"So this is what it's like to be worshiped huh?" I asked myself as I walked around in the basement floor of the very first temple ever built to me. I gazed at my surroundings with a smile and the objects that surrounded me.
I was on the floor of my temple where sex workers who worshiped me would be allowed to live and ply their trade. This was something that surprised a few of the more stuffy nobles who worshiped me but it was something I insisted on, and in doing so I earned the admiration and worship of the city's sex workers, which had one of my larger goals all along.
The floor I was on was a dark one, but at will, anyone who had one of my amulets could, without even expending their own mana or that of the amulet, could illuminate whatever section of this floor they were in. The darkness didn't bother me or weaken my ability to see so I didn't mind it, but mortals weren't as powerful as I was as far as senses go. They needed light to see and so I came up with a solution that addressed that need. The sex workers who lived on this floor would be given special amulets as well so that they could illuminate their living spaces as needed.
As a grand adonis, all sex that either involved me or was dedicated to me could empower me, even if the empowerment was small. I knew that once enough people were having sex and dedicating it to me, even by just thinking of me while making love to someone, I'd begin to feel the boost to my own power and I intended to get that started right away. It was such a small boost in the beginning, which I knew because it was already happening, that in order for it to matter someday I needed to get involved and actively encourage it.
At the moment many of the first sex workers to come and live in the temple were currently sleeping. I could hear them, even though they lived in other, private rooms away from where I currently was.
They were beautiful women and handsome men who enjoyed living hedonistic lifestyles and more than a few of them had approached me, hoping to earn my affection and feel my embrace, yesterday while I was helping them move into the temple. It had been cute to watch them try, and see their disappointed but understanding faces after Riezel explained that sex with me was a supernatural, intense experience that wasn't for the faint of heart. I also knew that some of them weren't about to give up so easily.
I quietly listened to them for a moment, enjoying the peace of this moment. The last few days had been so busy and throughout each of the days that had passed I had grown so much, steadily making new friends and allies all while I was regularly growing in power. I felt stronger than ever and in the back of my mind, I realized that this was a good moment to follow up on something unusual I heard back before I revealed myself to the world.
I closed my eyes and began to utilize one of my favorite abilities: will-casting. I channeled my inner ocean of magical energy and envisioned it altering what was in my mind's eye.
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Divination magic was a kind of magic that allowed me to do things like "remote-viewing" and "scrying". It was a powerful type of magic that allowed me to know what was going on in other parts of the world, and eventually, when I had enough power, even beyond this one world. I had gained the ability to use divination magic as a consequence of acquiring several thousand worshipers and now I was using it to follow up on a strange rumor.
In my mind's eye I saw the coast outside of the city. A few days ago I heard a rumor about goblins behaving strangely and I figured that I could remotely follow up on that right now. I took my mind's eye and drove it north up the coast, and as I did I watched the view in my mind's eye beginning to shift. I was utilizing "remote-viewing" to be able to see things occurring in real-time outside of my actual field of vision.
As I drove my mind's eye north, I began to see people preparing to go fishing and eventually even small villages that were built on the coast. I found what I was looking for when I had driven my mind's eye so far north that I had passed by several small fishing villages; a tribe of goblins living on the coast.
There were no less than thirty of the small creatures, barely bigger than dwarves, living in a tiny collection of ramshackle huts made up of various animal hides and placed, loosely, in the sands of a long-abandoned stretch of the coast. It was still early morning, even for them, so many of them still slept, although the earliest risers were already awake.
One of them was a violet-skinned little humanoid with a body that I'd never forget. The tiny creature radiated raw arcane power and had a grass-green aura that shone like a verdant sun, but that wasn't the feature I was referring to. She had four breasts, each tattooed with potent arcane sigils that seemed to contain and store magical power, perhaps to supplement her normal amount of eldritch energy.
Curiously enough the little goblin managed to look up in the direction of my mind's eye as if she could sense that she was being watched. Her gaze was unfocused and unsure, indicating that she herself was hesitant and unsure of whether or not she was actually being seen, but it was enough for me to know to be wary of her when the time came for me to confront these strange goblins.
