As the second invasion advanced, Stretch became the clear hero of Earth, followed by Petar Kostov and many other mundane humans using mini-mechs. Stretch was doing most of the heavy lifting. The puppet’s signature move was still the jackhammer punch, but he had figured out how to manifest essence a little too.

Even with all the new lasers, mini-mechs, and weapon systems possessed by Earth’s forces, even with Stretch being a Gold at the start of the invasions, casualties were much higher than projected.

One of the dark walkers couldn’t be trapped by the circles the new Ritualists of Earth drew, and Hubaba had to step in. Sublime Ton-Oi didn’t mind, or at least didn’t punish Hubaba for drawing the circle.

The government of the US played what John considered to be their silly game where they pretended to have the ability to imprison him. He went along with it as he had little else to do, though he wanted to test himself on the invasions and regretted not being allowed to.

The government moved John to a house with a lot of land in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The area was filled with a type of people called the Amish, and he was told they stuck to the old ways. It was thought he would be more comfortable around them.

How could I be comfortable among people unwilling to commit violence to defend even their own families? How have they lasted this long with such beliefs?

John wished he never gave that interview. People didn’t believe he wasn’t attracted to children. How his city would be run, and the reasons why it would be run so, were not concepts modern people could understand. He wanted a city that fostered only strong and capable citizens. Every aspect of the culture would need to enforce that.

John knew there didn’t have to be nearly as many peasants as there always were. Most were forced to be low. They were told that since they were born low, they had no need for pride and honor.

In the tribe John was born to, all men were treated well until a man gave other men a reason not to treat him well. All men were expected to be strong and capable, because they had to be, so they were.

The farmers weren’t warriors, but John would put good money on the farmers of his tribe outfighting every modern soldier he had met besides very few of the most capable, regardless of the much greater size of modern men.

It was expectations. John’s city would expect all to be tall and fell, so all would be tall and fell and capable. There would be no one that told those born low that they were small and unimportant and had lives of so little value that it was illegal to defend their own. Because no one would be born low.

Expectations.

Some wouldn’t make the cut, and those would be exiled. Some men wanted to be little and ruled. John’s city wouldn’t let those sorts infect it.

It was very hard for John to articulate what he found wrong with modern people in general, but one thing was obvious - no matter how smart a modern person was, that person was equally ignorant. They would proudly announce their ignorance for all the world to see on the internet.

"I'm a modern person and very smart. I listed all these degrees in my profile. This simple concept you mentioned that I'm either incapable of understanding or purposefully misunderstanding, I will now mock you relentlessly for it and tell you why you're wrong while also failing to address any of your points," modern people would smugly post online, reveling in their own ignorance.

“Oh, yeah, you’re a sick pedophile too,” they would often add.

The city John wanted to build would be considered anarchic in government. He explained how the government would work in a very simple and understandable manner. Even people proclaiming to have the highest degree of education couldn’t get past that, as they were taught anarchy meant chaos and pandemonium and lawlessness.

Anarchy was a simple word that merely meant no leaders. No ruler certainly didn’t mean there would be no rules. It didn’t mean chaos and pandemonium any more than a monarchic or any other way of governing meant no rules or chaos and pandemonium.

Citizens would be required to swear to abide by and hold dear the tenets John laid forth for the city. No one would rule as every man would rule himself, and the citizens would enforce the tenets through various means.

John believed all the tenets were sensible, such as becoming strong and capable, participating in a certain number of raids per year, dedicating time, effort, or resources to the wars powerful groups within the city conducted against neighboring cities and countries and such.

Not only did people not understand the tenets, but they took great issue with them, as did the US and many other governments.

Many schools focusing on cultivation and martial learnings were opened by many governments all over the world, the biggest in the US was not all that far from the crafting school Hubaba ran in West Virginia.

John believed those martial schools highlighted a large problem with modern people, but this problem was an old one, not a modern one, and had been true throughout history – people still mistook discipline to mean obedience.

The many martial schools promised to turn students into obedient fodder, and students flocked to them. Some good students would come of them, but that would be despite being trained wrongly and taught wrong things, not due to it.

John believed people wanted the safety of conformity and not having to think for themselves or be tall. That many smart people wanted to close their mind to obvious truths did not surprise him, as he long ago learned smarter dogs were easier to train, and the same had also always been true for humans. And modern humans were trained very well. Trained very well but very wrong. All their beliefs were wrong.

