I immediately went ahead and tapped on the religion symbol after chatting with the system. As soon as I did I received an alert that filled my vision with informative text. [Dual Cla.s.s Description:
The "Patron" and "G.o.d" cla.s.ses are cla.s.ses that govern how you grant religion-based cla.s.ses to your servants. Paladins, dark knights, witches, wards, and warlocks are all left physically marked by you when you grant them their cla.s.ses, or when they earn them after years in your service and you gain an ability to brand someone as your first cla.s.s feature from these cla.s.ses.
The "G.o.d" cla.s.s also has miscellaneous traits and features that are worth taking note of. Some of these include powers that aid your servants and worshipers in achieving their missions, and others are miraculous powers that do a number of things.
This brand is more than a physical mark. You use it to transmit your power to those to whom you"ve bestowed it, and can you use it to transmit emotions and sensations to those who serve you. For instance, you can use it to cause a servant of yours to experience great pain as a punishment for failure or to provide soothing relief after a heated battle that leaves them injured.
As a patron, you are given great power over warlocks, witches, and wards. You can give them enhanced blessings, directly restore their HP, and at one point you can bring them back to life to serve you.
You gain experience in these cla.s.ses by causing people to become Paladins, dark knights, witches, wards, and warlocks in your service and by using these skills. As you level up you"ll gain more abilities and features with which to affect your servants.
Dual-cla.s.s features:
Branding: You can leave a physical mark on a creature who agrees to become your servant in exchange for power or a devoted worshiper of yours who has earned a cla.s.s of great power. You configure the brand to look however you want, and any of your worshipers recognize it automatically as a symbol that whoever bears it is a servant of yours.
This feature is owned by both cla.s.ses.
Transmit sensations: The brand is an extension of your power and no matter where a creature is in the multiverse a creature who is branded by you is vulnerable to sensations you transmit. This feature is owned by both cla.s.ses.
Change: As a patron, when you brand someone you can cause them to undergo a change of some sort.
A lot of patrons who lacked your particular powerset opted to take advantage of the sick and made pacts with those who were suffering from deadly diseases. Others sought servants who desired beauty or love and used the "Change" ability to make them beautiful or desirable.
The change that pact-beneficiaries undergo is determined by their masters, but was often negotiated in advance and was part of the initial investment made by the masters of the pacts in the past.
Conditional casting: As a G.o.d, you can grant your servants and worshipers magic. You can also cause such magic to require the fulfillment of certain conditions before it can be used. You can decide these conditions as you wish.
Prayer inducement: As a G.o.d, you can force a worshiper of yours to enter into a temporary state of forced prayer. While in this state the creature is forced to kneel and pray and reveals their deepest and darkest secrets. It can only be used on genuine worshipers of you, and more than anything else was used by those who had this cla.s.s to help detect pretenders who only offered G.o.ds lip-service.
Desire sense: You can peer into a soul and see what it desires. This is an enhanced version of your "l.u.s.t" power. What you see are the desires that define the person who experiences them. These desires are their goals and their dreams.]
I grinned as I read through these powers. They were all interesting and I couldn"t wait to use them on people. I also went ahead and tapped on my grimoire. I figured I might as well check on the magic I had gained.
________________________________________________
[Greetings! You have gained countless new spells. Among them, you have gained alteration spells.
The school of alteration is the school that governs manipulation of the physical world, changes made to the body, and can allow for weapons, armor, and other items to be magically enhanced. It is tied to the domains of biology and physics as well as being its own subdomain.
You have also gained enchantment spells. Enchantment magic muddles the mind and senses. It is magic that is used to deceive people.
Gravity well: This legendary alteration spell alters gravity in the affected area.
Upon using it you select a fixed point in your vision and all gravity in the surrounding area up to twenty-five meters vertically and fifteen meters horizontally is affixed to that point. This spell can be mixed with other spells such as "Weight of the dead" to create messy gravity-based situations for your enemies to deal with.
Charm: This enchantment spell causes a creature to become friendly towards you. It can be resisted but resisting it is difficult.
Stiffen: This alteration spell manipulates the body and causes it to cease moving. A living body is frozen by this spell.
Dominate: This enchantment spell is a potent one that not only charms a target but enthralls them. It can also be resisted but is much harder to resist than the simple "Charm" spell.
Sharpen: This is an alteration spell that carefully sharpens a blade and increases the damage it can do. It increases both penetration and piercing damage.