None of the other goblins stood out at a glance, but right before I was about to begin to peer into their minds I watched a shimmering purple portal appear at the end of their makeshift settlement. The portal was large and on the other end of it, I could clearly see a heavily armed and armored figure stepping out of what looked like some sort of spaceport or docking station where interstellar vehicles could be parked, the likes of which I knew of thanks to Riezel's memories of distant space-stations and other technology beyond my understanding.
The figure stepped through the portal and onto the beach clad in full-body armor that covered every centimeter of skin and left everything to the imagination. They stood almost as tall as I did, and their suit of armor was perfectly black making them look like some sort of unearthly knight. They carried a gleaming battleax with an edge made of deadly-looking solidified energy. I watched the figure, and as I did some of the goblins in the camp began to approach them, with awed looks on their faces. They carried bowls of fruit and fish and meekly offered them to the figure, placing them on the floor at the figure's feet.
The stranger was almost as tall as I was, and they politely bent down and grabbed one of the apples in one of the bowls. They slowly lifted the fruit up to where their mouth ought to have been, and I watched as a small slit on their helm opened up and revealed a corner of a mouth and a set of lips covered in black lipstick. The figure delicately bit on the apple and the goblins cheered. Behind the stranger, another figure stepped out of the portal and grabbed the bowls, but this stranger was easier to identify.
The person who stepped through the portal was a woman whose only bit of apparel was a belly button ring that exuded some sort of energy that covered her body in a shimmering forcefield. I suspected that the ring wasn't magical and had to assume that it was instead technological because it didn't radiate arcane energy and instead occasionally released sparks which the woman's body absorbed. The woman herself was otherwise completely naked but her eyes glowed with what wasn't magic but must have instead been some other sort of power.
I froze in shock when the woman was about to step through the portal but before she did she happened to visually inspect the beach and then her eyes began to turn into completely pink orbs before snapping up and making what would have been direct eye contact with me if not for me not being there physically. Her companion turned to look at what the strange woman was looking at, and I shivered when the figure turned to "face" me only to freeze for a moment and then begin to speak.
"I can't see you... But I can sense you, stranger." The figure uttered, in a language unlike any I had ever heard before, but one I could fully understand. Their voice was distorted as if it wasn't actually the figure's voice and instead was actually a voice that was somehow being altered. Their companion began to smile in my "direction", and stepped back through the portal, leaving me and the armored figure alone.
"I know the people on this planet can't understand me, but I know you can see me, so I'm betting you can hear me. Divination magic huh? How fascinating..." The figure uttered, quietly. I was an adventurous sort and so I opened my eyes, rose my hand, wordlessly created a portal to the beach, and stepped through it. I found myself face to face with the armored figure and studied the stranger for a moment.
"I can understand you. Who are you and what do you want with these goblins?" I asked in the stranger's own tongue. I gazed at the odd figure in otherworldly armor and waited for an answer to my question. The figure fell silent and was still for a moment. I sensed their mind appraising me carefully as if weighing and contemplating different courses of action and their consequences.
The figure responded to me with actions rather than words, hurling their strange battle-ax onto the sand near the portal, after noticing that I was unarmed, and then hurling themself at me. I chuckled and kept my eyes firmly locked on my apparent enemy, since with my powers intellect, and reflexes, I was always ready for battle.
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The armored figure leaped at the young god at a speed that was nearly equal to the speed of sound, and somehow, to the figure's shock, that wasn't nearly fast enough to catch the godling off guard. The young god kept his gaze firmly locked on the warrior, following them as they moved through the air, and dodged their first attack, with a simple side-step, effortlessly avoiding the simple yet powerful thrust that was meant to get the unarmored man into the air.
Raul responded by launching a single kick at his enemy, a devastatingly powerful kick that collided with the stranger's armor and sent them flying backward, almost into a group of the subservient goblins, though Raul prevented this by lightly stopping the warrior's backward momentum with a gentle usage of telekinesis. He also rubbed salt in the wound, figuratively, by chuckling.
