The gods sent him around like a paranormal janitor for a while before deciding to strip him of all magical items and seal all his learned magical nonsense before sending him back to his reality. They accidentally sent him back to another hell for a few of their hours before realizing the mistake. They were watching for his triumphant return to KR-9, but he didn't show up.
They thought it might have been one of the other worlds in that reality, or one of the ones that they had sent him to. By the time they retrieved him, he was eating part of a demon that could have severely injured or killed a god and had a crude but effective set of armor. They had accidentally sent him to a worse hell and had stripped him of all his items. He had suffered a million years per second, and they were treating it like a forgivable mistake.
"I just spent millions, if not billions, of years in hell. Even after I did the things you wanted me to do, so what did I fail to satisfy you in? What reasons do you have that would warrant such actions?" Costan was calmly murderous.
"It was an accident."
"And you expect me to forgive you for it? Would any of you forgive me if I accidentally sent one of you to hell? Would you?"
"The fact is that it doesn't matter. We are gods, you are not."
The Nekogian pantheon didn't back them up on that stance, instead giving an expression of "why would you say that?" The Grequenok god then opened it's mouth and promptly made Costan even angrier. Their statement of "you deserve worse you genocidal maniac."
Costan lost his cool, and issued an order. "Be gone or die." The Greq refused, beginning a rant, but receiving a ball of hellfire to the face for it. He fell from his column and was targeted by the wrath of the Black Tiger, Hell's Merchant, Emperor of Two Hell's, Bane of the Ancients, and Childcare Expert.
One of the other gods quickly sent Costan somewhere else, not thinking about where. The focus was keeping the very injured Greq deity alive. Nobody expected him to have mastered hellfire, and would need to find out how he did so later.
Costan landed head first on a metal floor, gaining the interest of weirdly dressed things with purple skin and big breasts. Some were almost as tall as Costan, but stood stunned as he tore the portal back open. He was hit in the face multiple times by a hammer that was swung through from the other side of the portal, and lightning ebbed from each hit.
Costan didn't let go, wrenching the portal further open. He was eventually stunned by a godly lighting bolt that melted his hell iron armor. The gods didn't waste time in sewing the wound in space time shut, leaving Costan in a cursing heap on the greyish purple metal floor.
Half of the ships systems were rebooting from the overload protection tripping from the lightning bolt, and Costan didn't resist arrest. The captain was not happy with the news. She now has an unidentified alien, wearing armor made of unidentified metal, who came via unidentified method, and fought with an unidentified third party on her ship.
If she thought that dealing with the humans was too much, now she had this to deal with. She ordered a full investigation and a preliminary report to be sent. Maybe some useful details would turn up, because he obviously didn't speak the Empresses holy tongue.
They turned up clues, but we're not going to state paranormal nonsense in a formal report. The captain wanted them to science it up in terminology, at least, call it suspected teleportation and stuff, not magic. They ended up calling in a human scientist to help twist it to be believable.
They had to result to image searches of known archives and networks just to get hints, and those were mithos and legends. The disturbing thing is that it turned up replicate results on multiple species networks. The initial portal was recorded as a god portal, the tear had no comparison. The hammer image turned up to belong to a god named Thor.
The medical scans didn't help either, and a search for big bipedal felines were the opposite of helpful. The search yielded mostly obscene content and cat videos. Then they found a reference to Hecate, the cat like goddess of war. The scientist was also a science fiction writer, so he did well enough to generate a more suitable report.
They found out that Costan spoke English, and despite everyone knowing that it was some paranormal bullshit, he made his answers very scientific sounding. This helped a lot on the report, which is why the captain requested him a far more lenient sentence for unlawfully boarding a military star ship. He was sent to a labor camp for thirty years.
He worked hard and was released with a new identification card and the ability to speak the Empresses holy tongue. The Empire had some good things going for it, though. When they were releasing him, they gave him his new work schedule, the address for the place, and a place to live. Integration of criminals back into society is a very good way to help keep them from turning to crime.
He was on his way to his new home in a city called Tokyo. He stopped at the crosswalk and waited for light. The light turned green and he began to cross the street, only for the speeding truck to materialize right beside him. He was unable to dodge the accursed Truck Kun.