Most relationships between people were anarchic in nature. Just as when John, Amber, and Hubaba lived together in the Trial near Circle Xakariz, there was no leader. That didn’t mean they weren’t governed by agreed upon rules of politeness and normalcy, or that anarchy meant no government at all as modern people incorrectly claimed.

The arguments people made against anarchy as a workable form of government infuriated John. They would always say a warlord would take control and start wars – in other words, a monarch doing what monarchs had always done.

If John made himself the king of his city, he would start wars, and they’d be bigger ones since he could force all his people to participate in his war.

People even admitted all the wars of the last centuries were due to every type of government besides anarchic doing what governments had always done – make war. John wondered why people saw a war started by an anarchic government as so much worse and so terrifying.

What happened within every current and prior government of the world were stated as reasons against an anarchic government – crime, murder, powerful people controlling all the resources, war.

The whole point of John’s city was to make a great warrior society, an obvious requirement of such would be war, so their fear of wars started by his city was correct. But the news often talked on and on about world unity and world peace and no war between the countries of Earth ever again.

John thought that was complete nonsense and a fevered dream of the stupid. He was very surprised when so long passed without war between any countries, and that there really seemed to be actual world unity and peace. This peace can’t last. In all my long life, war has been a constant, as has the greed of rulers.

Giving that interview was a grave mistake that seemed to have opened a floodgate, as if everyone in the world agreed to deride John on the internet all at once, and there were far too many doing it for him to consider vengeance.

Weeks after the second invasion began, John left the home he was told to stay within ten miles of.

Since he was already teetering on the rain-slicked precipice of darkness, John had little choice but to take refuge in hiding once again.

John could disregard being disrespected when he hid. It came with the persona he wore. What people said on the internet didn’t matter because they weren’t saying it about him. Not the him he was while hiding, the him that wore sunglasses, a baseball cap, simple but modern clothes, sported a large bushy mustache, and went by the name Jim.

Lilly never made Jim a cuckold for well over a thousand years. She never killed Jim’s brother Yan. Jim didn’t love Amber, a woman destined to make a cuckold of any man that fell for her lies about loving him.

No one knew Jim so they couldn’t tell horrible lies about him on the internet. And Jim never gave an interview, so he didn’t care if supposedly smart people couldn’t understand a simple word.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Jim was the son of a very rural farmer from Bulgaria and had immigrated to America by himself a few years ago. It explained his accent. And, thanks to Petar Kostov, Americans had a generally positive view of Bulgaria without knowing much about the country or people. And when he worked on farms as a hand, it explained why he knew much about farming but little about modern farming machinery and methods.

Jim was polite, shy, and loved authority, but he also had somewhat of a wild side as made apparent in his love of a new type of music called rock and roll. He especially loved wacky dressing bands that specialized in that form of music such as KISS and Twisted Sister.

Jim certainly didn’t believe the word anarchy meant no rulers. He strongly believed anarchy meant only pandemonium and once well-behaved and peaceful people reverting to wild barbarians following rulers called warlords that somehow weren’t monarchs, roaming around killing and enslaving everyone they saw for fun.

Life was much better as Jim. So, with a lighter heart and far less darkness and black thoughts, Jim traveled around, mostly keeping to himself, glad he was able to veil so well. He had hidden for so much of his life that doing so was second nature and far easier than being himself. Far easier.

Jim just watched people and did as they did. No thinking. No defending his honor. No honor at all. Just keeping a low profile and fitting in, like a sheep hiding among sheep. The same as it always had been. The easy life.

Very few people were able to detect Jim was a Bronze. More were able to feel his [Titles], but few of them knew what they meant, and most still left him alone, as he wanted.

After wandering around the US aimlessly, meditating, practicing in private, training in his mind, doing odd jobs, Jim decided to check on the spirit of Ukaraaz in Canada. If the demon’s spirit was still there, then his brother’s spirit in India would definitely still be there, and he could spend some time with it, wondering what could’ve been if things worked out a little differently.

Once Jim found the old battlefield where he defeated Ukaraaz, he was disheartened to see the demon’s spirit was gone. He sat down to meditate and lost himself in the act, the same as how he used to, trying to purge his heart of all the darkness that filled it so painfully.

