1 Prologue: An Abrupt Apotheosis

The sound of soft fingers tapping on keyboards, and of pencils lightly writing on paper could be heard throughout the relatively small classroom. A young teaching assistant, or T.A. as they were more affectionately known, oversaw the class and listened to the sounds of students mentally exerting themselves as they completed the very first warm-up activity of the semester.

One particular student, named Antonio Lopez, diligently worked to complete the assignment. His eyes were bright and filled with ambition, his mind was hungry and yearned for all sorts of stimulation, all of which was common for a freshman who had not yet become jaded by college life. Unbeknownst to the freshman's conscious mind even as he typed up responses to questions about communication his soul was undergoing an unheard of, impossible apotheosis.

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Elsewhere in the omniverse, the totality of existence, a small room existed in the heart of a vast empire. That small room was filled to the brim with potent arcanotech, the fusion of technology and magic. And the moment that Antonio's soul began to undergo its apotheosis each bit of arcanotech in the room lit up at once, due to the truly overwhelming, and frankly unbelievable amount of power lurking within his soul.

The room's sole occupant found herself astonished by the potent light show that Antonio's apotheosis caused. She sat in the middle of the room, stunned for a moment. It took her almost a full minute to recover from the shock she felt due to the light of the power that emanated throughout the room at the moment that Antonio began to become who he was meant to be. And then she hurriedly began to work to alert her superiors. They'd certainly want to know that somewhere, somehow, a true deity had just awoken.

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The young man, or rather the nascent true deity, was, at least on a physical level, a somewhat ordinary and kind-looking individual. That said, that too would change soon enough. At the moment he was dressed in a solid-colored polo shirt and khaki pants, the sort of outfit one might see on an employee at a Tech Stop or other such specialized stored.

He was fairly lanky, standing a somewhat impressive six feet tall, and had the tanned skin that many Americans associated with life in tropical Puerto Rico, despite the fact that he hadn't lived in his birthplace for seven years. He had a gentle face and a long scar that ran up the left side of his face, in the distinctive shape of a wolf's claw.

A small iPad computer was situated in front of him. The iPad in front of him was a small, purple, iPad mini that he had been used at an impressive speed, thanks in part to the tiny stylus he dexterously wielded like some sort of rapier. He was also unconsciously utilizing perhaps the most basic pair of powers he was acquiring: "Absolute Condition" and "Worldmind".

The instant that the newly ascended deity began to undergo his impossible apotheosis he began to acquire the potent powers that came with being the sort of powerful deity he was both actively becoming and had, unbeknownst to himself, always been. The most basic of his new powers was that his mind and body were perfected to truly absurd degrees.

His perfected body's first chance to flex and demonstrate itself was by completing the assignment the T.A. had come up with. And so the young man's perfected body was slowly speeding up his fingers as he typed in word after word. His fingers guided his stylus to each of the iPad's virtual keyboard's keys at an increasingly rapid pace, so much so that in a few seconds he was moving as quickly as the iPad itself could process, his fingers practically a blur as they whizzed from letter to letter.

He was unconsciously not moving at his true maximum speed, due to the perfected control his unconscious mind had over his powers and now his body. His unconscious mind, the part of himself further keyed and attuned to his powers than his conscious mind was, knew that to move at his max speed, a speed that dwarfed the speed of light at least ten thousand times over, would destroy the small device he needed for class. So he only moved as fast as the machine could process, not once harming the thing despite the fact that he was indeed pushing it further than it had ever been pushed.

As he did that his mind also demonstrated the first of the countless improvements it was undergoing by allowing him to process the entire assignment he was tasked with doing in an instant. The improvements to his mind were due to a number of powers he possessed, among them both "Absolute Condition" and "Worldmind".

While he studied the assignment, his eyes skimming each letter of each word on the Google assignment his iPad was displaying his mind began to utilize the potent power that fell under the "Perfected mind" part of "Absolute Condition", the power known as "Parallel Processing". That potent ability, common among comic-book super-geniuses, allowed him to separately consider each question and formulate answers to the entire, multi-question assignment at the same time, effectively doing the thinking equivalent of multitasking. That specific power was boosted to the point of parody thanks to "Worldmind", which ultra-charged his mind.

In a matter of moments, he had constructed complex, nuanced answers to the soft-ball questions that the young teaching assistant had formulated as a means to assess the class's rough awareness of communication and communication theory.

Antonio smiled as he continued to type, and as he typed he slowly began to realize that something within him was actively changing, allowing him to do more than he had ever been able to do in the past.

The next change to occur to Antonio, or rather the next change that he could sense was that his senses were slowly but holistically being forcefully improved and refined. His enhanced and unconscious mind, already radiantly alive with power, was able to allow his conscious self to slowly adjust to his newly supercharged senses rather than taking in everything at once, so as to spare him from being forcefully overwhelmed by the abundant stimuli all around him.

