A Casual Hunt

A few minutes after I slashed into the slower thief, the man fell to the grassy floor of the forest. He was dead, and had been for a few minutes. He was also missing several fingers.

The man's corpse was currently bleeding profusely onto the grass that surrounded his fallen form. I ignored him and gazed curiously at my fingers. There was a playful smile on my face as I studied them.

"This was fun! It's been too long since I directly partook in violence." I said, speaking to my shadow. The creature was silent, but I sensed its excitement and it radiated a general air of agreement with my words.

My remarks were true, it was extremely rare for me to behave violently since usually, I left that to my servants. Though I was pretty violent towards demons. Many of my servants were quite violent and engaged in violence regularly, but I didn't. In fact, I could go weeks without directly committing a single violent act. A small part of me felt saddened by that.

I enjoyed utilizing my powers. Even my violent, destructive powers were fun to use and that was something I was only recently fully discovering. I had enjoyed destroying the human civilization over on Ryths. Changing that world just through usage of a few assorted animal subdomain, nature domain, elemental subdomain, and fungi subdomain abilities but on a massive scale was quite exhilarating.

I had several sources of powers. The overwhelming majority of powers I possessed I possessed due to my godhood. I had other abilities due to the numerous classes I possessed. And finally, I possessed a not insignificant number of abilities due to the fact that I was an elemental overlord. Some of my most significant powers were actually my elemental overlord powers. I had mastery over natural disasters and extremely potent sensory abilities due to my unusual identity as both a god and an elemental overlord.

An underutilized source of power for me were my class abilities. I had reached level 20 in a few different classes, druid, necromancer, rogue, ranger, brawler, berserker, and warrior. I also possessed numerous other classes, some of which were unique to me as a higher being. I was still for a moment, before I quietly reached inward and asked the domain of knowledge an important question.

"How do I level up my classes?" I asked, inquisitively. A full minute later I was surprised to receive a pleasant notification.

[Alert: Leveling Up And Class Information

Classes were originally designed by a long-dead, primordial overgod of reality and law. Incidentally, that same god also designed the system. That god was determined to organize reality and to make the multiverse an understandable place. In many cases, it succeeded.

That god wanted to design an orderly way for mortals especially but also for other beings to be able to grow in power in structured, documentable ways. It succeeded. The class system is an incredibly potent, extremely successful invention that is used in many universes.

Leveling up can be done in two ways. The first way, which is universal, is to defeat enemies using class skills and talents. This is the easiest way to level up some classes, martial classes especially. The other way is individualized, but basically, it is to utilize the talents of your class to do something that matches what the class would. The rest of this notification will be a list that lists out some ways to level up each class you possess, aside from classes in which you've already reached level 20.

Assassin: You can level up this class by either killing or defeating creatures swiftly. You gain more experience if you use poison and/or defeat or kill someone in a single blow.

Conjurer: To level up your conjurer class, utilize conjuration spells.

God: The god class is a bit of a quirkier class. To level up with it you must grant people the religious classes, utilize the abilities granted to you by the religious classes, and it's worth noting that you also don't have all of the religious classes under your belt just yet.

Magician: You level up in this class by utilizing spells creatively and spontaneously.

Patron: To level up this class utilize your skills as a patron, create witches, wards, warlocks, and use the other skills you've gained as a patron.

Shaman: To level up this class interact with spirits and use spiritual magic.

Sorceror: Study magic rigorously and rigidly to level up this class.

Spellsinger: Make music and utilize the skills granted to you by the class to level up this rather fascinating class.]

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The list of classes I had access to but hadn't fully mastered yet was considerable. Seeing it laid out flatly like that, just one after the other, put in stark contrast just how much I had ignored a real source of power. It annoyed me to see it displayed so bluntly.

That said, it was also a bit illuminating to learn that the system and classes were creations of a deity of law and reality. It explained their innate orderliness quite well. The system was one of the fundamental underpinnings of reality, it was something that every single lifeform had some access too, and understandings its origins explained how it was able to be so incredibly significant.

My godly powers were often enhanced versions of class abilities, but I knew that there was a very real reason to level up my classes: by leveling up my classes I could reach beyond level 20.

Level 20 was the maximum available class level for mortals but it wasn't the highest level accessible to gods. As a god I had the ability to go all the way to level 30 if I wanted too and in doing so I would apparently gain even greater powers and mastery over classes. I was really curious as to what a level 30 assassin or level 30 druid would be capable of.

As a level 20 druid I was capable of manipulating nature and aiding it in ways that most mortals could only barely begin to imagine but my real power over nature came from my potent influence over the nature domain. I possessed such potent power over nature that every druid in the universe subconsciously felt my presence. If I wanted too I could turn nature itself against the inhabitants of a planet and destroy humanoid civilizations.

I also wondered what sort of nightmarish powers a level 30 necromancer wielded. As a level 20 necromancer I was capable of using my powers over undeath to bring destruction to entire communities. And as a god of death and undeath I possessed even more potent and efficient ways to deal death than mere class abilities accessible to mortals. That said... Some of my abilities were handy.

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I closed my eyes for a moment and took a single deep breath. As I did so I began to concentrate and forcibly transform my aura. For the first time in my life I was unleashing an aura that wasn't due to divine power, but was actually a class ability. As I did so I mulled over some of the memories I had stolen from other, older lifeforms. For a few moments I quietly remembered incidents I had never experienced, events from before I was born. The life of a dwarven ranger.

As I went down someone else's memory lane I quietly began to exude a chilling air. All around me, life came to a sudden and chilling halt. Around me every blade of grass, every insect, every tiny woodland animal, was paralyzed with fear. And my own mind began to race.

I pictured things dying. I pictured all manner of life coming to a startling end, centered around me. I pictured grass being crushed, insects being precisely cut in half, trees being set on fire, birds drowning, and all other manner of death. And so I began to exude extremely heavy and palpable killing intent.

I activated a few divine powers one after the other, while exuding my paralytic killing intent. The first of my powers to be activated was an ability to create raw, unrefined metal. I then refined it an instant later, before turning it into a spear. The weapon felt light in my hand. I swung it lightly a few times and felt my hands quickly grow used to the weapon's weight, length, and more. A gift from my class levels as a warrior.

I opened my eyes and gripped the spear tightly in my hand. I then dropped to the floor and activated another ranger ability. The power to track wildlife as only an immensely skilled hunter could. Of course, tracking a creature wasn't tough for me. In fact, no being short of a vestige could evade my detection. That said, I still pretended that what I was doing was a necessary part of me hunting in a darkened forest.

I studied the forest floor and even in the darkness of the night I easily began to notice footprints in the forest floor at my feet. My skin also grew more sensitive to disturbances in the air, and my ears more easily picked up the sounds of shuffling and digging through the dirt beneath me.

"So this is what it's like to intentionally track life huh?" I asked, as I scanned my surroundings. My eyes narrowed as I stepped through the nearly pitch-black forest. I felt confident, supremely so. And that was because at the moment I was untouchable, unmatchable. I was a peerless existence within this forest. I was also radiating a nauseating amount of killing intent, so much so that I could almost see it invisibly seeping out of my pores.

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The god and his terrible, sapient shadow stalked the forest. At the moment, though the god looked as human as he had ever deigned to appear, he was perhaps more terrifying than he had ever been.

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 and 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.