabilities between what he was unleashing now and what he had unleashed in the past. It was incredible.

The power he felt radiating out of his pores blew his mind more than anything ever had before. In his mind, this was redefining power itself as this sort of power was incomparable to the poultry powers he possessed until now. Within himself he possessed the ability to create or destroy objects bigger than planets, and he could unleash beams and attacks that were over a million degrees in celsius.

Beyond just the ability to unleash unimaginably destructive beam attacks, he had gained other new ways to destroy than ever before. One brutal example was that if he wanted too he could now radiate light and that light itself could burn and destroy his enemies who made the mistake of existing near him.

That ability was a particularly nasty synergistic ability he gained an awareness of while studying new synergistic powers he had gained as a consequence of his newfound control over stars themselves. It was a triple synergistic power that took from the domains of destruction, light, and stars. And it was separate from him just manually making the temperature around him millions of degrees, another thing he could do if he wanted.

The god was still and silent as he continued to radiate pure sunlight in an omnidirectional wave around him. He didn’t let it radiate particularly far, but he did let it go on for several minutes before eventually ceasing to radiate the light.

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After a few minutes of quiet introspection, minutes in which I mentally checked myself out for new and even greater synergistic powers, I spent a second to will the light radiating out of myself to stop. Darkness quickly crept back into the part of the forest I was located in, and as it crept towards me I opened and stepped into a portal that led me back to my submerged, subterranean temple home.

I went from standing in a rapidly darkening forest to swimming in the depths of a submerged temple devoted to me as an aquatic and monstrous god. This was my favorite place in all of Htrae and I was quite happy to be back.

The temple that surrounded me was massive for my current form. It was built, by me, to accommodate one of my more monstrous visages: that of a massive sea-serpent. That said I stayed in my smaller, human disguise for now.

I was within one of the deeper chambers and I was on the temple’s floor, something which was quite rare for me. All around me stood statues of men and women, statues that were all once living people. The statues were of Deep-Ones, humans whose sanity I had take mere moments after their creation and transformed into aquatic, pious worshipers of mine.

I walked over to one of the statues and began to study it. I stood mere meters from the thing and I lightly touched its face. The statue depicted a male deep one, an unusually burly and well-built member of his kind. He was perfectly encased in stone, and unless I ever sought to use him for something, would spend the rest of time in that form. He had volunteered for this during the months-long period in which I was building cults all over the cosmos. The creature had been eager to serve me and like all other abominations in my cult was one of my fanatical worshipers.

The deep-one was a muscular member of his normally lithe species. He stood a few meters tall, towering over them and appearing to be far, far older than he actually was. Deep-Ones didn’t die of old age and kept growing throughout their immortal lives. I had physically aged this particular Deep-One because I liked the idea of him positively towering over anyone I commanded him to interact with and in doing so he became incredibly tall.

In my current form, he and I were the same height but in my normal human form, he would have been almost an entire meter taller than me. That was an impressive feat because I was not a short man in my usual human form. He was nude from the waist up and wore a small loincloth that I had made water-proof using my powers over clothing months ago.

I considered freeing him from his prison, just to have some company, but quickly decided against it. The creature was a fanatical brute who loved to obey me, but he wasn’t very smart. He wouldn’t have made for a good conversationalist. That said… I was worshiped by countless creatures. I knew plenty of fantastic conversationalists.

I opened a portal into my divine realm, specifically the archives I had created for angels of knowledge and angels of law to sit down and archive all they knew, and then, someday, all I knew. I peered into the portal and saw a young, female angel who was scribbling away in a journal.

She was a youthful thing with dark hair and darker features. Even her wings were jet black, which was a strikingly pretty color for wings. I silently observed her and chuckled, inwardly, at her focus and her devotion to her task. After a few moments I spoke, my voice penetrating the portal and despite coming from me while I was within the water came across loud and clear to the angel thanks to my powers over sound.

“Hello! Why don’t you take a break from your task and come converse with me?” I asked her, startling the young angel. She leaped as she heard my voice and turned to her left in search of me. My powers over sound caused her to not be sure where I was. I allowed her to look around in confusion before clearing my throat and causing her to look to her right and see me, in the portal.

As she turned to face me she began to think of a question to ask. I could read her mind effortlessly, even though she was an angel, since she was a member of my angelic host. I chuckled and spoke again before she could verbalize her question.

“You can take a break. Plus, I’m your god. If I suggest you take a break and come chat with me, you can come and chat with me.” I told her, reassuring her effortlessly. She looked at me, her dark brown eyes peering into my currently space-black ones. We stared into each other’s eyes for a few moments before she eventually nodded at me and got up and walked into the portal.

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She was fearless. She had no hesitation once she was assured it was fine for her to take a break, even though I was in a submerged temple. She passed through the portal and found herself face to face with me.

She was dressed in a white robe and kept a single, simple book on her at all times. Both her robe and her book were waterproof and I granted the angel the ability to breathe underwater even as she approached me. When she was on my side of the portal I closed it, and nodded at her. She nodded back and began to speak.

“Greetings lord-god.” She said, her voice filled with warmth. Her eyes, like her hair and wings, were dark, but there was a vitality there that lesser eyes would not have been able to pick up on. I smiled at her and began to speak.

“Hello Ariel.” I replied back, greeting the angel warmly. I knew her name even though we had never conversed before. I knew the names, and much, much more, about every single angel who was in my angelic host. She beamed at me upon hearing her name escape my lips.

The angel was a low-tiered angel of knowledge but even at a low-tier she undoubtedly knew more individual things than I did. She was thousands of years old, and had worked for dozens of nations across as many worlds during her lifetime.

“What would you like to converse about, lord-god?” She asked me, her voice sounding surprisingly chipper given the overall darkness of her appearance. It, like her robes, was light and bright.

I was silent and considered her question for a few moments. My expression darkened as I did. There was so much I didn’t know, and a lot I wanted to learn about. I also knew that the angel would keep no secrets from me, nor would she leave a question of mine unanswered. Not if she could help it anyway. After a few moments, I finally had an answer to her question.

“I was curious if you could tell me what you knew about the dimension known as the Wildlands.” I told her, knowing extremely little about it aside from its status as the home of the Salvages, chaotic extraplanar entities I could summon if I ever felt like gaining the service of chaotic creatures. Ariel smiled as she heard my question and opened up her book, reading a few lines before beginning to speak.