The young man's sight was the first sense of his that was slowly improving. At first, the improvements to his sight were gradual.

As his sight began to improve he began to be able to do things like see every thread and stitch on a jacket one of his fellow students wore, who was himself seated several desks ahead of the young man. But then he began to be able to see more, his mind's eye becoming aware of colors he had never known existed because he could now see the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

For a few moments, the world around him became a confusing jumble of colors as he realized that he was seeing were colors that were not visible to human eyes, colors that no human eye had ever been able to see and categorize, even with the help of technology.

As soon as he realized that he was seeing the full breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, his vision underwent another impossible improvement, one that granted him a true superpower in and of itself. He could suddenly see both the strings proposed by physicists as part of "String Theory" and the strange, subatomic objects known to some scientists as "Virtual particles". This impossible power up to his vision bestowed him with a true and complete power in and of itself, one that could be known as "Absolute Vision".

Antonio, who had always appreciated science and had a fondness for reading more than he needed to, had heard of things like "Quantum foam" and "Virtual particles". The instant he saw them, he immediately recognized what they were and he began to smile. He consciously wondered what was occurring to him, as the next senses of his to improve began to improve.

As his hearing began to improve, so to did his mind. A small voice in the back of it whispered to him that he was becoming who he was always meant to be. That he was becoming what he was always meant to be. He was still for a moment, before disregarding that thought as the sort of foolish wishful thinking he couldn't afford to get distracted by.

Over the course of the next few seconds, his hearing improved tremendously. At first, he could only hear what was normal for a healthy young man his age but then his hearing began to keenly absorb any and all sound around him.

He could hear the soft sounds of muscles moving as students wrote down answers to the assignment he had completed minutes ago. He could hear the drum-like noises of hearts beating, some faster than others and others much slower than their neighbors.

He could hear some of his peers gently uttering their answers to their questions, in voices so soft that to anyone else relying on their own unaided hearing they'd surely be inaudible. He could also hear individual conversations throughout the building he was in, and other noises throughout the place, such as the sounds of toilets flushing over three floors above him, and the sounds of janitors grabbing equipment with which to clean classrooms once class ended, or to maintain the bathrooms throughout the building.

A second later his other senses began to improve as well. He could smell the entire contents of the room, and even had the ability to differentiate between scents and focus on them, ignoring every other scent, as if he were a bloodhound of sorts. His sense of touch was magnified to the point that he could sense every imperfection or crack in the wood of the desk he sat at, where he rested one of his elbows.

His sense of taste allowed him to taste the apple he had eaten for breakfast earlier that morning. He felt weirdly grossed out by that and shuddered as he realized how sharp his senses had become. That same voice he heard in the back of his mind earlier now told him to embrace his new senses, to relish how incredible he was becoming, how remarkable he had, perhaps, always been.

The rest of the class passed by in a blur, as the T.A.'s only other planned activity was a boring "Introduce yourself to the class" activity that was perfectly fitting for the class, an introductory one entitled "Intro to Communications", otherwise known as "Comms 101". The instant that the class let out Antonio quickly got up and left both the classroom and the building the classroom was in, doing so at a speed so fast that it defied belief, but fortunately the young man had been so consumed by his desire to leave the classroom that he had unconsciously activated another pair of his powers.

The very instant that Antonio had gotten up he became not just invisible to his classmates and the T.A., due to him unconsciously activating a potent power known as "Subtle" and another known as "Power Matrix", but also totally and utterly undetectable.

"Subtle" was an especially potent power that allowed him to become undetectable at will, by quite literally anything, and was activated due to his intense desire to leave the classroom unseen by his classmates and get away from the classroom, to someplace safe where he could begin to explore and utilize his new powers. The fact that one of his powers had activated unconsciously was due to the influence of another of his abilities: the powerful superpower known as "Power Matrix".

"Power Matrix" was an unusual and rare ability possessed only by deities who had some level of influence over power itself and over powers, even superpowers, themselves. It was an ability that made his powers a potent part of himself and granted him another pair of, power-based abilities as well: "Power Architect" and "Spectrum". All of those powers, unfortunately, were all a bit complicated and their full potential was not known to the young man who was only just now beginning to adjust to the superpowers he possessed, courtesy of his nature as a true deity.

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A few minutes after my class ended I found myself standing a fair bit away from the rectangular building known to students of my university as our "School of schools", or more formally as the "School of education". I watched both fellow students and staff walking out of the building, conversing with each other or on cell phones, as they wandered to their next classes, to go and grab breakfast, or to simply head back to their dorms or homes. As I studied them and listened to them, I made several important observations.

