The lands across the shallow sea to the north were ravaged. All the fields were soot or grown over, set aflame or abandoned. There weren’t many cities or villages, but all John passed by were ruins and put to the torch some time ago. There was hardly the right amount of wildlife he expected considering how thickly forested the lands were.

The info function of the NCS finally gave John something. A little over 200 miles to his northwest was a place named Ingam with a population of almost 10 thousand. He headed straight to it while maintaining his stealth.

The closer John got to the place, the more thickly a strange and tainted fog infested the lands. The fog made his skin itch and poisoned him, causing his essence to drain enough that he took the time to find and drain an animal. The animal was tainted too. The little blood he took in along with its vital essence also poisoned him.

When John could see Ingam in the distance through the fog, he stopped. The place was massive, had giant walls, and could easily fit a hundred thousand people within it. The large area around it was cleared and made into farmland, though it had all been abandoned and unmaintained for a long while. Many new sick saplings sprouted from the ground, and some were years old by his estimate. The forest was taking its land back.

After infusing more essence into Adumbration and tightening the veil on his soul, John made his way into the old city, slowly and carefully with senses extended out as far as possible. He took his time exploring.

The majority of ananongs in the city were lower tier, and most wore various colored robes. As best as John could tell, there were less than 10 Golds and only one Platinum in the city. Most Silvers and above were armed and armored. In the square in front of the castle were giant piles of dead ananongs next to enormous piles of their skeletons.

A couple hundred ananongs were screaming in agony, crowded around and chained to a truly massive statue of a g’athu head. John had seen a much smaller version of that head in the three witches’ house in Canada. He had been one of the prisoners attached to it. The head of Kazthun.

Kazthun the Unconquered, the Soul-Eater, the Web-Spinner, the Canny.

East of the square were hundreds of pens housing thousands of sickly and filthy ananong prisoners wearing tattered clothing and put to work carving tiny heads of Kathzun out of wood. Many of the streets and buildings were crowded with those pens.

The armed and armored soldiers mostly lazed about in houses and old shops further out around the square, chatting, laughing, and gambling. West of the square was an odd type of castle where the Platinum and three of the Golds were located.

The only food John was able to find or see eaten by the ananong captors and prisoners was the flesh of their own dead, though he could tell it disgusted the prisoners to do so.

Maybe I’m not the best at math, but I’m still no fool. When the demons and g’athu invaded my planet, I wanted them gone and swore vengeance against them for all eternity. I swore the same when the Peerless invaded.

Seeing that these people are ensnared by Kazthun makes me feel better about what I’m doing. Though if I succeed in conquering this world, these people will go from the fire into the frying pan. From Kathzun to the Peerless. A better fate, but not a good fate by any means.

Like Kazthun, I am one of the villains here. I will not allow myself to forget it or pretend otherwise.

If the snake only wanted the heads of two Golds, he was in for a pleasant surprise, as John would give a much larger tribute. He wanted the Transcendent beast as a solid ally. The Peerless treated sacred beasts extremely well, so there’d be no guilt there.

Seeing no reason to hold off, John entered the castle, snuck behind the Platinum, put his shield down, and gripped his spear with both hands. As he built up piercing energy, the Platinum and the two Golds in the same room perked up and looked around suspiciously.

The spear didn’t survive the thrust, but the weapon energy pierced a hole right through the Platinum’s head. As soon as John appeared, without hesitation, the two Golds started casting manifestations.

Wanting to see how doughty his enemies were, John let the manifestations complete. A ray of frost shot at him, and he manipulated essence to create a small and focused shield in front of him, blocking the ray. He got the idea for creating that type of shield from the Butcher and worked hard on getting proficient with manifesting focused essence-shields that way during his time in Thecla’s arena.

The other Gold manifested a few missiles that were easy to sidestep. John wasn’t impressed. He pulled the blood within the two Gold’s brains through their eyes and hardened it, killing both. As he was collecting the crystals and a decent axe, another Gold burst into the room.

John held it still by its blood, unbinding whatever manifestation it was casting. Alarms started to ring throughout the city. He got near the Gold and released it. He wanted to see how this race fared physically, so he unbound the man or woman’s manifestations until it attacked with its strange sword.

The Gold was strong. Very strong, fast, and durable. John assumed the race was highly graded, at least physically, lacking only in cultivation knowledge and ability. After learning enough, he stomped on the Gold’s head and took its crystals.

Two of the Gold’s had swords, but the hilts weren’t right at all for John’s grip. The Platinum’s axe was the best weapon. There was a decent shield, but he needed both his hands for the axe. None of the armor pieces fit him all that well, but he made do with a chain shirt that covered him past the knees. No helmet came close to fitting his head serviceably.

Only a few of the weapons were magicked with runes, but the runes were done poorly and wrong, making them a fraction of how efficient and powerful they’d be if done correctly, and not really worth considering. He needed a durable weapon far more than a poorly runed one.