Eventually, a strange and weird presence brought Jim out of his meditation. Beings of light descended towards him from high in the night sky, and he thought the Peerless must have arrived very early.

Jim had to go back to being John. The world seemed to have scoffed at his warning regarding the Peerless, and that made him want to leave them to it, and scoff at their eventual pleas for him to help. But he couldn’t do that. The Peerless were his chance.

John quickly donned his armor and the rest of the gear he didn’t already have equipped, the descending lights becoming visible as people as he did so. And not just people, three women every bit the equal of Amber in beauty and grace. That made him nervous, and he quickly finished equipping himself. What made him even more nervous was his orb-eye saw nothing at all, just empty and dark night where the eyes of his head saw three beautiful women with no souls nor vital essence within them.

John’s real eyes couldn’t see spirits. John’s orb-eye couldn’t see souls or vital essence. His orb-eye sometimes showed him something different than what his eyes saw, such as when he was in the [Domain] spell of Ukaraaz. So, he wasn’t unfamiliar with his head-eyes and his orb-eye seeing different things, but it still made him nervous.

The descent of the three beautiful ladies slowed as they neared the ground, and all three landed gracefully in front of John, their beauty hurting his heart, the serious expressions they wore causing his heart to beat faster.

“This is the one. Can it see us?”

“First, place your lanterns. There’re far too many souls on this planet needing to be collected. Feel their age. All are new. The claim must be true. Many died here recently. Those before had been taken to the Beyond without being judged. Poor things. A cruel fate, that.”

The three women turned from John to place lanterns on the ground. John kept his silence and watched. The women felt powerful, but not in the usual way he had felt power since the Tree of Life returned to Earth.

The women, once again, stood before John. The one on the left said, “You there, magal, can you see us? Hear us?”

John kowtowed. “Yes, great mistress, I can. Both see and hear. And feel you too.”

“Feel us? Are you known for your ability to sense what others can’t?”

“No, great mistress. Not in that way,” replied John.

“Hmm. Well, at least it’s polite. Have you looked inside of it? Wasn’t even trying to hide anything he did, was Curiosity? So, the soul told the truth about everything. Guess we should deliver the message.”

“We’re not going to play with it? Eternals can barely see us, and most of them can’t hear us. We never get to have fun with magals. This opportunity shouldn’t be disregarded.”

“Good idea, yes. I want to know how it sees us. Is it still as beautiful females of its race? Or can it see our true forms?”

The females all looked different from one another, but their voices were exactly the same and John had no idea which was talking without being able to see their mouths.

“Ask it if it wants to mate. It will want to mate if it sees us as beautiful females of its race. Wait, that’s only true for males. And when the race has males and females and makes offspring that way. Can either of you tell what kind of thing it is?”

“Magal, what type of thing are you? Do you want to mate? Wait, it called us mistress before. That’s a female title, right?”

John became more nervous. “Great mistress, I am a man, and you all appear as very beautiful women to me. If you aren’t planning on staying here, I would mate if you promised to raise my son to be strong and honorable, and, if a daughter…well, women are expected to fight now so I’d want her to be raised strong too, and a promise to find her only the best of husbands. One that is strong, honorable and that would always treat her caringly and with great respect.”

Silence reigned in the field for long moments. John pushed his forehead deeper into the snow.

“Oh, I get it. Mate translated as procreate, breed. To create offspring through conjugation. No, magal, we meant fornicating for pleasure.”

John put some care into what he next said. “Great mistress, though all three of you are very beautiful, and I desire all of you greatly, if it’s only for pleasure I’d rather not. There’s a woman…it would feel like a betrayal somehow. I would gladly take one or all three of you as wife to raise strong children with, but pleasure’s another matter.”

One of the women giggled. “Do you know what we are, magal?”

John remembered Sunshine telling him something about women collecting souls, but he couldn’t remember anything else about them. He said, “You call me magal so part of the Forsaken? Maybe ancient old ones?” He had heard ancient old ones could take any form they wanted.

“Ha! No, we are not of them. We are not ancient, just old ones. What we are, not our ages. We’re all rather young for our kind. We are of the Vhilani Mahilaharu. Our kind were created long before the Tree of Life came about. We collect souls and deliver them for judgment and then either the Beyond or the Wheel to be reborn. That was the deal we made with Prime after He made the Tree. Most have heard of us. What do you mean by Forsaken?”

