I shivered as I felt the power wash over me. It brought a smile to my face and I especially enjoyed learning about "Subterranean lordship". That power had an especially dramatic and theatrical name and it was one that I felt spoke to me on a grandiose level. With it I felt even more powerful than I had before. It was grand enough that even though the other powers felt disappointing I wasn't disappointed.

  After I read over the powers, I closed my eyes and grinned. My powers were ever-expanding, and I was quite fond of that. I enjoyed the gradual growth of my powers and the ever-expanding list of things that I could do. I was quite ambitious and I had come to this world already equipped with a healthy list of powers at my disposal.

  It was while my eyes were closed that Geoffrey, now in the body of his youth, approached the part of his extensive property that was suited for farming. I sensed him approaching and chuckled softly. I silently took steps until I was near an empty patch of tilled soil and then I got started doing something unusual: using my powers over spores.

  I wanted to help the farmer, and I had one specific set of abilities that'd make helping him very easy: my power over spores and fungi.

  Althos was a potent lord of a plethora of things. Not the least of the things that he lorded over were spores and fungi. His abilities over spores and fungi came in the form of an abundance of abilities that he hadn't really used yet, but he began to change that as Geoffrey approached him, the man approaching the god from the same path that the god approached the man, last night.

  Althos stood over an empty patch of tilled soil and chuckled. There was a crude smile on his face as he rose an arm over the soil and silently allowed some of the spores he had generated internally to seep out of his hand and drift lazily towards the soil at his feet. These spores were created using his "Spore production" power and they were ordinary, reproductive spores that would rapidly grow into a diversity of fungal lifeforms if left alone.

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  The young god was silent as the spores detached themselves from his body and as the first of them reached the ground quickly and quietly. He smiled as they planted themselves into the dirt at his feet. As they did so he effortlessly targeted them and activated his power to age lifeforms, and watched as the spores began to grow quickly.

  Before his very eyes, the spores advanced through the first of the stages in their life-cycles. The ones he found the most fascinating to look at were the spores that ultimately grew into mushrooms. Those spores invaded the soil, created hyphae that went on to find other, similar hyphae by digging into the ground, connected with them, and then began to form pinheads that ultimately grew into full-on fruit-bodied mushrooms.

  Some of the spores that left his body seeped into the ground and swiftly became eerie patches of mold that swiftly spread through the tilled dirt, discoloring it and causing it to begin to exude an unpleasant smell into the air. That said the god was fascinated by this, and enjoyed displaying his own powers to an audience that consisted solely of himself.

  The god carefully targeted a handful of the mushrooms that grew from the spores he produced and silently activated one of his more potent abilities: "Lesser fungal manipulation". This power caused those mushrooms to begin to radiate an incredible and eerie light as he caused the fungi to evolve into a wholly new stage of their lives.

  My eyes were glued to the mushrooms as they evolved. I watched them undergo an intense and alien transformation as they took on an assortment of new characteristics. The most immediate of the changes they abruptly underwent happened underneath the tilled dirt I had planted them in.

  I had targeted five of the mushrooms that had come from me and caused them to transform into wholly separate and far more powerful lifeforms. Underneath the dirt the hyphae network the mushrooms had created before entering the mushroom phases of their lives rapidly expanded for a moment, before solidifying and becoming the humanoid-like bodies of the evolved form of the mushrooms: fungal folk.

  The hyphae transformed into every body part a humanoid needed to survive and thrive. I could sense the intense transformation occurring underneath my feet and the incredibly bright light the mushrooms were exuding continued for another moment before the transformation from mushrooms into fungal folk was completed with the fungal folks developing organs like eyes to assist them in navigating the surface world.

  This wasn't the only transformation I was causing. Another one, one near the diner I had visited earlier, was also taking place.

  One of the tasks I had done earlier in the day was aid the spiders I had awoken out of the diner. I did this early on in the day, while I was in the government building and gaining vital documents that'd make it possible for me to live as a human in this world if I had wanted too. Currently, the spiders were out of the diner and in the forest that surrounded the town.

