A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse - 217 Resurrections Aplenty

I did my best to mentally hover over the shortcut without actually activating it as I was curious as to what it was. I had a theory that it was a dungeon menu, one which allow me to control the city more efficiently and also do a number of things utilizing my power. A second after I began to mentally hover over the shortcut, words appeared over the icon. They were simple, which made it a bit vague.

“Dungeon menu”. Those words were simple but they told me all I needed to know to activate the shortcut. I grinned as I mentally tapped the tiny icon, and as another notification appeared at the center of my vision.

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[Dungeon Menu:

Welcome to the “Dungeon Menu”. This menu lets you exercise control over dungeons and utilize your powers in them more efficiently. This menu exists to serve higher beings and it allows degrees of control over dungeons that are astounding and beyond the capabilities of lesser beings. You have become the lord of Duvessa, a city-type dungeon located on the surface of Infernius.

Duvessa’s core, like every other core on the surface of Infernius, was hand-created by Technos. Technos’ cores were efficient and easy to use power distributors. The core is currently returning full power to the city, and thus even when the power given to the city by your usage of your abilities wears off the city and its robotic inhabitants will continue to stay on.

One thing the core can do that isn’t being done at the moment is turn on a city-wide barrier that will disperse the ash and keep the city clean. Would you like to do that? Additionally being the lord of Duvessa means you have control over the city’s resources.

-Manage city robots

-Gain total awareness and detection of and within the city

-Activate illusionary day-night cycle

-Manage robot factories

-Manage soul-orb processing plants]

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The notification went on, but the rest of the rows it contained were all devoted to management. I silently informed the menu that I’d like to turn the barrier back on, and a second after I did so the ash that covered the floor, the robots, the buildings, and drifted lazily through the air began to move on its own. I also gave myself total awareness of the city, and felt my sensory capabilities expand further than they could innately.

The city’s appearance now, cleared of ash, was incomparable to the sight of the city when it was covered in ash. Objects had color to them, and they shone on their own. The added fact that the power was back on throughout the city helped as well, providing real illumination to light the streets and provide an illuminated backdrop through which to see everything.

Vehicles, which lined some streets began to come to life as well, humming with power and returning to their eerie mimicry of life. I could hear the sounds of thousands of vehicles, cars, and other things, reviving. The city restored was an odd, yet miraculous sight. This entire place was an ancient relic from long ago, the age of myths and legends, and yet here it was coming to life as a direct result of my actions.

That said all of the life that was being restored here was mechanical in origin. These were robots, intelligent and skillful machines, not creatures of flesh or of the soul as mortals and extraplanar entities were. And all around us, I could sense the barest fragments of the souls that once formed devils. And for me, that was enough.

I enjoyed the sights of the city beginning to come back to life, even as an opaque barrier formed at the boundaries of the city and raced across the skies above my head. The city was incredibly vast, larger than any city I had entered to date. I watched it zoom overhead and then out of sight and grinned at it. The enormous mass of ashes that hovered in the air began to vanish before my eyes, silently and forlornly shrinking until nothing at all remained. Seeing it gone brought a grin to my face.

Once it was out of view, I closed my eyes. And with my eyes closed, it was easier for me to focus on and latch onto the fragments of souls that lingered in the city. I focused, and I began to undo death on a massive scale, for the first time in my entire life.

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The god stood at the center of the city. As he focused he began to glow, his skin radiating a potent silver light. The robots gathered around him, already in awe of the god who had brought them back and restored their city to its former glory, began to grow even more awestruck by the incredible light coming out of him. He was in essence a mobile sun at this point.

After a few moments the god lifted his hand up and he spoke. His voice was incredibly powerful and amazingly confident. The robots could hear the smile in it, even though he was hidden within the light he had begun to radiate.

“Today… I defeat death. Arise fallen devils, arise!” He said, his powerful voice booming out of the light. The robots who were close enough to see the light he radiated were also close enough to feel the extremely concentrated lawful and life energy he began to exude, and they froze as the energy washed over them and seeped into their skin.

A second later, even areas not touched by his light began to change. Wherever the smallest fragments of a soul were touched by the god’s capabilities the area the soul occupied began to change. A devilish outline began to slowly appear, almost ethereally at first. It took each outline a few seconds to begin to solidify and when they did, they began to moan painfully.

The wails of deceased devils soon overtook the city, even as the god’s abilities began to heal the creatures. For a few minutes, the only sounds audible in the city would be the incessant cries of the damned, an unholy and sinister cacophony of sounds that reverberated throughout the massive city.

The robots who had long ago patrolled the city and did countless menial tasks to keep it running remembered a time when the city was filled with life. And they remembered the end of that time. They remembered the savage creature who roamed their streets and defeated both the devilish guardians of the city, and the robots who were indispensable to the city’s ability to operate. They remembered when they last heard those sickening wails of pain and sorrow. The robots froze and watched, and listened, as the god’s power washed over the entire city. And they felt awe.

