revel in my newfound power for a moment letting my divine senses stretch far and wide. I can feel a wave of unseen power wash out across the continent as it pulses out from the… Temple Tree Argus, as it wishes to be called. I smile and pat the living wood wall and then get a feeling of smugness in return from the tree. Cheeky thing arent you?
It takes me a moment to attune to having such an extensive range again especially since it's much larger than what I had before. It's a bit overwhelming but like I did before I let the Divine Amp do the heavy lifting by shunting the brunt of my connection into it. Slowly but surely the mental strain lessens to a low thrum in the back of my mind.
Hmm, Divine Amp doesn't really fit with the sheer size… and well lack of portability. How about Divine Pylon? Yeah, that sounds good.
Now to turn this Divine Pylon into a proper Divine Terminal. As of right now, it's just a glorified battery and amplifier. Perfectly suitable for a natural-born god since their duties are intuitive, not so much a mortal turned divine. The intricacies of godhood are a bit hard for mortal minds and souls to handle and understand.
That is one of the reasons gods have trouble understanding mortals, after all, their mindsets are simply too different. Some do make an honest effort and succeed, like Hachi-chan. But for most? They will never fully understand mortals and not for lack of trying… for the most part. Some gods can just be assholes at times.
There is a reason so few demi-gods choose to ascend to full godhood. While the benefits might be tempting losing one's humanity is not a trade even I would want to make.
Luckily I can cheat.
I place my hand on the massive Divine Pylon and go through the process that Medea devised to make a Divine Terminal. Apparently, she was clued in on the whole mecha Olympians thing when she was alive and didn't really grasp what it meant until she had some time to live in the modern day. Which may have influenced her hobbies.
Because while minorly (lies) obsessed with cute idols. She is also a gunpla and mecha fanatic.
She took her admittedly rudimentary knowledge of the mecha Olympians, her much more fleshed-out knowledge about the gods, and some inspiration from playing RTS games (that Osakabahime introduced her to) and devised a way to create a Divine Terminal. Which lets me do god things a lot easier and with little repercussion.
It, however, is a long and tedious process that I have to do personally. So I announce to my current companion, "Stachys this next part will take some time so you can go do whatever if you want."
I crane my head and find she's sitting there writing in a notebook. She looks up, "Don't mind me, this is all extremely fascinating. So I want to get my observations down while it's still fresh."
I simply shrug. It's her unlife, she chooses what to do with it.
The next few hours are spent weaving delicate spellwork into the colossal hunk of Divine amber. I got to say it is much easier to do it at this scale. When I did it to my original Amp it took all my focus to make sure the extremely tiny spell matrices were done properly, with the Pylon much less taxing on my mind.
Sometime later I finish with a heavy sigh. I sit down and observe the newly created Divine Terminal. The former glittering starlight of my Divinity is now a galaxy in miniature swirling lazily within the Massive hunk of amber. Before it was free-floating power with no purpose, content to simply exist and go with the flow. Now it is structured and focused. The scattered stars of divinity are now constellations with meaning and purpose. One could even say they are programs… they are in fact programs.
I raise my hands toward the Divine Terminal and with a thought, a holographic interface appears before me. The UI is simple yet tasteful. In one corner it shows my stored divine energy… which is very low. Next to that, it shows my passive faith income… which is almost nothing. I tap that and it shows me the number of my 'followers' or people that believe in me whether as a god or as a person… it's about a handful of people that actually believe in me with a smattering of a couple thousand that believe in me for simply being a Hero. For the latter, I say 'believe' very lightly.
I tap it again and it shows me a more detailed view with names and the number one follower is… Stachys. I lean over to see the librarian furiously scribbling in her journal.
Well, that tracks as she saw me do some crazy divine bullshit.
Number two is, Frillite. I look at her name a bit surprised. Huh, I assume rather than being directed at me personally it's because I'm a Hero.
Next is the girls, though it's a bit shaky. Makes sense though given yesterday. Ophelia is in the lead with Neria being right behind her and Eri is in last.
I close that menu and take stock of everything else. I have my world map that is very bare bones at the moment since I haven't taken the time out to do a scan. I should probably do that. I bring up my divine ability menu and select the low detail scan, as I am low on juice. A brief pulse spreads outward from Argus and makes its way across the continent.
Well while that is doing that I flip through my divine abilities menu lamenting that my personal tweaks and settings are gone as it was a fresh install. With a sigh, I pull up Blessings and get to work recreating my patented faith farming ability.
It all boils down to one question. Can plants have thoughts? Mundane ones, not magical ones obviously. And the answer to that is yes. Not in the traditional sense, however, but they are still thoughts nonetheless. So I think to myself one day, If plants can think then they can believe.