Transfigure: This legendary alteration spell is the first of the true shape-shifting spells. When you use it you cause someone to undergo legitimate transformations and can alter someone"s appearance in wonderous or terrifying ways.
Disguise: This is an enchantment spell that allows you to alter someone else"s appearance. You can this spell to effectively cause someone else to shapeshift, even if it doesn"t actually change their physiology.
Light of hope: This spell creates an orb of warm light that illuminates the area around it. This alteration magic is granted to you by the domain of light.
Invisibility: By refracting light and darkness around you or someone else you can turn yourself or someone else invisible. You, as a G.o.d of light and darkness, have a greater version of this spell that doesn"t dissipate when you or someone else attacks while invisible.
False reality: This legendary enchantment spell traps targeted minds in a reality under your control. If they die in this reality they immediately awaken from the spell and will experience long-term health effects as they are traumatized by the experience.
Ravenous darkness: This legendary alteration spell creates an area of darkness that hungrily and greedily devours the life-force of anyone who steps into it or is in it when it is created, aside from the caster. This vicious spell transforms those who die from it into undead. Its range can be increased by using more magical energy than necessary when casting it.
You have gained access to dozens of other spells as well. These spells are just some of the new ones under your control. Use the "search" function on the grimoire to find more specific spells.
New quest alerts:
Biology: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the domain of biology, use the legendary transfigure spell on a willing target to alter their appearance in a way they see fit.
Physics: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the domain of physics use the "Gravity well" spell five times.
Alteration: To gain access to the first tier of influence over the subdomain of alteration use alteration magic to win a battle against an enemy.]
________________________________________________
One fortunate thing about a G.o.dly mind is that it allowed me to think about several different things all at once and learn so many different things at the same time. I was able to absorb so much new information, all while steadily processing the trillions of notifications I was receiving via "Domain-sense".
"I wonder if I could mix and match my G.o.dly abilities..." I muttered, while my mind was being alerted to all of the dreamers in this universe. I felt an incredible amount of knowledge flowing into my mind from every direction and from across distances that even I couldn"t really imagine.
I was able to detect the dreamers of an uncountable ma.s.s of humanoids. And as I did so I learned the names of the worlds they lived on. A domain-sense notification looked like this:
[Name:
Species:
Name of birth-planet:
Alignment:
Cla.s.s:
Distance to you:]
It was an incredible thing. I saw the names of tens of thousands of worlds, and the names of millions of species. And I was able to process it all instantly. But what I wanted to do, to safely experiment, was add another thing to the notification. I wanted to add someone"s desire to it.
I had a scheme in mind, and in order to test it efficiently, I needed to know what someone desired. I needed to know what their hearts craved.
My scheme was a fun one, and I wanted to act upon it in a safe environment, far from my current location. I needed someone upon whom I could experiment with these new powers at my disposal. And in order to find the lucky person who"d be gaining powers soon, I needed to efficiently find someone who desired something simple.
I opted not to ask the system if something could be done and instead try to experiment on my own. I envisioned the notification I received from the system gaining one extra bit of information. What someone desired.
I focused on that for a few moments, attempting to will it into reality, and then I checked if it worked. I did so by focusing on a notification I had just received alerting me to someone who had just fallen asleep.
[Name: Andrea Handsfall.
Species: Human
Name of birth-planet: Htrae
Cla.s.s: None
Distance to you: 42,000,000,000 light-years away]
I hissed when I noticed that it was unchanged. In annoyance, I simply focused on Andrea"s name and then activated my "Desire-Sense" power.
[Andrea Handsfall desires beauty and admiration. She is, in fact, willing to go to any length to get it.] The automated version of the system told me, seconds after I activated my power. Learning that brought a smile to my face.
I took a deep breath and then activated my "Dreamwalker" power. Upon doing so I willed myself into Andrea"s dream and found myself standing in a place unlike any I had ever seen before.
I stood in the middle of a plain white hallway. The floor underneath me was made of some sort of tile that a voice in my mind whispered was called "Vinyl". It was white.
On the walls beside me were metal containers that were blue and a few meters long that happened to be stacked on top of one another. They were closed and I could see a sort of combination lock where someone would otherwise be able to open them. The ceiling on top of me was made of some sort of white tile, and occasionally there"d be some odd lighting fixture suspended in the ceiling that emanated harsh white light onto the ground below.
The place was eerily silent and my tremorsense alerted me to the reality that there were only two people here: myself and Andrea. I began to walk in Andrea"s direction, curious as to the true nature of my present location, or at least its true nature relative to Andrea.