For the future

I was still at the back of the hospital under the same tree, no time had passed at all. Nobody had come out and no one would ever know that there had been a struggle here. Even if there had been someone all they would've seen is me grabbing air and then putting my hands down. A little unusual but nothing to be suspicious of. The only things I would need to be concerned about are other souls seeing me, but there were none around. I didn't need them floating around and warning their friends that there was a strange man kidnapping souls. I liked challenges but given how troublesome they were to find I didn't want that challenge.

The sun had already set, and the night was tranquil and soothing. No secrets would be unveiled. Despite being happy with the results, the whole endeavor had left me exhausted, both physically and mentally. The struggle with the souls had taken a lot out of me.

There had also been a slight shift in my universe. I instinctively knew that the presence of those two had lessened what I would be allowed to do. Though given the power I had demonstrated before I wasn't too worried.

There was still much to do, I had to brainstorm some good titles for those two as well as create their bodies. I could have given them random titles, but I would feel bad for putting them through all that and giving them lame titles. I didn't want them to die immediately. Even though I didn't want to coddle them, they had to survive for my plans to fall through. Yet I didn't want to give them titles that were too powerful.

Then there were some other creatures that I had to visit and finally, there was a storyline I wanted to implement. I wasn't angry or stressed to have so much to do but I needed to recover first before continuing.

This is why I had slowed down time in my universe.

As I started my journey back to the hotel, I reviewed the day. It wasn't unproductive by any stretch of the imagination. Even if the results could have been a bit better, I was satisfied with them. I should have accounted for them putting up a fight and tried to nab them one by one instead of both at the same time.

I was exhausted by the whole thing. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, I just wanted to fall asleep.

The lady had played her part quite well today. The richness of the emotions and the speed of adaptability had been astounding. Not to diminish from the man's part, his anger and then forceful calm had also brought a lot to the scene. If it wasn't for my ability to change into the character, I definitely would have been the weakest link in that scene.

Maybe I was being a bit too harsh on myself, but if I wasn't going to push myself then who would? That harshness was one of the qualities that had helped me thrive in life.

Next time I would do better, that scene while great was not truly eldritch. Regrettably, the character I'd made was now stuck in that role.

Hmm, I did say he needed a name. I think I'll call him Mazzain. I wonder what role he'll play in the future.

When I finally arrived back at my hotel, I was barely keeping myself conscious. I'd dozed off several times during the journey and almost missed a couple of my stops. My excitement had distracted me from realizing how tired I was. When I arrived at my room, I never got to take my clothes off before passing out on the sofa.

The next morning after breakfast at the hotel I ordered a driver to my chalet. On the way there I brainstormed some ideas for their titles.

The girl from my initial impressions had seemed like a carefree type, she hadn't been as composed as the man, but she had recovered quickly. So, what titles could work with that? I already had [Child of the winds] in my mind but maybe [Nascent Wind Spirit] might be good. Though I was a bit iffy on those.

They could lead to potential race changes and that might complicate my cultivation goal. I wanted humans, not human-shaped wind spirits.

So, nothing that implied a race change was allowed. So, what would work with carefree and religious? I decided to stick to wind for her carefree nature plus it made sense for a quick recovery. Air takes the shape of its container after all.

I needed a title that would conflict with her religious nature, like a priestess or a Herald of a wind God.

I liked where this was going. There was a lot of potential for conflict there. How would she handle being a vital part of another god's "return"?

That would surely cause some amount of emotional distress and the funny part is that the god wouldn't exist until she made it exist.

You see another aspect of the titles was that if there was a title that was consistently believed in by beings with a soul and no one owned that title then the universe would create a being whose purpose was to fill that role. For instance, if some imaginary being named Zeus had the title of god of thunder and that title wasn't claimed by any other, then the universe would create Zeus [The god of thunder].

I'm going with something like that, it sounded too beautiful to not go with.

So, I hopped on to Google on my phone and started to search synonyms for wind priestess and other adjectives for god that I could use. I could've looked through some other religions and myths, but I didn't want the universe to accidentally recreate a pantheon from Earth.

The thought had gone through my mind to give her a title related to storms, but she wasn't ferocious enough in my opinion to have a title like that. Eventually, I settled upon [Oracle of The North Wind].

