"I'm sorry about them, Daz," Greg said, trying his best to diffuse the tense atmosphere. "I helped Freddy deal with a gang of damn-near-bandits who were harassing him and his family, and as for Dalton, I saved his life when an alligator the size of a semi was trying to have him for lunch. They don't know you outside of the auction, and they, in all honesty, want me to become an independent lord. Hence the aggression."

Daz tapped his finger against his throne's armrest before replying with, "Have you told them about your goal and about how your son is loyal to me?"

The former U.S Army general nodded. "They're hotheaded despite their age though. That kind of comes with living day-to-day worrying about if you'll live to see tomorrow."

"I would expect them to be wiser, not stupider from what they've experienced," Daz said cynically. "You two do not respect me for whatever reason, so be it. I will make you respect me. Come with me, all three of you."

He got up out of his throne and walked past them towards the main entrance of the throne room. "Let me earn your respect the old fashioned way; by beating the shit out of you."

"Oh, you're on, Kid," Freddy said as he grinned widely.

Dalton adjusted his hat with a frown on his face. "General?"

Greg nodded. "Just do it, would you? It'll be faster than using words."

"Okie-dokie," the Aussie replied, and then the three men followed after Daz.

"Ah, King Daz. Good afternoon."

"Nice to see you again, King Daz."

"Everything going okay? You look a bit annoyed. Don't let yourself get stressed out, young man. I wouldn't want Madison or the Guardian to get upset as well, hahaha!"

"Um, this is from Class-A at the school... Miss Jesabelle told us to make you something for safely returning..."

Freddy frowned in concern. "Hey, isn't this kid really well-liked by his people?"

Greg nodded. "Rightfully so. The core citizens who've been here since the attack cycles know him the best. He - along with the main fighting force of Fort Skip - fought with the burden of their attacks on their shoulders as well. Not to mention in recent days Daz's government has taken it upon themselves to help out the general citizens accomplish their semester goals."

"Must be nice," Dalton complained. "Havin' hard-working good folk coming up to you and thanking you for just doing your job."

Daz could naturally hear them and he smirked. "Don't forget having children approach me to give me clay statues of Rimmy."

"What the hell's a 'Rimmy'?" Freddy asked.

Greg sucked in a breath of cold air as he instantly got nervous. Disrespecting Rimmy in front of Daz - or any citizen of Fort Skip, really - was akin to a death sentence for your reputation. Hell, Daz himself had been known to get violent on occasion towards those that didn't treat Rimmy well.

"This is," Daz answered plainly as he summoned Rimmy's main body.

A lot of excitement was generated upon the big guy's appearance since he was treated like a god by the citizens. "Go guard the outer walls like usual, please, buddy."

"Rimmy," the hulking 30-foot tall giant responded happily then lumbered off with a trail of unoccupied citizens behind him - mostly children.

'It's taking him forever to absorb that final bit of the third king's power...' Daz thought in slight worry before he turned back to look at Freddy and Dalton. "He's part of my power, by the way. Lucky for you that I don't take either of you seriously, huh?"

Shortly after Freddy and Dalton had been given a good beating by Daz at Fort Home's gladiatorial arena, the two apologised for being so rude.

Daz then personally helped Greg's men register as citizens and then gave them provisional jobs that they'd have to complete before being allowed to defend Fort Home and its two bases.

Greg was given his next orders as well. Daz had commanded him to work with General Retford's scout units to find and wipe out any groups of monster that didn't have a leader class within a 20-mile radius of Fort Home. Again, he gave the man a month to accomplish this.

Right now Daz was in the Ridomochi Final Model with Madison snoozing next to him and their destination was New York.

Daz closed his eyes briefly and recalled the conversation he'd had with Rose after he had finished all of his official business as New Earth's king in the morning.

"Huh? The airlock thingy from Emma Cromwell? Good question. We should have received it by now, to be honest. I can look into it if you want? I can't contact them without blowing a ton of points but I can use my class skill to figure some stuff out."

"Please, do so."

"Okay... Hmm... Well, that's unexpected."

"Hmm? Something interesting happen?"

"Kind of? I blew through my questions pretty fast since I didn't think it'd be important, turns out I was wrong."

"That's rare. So what's up, exactly?"

"Aila's dead and Emma Cromwell and all of New York is in a desperate war with someone. I need more time to figure things out. Wasting questions makes figuring things out a lot more resource-intensive."

"Don't bother. I'll head up there myself. We're technically allies. I'm curious about Aila too... Do you know how she died?"

"No idea. Maybe she was so heartbroken seeing you and Maddy all happy together that she hung herself?"

"Don't be such a morbid little shit."

"Hey, if I can't curse then neither can you!"

"I'm an adult, you're 10. You can curse when you're 18. You've got a big brain, don't you? Why don't you use it to think of better words to be crass with rather than curses, huh?"

"Hypocrite..."

Daz couldn't help smiling when he recalled the interaction. He could feel himself getting closer and closer with his sister and that made him genuinely happy. He was glad that his emotions had returned and were now allowing him to feel things like this.

As for Aila, he felt nothing. She was nothing to him but another piece on the board available to be moved and manipulated. Her death didn't impact him at all beyond wondering how it had happened.

It sickened him a bit to know that he had actively seen the woman as a malleable piece of clay free to be moulded as he pleased. It made Daz realise just how similar to his father he truly was underneath all of the hatred.

"This place is certainly a lot more fortified than it was before," Daz noted as he cautiously approached New York's city walls with his gems, Hamson, Madison and Mr Barrier in tow.

"Stop! Identify yourself!" a man wielding an assault rifle stood atop the wall screamed down at them.