Before John could answer, one of the other ladies said, “I know this. Forsaken is used as another word for the ptagmog, I think. How demons and g’athu consider themselves to be part of the ptagmog even though they have souls. They use it to mean something along the lines of not being created naturally by the Tree of Life. Something like that. That’s what I heard.”

John thought about correcting them. From what he was told, Forsaken meant anyone fighting against God, or allying with the ancient old ones fighting against God, both ptagmog and magal.

“Oh, well, that’s silly. And how ptagmog is used now too. Magal, I know you said you didn’t want to, but I think I see how it works and I want to try mating.”

John began to scream in pain. His groin and behind filled with a feeling of terrible fire and he rolled in the snow, completely incapable of not yelling out in agony. It felt like it lasted hours, but he knew it only burned for a few minutes. Once the pain stopped, he panted heavily and noticed he had soiled himself. His undergarment was filled with both urine and feces.

“There. We mated. I think. I thought mating was supposed to be pleasurable. It didn’t seem to think so. Its aura is as filled with despair and grief as before. Magal, why are you so sad? Is it because your soul is so dark and there’s little chance of joining with Prime in Heaven? We can’t join either.”

John thought about telling them the truth. Telling them he was sick of kowtowing and being treated so low and having no choice but to tolerate it because there were things out there far more powerful than any of the gods humans believed in when he was younger, and if those god-like beings didn’t want to kill the person they toyed with, and would rather place a book up their behind or make them painfully soil their pants and call it mating, he had no choice but to grin and bear it.

John thought of telling them he was sad because the woman he loved for so long was sick in the head and too bloodthirsty and betrayed him terribly in a million ways and he had to kill her twice. And the other woman he loved was far too similar to the first to risk being with, because once she betrayed him, he knew it would break not just his heart, but his mind too.

John had fought so hard and bled so much for a world that now mocked and derided him and wanted him caged. Feeble men tried forcing him to adopt their weak ways as if they were right about anything.

And worst of all, John was alone and would always be alone and he hated being so alone. He wasn’t even allowed to battle invasions and pray for a glorious death in that way. His only hope was the Peerless, as he despised cowards that took their own lives to escape the horrors of it.

John wanted to tell the women that, unlike the farmer he held in such high regard, his torment wouldn’t be over by just waiting a handful of years and dying naturally. His horror wouldn’t be over if he just had a little patience. It had gone on for nearly six-thousand years and there was no end in sight. It would just keep going and going forever. He was trapped in a living hell, one not nearly as terrible as the cold-dark, but terrible still. He wanted an end to the farce, an end to not fitting in anywhere, an end to the constant pain.

Instead, John said, “I’m fine. I’m not sad.”

“Could you feel its thoughts? I’m sure now it didn’t like mating for some reason. I caught something about being incapable of love and wanting its soul released. Magal, we are incapable of love too. That’s no reason to be so sad. Our message is from your friend. What’s-its-name? Gaga? No, Taga?”

“Thomas,” answered one of the other ladies.

“Yes, Thomas. Thomas was taken by Prime Himself. It has almost finished joining. It said to tell you it was wonderful, better than in the vision, and how much it wants you to join too. It wanted us to tell you what everyone already knows – that no one needs to be an Eternal to join with Prime, they just need the karma.

“Everyone knows that right? We know that and we can’t even join with Him. We thought it was a silly message to deliver but it said you’d be able to see us and talk to us. And we wanted to check out its claims about this world.”

After a moment of silence, one of the ladies said, “We’re not supposed to kill any magals. Directly. If you want us to, we could create one of those Trials that could kill you.”

“No, the Trials are the big ones used for training. Tribulation is what you mean. We’d still have to follow the rules though.”

“Yes, but not as magals have to follow them. One enemy. Outside the normal Tree system. A rajvakyl or a dark walker would work.”

“The rajvakyl would have to agree and would demand a high price. A dark walker would spawn too many dark ones for it to work. No, that would be after it initiates, so we just won’t make them a requirement to kill is all. Good idea, that! Do you want this still, magal, your soul freed of this mortal coil?”

“Yes, great mistress,” replied John.