The first observation I made was that my eyesight was still improving, and actually, all of my senses were still improving. If I glanced at the sky, as I had done when I first exited the building, I could see in incredible detail for an incredible distance, my eyesight was so sharp that I could see the surface of distant planets, and I could hear for miles in every direction, to the extent that it felt like people in other parts of the city were standing next to and speaking to me personally.

The second observation I made was that I could understand every conversation occurring around me. That was strange because I only spoke English and Spanish and I knew that some of the languages I was hearing were being spoken in neither language. Nevertheless, I was able to understand every single word that was being uttered, and due to that, I felt my awareness of my surroundings increase far more sharply than it would have if I had only been able to hear the countless conversations I could hear without having some sort of means to make sense of them.

The third observation I made was perhaps the most important. It seemed that no one around me could actually see me or detect me in any way. People were walking out of the building and almost running into me, in some cases even if they had been looking in my direction, causing me to effortlessly step past them with a level of grace and speed I had never possessed before. I wasn't sure why people weren't aware of me, but even as I wondered about that I again heard that quiet voice in the back of my mind.

"The reason they can't see you is that you don't want them to. You have activated a power of yours. A power you've always had, stored inside of yourself." That voice whispered, and as I listened to it again I realized a fact that took my breath away. The voice I was hearing was my own.

"Now you're starting to get it. This voice is your voice. The voice of your unconscious mind. The part of you that is not affected by your doubts, by your fears, by your sense of rationality." The voice whispered, and for the first time since I had begun to hear it, I could hear a touch of emotion in it, the slightest edge of joy and triumph audible to me. I was about to question the voice when it spoke again.

"I know what you're about to ask. And the reason you can hear me now is that your soul is awakening. You are undergoing an apotheosis and becoming what you were meant to be; a true deity. As a result of that, I am the manifestation of the part of you that has control over your powers. I am here to guide you, to help you, and to see to it that you, that I, that we, become who you're meant to be." The voice explained, sounding gentler now than it had before. Something about that was weirdly reassuring, even though I still wasn't sure I wasn't going insane.

"Your powers are incredible. If you believe in them, you will surely accomplish your goals. Whatever those goals happen to be." The voice, apparently a manifestation of my unconscious mind, told me, speaking confidently.

"Alright so… How am I seemingly invisible?" I asked, opting to interrogate myself in an act that would surely be listed somewhere as a symptom of various mental illnesses.

"Because you're utilizing an ability of yours known as 'Subtle'. With it you can be as indetectable as you wish, and you wanted to disappear earlier. 'I' activated 'Subtle' to help you with your disappearing act, and because I recognized that activating 'Planeswalker', to teleport you elsewhere, would have been too jarring." The voice explained, sounding rather pleased with its decision-making process. And the second it said the names of those powers, I realized that I knew what it was talking about.

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In the back of my conscious mind, the instant that the voice of my unconscious mind uttered the words "Subtle" and "Planeswalker" I felt a keen awareness of those abilities form. I knew what they were and what they could do, and suddenly the inability of others to see me made sense, and this in and of itself was "Proof" to a small part of me that the voice in my head was telling the truth.

With "Subtle" I was only as detectable as I wanted to be at any and all times. At literally any instant that I didn't want to be visible I could just become totally and invincibly undetectable, or I could manipulate how perceptive of me others were allowed to be. Beyond that, I could even revoke someone's knowledge of me! That sort of power, even if it wasn't accompanied by any other powers was… unfathomably powerful. And it certainly appeared to be accompanied by other powers.

"Planeswalker" was the power that was responsible for me being able to understand conversations in any language. With "Planeswalker" I was capable of instantaneous travel to anywhere I could imagine, and I also had a set of other "Bonus powers" as part of "Planeswalker" that strengthened the sort of freedom I now possessed by allowing me to speak any language in existence, and the mental adaptability to quickly grow accustomed to various cultures I may come into contact with, as well as granted me movement and speed based superpowers, including some of the classics such as flight and super speed.

To test out my new abilities, and thanks to the potent knowledge of my own powers that I possessed, I turned my head upwards to the sky above me. I closed my eyes and simply… willed myself upwards. At first, nothing happened, but then I felt my feet lift off of the ground below me and I opened my eyes. I found myself floating a few inches off of the ground, not very high at all but high enough that I was certain I was flying.

"So… It really is true, isn't it?" I asked myself, not in the solitude of my mind but aloud, though I was still unheard thanks to my current state of still being rendered undetectable thanks to the power of "Subtle" as I took in the news that I was apparently able to fly now.

"Incredible isn't it? And hey… How'd you like your first taste of 'Power Matrix'?" The voice that supposedly embodied my unconscious self asked, filling my mind with an awareness of another power of mine. As I floated in mid-air I began to smile, eagerly processing yet another power I possessed, now that my conscious mind was aware of it.