Now it wasn't as cool as [Herald of The Wind God] but it still held immense religious potential. Even though it didn't mention a specific god. Oracles were vital people in mythologies after all and it was a chance to observe how a precognitive power would work. Could she predict my actions or were there limitations?

As for the north wind part, even I'm not sure why I specified that it just sounded cool. At most it would slightly diminish her power, it shouldn't be anything too crazy.

The fact that I might have lost interest in searching up synonyms of wind priestess might have also played a part. In reality, it was just like with my universe, I just wanted to throw some things together and see how they would fit. My life had been carefully planned out by me, not fully planning was thrilling to me.

Now for the man, what to do with the man? Iz had messed him up, I don't know why but he went hard.

I also don't know exactly what he did to that man, but he probably has PTSD from that if he didn't already have it. I was tempted to give him the title of [Adversary of The Mist]. Though that idea was quickly shot down. I wouldn't be giving anybody a title that important. I wasn't comfortable giving someone a title that might aid them in fighting Iz.

Another idea had been to make him a [Slave of the mist], but that was too cruel. It did make me chuckle a little at the thought.

I did like his temperament though and he had pulled himself together rather quickly. Maybe a title related to warriors?

After about 30 minutes of brainstorming and searching up online, I came up with [The Numerologist]. It was completely different from my initial thoughts, but the concept had caught my eye, so I decided on that one.

By the time I had finished their titles we had already arrived at the chalet. I decided to leave the creation of their bodies for after lunch. I needed a little bit of break from thinking about my powers all the time. I had dug deep into them so I figured it would be healthy to pull back a little. Kind of like video games, it will never stop being good but sometimes it's just good to pull out.

And I'm happy I did because I felt so much more relaxed. The powers while fun were very tiring. The break allowed for my mind to think about things not involving my powers. Though there wasn't much else to think about. I wondered how Martin was doing, he should be back from his trip.

I had to admit my actions these past few days had been rather dubious, but I didn't feel bad about them. I didn't think I was a psychopath, after all, I still felt emotions just like everyone else, but I did come to realize that my morals might not be as good as I thought them to be. I'd started to have these realizations back in the business world, but I'd just chalked to corporate bureaucracy. Maybe there was something wrong with me?

Eh, who cares.

Once I finished my break I headed back immediately to the fulcrum.

"Hey, Iz I really liked what you did with the dude. I'm proud of you." I could feel the joy coming out of the mist and I couldn't help but smile it as well, it was like a little child aiming to please.

"Next time make it a bit more confusing for them. So, they don't understand what's happening okay?". I felt what must have been akin to a nod from the mist. Iz was incredibly smart and maybe my comparisons to a child were a bit inaccurate. He had played his role incredibly well; I just needed a bit more eldritchness in it.

The spear that I had created last time was still there just floating a couple of inches above the ground. I left it there as I didn't need it right now.

Creating human bodies did not take much more effort than creating anything else in the fulcrum. instantaneously and I had two bodies resembling both people in front of me. I had made them be a bit above peak earth humans, health and strength-wise. Regular humans would not be able to survive the planet at all. I did make them a bit more resistant to disease since I didn't want them to die while shitting their guts out. And I might have tweaked their brain chemical makeup to make them a bit hornier. Who knows?

Then I dropped the bodies into a relatively uninhabited grassy plain before grabbing their souls and throwing them in their bodies. I resumed time to its regular and watched from up in the sky as they slowly oriented themselves.

They didn't immediately start walking, rather they sat down and discussed like two responsible adults.

Lame.

Rather than sit and watch them I decided to move out and complete the rest of my goals. I had been too much of an active actor for my tastes. Right now, I just wanted to put everything in place and watch them interact with each other.

There had been a couple of beasts that had stood out to me that I had deemed worthy of titles from me. Plus, I didn't feel comfortable giving the humans titles and leaving the rest title-less. The universe didn't hand out titles easily and they tended to not be too powerful. I needed some opposition to the humans after all. The other species wouldn't start making civilizations for another couple thousand years, I had to speed up that process. And what fantasy world exists without a couple legendary beasts roaming around?

Plus let's not forget I had a new storyline to implement.

Ooh, I couldn't wait.