201 A Casual Hun (2/2)
For one of the first times in his life, he was making use of the full breadth of his powers. Not only was he actively following the footprints of other lifeforms, but he was also utilizing a weapon he had created using his powers and he was being guarded by his shadowy bodyguard. Plus he was exuding a killing intent so intense that it was almost miasmic and made it impossible for any lesser beast to imagine standing up to him.
Creatures within a distance of a kilometer of him were overwhelmed with fear to the point that their bowls were at risk of spontaneously emptying. Creatures more than a kilometer away relied on flight or fight instincts to determine their next course of action. His killing intent only petered out at a distance of over two kilometers.
The spear in his hand was a simple tool, and yet because it was created by him even instantly its quality surpassed the sort of spear created by a dwarven master-smith who poured his heart and soul into a single magnum opus. There was simply that much of a difference between a god of something and a mortal who worked even their entire lives to master it. To call the difference between a god and a mortal unfair would be the understatement of the century.
Althos slowly and silently trekked across the forest, studying different footprints with a casual ease that suggested that he was a veteran of a thousand hunts. He was not, but swirling inside of him, stored safely in his mind, were the memories of someone who was. A skilled dwarven ranger who managed to reach level 15 in the class before Althos' theft of his memories.
Althos used the dwarf's memories and mixed them with his own knowledge of animals, knowledge that was granted to him in part due to the synergy of the knowledge domain and the animal subdomains, and due to his knowledge of biology and life. After trekking across the forest for a few minutes and glancing at countless sets of footprints, the quiet god eventually picked a single set to follow.
The footprints the god picked belonged to a deer. He could tell just by quietly studying them for a few moments, and by accessing the memories he had taken from other people. After selecting the footprints the god gripped the spear in his hands tightly and began to poison the spear. The way he did it was by altering his very sweat itself, sweat which seeped onto his spear.
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Without uttering a single word I explored the depths of the forest. I tightly held onto the spear in my hands and casually followed the footprints I had decided to lock onto. They led me deeper ad deeper into the forest, and in doing so caused many woodland creatures to begin to become exposed to my killing intent.
Even as I physically explored this place, my mind was elsewhere. Or rather my mind was everywhere. Fragments of my mind were in countless dreams, quietly corrupting them.
At the moment I was having fun inflicting nightmares on people. Tonight I felt like utilizing my powers over diseases to cause people to have to endure a night of restless sleep, and I filled their dreams with instances of themselves or their loved ones suffering from potent and in some cases as of yet nonexistent diseases. I was causing people to endure another kind of dream.
In some dreams I was utilizing some of the other domains I had influence over. In the cases of the people who had the most wealth and fame in their worlds, which were usually the nobles but in some technologically advanced worlds were celebrities instead, I used my influence over the domains of emotions, faith, the subdomain of art, and the eldritch domain, to slyly tempt people. I was tempting them into thinking countless things.
In many cases I tempted them on a simple, physical level. In other cases I performed true mind-readings and instead tempted them with things that resonated with their souls. This was often power, or beauty, and in both cases giving them a taste of whatever they sought was easy enough. Dreams, now more than ever, were a place for me to utilize my abilities to a truly terrifying extent.
Being so active brought a smile to my face and was something I enjoyed very much.
My powers over dreams had undergone an incredibly significant upgrade when I completed the quest to gain the second tier of influence over dreams and I was reveling in that upgrade.
[Dream Domain Passive Powers:
Dream and Nightmare Monarch: Your powers over individual dreams are effectively absolute. If someone is sleeping and in an individual dream you can at will seize control of that dream. This potent power also grants you a small territory in the dreamlands and the nightmare marsh, the dimensions of dreams and nightmares respectively. The first time you enter both dimensions you will be brought to your territories, spaces which you are the god of.
This potent power also allows you to create portals connecting the waking world with the lands of dreams and nightmares. No other creature can do that, since all other gods are gone and the worlds of dreams and nightmares were one of the areas once controlled by the gods. In your territories within the worlds of dreams and nightmares, you are effectively omnipotent. It's like being in your divine realm.
Total Dreamwalking: You can now enter all kinds of dreams. Previously you were restricted to the dreams of humanoids, and this restriction is now gone. This restriction was weakening over time anyway, which was how you could enter the dreams of dragons and even demons, but this does away with it altogether.
