《An omnipotent God's bored dilemma》


 Boredom: (chapter 1)

    (pathetic David)


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    The sound of David''s ragged breathing tore through the air as he sprinted through the forest. His heart pounded like a war drum as branches whipped against his arms and face, but he didn''t dare slow down. He couldn''t, not unless he wanted to be dog food anyway. A deep, guttural growl rolled through the trees, sending a shudder up his spine as he riskily took a glance over his shoulder. It was a massive creature, easily the height of a Great Dane, its hulking figure moving effortlessly between the trees, and its eyes were filled with hate as it looked at him.


    Out of desperation, he threw a punch at a nearby tree, his fist connecting with the wooden trunk with such force that it splintered from its roots, the impact sending a shockwave through the ground. Before it could fully topple, though, he caught it mid-fall with one hand, hurling the massive tree at the wolf as if it were weightless, sending it crashing through the underbrush with an earth-shaking crash. Without missing a beat, he pushed forward, desperately trying to create distance between himself and the murderous dog.


    His eyes darted around everywhere, a manic gaze in his look as he desperately searched. Finally, spotting the large, gnarled branches of an oak tree looming ahead, he leaped without a second thought, using the trunk as a springboard to propel himself higher. The moment his hand made contact with the tree, his fingers dug into the wood as he gripped the lowest branch, and in one smooth motion, he swung himself upward, climbing faster than any normal man could. The branches shook beneath him, but Tom''s grip was firm enough to keep him balanced as he took a quick glance down at the ground.


    ¡°Shit,¡± David cursed before pushing himself off the branch, launching himself through the air just as the creature''s jaws snapped shut beneath him. He landed with a roll, barely keeping his balance, but the momentum carried him into another leap, narrowly dodging a swipe from the wolf''s claws. His body twisted mid-air, his hands outstretched to grab a higher branch, but he failed to catch it in time as he felt a sharp pain ripping across his back as he fell back down to the ground.


    He screamed.


    The wolf rebounded in an instant. Before he could react, the bloodthirsty hound lunged, its jaws snapping shut mere inches from his throat. He twisted desperately, but the beast''s massive paw caught him in the ribs, sending him hurtling through the underbrush like a ragdoll, branches tearing at his skin as he tumbled helplessly on the ground before skidding to a stop next to a tree. But before he recover, the wolf was already closing in, clearly not intent on letting its victim rest or even have a moment to recover.


    He tried to get up, forcing himself to move despite the excruciating pain in his body. He gritted his teeth, but the moment he got to his knees, the wolf was there. A massive paw slammed into him, knocking him flat on his back, and in an instant, its jaws clamped down on his forearm. He tried to fight back, wrestling with the monster before quickly losing the battle as the beast continued to rip into him, his blood coating its mouth as it tore out his vital organs before finally ripping his head clean off his body with its massive jaws.


    His soul got ruthlessly plunged out of his body, and the next thing he knew was that the whole world had become enveloped by darkness¡­.


    <hr>


    The world beyond space and time.


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    "Well, that was anticlimactic," the boy muttered, his voice laced with disappointment as he leaned back in his chair. For all his efforts and the years he had spent molding, guiding, testing, and shaping David to be the greatest hero he could forge, he had sadly still died like a fool, crumpling like a leaf in the jaws of his pet. And now, he was without a hero to entertain him in this newly created world that he had made. "Such a senseless pity," he murmured softly, resting his chin on his hand as he watched the last remnants of David''s dead corpse fade into nothingness. "If he couldn''t survive the direwolf, there''s no way he could have defeated the Demon King.¡±


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    One by one, fragments of the corpse began to dissolve, disintegrating into shimmering motes of light that drifted skyward before vanishing altogether. The process was slow, almost agonizingly so, which made him click his tongue in irritation as he drummed his fingers impatiently against the edge of his desk. The corpse-dissolving feature he had added to the world''s laws wasn''t really working as he had intended, and after he was done dealing with David''s soul, he needed to fix that.


    A faint pulse of energy flickered in the air, and the boy shifted his attention back toward the glowing, translucent orb that hovered a few feet away from him, watching as David''s soul slowly detached from his corpse before rematerializing right in front of him, the intelligence in its eyes completely gone since it had no brain at all to really function. With a flick of his hand, the soul orb drifted closer. The boy laced his fingers together, his expression thoughtful. "You can be a constellation in the sky, or maybe a¡­" He raised one hand, and tendrils of shimmering blue light began to spiral around David''s soul, binding it in a glowing lattice of energy. The soul flickered in protest, but the boy ignored it, his grin widening as he wove intricate patterns into the air.


    ¡°A dragon,¡± he muttered, pouring his power into the soul as he forcefully expanded it to the appropriate size of what he was aiming for, before carving the soul into the crude shape of a red dragon. It kind of looked like an azure dragon, but meh, it was whatever. ¡°Or perhaps something even better.¡± His eyes gleamed with a mischievous glint as he tightened the weave of energy, sending pulses of power rippling through the room. The soul squirmed under his grip, twitching faintly like a caged bird, but it wasn¡¯t going anywhere. Not until he was finished.


    "Oh," he muttered under his breath, turning away from David''s soul and onto the world he had crafted. "Right, I should deal with you." With a casual wave of his hand, the landscape of his creation shimmered, distorting as reality itself seemed to ripple. A crack tore open in the sky, and dark tendrils spewed from the open crack in reality before engulfing everything and reducing it to nothingness. Purple electricity crackled from every surface of the world and, by extension, the universe, as screams from the gods, giant celestial beings, and whatever else he had crafted sounded in the distance as they slowly died. "There we go," he said, a faint smile creeping onto his lips.