The Nekogian pantheon pointed out that while the plan was clever, it would make Costan all that more angry. Thor looked at them and spoke, "his head is so dense that it put a dent in my hammer." The gods argued a bit, but agreed to seal or lock everything from Costan except his physical stats and weird shaman stuff and try to make him think it was a dream, which they did.
Costan awoke at the base of the mountain of bones and mangled war machines. He was confused and was tempted to believe that it was all a dream, but he was still able to pull up the stupid screen. Most of the stuff was greyed out with little lock icons, even his item box thing. All of the loot was in there, so it made him angrier. He had been reverted back to his previous age, from when they took him.
Then he remembered a trick for retrieving things without actually going through the screen. He had a little trouble remembering it, given that the screen didn't work in hell, and it had been a long time. He eventually got it down pat and managed to retrieve a set of mundane lockpicks around the lock. He got a hint of attention deficit, and tried to pick the locked icon. He almost flinched when someone asked what he was doing. It was strange, seeing those uniforms again.
They had been sent to patrol the base of the new Death Mountain landmark, for the second time. The shear scope of the destruction still chilled them and gave them a sinking feeling. They didn't expect a, seemingly insane, Nekogian to be half naked, picking an imaginary locked object, ignoring them, and being covered in the still wet blood of the Grequenoks. They also were not expecting the audible clack of a padlock opening or a highly ornate lock to be unceremoniously discarded.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
The day was full of surprises for them. Costan didn't care about how they perceived what was happening, only that they didn't interrupt. He could access the entire item storage, which he stuffed with everything he found to be possibly useful throughout his travels. The gods took everything that was remotely magical or more technologically advanced than his society from him and all of his storage options. He seemed to have no maximum to his grumpiness.
The patrol asked him his name, and he had to ponder what his rank was for a second. "Private Costan, Marines Drop Division... Conscripted." He gave the mountain a good once over with the mark one eyeball, seeing some things he thought he had lost. "How did my gear end up in that crater?"
They called it in and watched as Costan climbed up the mountain of death and retrieved his gear from a suspiciously truck sized crater. Costan knew that he had his things during the bullshit they put him through, but they chose to put him separate if his gear. He glared at the heavens, but quickly descended the mountain and waited for the transport to show up after the others finished their patrol.
He had a day and a half before the transport showed up, he had time to think. Remembering things that were set in motion before he left, he devised a plan, picking some choice locks. By the time the patrol had returned, he had built a not so luxurious concrete building with solar power and a landing pad. Nobody knew how he did it, but the gods were cursing, and he was still quite angry.
He continued picking at the "divine" locks, he couldn't do anything about the seals though. He would have to out grow those. The patrol were unsettled when Costan asked that they have a godly intervention form readied alongside the shaman bullshit form.
The transport shuttle was late, as expected nothing goes right for Costan. In the interim, some of the patrol guys pointed out that this part of the planet was uncolonized, thus making Costan owner of the surrounding lands via homestead. They quickly offered to trade things for a partial ownership, given the land prices back on Snok. He accepted a legit candy bar for a ten percent stake.
One of them was doing some intense thinking before upping the any. Costan traded away his two story concrete shack and ninety percent of the holdings for snacks, a laser pistol, and a card worth twenty credits a month. The guy had an annuity payment from where he lost a toe as a kid, and traded it.
Costan enjoyed a candy bar for the first time in, to him, a few billion years. They were not sweating the deal, a homestead with electricity, running drinkable water, farmable land, and a landing pad was worth a lot more than twenty credits a month. You couldn't rent an apartment for what they just paid, not long term anyway. The laser pistol was pricy, but was only a suitable security deposit in worth.
They would have some paperwork and explaining to do, but it would be worth it. One of them was already planning to tell her mother to pack up and move. That desire was tempered by the fact that her's was a ten percent stake and the shack was a three bedroom, two bathroom, with a kitchen. The question of expansion for other trades was raised.
The transport shuttle had made this trip twice, and the pilots didn't expect anything of changing, but they had to check the map when they came over the mountain range. The mountain of bones was situated in a large glacially formed valley protected from the North by a crescent shaped mountain range.