Dreamwalker Dominion: Creatures who can enter dreams, like succubi and incubi, recognize you as the king of dreamwalkers. This may make them serve you outright, but even if it doesn't by itself it grants you a powerful bargaining tool since through it you can deprive others of their ability to dream walk. Inversely, you can also create powerful spy rings by giving servants of yours the power to dream walk. With this ability you can become the king of dream walking races, if you choose to pursue such a route to power.
Dream/Nightmare Control: You can control what creatures dream of or have nightmares about even if they are awake. This means you can ensure they have pleasant dreams or terrible nightmares, even as they wander the waking world.
Dream/Nightmare Trap: With this power, you can trap creatures in dreams. This is an upgraded version of the ”Dancing Dreams” active power you acquired when you earned the first tier of influence over dreams. This power prevents someone from waking.
Dream/Nightmare selection: This power allows you to target individuals and select whether or not they have a pleasant dream or a nightmare. What's more, you can choose to make this permanent. That means that you can cause someone to suffer from nightmares the rest of their life if you chose to. If you do, this power will persist forever unless you choose to undo it. Nightmares also have the effect of draining sanity, at least if someone is exposed to nightmares night after night.
Dream/Nightmare Wounds: If you chose, wounds one receives in dreams or nightmares carry over to the waking world. They are, at this level of influence anyway, weakened when transferring over. That said the abilities of their wounds to persist into the waking world can disturb and frighten people far more than they can physically harm people, for now anyway. If you wish, this power can sap sanity instead and those who are sufficiently injured in dreams lose their minds in the waking world. Synergistic power taking from the eldritch domain and the pain subdomain.
Dream Domain Active Powers:
Field Of Sloth: This power synergizes properties from the domains of dreams, darkness, and the corruption subdomain. With it, you can target an area shrouded in darkness and cause it to sap the energies of anyone who steps into it. Targets who lose all of their energy sleep for forty-eight hours. It's useable once per day.
Field of Nightmares: This power allows you to target entire areas and ensure that those who sleep in them have terrible nightmares. With this ability you can create areas the size of cities and ensure that anytime someone sleeps in them they get no rest from their dreams. This is useable per once twelve hours.]
These new dream abilities brought a wicked grin to my face. And I was still grinning even when I was close enough to the deer to see the majestic creature. It was sleeping, and I lifted and then hefted my poisoned spear at the thing with ease.
The deer was a large member of its species. It had brown fur, and an impressive set of antlers. I studied the creature as my spear fell towards it. The spear sliced through the air effortlessly, and that was even without my intervention. The spear collided with and stabbed into the deer's neck.
The creature wailed in pain, the pain giving it the strength of will needed to ignore the paralysis effect of my killing intent, but I quietly manipulated the pain it felt to reduce its suffering. After a few seconds I rose a hand and willed the creature to sleep, my mind surging into its mind and stealing all of its energy through a single usage of ”Drain”. The creature closed its eyes and its last moments were moments of peace where it was allowed to rest.
Even as the creature passed from this world into whatever afterlife awaited animals, I received a notification alerting me that I had leveled up my assassin class. I silently opened a portal into my divine realm next to me, and without a word a single angel of necromancy rose a lithe hand and fired a spell at the deer I had just slain.
A bolt of sickly green light shot forth from the portal and into the deer. Even with the spear still embedded in its side, the deer began to steadily and slowly arise, reborn into the embrace of undeath. As the deer struggled to its feet, I rose my hand and willed the spear back into it. There was a smile on my face as I did that.
Within the portal stood a youthful angel of necromancy. He looked like a fairly young adventurer, dressed in dark robes that obscured most of his features while not hiding his face. He had a clean-shaven face that looked young enough that it was questionable whether or not he needed to shave at all. He had eyes the color of a moonless night, and his complexion was quite pale, giving him the image of a stereotypical novice practitioner of necromancy.
”Hello Muerte.” I said, greeting the angel I had just summoned. The angel turned to face me and grinned widely.
”Hello Althos! I'll make sure to take good care of my new pet.” He said, greeting me back. He was a lesser angel, and he was also more youthful than many of my other servants. The more youthful angels tended to be more jovial in their reactions to me, especially necromantic angels with the sort of freewheeling mission that Muerte had: to transform the dead into the undead whenever they could.
The deer slowly walked towards Muerte, having been fully transformed into a simple zombie when it was hit by the necromancer's spell. It took the creature a few moments to reach us, and then another few moments to step fully through the portal. When it was through I smiled and closed the portal.
Leveling up brought a smile to my face. I placed the spear I created in my inventory and opened a portal that I then stepped through. As I did I began to think about my next moves. And about the incredibly potent powers I had earned over the star domain.