"Ugh..." The armored figure groaned as they leaped to their feet a few nanoseconds after their backward movement was stopped. There was a tense moment wherein both warriors gazed at each other, and Raul momentarily wondered if the figure would stop but his internal question was answered in a way that annoyed him when the warrior instead spoke once more.
"Alpha!" They shouted, a few moments before the figure who had stepped into the portal stepped back out of it, and grabbed the axe that the warrior had thrown to the sand before. The strange woman winked at Raul, before lightly hefting the axe at her companion, who deftly caught it. The weapon began to glow and the figure charged at Raul again. He smiled at the warrior, who was evidently now taking him seriously.
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The stranger charged at me and began to swing their axe the instant they got within the distance they would have needed to be in to hit me with their weapon. They were fast, much faster than any enemy I had faced to date, but not fast enough. I made use of my supernatural grace and my speed to narrowly, dramatically, and enjoyably dodge each of their swings, even as they began to chase me down the beach at a speed that made us blurs to the goblins.
In my eyes they were basically moving in slow motion as they brutishly swung their weapon at me. I waited until the last moment and then dodged each of their strikes with acrobatic motions and flexibility. Each of their swings had a considerable amount of force behind it, but without the ability to actually hit me it was meaningless.
The stranger I was fighting was an immensely skilled warrior. If I was being honest and humble in my assessment of my foe I'd easily say that they were more martially skilled than I was. Their blows were fast, powerful, and decisive, the problem was that I was so much faster than they were. This was not a battle between two equally skilled warriors, it was a battle between a classically trained warrior and a rogue who was specialized in dodging strikes and dealing critical hits.
I effortlessly slid under one particularly nasty ax swing that would have decapitated me had I been slower, and I grinned at my enemy as I did so. I sensed that my enjoyment of the fight and my odd choice to not especially fight back was beginning to get on the nerves of my enemy. The enemy changed things up this time by leaping at me and swinging their axe downward as they spun, in an attempt to cleave through me. I grinned at my foe and when their axe began to close in on me I launched a single punch at the weapon.
My fist and the weapon sailed towards each other. In my mind's eye, I felt my perception of time slow to a crawl, as my weapon and my enemy's weapon drew ever closer. My enemy shouted at me, declaring their victory, right as our two blows collided and I began to smile as I watched my fist first crack, then fully shatter the blade of my enemy's ax. My fist went through the weapon and shattered its blade into several shards of unearthly metal all of which bounced off of me and onto the ground, thanks to the momentum of the swung weapon.
"Damn it!" My enemy shouted, in anger, as they spun in mid-air just past me. They landed on the ground behind me, and I felt their growing anger, even as "Alpha", their companion, silently watched our battle. I didn't move to continue the battle, but I did turn to keep my eyes on my enemy. They also didn't move to continue the battle.
"I've... never lost before." My enemy said, in what felt like sincere disbelief. I telepathically sensed their gaze fall on the handle of their ax, the only part of it left after its collision with my fist. It was at that moment that two more figures stepped through the strange portal and onto the sandy beach. One of them was a man a bit shorter than me who wasn't human but looked human, and another was a woman a fair deal shorter than either of the three of us, with short blonde hair and a decorated spear in her hand. She also wasn't human.
I could tell at a glance that I was facing a group of extraterrestrials, which I confirmed with a light glance at their thoughts. All three of them, including the warrior I had bested, were travelers who were citizens of a space-faring, nomadic civilization known as the "Starmazons", a matriarchal society led by strong, warrior women. And I sighed upon realizing that the strongest woman in this particular group of travelers was the stranger I had just bested.
The other woman, "Alpha" was not a member of their strange family, and was instead just a mechanic from another, interstellar civilization which was known for producing universal-class technology.
While I wasn't glancing at her I heard the strange woman who had wordlessly attacked me earlier remove her helm and glance at me, her mind now clearing from a rage she had entered for the sake of battling me at her best. I chuckled and studied my situation, as I began to steadily peer into the minds of the goblins who had just watched me best their unofficial leader. At last, I knew the whole and admittedly very odd story here.