Still wanting to go through the corpses’ possessions, John gave up as he felt many, many enemies approaching including the five remaining Golds left in the city. He made minions of his four dead enemies and went to meet them.

After some time battling, John praised his minions. All his time in the arena certainly wasn’t wasted. The minions behaved more sensibly and fought much more competently now. They somehow knew what enemies he was already killing with his vampiric power and avoided those. They quickly moved out of the way of his energy attacks. He could send commands to them as if they were normal people. But still within certain limits.

John only wished his minions had access to manifestations. He hoped they would soon. As his enemies died and his minions fell, he raised more. He could control eight of ananong size now.

To see what it could do, John pushed his ‘vampirism’ concept. After grabbing all the blood within a large group of ananongs, he was able to lift them a little into the air as they screamed out in great pain before exploding in a shower of blood and viscera. Killing enemies that way was way too essence-inefficient, but at least he knew he was becoming more powerful and such a feat was possible now.

John didn’t just praise his minions. He praised his enemies for being much tougher and putting up a better fight than he expected.

The cultists were far braver than expected too. Not one fled the slaughter. John would’ve let the ones below his tier flee if any had tried. He didn’t know if this suicidal bravery was somehow related to being a Kazthun cultist, or if it was something intrinsic within the hearts of all ananongs.

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After the battle, according to the NCS info function, the population of Ingam was now about seven thousand. John wanted to go through the corpses, collect crystals, and find out if he had better choices for arms and armor, but the prisoners were of higher priority, especially the ones chained to the Kazthun statue.

The penned prisoners that watched John head to the statue looked wary and uncertain of him even though they had just witnessed him fight and kill those imprisoning them. He thought that was understandable.

The chains connecting the prisoners to the statue were mighty and reinforced by some power making them very difficult to snap apart or cut through. It had taken far too long to free just two ananongs chained to the statue by those methods.

John moved the two unconscious prisoners he had freed aside. He then built up as much slashing energy as he could with his new axe and whipped it forward toward the massive statue, causing a decent-sized gash in it.

And this caused the giant statue to light up and glow darkly. A strange eye opened above it, and the eye stared directly at John. Bizarre energy lashed off the statue like tentacles, and those tentacles snatched John up and held him in the air.

John screamed as loudly as his body allowed. He screamed in terror, in despair, in impotence.

Of all John’s memories, a good many of them were of the type to be avoided, not to be thought of or remembered. Some, because the remembering of it caused great anguish and hurt the heart too sharply. Some, because the remembering of it caused too much discordance between how John chose to see himself, and who he truly was, proven many times when character and convictions were put to the test. Proven yet again by his ultimate goal on the planet he stood upon.

There were many, many instances where John had proved he was not the honorable man he chose to see himself as, that he strived to be. He fell far, far short of the best of men.

John’s head was flooded with his mistakes, and far worse, it was flooded with his successes. No relief was given. No time to recover. A constant bombardment, one memory right after the other, reliving the scenes too bitter to turn mind to. He relived all the memories proving he was small and unworthy and timorous, and they left no doubt he was undeserving of love or even kindness or peace.

John was not a good man. He deserved what was happening to him. Deserved this and more besides. He was base and mean and a coward. Who was he to ever judge others? He screamed in despair. He screamed in anguish. He screamed in desperation and despondency and hopelessness. He screamed in the lonely desolation that echoed throughout his long life. He screamed many, many times, and for long. He screamed.

Then he didn’t. John had been there before, in this same situation. Previously, in the end, he had stood victorious, and he would this time too. He didn’t even need to enter into himself to escape these mind tricks. Kazthun was feeding on him, taking all that was within him. Like a vampire. Draining him. He would not be beaten at his own game.

John knew he wasn’t a good man, though he tried to be one. There was a part of himself as dark and as evil as Kazthun herself. A true beast. He unchained that feral part of himself and pulled back on all that pulled on him. It hurt a tremendous amount, more than ascending, more than breaking the slave collar rated for third tier Transcendents. But it didn’t hurt enough to stop him.

The statue seemed to scream and the strange eye above it bore into John with anger. He laughed and pulled. And he pulled until what was in the statue was being sucked into him and he needed to cycle the painful stuff and waste essence by spraying it into the air to make room for more.

The statue then tried to release John, but he wouldn’t let it. He latched on to more of its tentacles and held them tightly, pulling from them mightily. He sent his abundance of vital essence to strengthen himself, something he hadn’t been able to do since he killed the dark walker of his second Tribulation. And he continued to drain.

John had to eventually take control of himself back and enter a modified state of meditation to handle all that entered him. And it kept coming. And kept coming. Until it finally ran dry.

