After killing off the entire branch family of the Diego Family at Piedra Oasis, the first twenty-four hours ended up consisting of a heavy workload that Night wasn't expecting. Just based on the logistics of setting free almost three thousand slaves, Night and the three Keres were working themselves non-stop to remove slave collars.....and keeping all hell from breaking loose in general. Most of the slaves tended to get along well after being freed, but a few still had conflicts that seemed to erupt immediately randomly.

Besides releasing them from their bonds, Night also had to give the slaves some sort of directions for what to do with themselves. To just avoid the hassle of giving orders, he mostly sent them out in the oasis to recuperate themselves with a demand that they maintain orders as best as they can.....or face consequences. He told the freed slaves that they could consider themselves safe for now and he would call a meeting a few days later to discuss the plans moving forward.

Because Night was busy deactivating slave collars, the task of keeping the oasis' order and cleaning up any scuffles had mostly fallen on the Keres shoulders. After the attack, there were also roughly a thousand corpses scattered across the oasis.....and they needed to be handled appropriately. It was so much blood that even the Keres couldn't take care of it all at once. There were also some slaves that recognized the situation that the corpses posed and started to help out the women. However, Night realized that most men agreed to help the Keres simply to loot the dead bodies, but he didn't' really care at this point....he had not thought that setting slaves free would be so much work.

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By the beginning of the second day, Night had realized another fact about the freed slaves. The group of freed slaves was surprisingly strong. In the first day's time, Night personally witnessed twelve peak foundation stage cultivators break through to Demigod once their slave collars were removed. Most of the breakthroughs were either in Earth Concepts, Metal Concepts or something related to the slave labor work in the mines. Night was relieved when some of these prior captives started to set themselves apart from the others. Mostly because if there were some strong individuals.....then he would be able to push off the management of the other freed slaves onto them....just like he had done with the Manco Oasis uprising.

One noticeably strong slave, Jackson Turin, actually broke through three levels progressively after being released from his bonds. He had been in the mines for close to 50 years without advancing due to the restriction of his slave collar. Once the collar was removed, he started to break through instantly. The man had actually broken through in the Truth of the Ax and was quite strong for someone at his level. Apparently, swinging a pick ax for so many years had given him all the insight he needed to advance himself to a Level 3 Demigod directly.

By the end of the second day after the attack, the situation was starting to settle down a bit. Most of the freed slaves had eaten well and found enough resources to begin to recover themselves. As everyone began to rest and recuperate, the oasis grew surprisingly quiet.

But that quiet was for everyone but Night. Much to Night's chagrin, there were three new soul orbs floating in his soul space waiting to be turned into Keres.

Against Night's expectations, it wasn't Grief that had brought these women's souls to him for salvation from death. Distress had brought the women's souls over from a gladiator-style battle area. The place was where slaves would be forced to fight at the whim of the rulers of the oasis. She had found three barely alive sisters within a pile with discarded corpses next to the small arena.

From what Distress had explained, the women had fought in a battle between a group of women and a large group of beasts. Although the women had managed to win out over the beasts, the three almost identical looking women were the only living survivors...and they were in such poor shape that they practically had no chance of survival and had been discarded with the corpses to be buried in the sands. However, they had managed to hang on to life through sheer will alone.....using all their effort to survive to a horrific experience.

The three women were very skilled warriors that were raised from their youth to fight as gladiators. They were originally part of a group of five sisters, but two of the sisters did not make it through the most recent battle. The entire story of these women made Night's anger flare at the Diego Family even more intensely. This anger seemed to make him a little more accepting of Distress' excuses for bringing Night this new batch of women's souls.

Apparently, Distress' justification for bringing the women onboard was that she needed strong soldiers under her command if she were to properly lead Night's army. Of course, Night had no idea what army she was talking about. The battle crazed young woman seemed to have misunderstood something somewhere along the way...or maybe Night had just failed to spell out his intent clearly. Night didn't intend to raise an army of Keres. Actually, he hadn't even considered their assistance in that sort of capacity.....from a fighting perspective, he had always looked at them as support for his own efforts.

Regardless of his original intent...Night now had three new souls in a waiting line to become Keres. The women had even picked out their new names and were calling themselves Despair, Gloom, and Sorrow. Distress had told the new team members that in order to serve under Night they needed to cast off their old selves and become a newly born Keres. The first step to that process was to forget their old names and come up with a new name that fit their roles as warriors. Night was left speechless at the realization that he should have spent more time explaining things to Distress. She really had a warped view of what he intended for the Keres...He felt like he had unknowingly created some sort of cult ...and the cult had now developed certain rituals and traditions.

After thinking the whole thing over....he couldn't get mad with Distress....somehow he felt at fault...and even if he was the cause For everything.....Night wasn't sure what he thought of it all. From what he knew from Nox, the Keres were intended to be a fighting force.....not just battle companions. There was even one part of the information that described hundreds of Keres present during a world level battlefield.

