Minds, even of the simplest creatures, were powerful things. The mind of a deity was exponentially more powerful than that of even the strongest non-deific creatures.

Few creatures were more aware of the power of a god's mind than M.A. or Samyaza, who were presently watching as new memories began to manifest themselves in the gigantic and barren mind-scape of the deity they lived in.

A mind-scape was a mental landscape a creature generated that was influenced by its powers, mental capacity, will, and ideas. And Althos's was weird.

As the deity walked back towards his followers his mind was aglow with activity. And for the two creatures who lived in his mind, that manifested itself in a peculiar way.

Samyaza, the orb angel who was Althos's first advisor, and M.A. the strange and conscious alternative to a deity's "system" and also that deity's second advisor, lived inside of Althos's mind. The mind of the deity manifested itself to them in the form of a massive and mostly barren plain.

This plain stretched on as far as the eye could see. There were no hills, no grass, no clouds, and not even a mental approximation of a sun. Endless, flat plains were the visual representations of the god's mind, at least to the two creatures who called the place home. The mind's two occupants considered that this was representative of the endless potential of the god and his mind, and also the nearly complete ignorance he sprung to life possessing.

There was no noise, no sensory activity of any kind in the strange mindscape the god had unconsciously created. It was honestly kind of eerie.

It was largely just an empty space. Empty that is, aside from where the two immigrants were content to pass the time in the plain and from the strange decorations that littered the area the immigrants called home.

The one occupied area of Althos's mind was an area that the two inhabitants of the space had quietly deemed "the center" of their boss's mind. In this place, Althos's memories had begun to make themselves manifest.

When Samyaza first entered the god's mind-scape, a day ago, the only memory there had been that of Samyaza studying Althos. That memory manifested itself in the form of a gigantic and mental version of a statue depicting the event from Althos's point of view emerging in the "center" of the plain. That mind-matter statue was of Samyaza, and it showed the angel's metallic body in astounding detail.

In just a day a number of memory statues had popped up, all of which equaled the statue of Samyaza in their level of detail and their quality of workmanship. And Samyaza had been inside of the deity's mind for the emergence of nearly all the statues that had come after the one of it. Here were the ones Samyaza understood:

There was one of Ranthor being dragged underground by realistically depicted roots, one of Raverangos roaring at Althos, one of Gallow being healed, one of Silander's mouth opening as she spoke to Althos, one of the two wolves with their mouths open in speech, and another from just now. The last statue showed the bear that approached Althos sailing through the air before painfully crashing onto the ground.

The only statue Samyaza wasn't present for, "present for" in this context meaning either involved with or inside of the deity's mind during, was the making of was a statue showing a plain wall, a wall of a hut. Samyaza recognized the wall, and it knew that it had left Althos during the time it flew high to alert any relatively nearby angels as to Althos's existence, but it didn't know why a scene from that time had a statue.

Both of the deity's advisors knew that the memories that had mind-matter statues of them were probably the memories that would shape how Althos looked at the world and would influence his actions.

Even as the two creatures exchanged glances at each other and communicated via their minds, another statue was coming into being, slowly and brightly. This statue depicted what Althos saw as he turned around after accidentally sending the bear flying. What he saw at that moment was all of his followers aside from Raverangos, who at that point in time had begun moving towards its master to aid in a fight in case one broke out, together and sitting side by side. It was an impressive moment and it was impressively well-captured.

That was when the two mind-inhabitants heard Althos's voice ring out all around them.

[Can you help me with this quest? I want to complete it and get the best possible reward for it. And given how well my last attempt at solving it went... I don't know if I can complete it without help. I'm planning to have the orcs and the demon do the fighting, but if you help me figure out a way to use my powers I'm sure we can quickly complete this quest, get the reward, and we begin to get more servants in this forest.]

The two mind-dwellers could hear Althos's annoyance in his mental voice, but they also recognized that he was evidently aware of the fact that even deities were more capable when they collaborated with other lifeforms than they were alone. Both of the god's advisors silently cheered for their immature boss, and after cheering for a second, M.A. let Samyaza respond.

[Sure! So we can't kill random bears huh? Then you're gonna have to use your mind powers to chat with the next bear you find. If you want... we can teach you about mind powers, including ones that you have, which may help.]