This brings me back to this newly finished blessing. It will ping plants far and wide if they want a little, little, little, bit of divine juice to make their lives easier. Like being able to survive the winter, pushing through a drought, and other stuff plants want. Sort of like more traditional blessings but on a much smaller scale. The faith that I receive from plants is not the best (unless they are sentient) but it's a constant supply and is relatively cheap on the upkeep.
I then activate the blessing nearly shedding a tear as my divine energy pool drains away to nearly nothing. Well, I should see some decent returns on that soon enough.
I take a look at my now slightly more detailed map. Well, I didn't expect much from the lowest energy scan but it should be useful. If I want more detail I have two options. One is shelling out more energy for a deeper scan of which I have nearly none, or exploring it myself and mapping it with my passive senses. I'll go with the cheaper option after all… I need what little energy I have to screw with people. One of the god's favorite pass times, making people's lives inconvenient.
I tap the toggle to show recognized presences and find Gis and Lorian still in the capital. I feel an evil smile grow on my face as I pull up my divine prank menu.
Let's see… how about a frayed thread or two on Lorian's pants that will cause them to split most magnificently at the worst time. And pair that with an upturned stone in his way and it being right in the middle of the street and we have a recipe for some embarrassment.
Now for Gis, I want something more personal. Gods can be petty and so can I. I then frown as I can't directly target him as he has Iris' blessing… well I can't directly target him right now. I just don't have enough juice at the moment to overpower the blessing. I do make a note the next time I have a booty call with Iris to ask if I can screw with him. But in the meantime let's see what else I can do.
The good old bird shitting on them is good but how about right when he's taking a bite of food? To let that happen let's see what events I have to set into motion. A stray wind at a food stall after the cook makes a particularly good batch of food should do the trick.
I then set it to record and get back to doing non-petty things.
Such as making myself a Personal Terminal. All in all, it's rather simple to take a small piece of amber from the Pylon and fashion it into a necklace with my jewel seed. Now I have a mobile connection to the main Terminal.
Next order of business asking Stachys something. I turn and walk to the librarian who was still writing in her notebook.
She looks up, "Yes can I help you?"
I give her an exhausted smile, "Yeah, is there a place to rest? Preferably with a bed?"
She blinks in surprise, "Oh! Sure thing. Just give me a moment to clean up."
Her assorted writing supplies vanish into motes of light. Projection? No that felt different.
She notices my confusion and giggles, "I have a very intimate connection with the library as its head librarian. I can summon just about everything in the library to me no matter how far I am from it. I can also send things to the library. It was very handy when getting new material back to the library or when pulling up an obscure reference out in the field… though lately, all I've been using it for is to be lazy."
That… is surprisingly useful and a very familiar ability. I can hear Gilgamesh yelling about copyright infringement from here.
She leads me to a bedroom so dusty I'm pretty sure some of it's fossilized. I give her a raised eyebrow and she shuffles awkwardly, "I haven't really been over here too much."
I take another look and find that under the dust is an untouched bedroom filled with all sorts of decayed nick nacks. Ah, painful memories then.
She then leads me to her bedroom. Which is a sort of organized chaos in one corner filled with books and other assorted magical tools and the other side is filled with a massive bed covered in stuffed animals.
She grips her nightgown in embarrassment, "I-I hope you don't mind s-sharing a bed. All the other ones are in a similar condition to that last one and it will take some time to… to clean them."
I pat her shoulder sympathetically, "If you don't want to clean them it's fine," she gives me a thankful look. I then give her a cheeky smile, "Especially if that means I get to share a bed with a cutie like you!"
She then flushes but then smirks, "Well better hope you are a deep sleeper I move around a lot."
"That's fine with me… but do you have a bath as well? I need to get cleaned up."
"Oh, sure. The master bath is over there," she says while pointing at a door.
I then make my way over and nearly cry at the sight of it, it's a proper bathroom porcelain throne and all. As a child of the modern age, one really takes things for granted, one such thing is indoor plumbing. I strip myself and enjoy my first hot bath in a month. My jewel seed gets to work making wonderfully floral aromatics to accompany my bath and that leaves me very relaxed.
I needed this.
I leave the bath recharged and refreshed. I then immediately plop face down on Stachys very comfortable bed.
She gives me a poke and I give a muffled reply, "Yes?"
"Do you have more of what you used in the bath? It smells really good."
I raise a hand and my jewel seed produces a sack filled with all kinds of flowers. She daintily plucks it from my hands and goes to take a floral bath of her own.
Soon after I begin to drift to sleep.
[hr][/hr]
Sometime later I momentarily flutter my eyes open as I feel a tight hug from Stachys. I give her a groggy look and she mumbles, "Do you mind i-if I hold you?"
I shake my head and pull her closer and she clings to me tightly. She must be very touch starved.
She nuzzles against me, "Thank you… I needed this."
I gently rub her head and fall back into blissful sleep.
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