'Am I going to eventually have an army of crazy ass women?' Night couldn't help think to himself as he tried to reason through the situation.

After wasting hours of worry on what the final outcome would be, Night eventually just accepted that things were going to be this way. He could easily handle five to six more Keres with his newly advanced soul strength, so he wasn't concerned over pressuring his soul. For now, everything was acceptable. Considering the way that this world worked, he could always use more people loyal to him. However, he did give all of the Keres a firm talking to about promoting others into their ranks without his permission.

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Most of the third day was focused on the organization and continued recovery of the freed slaves. At the beginning of the third day, Night had set up a meeting with the top 30 strongest of the men from the mines. To everyone's surprise, all thirty of these freed slaves were at least at the demigod level. In fact, there were actually 31 demigods that had advanced over the previous two days. Having been starved of resources for years, the abundance of resources and freedom was like a tidal wave of cultivation improvement throughout the entire population of freed slaves. Almost all of the foundation stage cultivators had seen an increase in one or two levels.

Night didn't really know how to manage such a large group, but he managed to take some input from some of the freed slaves. Jackson Turin had actually been a skilled military commander in the United States before he was captured by enemies and sold into slavery to the Diego Family. Taking that experience, he was easily able to understand managing a large number of men and offered Night all levels of advice.

Since Jackson had proved to be both the strongest cultivator and a qualified leader, Night had supported him as he assumed the role of the general commander to oversee the 30 strongest members. The thirty demigods were given the responsibility of overseeing a group of around 300 foundation stage cultivators each. Jackson had recommended that each of the demigods further divide their groups to make management easier.

The ease at which Jackson could get the freed slaves to comply was mostly due to the fact that the men were freed slaves. Most of the men had lived their lives under constant threat as slaves. To be compliant and follow orders correctly was ingrained in their behavior, so keeping the men in line didn't seem to be that difficult for Jackson.

Night had spent most of the day recuperating himself....and just observing how the other men handled the new arrangements. Although Night had felt himself to be a powerful individual, he knew that he was very lacking in management skills with large groups of people. As he laid down to rest that evening, Night couldn't help but think about the three souls floating within his at the moment. What would he do if the Keres kept growing in number? How could he successfully manage them to keep order? He didn't really know...but he felt that he would definitely need to learn to manage people to have any chance in the future.

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Night started the fourth day early with a meeting with all the freed slaves. The freed slaves had actually filled the oasis' battle arena to the point that it exceeded its maximum capacity. Night had chosen this location because it was the largest meeting spot in the oasis. As he stood in front of such a large crowd, he surprisingly felt nervous like never before. He really hated public speaking.

"Everyone, I am glad that we can all be here...and that we can all be free!," Night yelled towards his large audience with the assistance of a speaking stone to enhance his voice.

Cheers erupted from the crowd but soon settled down. Night began his speech.

"Despite what some of you believe, I am not here to lead you away or help establish some sort of new life with you all. I have my own journey ahead of me and need to keep going on that path."

"Over the last day, I have met with the strongest of you and I firmly believe that you can all be successful under their leadership. I have shared this oasis' resources with each of your leaders and they will be distributing some to each of their respective groups as they deem necessary for your advancement."

"You all must work hard. This world.....this area of the world is currently undergoing many troubles. The Diego Family has begun expanding their territories and had caused conflicts with the Demons. They have developed new poisonous weapons that do not discriminate between warriors and innocent civilians. And they will come for you now that you have your freedom."

"So take what time you do have to train, build your strength, and prepare for whatever happens next. You have my support in your efforts and I will definitely help give you all the opportunities that I can. Thank you and best wishes."

After Night's depressive speech to the audience, Jackson had taken over the speaking stone and began to layout the future plans for the men. He was a much better speaker than Night and clarified many of the issues that Night had brought up and left unresolved. Jackson's overall plan was similar to how the Manco Oasis freed slaves had planned to live. Since this group was much larger, they would be dividing themselves up into 30 different base locations within the complex network of mines. This way.....if the Diego Family tried to hunt them down, they would have an issue getting everyone in one attack.

The end result would be numerous groups of bandits that lived in multiple hidden locations throughout this portion of the desert. Using the old mines as a base also had its advantages...all of the men were very familiar with navigating the mines and were experienced mine workers. They could easily manipulate the tunnels to serve their purposes. Night was happy that the group seemed to be on track so quickly.

By the evening of the fourth day, Night packed up his things and continue on his journey. He wasn't really trying to build his own army with the freed slaves and they seemed to have become somewhat organized for the future. Night just wanted to give them a chance to be free and take action on their own.

So after saying his goodbyes to some of the freed slaves....he left the Piedra Oasis in moonlit darkness....to begin the next phase of his travels toward Nazca City.