223 Life (1/2)
Congratulations on acquiring the second tier of influence over the life domain! This is one of the greater domains that is the most affiliated with your soul, and you are now beginning to unlock its true power. As a consequence of that, this is a significant upgrade to your powers that bolster your abilities in many ways.
New Primarily Life Domain Passive Powers:
Chi Awareness and Manipulation: Chi is one type of lifeforce that can be found in all living creatures, be they mortal or not. This power not only allows you to be perpetually aware of chi, sensing even the most minute amounts of it but also manipulate it. You can manipulate chi to achieve a number of effects with some examples including paralyzing or empowering others and also hardening your own attacks.
Enhanced Resurrection: This supercharges your resurrection ability, allowing you to perform up to fifty true resurrections per day. Resurrection is innately a life-domain ability, and thus each tier of influence you acquire over it awards you greater control and ease of use of the power.
Flawless Restoration: You can heal anyone or anything of any damage so long as they are alive. This power takes from the healing subdomain, creation domain, and the life domain, and mixes them together allowing you to heal people, things, and even concepts.
Life-Aura: With this aura, wounds heal faster in your presence, and life is more likely to be created.
Life Bestowal: This power is specific for objects. You can grant them life, utilizing your powers over minds, souls, creation, and life. They come to life and begin to worship you, unless you make them unintelligent. This could be an especially powerful ability specifically with regards to art or technology. This differs from granting something consciousness, in that a living object can be killed by sustaining enough damage.
Life Element Manipulation: With this power, you gain the power to manipulate energy that fuses life-force and elemental forces. As an example you can manipulate a variation of air that heals lifeforms and a variation of water that can produce life.
Life Force Extension: You can infuse more life-force into a living creature to extend their life. One of the key uses of this is that this can increase the age someone can live too, but it can also be used creatively in a number of different ways.
Lesser Life-Editing: With this power, you can more finely manipulate a mortal's life. This allows you to directly interface with a mortal on a scale that magic can't replicate. With this, you can edit someone's appearance and other lesser things even without their consent.
New Primarily Life Domain Active Power:
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The new powers that settled within me were extremely significant. I felt them in my heart, in my soul, as I read through the first notification. I received a second one was a longer, more complex list of synergistic powers.
Not far from me, the spider-like creature I had created was feasting on the corpses of the leaders of the town. It was a messy eater, and it was also having the time of its very short life. As the creature devoured the corpses I watched as it began to change.
The more the creature ate, the more humanlike it became. At first it was a slow, subtle change, as it began by changing the pigmentation of the creature's chitin. But the more it ate the more pronounced the changes became.
The first real, indisputably noticeable, addition was that the creature grew distinctly human arms. And from there the changes only grew in intensity. By the time the creature was done eating the last of the corpses it looked as human as I had in my very first form.
”So it worked...” I said, beholding the true nature of my creation. I hadn't created any ordinary spider-monster. I had created a terrifying and quasi-eldritch monster-race of shape-shifters. The creature, now eerily human in appearance, looked at me curiously.
The creature opened its mouth and a strange, clicking sound came out of it. It was speaking to me, in the language of its species. I smiled and listened to what it was saying.
”Creator... I feel wiser now.” The thing remarked, now possessing all of the abilities and knowledge of its victims. Despite the monster's human-form there was something predatory in its voice. I remained silent for a moment, before opening my mouth and releasing a click-like sound of my own, which was me replying to it in kind.
”You are. When I created you, my child, I bestowed you with a number of gifts. You are, in many ways, a creature like me.” I revealed, while also speaking vaguely. The creature gazed at me curiously, its mind filled with wonder.
”You are the world's strongest predator and parasite. I not only gave an archnid's base form, I also gave you a few other special gifts. The greatest gifts I gave you were the powers to shapeshift and to drain everything from those you devour. Those you eat do not become mere sustenance for you, they become inspiration for you. Their knowledge, memories, secrets and thoughts are absorbed by your mind.” I explained, revealing why it was that the creature felt wiser.
”You are a mortal. Your mind cannot process everything instantaneously as mine can. It takes time for you to absorb what you've learned. But when your mind is done processing the collective knowledge of your victims, you will suddenly understand an incredible amount all at once.” I revealed, smiling as I spoke in the click-tongue of the spider.
The creature fell silent, shocked by the weight of what I had just revealed. I had also bestowed the creature with other gifts, such as immortality, but I didn't need to overwhelm it all at once. For the moment I contented myself with replying to its questions as they came, and not revealing everything to it at once.
The creature opened its flawless imitation of a human mouth and once more clicked at me, after a few moments of silence. This time the click was longer, louder, more emotional.
”Creator? Why was I created?” It asked, as a powerful emotion, curiosity, filled its voice. I looked at it for a moment, and sped time to the speed of light for the briefest of instants. That gave me space and time to internally debate whether or not I wanted to tell it the truth.
The world around me slowed to a standstill. I felt everything freeze, everything but me. And then I chuckled and began to think.
The truth was that I created an entirely original species to acquire more power. That was why I had made the powerful monster that I had just finished creating. I would do a lot to acquire more power, to gain more knowledge, and to spread my influence far and wide. But if I told the creature the truth it wouldn't sound particularly godly. Nor would it make the creature want to serve me.
I could lie to the creature. Lying wasn't challenging for me. I doubted I'd even need to use any of my powers. I knew mortals. Many of them wanted to believe that they were a part of a grandiose design, that some architect created an elaborate scheme that would only work if they played their part.
Truthfully telling them that I was that architect, or some approximation of that basic idea, was something I had before. I was powerful enough and intelligent enough to make it work too. Entire lawful cults of mine venerated me as a grand designer, one who had come to pick up the pieces and fix the broken worlds left behind by my deific ancestors.
That said... There was also a middle ground. I could reveal that in creating this creature I gained more power, while also giving it a purpose. And what's more I could make the purpose I was going to give the creature a real purpose, one worth basing it's immortal life around.
I quietly contemplated the situation before me. I stood still, in the silence of a nearly frozen world, and I carefully weighed the three solutions that I had come up with to answering the creature's inquiry. After countless moments, ones that the spider-like doppleganger before me would never realize passed, I realized which answer I wanted to give to the creature. I closed my eyes and returned to my normal speed, the world returning to vibrant life around me and my creation.
I kept my eyes closed as I began to click at the creature. I was once more speaking to it.
”I created you and indeed your entire species as a means to gain an archivist in this world and others throughout the universe. Your ability to grow in intelligence and wisdom by feeding on other living creatures is invaluable to me, as a god of knowledge and manifests my other powers as a god of parasites and as a shapeless deity.” I told the creature, in its anthropoid language. I wasn't done speaking either.