136 Practice And Training (1/2)
The town was currently infested with the walking dead, but somehow they managed to be the least strange of its invaders. The strangest creature to invade the town, the genocidal-entity who had maliciously commanded them to annihilate it, was a being who was fully and horrifyingly alive.
The entity whose worshipers had invaded the town had a deceptive appearance. He looked human. He looked like a tall, older, tan-skinned human man and he even walked like one. He was leisurely exploring the ruins of the town, and as he did so he performed odd actions.
He stood in front of the wreckage of one of the houses. The god was silent, and behaving oddly even for him. He was in a ”playful” mood after having listened to a prayer by a particular mortal in another world, and when gods were ”playful” entire worlds could be left changed.
His mind was an eerie thing, and it was currently connecting him to the life that was left in the town. Such life was unlike most of the life he had interacted with before. He was interacting with fungi.
Life remained in the invaded town in two forms. Plants and fungi. For the first time in his life, Althos was utilizing his fungal abilities.
Another, smaller, part of his mind was also thinking exclusively about the strange dwarf who had prayed to him. He was wondering what to do with her. He had an array of options at his disposal, now that his powers were diversifying.
He could turn her into some form of undead. He didn't doubt that she'd make a great vampire if that was the route he went.
He could also infect her with his parasitic spores. Normally he wouldn't even consider using that power on someone, but he was trying to be open-minded to his darker-powers, but she didn't want freedom, so he wasn't taking it off the table unnecessarily.
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I found myself standing still in front of an empty house. The house wasn't what I was interested in though. I was only standing still because doing so was convenient. It was my mind that was at work, and not my body after all.
”This feels... odd.” I mentally muttered as I studied what my detection-based abilities had revealed to me. The buildings in this place were made from wood and from stone and such buildings had a fair amount of fungus contained within them. I focused on the thousands of patches of fungal matter that existed within the town and began to smile.
I focused on them for a moment longer before I mentally reached out and did the mental equivalent of stroking the fungal patches and related lifeforms found throughout the town. Doing so was easy like I was petting a dog that was right in front of me. And the fungal patches immediately reacted to my gentle, mental touch.
The eerie lifeforms reacted to me joyously. Such creatures weren't usually emotional beings, but something about my actions filled them with a strange energy that left them amusingly active. I could sense them react to me in a purely internal way, but more than I could also sense their physical reaction.
Actual mushrooms, a few of which could be found throughout the town in small, relatively isolated patches, began to almost bounce in fungal delight. They impossibly bobbed up and down in a mad dance. I smiled as I saw some of them do so, my incredibly powerful vision allowing me to see them effortlessly despite the distance that separated them from me.
”How delightful...” I muttered, amused by the display. For a moment I considered reaching out to the fungal patches and fully evolving them. That was something I could do, if I wanted too, thanks to a power I possessed entitled ”Lesser fungal manipulation”. I thought about it for a moment, before deciding not to do it.
”No need to create new, complex life here.” I told myself, aware that such a choice would, in a way fly in the face of my choice to annihilate the people of this town. Instead, I allowed my powers to wash over the fungal patches that existed here and awoke them.
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Awakening a lifeform was a strange process. The truth was that it involved flooding a non-sapient entity with some form of energy, a normally dangerous process, in a controlled, precise way. When a god did it they flooded whatever they were awakening with the divine power that coursed through their deific veins, but it needn't be divine energy that floods whatever is to be awakened.