The sickening wails of agony continued. They went on for what felt like hours, even to the robots. But after a few minutes the first of the wails stopped, and then another. And another. And another. And more still. This was because these souls were entering the final stages of their respective resurrections.

The god had quietly utilized a number of different resurrection-abilities to bring the creatures back to life. And depending on which he had used on any particular soul, their reemergences as living beings would differ drastically. He used his ability to truly defeat death, his “true resurrection” power, on less than a handful of leaders. He had chosen just two devils to receive that honor, and they were the only devils to escape death’s clutches and come back from their long slumber unchanged.

The god used a smattering of his other powers on the remaining several thousand devils he was resurrecting. On some he used his fungal resurrection ability, his parasitic spores gaining the power to even affect the soul at the moment they latched onto the devils. On others, he used his ordered resurrection ability, his power allowing the affected devils to defeat even death and snaring their minds so that they would return to life with an irrepressible desire to see Althos’ will be enacted. And as his powers spread to affect tens, then hundreds, then thousands of devils he began to further diversify his powers.

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The city felt the god of life’s powers wash over it. Silvery light began to creep out of the aura of light that totally engulfed the life-giving and life-restoring deity who had decided to busy himself by saving the city. The light that crept out of the aura, that escaped it, wasn’t just light either.

Where the light crept, plants sprung up. They were never big plants, but they did appear and quietly covered the ground that surrounded the god in green vines and grass that managed to grow even on the synthetic materials that made up the city’s “streets”. Beneath the city, tens of millions of vines and roots began to appear, spawned spontaneously and unconsciously by the god of life.

Within the aura of light the god was skillfully working. He was carefully weaving together new powers, ones that would allow him to resurrect the devils in newer ways. He crafted a power that allowed him to resurrect creatures using corruption, nature, the elements, virtues, and even peace and war.

During this time the city grew quiet as even devils who had yet to be fully and truly resurrected stopped feeling pain, their new god having found their wails quite annoying so he willed away the pain they felt and gave them a peace they lost long ago. He did this idly, utilizing his powers effortlessly, but to them who had been released from suffering this was seen as a display of incredible mercy and kindness and it was their the first memory they’d make during their resurrections.

The city fell into a strange, almost kind silence. Everything, everyone, in the city held their breathe as one. And the resurrections continued.

Devils began to come back to life, their souls fully formed and fully healed for the first time in over half a million years. They appeared, fully formed and whole once again throughout the city. They appeared in buildings that touched the sky, on the city’s many streets, in countless plazas and in subterranean portions of the city.

In restaurants and offices, in malls and in infernal parking lots, in skyway bridges and in metro stations, devils appeared on the surface of the infernal dimension known as Infernius. For the first time in over half a million years, scarlet, amber, purple, and black eyes opened. Devilish wings unfurled, and infernal voices could be heard roaring in triumph and crying in elated joy.

The chaotic, life-giving god, was undoing the legacy of the last chaotic god to storm through this dimension. Both gods were unpredictable, both gods were flexible, but where one had been destructive the other was invasive and corruptive. Where one had sought to undo the horrid works that took place in this dimension, the other sought to rule over it. And the one who sought to rule over the darkness of this place had to first restore it to its former glory.

Devils continued to come back to life, even as the god extended his range and worked to track down every devil in the city. This was such an undertaking that it took even Althos many hours to do successfully. When he tracked down the last devil in the city and successfully resurrected the creature, a potent sort of devil known as a verminlord, he grinned from within the sphere of light that perfectly surrounded him. It was at this point that he finally allowed the light to begin to vanish.

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As the light that surrounded me began to vanish, I sensed a large number of creatures begin to approach me. I knew what they were and didn’t tense up even when they got quite close to me. I was being approached by a number of newly resurrected devils, all of whom had been changed in some way by my powers.

I wasn’t nervous, I could sense their emotions towards me. All of them were awed by my power and my decision to bring them back from death’s greedy clutches, and none of them had any hostile intentions towards me. I silently made the choice to slow the speed at which the light that surrounded me was vanishing, so that it’s complete disappearance would coincide with the arrival of the devils who had been released from death by my intervention.

Among the devils who were approaching me, knight devils and faith devils were mixed with other lesser devils. Both faith devils and knight devils were medium-ranked devils who had powers tied to piety and chivalry respectively. A small part of me, the part that was interested in devils in the first place was excited to meet these new creatures. It didn’t take them long to arrive and prostrate themselves before their savior. When the light I had wrapped myself in vanished, I was able to see the bowing bodies of over two dozen devils. I began to smile, wickedly, as I took in the forms of the diverse bunch gathered before me.