Throughout the next few years, I wrote a lot about what I’d done and what I planned to do, with objectives of including it into this book, but I realized that it’d just drag on because my ideas were pretty repetitive and there was little variation in what I wrote.

What I believe I should indeed talk about is the evolution of my crimes against intelligent life. The original town that I’d built, with its temples and parks, had been a success, except for two details. First of all, I found out that there was corruption between some of the guards of the place and some of the leaders of the religions, so in order to fight that I thought of having less people guarding there, because they’d be selected carefully and examined for a while, yet it wasn’t a viable option due to the large population already living inside.

There were so many people that if there weren’t differences between their ideals, they could band up together and defeat all the guards and escape at once. But because they didn’t trust each other, they kept pointing their guns at each other.

The other problem was that the newly conquered cities were filled with religious bastards that weren’t attracted to leaving their town, especially not to go to an overpopulated one where they wouldn’t be able to pray for their gods, as the temples were occupied from the other cults.

He decided to build two more of these prison-towns, but now he’d go further in order to rebuild these people. Even though the publicity remained almost the same, the process in which they were let in was different and now they even had a chance to leave… After being reeducated.

First of all, the guards would identify three different categories of believers into a religion. The first one was the full one, which believed in every aspect of their god, its writings and sayings and would do anything it told them to do. The second one was the convinced one, which believed in what their god said and planned to do, but still had his/her own moral compass that wouldn’t pass over. Lastly, there were the unconvinced believers that didn’t really believe in what the god or religion had told them, but still came into the city either because their family members believed in them, because they were investigating or because they thought they could have a new life in this city.

The first group of people were stripped of their clothes, given new ones and sent to the mines, where the work was tough, the food was rough and there wasn’t enough stuff… They were sent enough resources that would normally be used by ten percent of them for them all, so there was a large black market where they sold and resold different objects they smuggled in and the little they could get from the provisions, because it was a battle to get anything, the guards just dropped a few sacks and whoever got the things inside first, and managed to keep it to themselves, could retain them.

Most of the newcomers died within the first week, while the others remained to fight for themselves. A few fools tried escaping, but every time one of them was found everyone was punished, so unless the escape plan comprised of multiple people that could organize themselves well and keep it hidden from the rest of the group, they weren’t going to escape.

And even if such a plan was carefully crafted, it wasn’t a guarantee that they’d manage to get out, as there were guards checking in on them every day, counting them and punishing them if not all of them were present. At the same time, the town was guarded as well and if any citizen found an escapee of the mines and informed the authorities, they’d receive a great reward.

The punishments ranged from receiving less resources to experiencing violence, at times directly from the guards, but sometimes a few chosen “citizens” that also worked within the mines were given the chance to give the punishment themselves and the worst their punishment was, the more they received, turning some of these into bloodbaths where some of them died, causing fights to breakout, while the guards did nothing but observe that no one tried escaping within the violence.

The second tier of citizens were given a home within the eastern side of the city, which was mostly made up of homes, though there were a few plazas, water fountains and markets the closer it was to the center of the city.

On the western side of the city there were less homes and more services, and it was where the minority and third group of incomers was sent to. There they could easily access libraries, schools and open forums where they could learn about the lies, they’d been taught and the advantages of not following a god and instead learning the truth of the world by themselves without being misguided by someone else.

Everyone in the city could access this information, but it was clearly closer to a certain group of people. The second tier of people that entered could have homes closer and closer to the western side and even enter this one if they explored the science and went against their own biblical and outdated thoughts.

Once they were considered to be completely reformed, they were allowed to leave the city and ordered to if they prolonged their stay for too long. Once they left, they could choose any city of their liking with free housing, which was most of the cities, and depending on which one they wanted they’d receive different things for moving there, in order to divide the population equally amongst their towns, the government thought.

And it worked up to a certain point, because most people already had certain attachments with their previous homes, but some of them wanted a new start or forget what they’d lived in their previous homes and were tempted by the benefits.

The population within his rule was steadily growing with his child policies and soon enough the first few kids were already old enough to participate in the wars, something which was encouraged in the children in the schools because that’s what Petrió and his government wanted, more soldiers so that they wouldn’t fall behind their opponents.

But they were already at a disadvantage, because while they’d been sitting around and planning everything, the other religions had been waging war and now less than twenty religions remained. With the rule between the gods that once they extinguished another religion they could “brainwash” everyone into believing on them instead of their previous ruler, their conquest was made easier, so long they could crush their opponents.

The three alliances that had been previously formed had broken apart and new, weaker alliances had been created, but none of the deities really respected them, they didn’t share information, unless it was convenient for them, and they didn’t help the other gods militarily even if it could lead to their doom due to an opponent growing too strong.

Now, every “kingdom” was made of more than a hundred cities and Petrió had fallen on the smaller side, though his whole territory was under control and his borders were also relatively safe. On one eastern side of his ruled land there was the coast that led to the ocean, where he expected ships to attack, so he defended his cities over there.

On the northern side a desert limited the amount of people that could cross at the same time, due to the need for resources to cross it. On the western side there were some zones that had a mountain range dividing his lands from the ones ruled by the gods, but as one wandered further south they disappeared, and planes were what covered the land.

Here Petrió had ordered his troops to install multiple traps which had actually fended off against a single enemy army, because too many traps had gone off and they didn’t know how many more there were, so they decided to keep what was left of their army, which was still over half of it, than go into what could’ve been the end of them, even if there were only a few more traps left, which they didn’t know.

The southern border was where things could get ugly if he was invaded through there, but luckily his neighbors on that side were relatively peaceful so long he didn’t try to attack them. They did reinforce the border, he also did that, using resources preventing was better than lamenting losing these resources.

But perhaps because of their responding behavior, which was the same to almost everyone, they ended up falling to a stronger enemy in a fell swoop, which meant that the south of his country was in serious danger now, but he was preparing for this moment, so only time could tell whether he had planned well or not.