  The spiders were wandering around the forest, familiarizing themselves with it. While I was creating helpers for Geoffrey I was also rewarding the spiders I had befriended for being spiders. I had always had a soft spot for spiders and these ones were no exception to that rule. One by one I targeted them and forcibly evolved them into driders, causing them to transform from creatures smaller than a fingernail into utterly massive and terrifying spider-elf hybrids.

  The spiders had huddled together in a nondescript part of the forest and then over the course of about seven seconds they began to undergo a truly mystifying transformation. The once unremarkable creatures grew to hundreds of times their original sizes as they gained elven upper-bodies and the lower bodies of truly terrifying, nearly horse-sized spiders.

  There was an even number of male and female spiders present among the group of newly transformed Althonians. The male driders became surprisingly handsome, and impressively fierce-looking male-elf-spider-hybrids. The female driders became beautiful and savage spider-elf-human-hybrids. Their transformations only took about five seconds each, as the powerful and divine energy that transformed them seeped into their souls and rapidly corrupted and transformed them nearly instantly.

  The driders, feeling the potent energies of their god surging into them, became even more fanatically devoted to their divine master. And even though he was far from them he felt their emotions surge into him, for a moment causing his eyes to flash predatorily.

  Before my very eyes the transformations the mushrooms had been undergoing was completed. As soon as it was, I heard a number of hands begin to dig at the tilled soil the creatures had come to life in. The creatures were trying to dig themselves out of the dirt! I chuckled and with a single flick of my hands the entities were freed from the earthy confines of their birthplace.

  Five fungal folks stared at me in awe and curiosity. The creatures were vaguely humanoid in shape, but not at all humanoid in appearance. They had milk-white "skin", the color of the stipes and stems of many mushrooms, but even at a glance the texture of their "skin" was too thick to be human. Their skin was also blotchy and covered in a number of nasty looking spots, which were actually modified gills from which they could exude spores at will.

  Their heads were enormous fungal caps, truly gigantic ones that protruded from the tops of their faces and constantly gave their actual faces shade. Rows upon rows of gills were visible underneath these caps. The tops of the caps were covered in scales as well.

  The creatures had no mouths on their faces, but they did have more gills where their mouths would have been. The gills allowed them to have a number of places from which they could spray spores at their enemies, or at fertile places where mushrooms would be able to grow. As I studied them, I felt their adoration and servility towards me begin to seep into me. It brought a vain smile to my face, and so I began to give them their orders.

  The wide-eyed fungal entities stared at their creator, the entity the system told them to refer too as "The fungal father", with nothing but awe, adoration, and love. Their eyes were ill-accustomed to light, but they quickly adjusted and as they did their only focus was their god and the orders they received from him.

  "Your first order is to serve me. That is indeed the one order that supersedes all others." I told them. They began to nod, understanding me instinctually. I was physically speaking, but it had been a bit of a test since the creatures didn't have ears.

  "Your second order is to spread. Within you, there are millions of spores with which you can be parents to the next generation of fungi. When you find places from which your own children can grow, either plant them or come back later and plant them." I told the creatures, an evil grin on my face as I did so.

  I liked the feelings of adoration these creatures provided me with. Their worship was etched into their very beings since they owed every aspect of their existence to me. I'd like to see how it felt to be worshiped by more of them.

  I was also keenly aware of a new development. I felt a new mental-tether tie me to the fungal folk I had created. I could ambiently hear their reverential thoughts. Internally this brought a smile to my face. I knew what this was: this was the fungal supermind that the subdomain had told me about when I first gained the lowest tier of influence over it.

  With it I could tie together the minds of all fungi, and a part of me wanted to experiment with that but before I had the chance to do so Geoffrey finally arrived in front of me and the fungal servants he had just gained. I turned to face him and smiled, even as he looked at the bizarre fungal creatures I had created.

  "Hello Geoffrey. I have a gift for you." I told him, smiling as I gestured towards my fungal creations.