181 Fungal Friendship & Decisions (2/2)

”I am a god of life. Being a god of life means being able to do this much quite easily.” I said, speaking arrogantly even as plants began to creep and spread towards me, flowers blossoming beside my feet and grass twisting towards me. As I watched the plants around me grow in my direction and make their way towards me, at least in the limited capacity that they could, I relaxed and continued to speak.

”This is a beautiful world. I shall fill it with life, of all sorts.” I proclaimed, speaking boldly.

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The god stood at the edge of a tilled field and relaxed, speaking boldly but also honestly.

”I seek to turn this world into a verdant paradise. And I shall be acknowledged as the one who made this paradise possible.” He declared, finally settling on an alignment to behave as, in this new world. He opened his eyes and the grin that was on his lips was visible on his face.

”I shall behave in ways that aid people and work to move governments towards hope, forgiveness, and peace.” He explained. In his heart, he knew what this meant: in the world of Htrae, he planned to behave as though he were a lawful good deity. One who valued order, tradition, governments, and systems, while seeking to guide societies in directions that uplifted all lives and helped as many people as possible.

Behaving in good ways, and in lawful ways, was difficult for the god. He was not familiar with true kindness or good intentions. Ultimately the deity had spent much of his life behaving in ways that advanced no agenda but his own, and he had committed incredibly evil acts in the past. And what's more, he wasn't repentant for the evil he had done. To call Althos malicious wouldn't exactly have been a fair characterization of most of his actions, but he certainly wasn't kind.

Even now the god was doing this to advance his own power. He sought to gain greater powers over goodness, life, and law, and doing so would ultimately require that he built cults that worshiped him as a god of those things. He would need to be worshiped as a life-bringer, paradise creating, god of order, and structure. He recognized that. He was willing to become those things, in the eyes of some of his worshipers. The god was nothing if not ambitious. He wanted to be worshiped in every single way he could be worshiped.

”I am a god of goodness, joy, love, and life.” He stated, smiling at his worshipers as he did so. His voice was flat, devoid of any emotions, and yet his followers didn't notice, as they were too enthralled by him to be able to realize that their master felt very little as he put on this performance.

”I shall spread goodness, joy, love, and life, wherever I go.” He told them, his face hardening as he spoke. This was an act he wasn't used to performing and thus it was challenging for him to maintain it.

As he spoke his mind turned inwards so that he could begin to think of how to advance this goal of his.

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”How can I do this?” I wondered, to no one in particular. I had a few ideas in mind, ways that I could go ahead and take a short-cut to more quickly become acknowledged as the god of this world.

My healthy abundance of abilities left me with a number of tools at my disposal through which I could manipulate the world around me. I wondered if repeating what I did in Torus would serve as a handy shortcut since on Torus it resulted in me gaining billions of worshipers at once. But even as I considered it, I realized I didn't need to rush things.

I didn't gain anything by rushing. I had all the time I wanted and needed to take over this world, so I ought to be patient instead of making brash decisions out of a wrong-headed desire to try and be quick.