Daz frowned. "King Daz, king of New Earth and an equal partner in an alliance between myself and Emma Cromwell." He pointed at his shovel, gems, then the grey halo floating above his head before adding, "Are these not enough proof to show who I am?"

The man narrowed his eyes as did his apparent subordinates before they started sweating upon realising who it actually was at the foot of their gates. "S-Sorry, Sir. We've been a bit on edge lately. You'll find Miss Cromwell in the town hall. She's very busy, what with the church's more brazen attacks and all, but she should be happy to see someone as strong as you... Ah, not that your strength really matters against these guys... Fuck..."

He had mumbled that last part so Daz couldn't hear it, but the reaper could clearly tell from the sudden sour looks on the soldiers' faces that not all was ripe and peachy in New York.

He chose to ignore them and move into the city. His instincts weren't sounding the alarm bells, so he saw no reason to delay just to ask questions to the lowest rungs of the ladder. There was no need to waste any time.

Everyone that Daz and Madison passed seemed to have hopeless looks on their faces and many were actually packing up their things and preparing to leave the city from the looks of it.

'Wow. What on Earth happened here? The soldier mentioned the church, right? Which church? I never really cared for religion before since no god would ever bother to answer my prayers... Best guess would be the Catholic or Christian church, but hell, maybe it's a new one founded around the system's gods or a long-dead pantheon like the Aztecan pantheon?' Ideas flooded Daz's mind as he entered the town hall and pushed through to the central meeting chamber.

"Shit. Another scouting group was captured? Send my condolences to their families if the members had any that are still living in the city. This is the third group in the last week... Even with guns they still don't stand any chance?" Emma asked of the man in front of her, a gentleman with messy white hair and cracked rounded glasses.

Daz recognised the man as one of New York's top brass, Stewart Finch. He was in the meeting regarding their alliance almost a month ago, though the cracks on his glasses were new. 'He should fix them with some points. Seems counterintuitive to let them remain broken.'

Not a moment later everyone noticed Daz and Madison's presence. "Daz? And this is...?" Emma asked in confusion as she stopped looking through the papers the messy man had handed to her.

"You know who she is," Daz said with a shrug. Emma would have to be an idiot to not know who Daz's lover was, after all. "I came here to get my oxygen filtration system and to find out how Aila died, maybe even fulfil my promise to help you get all of rural New York under your rule, although... it seems that things aren't nearly as calm here as I had first assumed. Just what's going on, exactly?"

Emma wore a forced smile. "God has deemed us unworthy."

"If only it were that simple," a woman sighed. "We've ignored God for ages and he never seemed to care, really."

This woman had golden hair and brown waxy skin that shone despite the lacking light. Her feet were kicked up on the desk she was sitting behind which helped show off her thigh-high leather boots.

Despite the chill of winter, she was wearing just a pair of denim hotpants and a revealing swimsuit bikini - both of which did next-to-nothing when it came to hiding her curves.

Daz recognised this woman too, though he had never heard her name nor identified her. "So, need my help or what? I mean, we're in an alliance, plus, we're fellow survivors. Though I'd like to know why you're being attacked and by who."

Emma shook her head as she approached Daz and pulled a cylinder tube out of nowhere. "No. No one can help us except for maybe your father. He certainly has the weapons for it. Here, your oxygen converter. You said it had to be able to turn space, most gasses and water into breathable air. It took a while, but I got one for a low price. Full disclosure, I got it through your father, though he shouldn't know it was for you."

Daz grabbed the device and immediately put it in his Industrial Item Box. "I don't care where it came from, all that matters is that it's mine now."

"I see," Emma replied dryly. "And yeah, you'd be as useful to us as a child would. Those guys... They call themselves Truthians, members of 'God's True Faith' or more simply the 'Church of Truth'. Bunch of fucking cultists is what they are, not a religion."

"Okay, and how, exactly, are they so dangerous?" Daz asked.

"They can cut off access to the system," Stewart answered in his leader's place.

Emma nodded and added, "Not only that, but they can even somehow stop esper powers. I have no idea how they do it, but that's how they captured Aila."

Daz held his chin. 'Huh. So similar to those ancient mummies in El Dorado? This is smelling more and more like another lost civilisation to me. Maybe they found a mythical city as well? One more intact and containing more direct powers than Atlantis and El Dorado maybe? I'll have to look into that.'

"Aila, dead, sure?" Madison asked in her usual confusing manner.

Emma, luckily, picked up her meaning fairly easily. "Yes. 5-hours after her and her team got captured, my citizen count reduced by 5. The math checks out, sadly. Their army of brainwashed cultists have destroyed half of my army by now and it'll take Mr Hamilio 3-weeks to send me any reinforcements... if he sends any reinforcements. He's too busy with his own... problems."

"Want to take refuge at Fort Home? That's what I've renamed Waterford, by the way. I'd welcome you all quite happily, though you'd have to renounce any allegiance to my father and fall under my rule," Daz offered.

Emma flashed a genuinely saddened smile. "No, as tempting as that sounds, this captain intends to sink with her ship. If you could take in the fleeing citizens though then I would be very grateful. Half of them get captured by the cultists, a quarter converted, and the other quarter killed by stray monsters roaming the rural towns when they try to leave the city."

"Sure, I don't mind," Daz answered. "By the way, if you fought as tactically as you possibly could, how long do you think you could hold out here?"

"Huh? I'm not sure. A week, maybe two?" Emma answered with an unsure frown on her face.

'The next lunar cycle begins in 12-days. If I recall correctly, the Altar of Permanence recharges at the start of each lunar cycle, not the end. I'm fairly confident I can handle one batch of lunatics if I make the right skill permanent.' Daz nodded with that straight face of his. "Make it two and I might be able to save you guys. That's a big might so don't hold your breath, but there's a chance."