The Systemic Lands
Chapter 467: Day 908 – New Dhaka

Looking at the melted soldiers in the plaza, they hadn’t even stood a chance. The city of New Dhaka was just as easily defeated as New Jakarta. I shook my head. I had been hoping for a bit more of a fight. It was getting late. Time to find somewhere to hole up and then head back tomorrow.

I noticed an older man approaching me from across the plaza. He didn’t have much energy, so I walked towards him without hesitation, curious if this was a trap.

“Greetings,” the old man said and got down on both knees to kowtow.

“You can get up,” I said, wanting to look at the man’s face as I spoke.

“Thank you, I am called Sandeep. The ruler of this nation while the High Priestess or her honor guard is not present,” he replied. Oh, the leader himself had come out.

“I am Emperor Michael of the Empire of Purgatory. Slayer of the Divine Empress. Custodian of the Avatar. Successor of the United City States,” I declared unleashing title after title. I had given it some thought and decided that if I ever needed to throw down titles, to whip them all out. I could tell it worked as Sandeep looked surprised.

“So, the great war is over?” he asked.

“The Dragon Empire is no more. The Avatar, or as you call her the High Priestess is in my custody and well taken care of.” I grinned at that. Just thinking about her eternal torment doing pointless paperwork never failed to bring a smile to my face. “The Astrologer lies dead and all that he had claim to now belongs to me, including the remnants of the United City States.”

“We surrender unconditionally,” Sandeep said. I shook my head. Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ NʘvᴇlFɪre.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

“The Avatar said such things as well. But she was a liar. Conspiring to have me killed. If you surrender unconditionally, then a requirement is to kill nine tenths of your populace and to kill any new arrivals until my soldiers arrive. Let’s just call it two hundred people will be spared.” They would be used to make a statement to the Avatar to send her spiraling into even more despair.

None of them would be living for long, but if I could take the cities without losing my own people, I wouldn’t complain. I could see Sandeep silently crying. How weak, how pathetic. He was dead the moment Avatar betrayed me and failed to kill me.

The Free City of Hong Kong would escape such a fate for now. But no locals would ever be given a position of authority. The same went for all other governorships. While a few of them were Asian Americans, I would not allow my absolute control to slip in the slightest or any of the governors to get ideas.

Even worse would be someone holding a grudge. Only people that had proven themselves and Clarissa had confirmation of their loyalty would ever be allowed to be a governor. That meant soldiers who had willingly served and fought on my behalf. Everyone else could eat dirt or die for all I cared.

“Please have mercy Emperor Michael,” Sandeep begged.

“Mercy, is the purview of the strong. And I am strong, but I do not feel like giving it. It appears your unconditional surrender was a lie, if you disagree with how such a surrender should be carried out,” I replied curious to how he would respond. This conversation was ultimately pointless in terms of what would happen, but it was amusing.

I could have asked about another city, or other information. But my soldiers would pry that from the locals in time. I was more of the mindset to amuse myself at making the Avatar’s people suffer as much as possible. It was cruel and pointless, but since I couldn’t kill her to vent my rage, I could only vent my rage on her allies and subjects.

“DIE-“

Acid Shot x4. Sandeep melted near instantly before he could do anything. No follow up attacks. Probably a bomb of some sort. Not that it mattered against me. In fact it was kind of amusing how his personality had done a complete one eighty. It confirmed to me that both cities were held by fanatics.

You don’t name a nation in the vein of past theocracies without having fanatics running the day to day operations. It honestly made me wonder how the Avatar had ever become in charge of a theocracy. Where was the crossover between the Almighty System and Allah?

That was what was confusing me. I could get worshiping one or the other, but conflating the two sounded like a spiritual mess waiting to happen and an all around headache. That was why I was going to implement the official state religion.

The Almighty System would be the God, and I would be framed in the same narrative as Jesus or Mosses. I would need a religious text, The Power Guide was a great name. I just needed to find someone to run it. I knew Clarissa had been keeping an eye out, but it was time to get the ball rolling on an official religion.

People needed spiritual guidance for their souls, otherwise they could fall into the path of less scrupulous people that would take unfair advantage of them and stir up trouble. My religion would be focused on empowering me with points. All donations would go towards empowering me and paying for preachers to spread word of my benevolence.

Purchasing some supplies from the store, I made my way into the city of New Dhaka. I would be spending the night here and my thoughts were filled up with how my religion would function. I needed a name for the religion as a whole.

