And with the objective of learning about the situation of the average man within the cities of the world that he started his tour around the continent, visiting cities or larger and smaller size and with different races as well. This differed the way that the place was governed by a bit, though overall the idea was the same.

A religion was in power while the average person had no say of the current state, though most people didn’t really care about the current leaders as they didn’t really suffer as much as the people from the first city he visited.

What differentiated this first settlement from the ones he visited after was that the cult at top was rather small so it had to be well-prepared against any kind of social movement within the city which could topple them from power, and they also had to conscript people to fight for them, unlike bigger religions that had a lot of manpower and didn’t really care about what a few armed people could do against them. Most of the time they didn’t even need to move troops between cities, unlike the followers of the hunting god.

What Petrió also observed was that some religions were more prominent than others. For example, the followers of the war god were the leaders of multiple cities and they had realized about his visits to the different towns and some priests greeted him when he entered the towns to inform themselves about other places in exchange of telling Petrió about their current situation.

Petrió gladly entered in this deal as it saved him the time of exploring every city they ruled over and the information they gave was surprisingly detailed. These people were very organized and because of the detailed descriptions he got he put them to the test at times, to see if he had been tricked or not, but the descriptions fit the reality very well.

But after a while Petrió learned that he was being used for their objectives as well, because some of the places he had described to the followers of the war god had been taken over by none other than themselves. This put him in a tight spot because if he stopped communicating with them then he might not be accepted into their cities, though there wasn’t much he could learn. At the same time if he told them lies it’d only get worse. And if he continued as he had been doing until then, then the world would lose some of the variety that it had, because some religions had some unconventional rites which he had managed to observe.

While he didn’t think that these cultures were necessary, he did believe that from variety new things emerged. When everything was the same, it’d be kept so as he had done throughout the last few years where he barely changed his daily activities and it brought him nowhere.

So, if a single cult started to take everything over it could fall in the same mistakes that he had fallen into. This could be stopped “naturally” if a conglomerate of religions were similarly strong, but Petrió had observed that very few cults were as strong as the followers of the war god and therefore something had to be done to stop or hinder their progress.

He thought of helping other religions, but he wouldn’t be able to help all of them at once and they could not listen to him, more focused on the short-term expansion rather than preventing the inevitable doom if nothing was done. There was also a chance in trying to convince people within their cities to revolt, but the power of the war god was already too strong, and they wouldn’t be able to damage them.

There was one last option that he thought of, but it was the most work intensive and would limit his actions. He could try to form a union of cities under his command and over time work against these religions but not completely defeating them in order to keep differences around the world.

This way he could also enforce progress where he ruled, giving benefits to the people that created new things and he could push it even further by making jobs that were entirely focused on creating new things. Petrió’s mind soared with imagination, thinking about what things could be created and how different the world could be, but he was brought back down to earth after hitting a wall, literally.

He had reached another town while being lost within his mind and it the wall he had just hit was recent enough for him to realize that this was a town of escapees from different cities. These places he kept for himself as they had the largest variety of people, thoughts and cultures.

But it was quiet, way too quiet for such a town that was really focused on staying safe from any religions. He started circling around the wall and found a large hole on the wall which didn’t seem to originate from a magical attack, but rather a physical one.

It was likely that a monster had attacked the place and ransacked it as most buildings had been destroyed rather than raided, which would’ve let any religion attacking this place keep as many resources from this place as possible, but what remained seemed to have come from a rather unintelligent creature, trying to kill humans or get to them through the simplest way possible.

What these villagers had done to incur the wrath of such a creature was still unknown, but Petrió was working on finding the reason for it and any survivors, if there were any. He searched around the village and found no signs of survivors, but he did manage some clues of the creature that had attacked.

If the village was populated by humans and other red-blooded creatures then he could guarantee that the attacker had purplish blood and dark skin, as some remains showed. There was also the chance that one of the civilians living there had those characteristics, but in the nearby cities he had visited he had seen nothing with that description.

And as if nature wanted to prove his point, an overgrown monster came out of the forest and neared the village. Describing it as big was too little, it was massive, towering over two-story houses and approaching Petrió as inevitable doom.

He hadn’t had the time to explore the village so he didn’t really know its layout and wouldn’t find a door fast enough to escape the monster, so he had to either make time or fight it. Even though his instincts told him to try and escape, he wanted to study the monster because he had never seen nor read about such a big humanoid creature.

Petrió tried reaching the monsters head, the presumed weak spot, but its height made it difficult not only to land a hit but also one that would damage the creature. He was quickly growing tired while the monster was still full of energy because it had barely moved, it was mostly standing in place and adjusting where it targeted to attack Petrió.

At the same time, Petrió had been running around the monster and trying to climb on top of different debris to get closer to the monster’s head and finally damage it, but before he managed to do anything critical to the biped, he realized that he wouldn’t be able to defeat it and started preparing his escape.

But then, the monster attacked the rubble he was standing on and a cloud of dust set in while the monster looked at its hand with red liquid dripping on it. He had come victorious and had finally defeated all the people inside this village, finally he would be able to rest.

He had accomplished the mission of his creators and as soon as he reached the place where he came from it’d be confirmed and the eternal rest, he had been promised would finally be his. But it didn’t happen. Instead, the number was still fixed on one, as if he had only imagined the recent events and didn’t really happen.

He went back into the town and observed the rubble where he had killed the invader, but there was no corpse to be seen in fact there was no blood either. What had happened? The monster didn’t understand and was visibly angry and started destroying things, which wasn’t against his mission of defeating deserters of cities ruled by gods.

What Petrió had done was to fake his death. He had indeed coughed up blood to make it more realistic, but during the dust-cloud that emerged he had burrowed into the pile of debris and after he heard the monster leave, he himself left the town. He could only remain with the doubts and theories of its origin, objective and history.

It was clearly not a natural monster, so something must’ve happened to it or someone had to have bred it in order to exist, such as the monsters below the city where he had once been caught in and escaped with the help of others.