Althos didn't react physically to that bit of news as he was explaining his plan to his followers, but his mental voice reacted loud and clear. He was excited and felt as though the mere state of knowing that he possessed those powers made him a bit less ignorant.

[I have mind powers? That's awesome! Yes, absolutely. Teach me all about them.]

The mental manifestation of M.A. that lived in Althos's mind quietly giggled at his reaction and set about doing something that she knew would make the deity's day. She was patiently modifying both her own settings and the settings of the deity himself in a way that would make powers make a lot more sense to the young deity.

M.A.'s mental manifestation was as strange as the creature herself.

The god's mental assistant manifested herself as a faceless beam of radiant blue light that had an hourglass figure. She had all of the curves of a buxom female humanoid but lacked a discernable face. In Althos's mind, she gave herself roughly the same dimensions as Althos, coming in at around 2.8 meters tall and as uniformly muscled as the god himself.

She had limbs, consisting of radiant blue light that in the mind of the deity had the ability to physically interact with things, but lost this ability if she left the deity's mindscape. Her curvy blue body was hidden underneath mentally manifested clothes as if the creature herself was uncomfortable the possibility of being nude.

The god's other mental advisor manifested itself as its physical form. It saw no reason to try and alter its appearance while inside of the deity who was at that moment excitedly waiting to hear about how to use a subset of his own powers he didn't know he had.

A few moments after his excitement had passed, M.A. spoke to the deity using their mental connection.

[ALTHOS. TAKE A SECOND AND THINK. THINK ABOUT YOUR POWERS. EVEN IF YOU JUST FOCUS ON THE ONES YOU KNOW, THAT SHOULD BE ENOUGH.]

After she saw that, silence enveloped the mind-scape of the deity. At least for a few moments. And then they heard the deity quietly thinking.

[Think. Think... Think!]

Althos's had taken M.A.'s advice quite literally.

After he spent several moments thinking hard, he received a notification, in a manner and voice similar to that with which he was made aware of how he received his first strike for accidentally killing the bear.

[NOTIFICATION: YOUR HUD CAN BE UPDATED. WOULD YOU LIKE TO UPDATE IT? UPDATING YOUR HUD WILL PROVIDE YOU WITH A VISIBLE MINI-MAP THE ABILITY TO SELECT WHICH POWERS YOU'D LIKE TO USE AND INFORMATION ABOUT STATS.]

[YES]

[NO]

Althos looked at the options before him in surprise. He had never been given choices before. Nor had anything ever appeared in his vision before. Until now everything had been exclusively auditory, manifesting itself as noises for the godling to hear and not as a text for him to read.

This "notification" manifested itself in the god's vision not by obstructing it, but by appearing at the top of his field of view. The [YES] and [NO] blocks each appeared right below the question about updating the "menu".

[What is HUD?]

The godling asked, not aiming the question at M.A. or Samyaza, but at the text itself. The text responded by expanding and offering an explanation.

[HUD STANDS FOR "HEADS UP DISPLAY". IT'S WHAT YOU CAN SEE. UPDATING YOUR HUD GIVES YOU A VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THINGS LIKE HEALTH, MAGIC (THOUGH THAT'S LIMITLESS FOR YOU), AND STAMINA (ALSO LIMITLESS FOR YOU). YOU WILL ALSO BE PROVIDED WITH A COMPREHENSIVE LIST OF YOUR POWERS AND ACCESS TO THE LIST OF SUBDOMAINS AND DOMAINS. YOUR TREMORSENSE POWER WILL MANIFEST IN THE FORM OF A MINIMAP THAT IS TRANSPARENT AND VIEWABLE IN THE BOTTOM LEFT CORNER OF YOUR VISION. ACCEPTING THIS UPDATE WILL INCREASE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND AWARENESS.]

After reading through the update, Althos was about to click yes when he suddenly left the desire to know what was responsible for this update. This time he received an update after just wanting to know what was up, before he could even question the text at the top of his vision.

[M.A. MODIFIED YOUR SETTINGS, INCLUDING THE INNATE SYSTEM YOU WERE BORN WITH, AND HER SETTINGS TO CREATE THIS. M.A. WANTS YOU TO FEEL THE KNOWLEDGE AT YOUR DISPOSAL.]