Systemology, felt too much like Scientology. I wasn’t going to go with Michaelology. That was just as bad as calling a city Michaelopilis. That was the real challenge I faced right now. Coming up with a good name that wasn’t pretentious, but instantly conveyed the meaning of the religion. Systemetry was quickly rising up in my mind as the best option.

Or I could just call it Astute Benevolent Society or Abs. Astute since they would preach knowledge and wisdom, teaching important life lessons about the Systemic Lands. It wouldn’t be called Abs as shorthand either, but A.B.S. instead.

But the joke would be hilarious. Definitely something I needed to give some more thought on. I slowly drifted off to sleep thinking about fun names for my religion.

I woke up a short time later, and after reliving myself, having some food and water, I left the city back along the road. I was still killing anyone that I ran into. It was kind of disappointing there had been almost no real resistance.

The Avatar had really abandoned her people. Well I guess only the Protector could have been counted as a decent ruler. Clarissa was decent as well. I didn’t count myself. I wasn’t ruler. I was the beat stick that went around killing people that caused trouble and handling dangerous situations. At best I could be a warlord. But I had no illusions that if Clarissa wasn’t running things, then my entire Empire would crumble in days, as I melted anyone giving me a hard time.

I knew my limits, unlike others and was happy to delegate away authority. I didn’t need to micromanage everything. I considered the number of crystals that were flowing in my direction and how that amount would increase over time. Millions of points per day would accelerate me forward. I could only hope that no one else had secured passive income from so many cities.

That had been another thing I had discussed with Clarissa. We weren’t going to be aggressively looking for new cities. If they hadn’t found us by now, that meant they were past level 4 zones at the very least. I would be doing the poking, but there would be no large airship expeditions planned. Better to focus on building up and not alarming any other powers.

It had been a hard decision. Since it would be invaluable to get information on how far along any other nations were, but the risk of another confrontation any time soon would put too much pressure on my empire as it was.

We needed time to stabilize and ensure that there was long term stability before I started up another war. Clarissa had been insistent that I don’t start another war until day 2,000 at the earliest. Since she planned to focus the Empire of Purgatory’s efforts into getting the economy up and running. The goal was people grinding level 4 monsters.

Once that happened, we would have a much more secure power base to draw from and take actions. There was also another long-term consideration we had discussed. The issue of a person getting a meta-point and if that knowledge should be spread.

As the Inquisitor proved, a meta-point did not make them invincible, but it did give them a massive power boost. After much back and forth it had been declared a state secret. Anyone getting a meta-point would be invited to have a discussion to assess their personality.

At that point they would either be killed or sworn to my personal guard. If they asked if I had a meta-point, I could just smile and not have to answer that. It would be assumed I had one, and if it was secret it would make anyone thinking about causing trouble that much more hesitant.

That way if another nation showed up, there would be a powerful and loyal team around myself ready to act and crush any opposition. At least that was the plan. Clarissa’s had her auditors informed about meta-points and told to keep an eye out for anyone who gained a lot of power without a corresponding number of points going towards them.

Eventually people would get meta-points and be invited to speak to Clarissa and myself. I would then offer them the right to challenge me for my title and then beat them down. I wasn’t that worried. My stats would only increase in time. And having a meta-point loyal minion like the Divine Empress was a powerful trump card to hold in reserve.

The fact was, while I could operate by myself, a team would make things much safer. But finding competent people would take time. People with meta-points would get a power boost without be having to invest points into them, which made them perfect.

Hopefully none of them picked stupid things. I could just imagine some idiot asking to be a furry. I didn’t plan on kink shaming anyone, and while there were many good options, that would be a clear bad option to choose for a meta-point.

It was frustrating I hadn’t earned one yet, and I had tried to come to peace with the issue. But it was still rage inducing. The best would be if I could get a bunch of people with meta-points. Then I got a meta-point that could take meta-points, and then take all of their meta-points. That seemed like what the Astrologer had in mind.

It wasn’t a bad idea, if he had actually succeeded. But there was value to having them spread out. In a fight a team could be a powerful force multiplier. The one thing I agreed on with Clarissa was to wait and see who got a meta-point and what they picked before making a decision on what to do with them.

It never felt good when other people were ahead of me. In the end, stats were key and the Divine Empress proved that. Just pile on enough and meta-points didn’t matter. At least that is what I told myself to deal with the frustration.

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