The valley used to be full of undesirable plants, like hell trees that made you wish you were dead if you touched them due to the silica encapsulated neurotoxin. It was now just fertile soil with grass around the mountain of bones and machines. There wasn't anything else, but they had to double check because they were not expecting a fully fledged settlement with a communications array and landing pad.
The guys of the patrol team were a bit jealous, but kept it light hearted by joking about how she agreed to marry the War Shaman for his wealth. The shuttle was three days late, and the chiding she got was nothing compared to what the pilots got.
"Y'all so late, we set up homestead. We're all settled down and shit." Everyone acted like it had been years waiting on the shuttle. "Hell, Corporal Shasha married Private Costan. They got children now." The greenhouses and crops really sold the prank.
The pilots caught on at the children part. Everyone knew of Private Costan, his wealth, and his medical situation. Normally, that would have been a confidential matter, but almost everything is disclosed about the royal family members, especially the black cat of the family.
In reality, they hadn't married yet, but had made plans for it soon. Costan was crafty, an expected trait of the reincarnation of the immortal inventer. He planned to use the marriage to shunt Emperor Karcos' control over his properties by half or whole. Shasha actually gave enough of a shit to hear what he had to say, and snuggled him at night, which was a large improvement to someone who treated him like an unruly artificial intelligence.
Even if she decided to go rogue with his assets, she would still be better suited to control them than Karcos. She had already seen the movie, and used to be a meme curator in her spare time, so she knew a lot about Costan. He was the source of good amusement for fifteen years just from the memes, like the "I cut this bear in half" meme, or the "T'is but a scratch" meme from the news of the bayonet attack.
Costan had wasted no time, things were in motion that he didn't like, and the other side of him was not improving his situation. Over the three days, he explained things. That the homestead was to ensure that he didn't get stuck in the Military Home Plan Act loop, he also elaborated on how the marriage would wrench control of his assets from Emperor Karcos.
Costan had also expanded the homestead down South to the bay. A source of salt, and saltwater fish would partner nicely with the fish from the nearby river and lake and the crops until they could get some more, familiar, livestock. While the bees were technically livestock, they made honey, and the odd fish in the hatchery were edible but weird. Even the cow and chickens were completed foreign to Snok natives, despite the good tasting things that came from them.
Costan had also unlocked his old spell book, and despite most of it being sealed, chained together a series of events. He even took the time to write a sarcastic big bad evil guy style manifesto that was one hundred percent parody, including the iconic "You have ruined my plans. You have murdered me this time, but I'll get you next time adventure scum, don't die before then, or I'll have to go after your descendents." Anyone who was familiar with fiction would recognize it as parody. He had set everything up, and put the receiving runes in his house by the mountain.
After the pilots caught on, they got the tour. The amenities on KR-9 weren't the best, even before the invasion, but the valley had become something just shy of paradise. They even had robotic servants and a full clinic that was better equipped than most hospitals. The pilots were documenting everything, maybe it would get approved and licensed as a location to take leave.
The original name of the valley didn't fit it anymore, but Hell Valley, south of the Hell mountains, and having Death Mountain would have to suffice. Now they took the Doom's Gate high-speed rail to Hell Port, south of the town of Demon's Rest. Even the town charter was full of parody, but Hell Port was a sleeping city, it just needed residents. Costan had divvied up the rights to Demon's Rest, but Hell Port was all his until he got married.
The tour was faster than everyone was comfortable with, but there was only so much a person could do in a day. They were expected back at base. The ground Commander was over excited about a place to take leave, fast tracking the ownership and agreements. Shasha requested leave to get married, they were in different divisions, so no problems there.
The request for marriage was blocked by Emperor Karcos, who demanded that both of them present themselves. The gods were a bit salty, but their plans weren't ruined. They, the Nekogian pantheon, were going to make everything up to him in time... But he would have to tolerate things getting worse for a while, just like they had to tolerate him having access to the item box and inventory space.
The fiances presented themselves aboard the Namaste, after a good bath together and some new uniforms. Emperor Karcos started a lengthy speech, and a medical staffer readied a dart gun. As soon as the dart hit Costan, he said "Nyah" which triggered everything.