Althos still didn't trust M.A. completely but that move was a wise one on her part, that made the deity look at her considerably more favorably. He decided to take the plunge and accept the update.

[Yes. Update my HUD.]

His newfound consideration for M.A. was immediately stretched and tested when the moment he accepted the update to his HUD, he immediately did the closest thing a deity could do to losing consciousness.

It was an unfortunate coincidence that the moment the god began to update his HUD was the exact moment he turned twenty-four hours old. And therefore hit the time limit on the tutorial all gods went through immediately after they became deities.

Deities didn't lose consciousness. They did something that wasn't dissimilar to losing consciousness, but they couldn't be rendered completely inert due to the power of their minds and their immense wills. Instead, the strongest parts of their minds, the parts that actually controlled their divine powers, were forcibly separated from their physical forms and were temporarily transported elsewhere. These mind-forms manifested themselves as embodiments of their alignments and were often called "Avatars" of the gods whose minds they are a part of. The avatars were called to the places they were the most needed.

And that was precisely what happened with Althos.

One instant the deity found himself looking at the servants he had acquired over the course of the last day and a few hours, and the next instant an avatar of the deity was elsewhere.

The place the avatar found himself in, rather inexplicably, was at the top of a massive tower overlooking a strangely industrial yet hauntingly beautiful city. He popped into existence right between a powerful devil who was beside a stoic humanoid angel, and a lowly imp who was being glowered at by a beautiful and muscular female devil.

The humanoid angel had been about to speak, in fact, his mouth was open when the creature appeared between the two pairs. He immediately ceased his effort to speak and instead examined the new arrival. As did the man who had given him dinner, the devilish city overseer known as Master Paimon.

The deity himself received an annoying notification in the form of a new type of alert.

[YOUR TUTORIAL HAS ENDED. UPDATING YOUR HUD AND PROVIDING YOU FULL ACCESS TO YOUR POWERS, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. ASSESSING SITUATION...]

At this moment the deity noticed that time itself seemed to have frozen. But not completely. Althos could tell that the creatures around him were still aware of their surroundings, so only their bodies had frozen. Not their minds.

[ASSESSMENT COMPLETE.

SITUATION IS DIRE. PROVIDING YOU WITH A CAMPAIGN TO ILLUMINATE THE PATH FORWARD.

CAMPAIGN: SUBJUGATE THE DEVILISH CITY OF BASTILLE.

OBJECTIVES: OVERTHROW MASTER PAIMON, THE CITY'S DESPOTIC TYRANT WHO LORDS OVER IT WITH AN IRON FIST AND INSTALL YOURSELF AS THE CITY'S NEW OVERLORD.

REWARD: AN IMMEDIATE RETURN TO YOUR BODY, AND ALL OF THE POWERS OF AN ARCH-DEVIL. IF THE CAMPAIGN IS NOT INTERRUPTED NO TIME WILL HAVE PASSED BETWEEN THE TIME YOU ACCEPT THIS CAMPAIGN AND THE TIME YOU COMPLETE IT. IF YOU LEAVE THE DIMENSION THIS TIME-STOP EFFECT IS NULLIFIED.

FIRST QUEST: ESCAPE THE LAIR OF MASTER PAIMON.

OBJECTIVE: ESCAPE MASTER PAIMON'S INFERNAL TOWER.

PROGRESS: 0/616 FLOORS DESCENDED

REWARD: CONTROL OVER THE LOWLIEST OF DEVILS, THE PATHETIC CREATURES REFERRED TOO AS SOUL-ORBS.]

And at that moment, as if the city's devilish overlord had heard the campaign notification himself, which he may well have, the devil known as Master Paimon smiled cruelly at the newest creature to enter the penthouse suite of the vast tower he had built himself in the past. The tower was built so long ago that at the time of its construction the gods themselves still roamed the multiverse.

"Well well well... to think I'd live during the first age of the gods and also live to see the day a new god graced the multiverse."

Master Paimon's voice was filled with sinister enthusiasm. And as soon as he finished speaking he began to move towards Althos, his hands outstretched so that he may touch what he believed would be his newest prize.

And in that moment, for the first time since he sprung to life, the deity was filled with knowledge. And after taking a second to examine the situation unfolding in front of him, he opened his mouth to speak.