    ¡°Well, I always have backups.¡± His gaze turned back to David¡¯s soul, now encased in the swirling lattice of light, taking on the vague, almost comical shape of a red rabbit. The boy¡¯s fingers twitched, and the dragon¡¯s form shuddered, growing slightly more defined, with a faint outline of scales and wings tracing the contours of the soul''s new shape. A dragon-rabbit would be very funny to have as a pet, not only because it raises a lot of questions about how that kind of birth could be possible, but also because he couldn''t think of anything else to do to get back at David for causing him to destroy that universe.


    It was his favorite one too, aside from Universe 6.6, since it was inspired by that one shield hero anime he saw in Universe 3.9.9.9 that was made by some random Japanese guy. Now that he thought about it, he had to pay a visit when he had the time.


    The boy leaned back, a gleam of malicious amusement flashing in his eyes as he observed David¡¯s soul struggling within its glowing lattice. He flicked his fingers, and the red rabbit-dragon hybrid began to take on a more definite shape, looking like a real rabbit instead of the cartoonish one it had been earlier, its form twisting and reshaping in response to the boy¡¯s whims. The faint outline of wings it had from before expanded, though not in the typical elegant pattern of dragon wings. Instead, they took on an unnatural, mangled appearance, as if they had been hastily sewn together without having had any time to fully develop. The soul quivered in protest, but the boy only grinned.


    His fingers danced again, and the soul was split down its middle with a glowing line of energy. From that line, two strange organ structures began to grow from the stomach of the rabbit all the way up to its mouth and nose, the twin sacks holding in them a viscous, dark fluid that began to pulse ominously. Every dragon needed a sac in order to hold the fire or whatever type of other element it would have in its body to breathe out. However, in this instance, instead of any of the elemental archetypes, he decided to make it spew poisonous blood.


    This poisonous blood would kill anything that came into contact with it, but at the same time, it would cause him as much pain as possible each time he tried to breathe it out. It was effective and served his purpose as well, not only because it would make David suffer, but because he was proud of himself for creating something so original and... new. With that settled and done with, he threw his soul into the abyss to end up in whatever universe was out there.


    In any case, though, he felt like getting some praise, and it had been practically a millennium since he had his ego thoroughly stroked by humanity. Disasters always make humans worship, but he didn''t know exactly how to make them worship the most in these kinds of situations other than just making the pain worse, which often left him with fewer followers than he would like.


    "Plagues have been done to death," he mused aloud, his voice echoing strangely in the formless dark. "And crusades are too predictable. Everyone loves a righteous cause until they realize they¡¯ve been duped, and that gets old fast." He drummed his fingers against his thigh, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully as he grabbed a nearby universe hovering just above his head in one of the hyperclusters he had made and thought to forget about later since it wasn¡¯t really all that fun. "You will do... for now at least. Now I just have to see what I have to work with."

 New plaything.

    The boy stretched his arms lazily, sighing as he gazed at the universe suspended in front of him. It was a modest construct compared to some of his grander creations, especially since he didn''t really spend much time on it, as he had quickly lost interest midway through its creation process. It kind of resembled an egg, the upper half of the construct marred by cracks that spidered across its surface, while the lower half remained hollow, a yawning chasm of chaos and destruction and whatever else was very terrible that he could come up with filling the space, made worse by the cosmic fire he had gathered from the chaos realm.


    There were also cosmic abominations he had made a very long time ago and other primordial creatures in there, but that didn''t really matter. He snapped his fingers, and the entire structure began to rotate slowly, glowing strands of energy swirling along its surface like a living thing.


    ¡°All right, let¡¯s see what we¡¯ve got here,¡± he murmured, leaning forward as his eyes glowed, the air around him vibrating to life as he brought the glowing surface orb that represented the shape and size of the universe closer to him. A cascade of images, sounds, and sensations exploded in his mind as he scanned through the universe¡¯s various layers, blotting out whatever he deemed irrelevant as he searched through the universe.


    Planets spun lazily in their orbits, some teeming with life and beginning to show the first signs of intelligence on their surfaces, while a few others that remained were completely barren and lifeless. In one quadrant, a vast empire waged an endless war against a coalition of rebellious star systems. In another, a demon-infested world was currently under attack by its neighboring orcs, which were only a few light-years away from it.


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    The demons, despite being much stronger than the orcs, were also much dumber, so they were currently losing. In yet another world, a jungle planet brimmed with colossal beasts, creatures, and vegetation that towered over everything due to the much heavier gravity of this world and the extreme conditions its inhabitants had to endure. The creatures in this world were much larger than they were supposed to be and far tougher than they ought to be, which was good. The only thing that was not good was the dead God that was floating around in the core of the planet, which would inevitably kill it due to the corrosive flesh of the being and its equally corrosive energy. But hey, life might find a way.


    But none of these needed his attention, and not only that, he really didn''t care about them. Demons were more akin to wild beasts than anything, and they were too dumb to even understand the concept of worship. Even if he were to speed up time in their world so that they could evolve and become more intelligent, he doubted that it would work. The orcs of this universe were atheists, believing that everything just existed and always had. There were other planets with much more favorable conditions, but most of these were either trapped in an intergalactic war with one another or already had gods that they believed in who were real... (sometimes).


    But eventually, he found one. They were on the in-between side of the universe, inside a tiny hypercluster of galaxies that was barely noticeable to the rest of the universe. It had a yellow-orange sun and was big enough to at least be considered a real star instead of a dwarfed one, and was small enough to not suddenly collapse into a black hole. On top of that, the planet had just the right conditions to remain life-sustaining, with the sun producing just the right amount of energy needed for the planet''s vegetation. It had a protective layer that kept it safe from any harmful radiation that would no doubt have killed everything on the planet. Aside from the primates that were putting trash everywhere within this small world, everything looked relatively fine.


    This was it¡­ he found it.