I found myself facing Geoffrey and my fungoid children. I had a neutral expression on my face, and after a moment of introspective thinking reverted my face back to a smile. I gazed at the creatures in front of me, and did my best to appear happy. Not that it was necessary to try particularly hard to deceive them, through "Absolute empathy" I knew they believed me whole-heartedly.

  They were all simple-minded creatures, which made them handy for me and my purposes. I wasn't unhappy that they were unintelligent, in a sense they reminded me of "training wheels", objects that humans put on bikes to help children become able to use them effectively before they have the coordination needed to take them off and steer and use bikes properly. By using them intelligently I'd become better at pretending to be a god of goodness and law, and thus be able to fool more intelligent people more easily in the future. And I planned to fool this entire world.

  After a while, they recovered from their awe at my false revelations and opted to begin to work on their fields. Geoffrey quietly accepted my gift, and as I watched him supervise the work done by the creatures I watched him begin to relax. The fungal folks knew what they were doing and were able to effectively help him in simple tasks without any instructions aside from him telling them what things he needed done. It was nice to see that they were that intelligent, at least.

  While I watched them I began to focus on my own powers. Specifically, my elemental abilities, all of which were second-tier thanks to the fact that I was an elemental overlord. The moment I had become an elemental overlord I essentially received a free upgrade to my elemental powers, but I hadn't really focused on the powers themselves aside from the ones I had gained power over specifically due to the fact that I was an elemental overlord. Now I was truly correcting that.

  As I finished reading through the entry on earth I felt... more solid than ever. Reading through it took a few minutes, but in doing so I gained a much better understanding of my powers over the earth itself and I felt more appreciative of them than I ever had. They were nicely diverse, and with them I could do a number of things.

  If I wanted too I could effectively create forcefields by solidifying oxygen and other gases, forming impenetrable walls that could stop bullets and even tanks. I could create sinkholes by skillfully eroding certain areas until they weren't able to support buildings, statues, or even people. I could also petrify people and turn them into statues made of gold or diamonds.

  As I thought about that, I quietly tried to alter my own form. I envision my arm becoming a solid object, one made of brilliant gold. And before my very eyes, it did. I watched as my sun-kissed skin became a gleaming metallic object that felt more solid than I had ever felt before. I grinned, wide-eyed, as this power overtook my limb, and I felt delighted that it did so.

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  With my current powers, I could create golems made of things like diamonds and use them to serve my creations or to act as enforcers of my will. These new powers afforded me considerable creativity in doing any sort of creation, and I positively loved that.

  I reverted my arm back to its usual, fleshed-out state and chuckled as I did so. I continued to watch the work done by my servants for a little while, before finally allowing my mind to wander. It took me perhaps an hour to come up with the next phase of my scheme. And when I did I finally left the farm, as the sun was starting a slow descent back below the horizon.

  As I left the farm of my first Htraeian servant I reached into my mind and learned more about the other elemental powers at my disposal. All of them brought different kinds of smiles to my face.

  The next phase of my scheme was simple. I would create my own little settlement, in the forest, and fill it with Althonians. When I was younger this would have been a more painful and longer-term process than it was today. It would have taken hours, even for the first part of it: building houses. Today it did not.

  I wasted no time when I arrived where I felt like establishing my first community. I immediately caused an enormous whirlwind that felled dozens of trees, while using my powers over sound to prevent the numerous crashing sounds from being heard by distant settlements. This cleared out the area I intended to plant the trees in, and gave me ample room with which to get to work.

  The next thing I did was immediately build the seven buildings I intended to make the centerpiece of the place. By using powers over creation and civilization this process took me roughly a minute, not a minute for each of the buildings, but a minute in total. I constructed the buildings, and then I set to work to establish boundaries for the little settlement I was creating. That wasn't very hard, as creating walls was something that wasn't challenging. I quietly created twenty-foot walls that surrounded the houses in every direction, with four equally spaced openings that would allow people in or out of the settlement but in an orderly way.

  I made the walls thick, but I also outfitted them with windows so that those inside the settlement could see the outside world. I knew how I'd staff these entryways: with constructs. By using constructs I'd be able to police the settlement without utilizing corruptable manpower, or having to worry about things like "shifts", "hunger", or "forgetfulness".

  It was at this point that I began to have fun. Now that I had made the basic settlement, I needed to make people. This was a process I was a bit familiar with at this point, I had made living creatures, including humans, in the past. But this time I opted to be creative.

  I went into the center of the settlement, an area a few hundred feet wide and long, and began to get creative.

  I created fifty humans over about ten minutes. One every twelve seconds. These humans were all beautiful or handsome, but they weren't anything truly special. Not yet anyway.

  When I was done with the first set of people, they were all either looking at me or conversing with each other. They wore an assortment of clothes, and each had souls. They were true, living humans. And they were about to become something so much more than true, living humans. I targeted each of them and then allowed my powers over metal to wash over them and make them something new.

  All at once the creatures before me began to harden. They lost the softest, most malleable, and corruptable parts of themselves. They also didn't react to this until they were fully metallic entities, made of an array of metals. Some were made of iron, others were made of steel or bronze. When the last bits of themselves were fully metallic, they stopped talking and slowly turned to face me before kneeling in front of me.

  Their metallic bodies were dense and beautiful, devoid of any blemish or any imperfections. They were living art, and I was quite proud of them. I admired them for a full minute, before I began to command them.

  "Metallic ones! Disperse! Give me room to create your... weaker cousins." I commanded, speaking authoritatively. The metallic entities obeyed me, not mindlessly, but they nevertheless didn't disobey my orders. They spread out to the edges of the space they had been created in. It was at this point that I began to create humans again.

  This was a human world and in order to blend in, even a little, I'd need to use humans as my servants and creations. I'd spend another ten minutes creating even more humans. And these ones would stay human.

  I spent time carefully crafting each human, utilizing some of my newer powers to modify the people I was making customized from the start. I gave them martial classes, ones like "warrior", "ranger", "brawler", "monk", and even a few like "rogue", and "assassin". They were all handmade, each carefully and singularly chosen to be a good compliment to two other people. The first person they were to be a compliment too was one of the metalized humans, and the second person they were to be a compliment too was another of the newly made, organic humans.

  I was creating families. Sort of. I made the metalized humans to be my direct servants and to be a guardian of one individual non-metalized human. I gave each organic human their own organic partner and their own metallic partner. This was my way of not doing what I had done to Raiz, where she was all alone for a long time. I also bonded all of the humans to each other, through the usage of my ability to manipulate relationships.

  I had fun doing this and found it to be a creative way to kill some time. By the time I was done darkness was fast descending on us, thanks in part to the fact that we were in a forest. I quietly encouraged my creations to go into the houses I had built for them, houses that already had the appropriate number of rooms and beds for each of the families I had made. I was excited for the days to come, and the next week would pass in a blur.