John fell to the ground as the statue cracked and crumbled apart, all the many tiny heads that made up the statue scattered around its base. He had to continue his modified form of meditation until the energies and essences within him could be handled and tolerated.

When he finally got all these substances under control, John stood. And he stood victorious. Once again, he had bested Kazthun. This time, nearly all the statue’s prisoners lived through the ordeal, though they were all unconscious.

The penned prisoners were silent and only observing John, still wary. He felt for his minions but had none. He would make more after freeing the prisoners. He went to the pens and ripped the first one open. The prisoners within stood silent and unmoving, too frightened to act.

“You’re free,” John told the prisoners. “Help me open the rest of these cages. Tell those you free all the crystals and possessions of those I killed, of our enemies that imprisoned you, are mine, and not to touch any of it. Once I’ve collected what I want, the rest will be yours.”

The prisoners still didn’t move. “Go on. Get out. Let’s go.”

With a look of fright, one prisoner said, “What are you? And what tier are you? You feel like a Silver, but you just defeated an army of thousands led by five of that tier.”

“I’m Silver. Let’s go, help me open these cages.”

“Sorry, Silver, but if we leave, when the Archlords get here, we’ll be put right back in or killed. I ain’t never heard of any of her statues being broken before, not even by Ino or Mena, may the great spirits bless them. The Archlords will be here soon, Silver. Mark my words.

“And not to sound ungrateful but if you mean for us to live past today, we’d be much obliged if you wouldn’t mind running as far away from this accursed city as you can get before the Archlords find you. Dangerous just being near those types.”

John, disappointed, just looked at the prisoners. A different prisoner said, “The Underlord will be back soon too.”

Underlord was Platinum. John said, “I killed the Underlord. So, you all have no spine and would rather wait to be given to Kathzun than attempt an escape?”

“You can’t kill an Underlord, Silver. Ah, what am I saying? I’d say that’s impossible if we didn’t just see you fight an army by yourself and win. The cultists control everything from Kardin all the way east to the kingdom of Gansett. All of Saxx is theirs now. Where’s there to escape to? We lost. They won. And we…”

John felt what was coming seconds before the prisoner. He infused essence into Adumbration, though he knew he was already sensed. He was able to run out of the city and a good distance south before a low Exalted caught up to him.

Hovering in the air, crackling with power, the Exalted said, “A Silver? What is it? No idea. Never seen anything that looks like it. Hey, can you speak?”

John bowed at the waist and said, “Yes, Sovereign.”

“What are you? Where’d you come from?”

“I’m an Atlantan. Long, long ago, our city, Atlantis, was taken by the sea, but our magic was able to protect it. We live deep in the depths of the ocean, protected by a bubble of air that surrounds the city. I’m the first of my kind to venture forth in long ages.”

After a moment of silence, the Exalted said, “My people had a tale about such a city. It’s called Vagenk though. It must be the same place. I can’t believe that story’s true, my love. Mine did too. Named Wanut. When the sea mother flooded the world, it sunk deep and was trapped in the ocean.”

John looked confusedly at the Exalted, thinking it might be insane. After slowly lowering to the ground, the Exalted split into a peak Salt and a mid-high Salt.

Cursing himself for not thinking of that, John remembered how the witches in Canada merged together too.

The two Salts looked very different, but John had no ability to tell males and females apart without seeing genitals. Some of the prisoners were menstruating, making it easy to tell, but he wasn’t familiar enough with the species’ scents otherwise.

The peak Salt was heavily armored and very large. The other wore robes and was about the size of other ananongs. Neither had a visible weapon, and Isb hadn’t discovered spatial storage yet, so they were unarmed.

“Who destroyed the sacrificial altar of the almighty Kathzun,” asked the armored and large Salt. “It couldn’t have been you, Atlantan. And…what is this! Look, Nas! What in the five hells kind of essences does it have? Do you see this?”

“You know I have death-sight. What’s wrong with it,” asked Nas, the robed one.

“One is kind of black, but a lighter type of black, or dark grey, not like black-aspected essence. A new type. And he has four others. Five in total. How?”

“Great Kazthun! Five essences? Are you certain? Look again.”

After entering his battle-mind, John noticed Nas was filled with the strange type of life essence he saw in corpses, but only when he was in his battle-mind. It was coursing throughout Nas’ body, mixed in with the normal kind of essence. He had seen a few cultivators with it before. Their manifestations were always strange and powerful.

It finally clicked in John’s head. That wasn’t a strange type of life essence. It was death essence. Nice, he thought. I can see two cardinal aspects. At least while I’m in my battle-mind.

John couldn’t think of any questions he wanted to ask the Salts. To conquer the world, he’d have to kill these two eventually, and doing so would be much easier while they were unmerged. He had killed many Salts during his stay at the Great Ring of Vodalus on Thecla, and those weren’t yokels.

So, while the two Salts discussed his essence, John attacked.