Over the next few months Petrió expanded the city more and more and with new buildings and also a bit of immigration, because a tale had been told of a city without enforced religion and some curious people wandered there, while others visited with worse intentions.

Some people stayed there to live, purchased a house and found a job, while others simply took notes and continued their travels, as he had once done. What worried him was that some of these people may have been sent by other cities and their religious centers in order to scope him out and find out whether he had a weakness or to find possible attacks that would defeat the city if they so desired.

But now that he opened the city, to trade and immigration, the citizens were happier than ever and even though there were some attempts to escape his rule, most people were satisfied with the relatively strict rules because there were rewards for following them, unlike with the previous rule of this city. Though this was very similar to what other religions were doing, except that he didn’t force a specific belief over people.

This alleviated a surprisingly large group of citizens that, instead of believing in the gods, had their beliefs focused on other things, such as concepts or myths that other people had created and was considered sacrilege for all religions.

These people were the ones that migrated to his city the most, because towns outside city borders had turned out to be more and more dangerous by the day, as cities sent out troops and weapons to these zones in order to prevent their citizens from escaping, which worked for some people, but others simply felt more urged to leave as soon as possible, fearing that the cities wouldn’t be able to protect them or thinking that their half-belief with the religion they were a part of would soon be a reason for their disappearance.

When the city Petrió was ruling had gotten to about four thousand citizens another nearby city had ordered his surrender of the city. When he observed who was the sender of such letter and realized that the church of the fishing god wasn’t really that powerful and didn’t really need the city, he ruled he realized that something bigger was at play. Probably a larger religion had forced them to attack, which meant that it was time to move his own plans forward.

Instead of replying with a letter, he replied with an army of three hundred warriors who relatively easy took the city that had asked for his surrender. His troops had only had four lives lost, though more people got hurt. Now that his territory had started expanding, he’d need to keep doing so for a while so that he could get some “cushions” between himself and the more dangerous religions.

At the same time, in order to prevent a mutiny, he stayed with his usual view of religion and the people of the city he had just captured wouldn’t be forced into any religion anymore and could choose. Meanwhile the followers of the fishing god could keep their temples, culture and other important things for their cult so long they helped him with his goal of freeing the cities of oppressive rulers, which was how he had decided to brand himself, while he was one of those oppressors.

At least he taught his people some things by opening schools in every city he took over and teaching just two basic subjects, reading and simple math, adding, subtracting and multiplying. One of his advisors told him that multiplying was just going to confuse the populace and wasn’t that necessary in their day to day lives. In order for them to use these skills he also had public libraries built where books were not only stored but also printed with printing presses which hadn’t been used that much before, because so few people read.

But the books weren’t perfectly copied, instead he ordered for a small reform that’d go unnoticed for all except the most scrutinizing eyes, he took the Rakshnurians off of the monster sections in all the books and installed on the sapient species sections, though just naming them and giving off basic characteristics, in order to prevent people to notice too soon. Over time, when more and more people read these books, he expected his species to be accepted, though he didn’t know if they wanted to be accepted.

He could take the time to think about the consequences of such reforms and of the possible reactions the Rakshnurians could have, was he not busy conquering different cities. Now that the mostly undefended ones had already fallen either to him or other religions, it was necessary to have strategic support within the army, which now numbered a bit over seven hundred.

At the moment he was on the camp surrounding a city following the fist god, full of fighters adept in close-quarters combat so he’d need to keep the fight with distance, though it was hard to conquer a city this way, especially considering that they had no siege weapons with them. The most they could do was shoot arrows at their enemies, but they rarely hit and when they did, almost no damage was done to their toned bodies.

To bring the fight out of a stalemate and trying to gain victory, he decided that he’d challenge their leader on a one-on-one fight, which they might accept, considering what he had learned about this religion.

They believed that might is right and that they should follow strong leaders, which is why the ruler of the city could change at any moment if a challenge was issued and the challenger defeated the previous ruler. The rules of the battle were simple, you could only use your body to defeat your opponent and to be defeated meant that you could either no longer fight back or you made it clear that you wouldn’t fight anymore.

If both the challenger and challenged dropped at the same time, a tie occurred and it counted as a loss of the challenger, because it meant that he wasn’t that much stronger than their previous ruler, if they were stronger at all. If they lost, then they wouldn’t be allowed to fight for the position again for two years.

He planned to use the “laws” of this religion against them and, if they were firm believers, they would have to accept his challenge. Petrió sent a letter directed to the leader of the city, requesting a short pause of the battle and during that time he wanted to challenge them for the rule of the city. Just to make sure that they’d accept the offer, he offered a large amount of clothes and food which would be useful to any city in case he lost the challenge.

After no deliberation from the people on top of this city the armistice began and the fight would be had within three days, in order to let their own soldiers rest and also to prepare a small arena just outside the city so that the citizens could watch the battle.

This also gave Petrió some time to work on his strategies, though on secret and through memory, in order to prevent spies from understanding what he wanted to do and ruining his plan in advance. But if everything went his way, then he would most likely be guaranteed the win.

The day of the battle the bleachers weren’t only filled with the citizens of the city they were attacking; many seats were also taken by Petrió’s army, and it could be a recipe for disaster if it weren’t for the guards that the town had thankfully prepared and divided the two sides.

After a brief introduction of both contestants by someone who seemed to do it often and a presentation of the referees, one from each side for the sake of fairness, everyone but Petrió and the burly leader of the city left the stage. Before they started fighting the man with a large moustache made a bit of a show for the crowd and pointed at Gabriel so that he’d do the same, but he wasn’t interested and instead prepared to fight, gaining boo’s coming from the crowd, but he didn’t mind.

After the gong of a bell, both of them immediately clashed, their distance disappearing in the blink of an eye. They were fighting with their physical bodies, but this was only a test by Petrió, to see if he could overcome this challenge with his body or if he needed to use other methods to snag a victory.

At first the fight was pretty equal, but over time the challenger was falling behind, so Petrió, using his bodily energies, started buffing himself with magic, which wasn’t mentioned in the rules explicitly and he wasn’t using any kind of artifacts, so it should be accepted. Slowly but surely, he started regaining his footing in the fight and started pressuring his enemy instead of being pressured.

People, of course, noticed this and started analyzing what he was doing different. As soon as the people realized that he was using magic, they turned angry, but they knew that they shouldn’t interfere in the fight, as it’d bring dishonor to their city.

Soon enough Petrió was on the brink of winning, draining the energy of his enemy until he collapsed. When he did, the whole stadium quieted down for a moment, before erupting into different noises, some celebrating his victory, other angry at his magic usage and some just exhilarated of the course of the battle.