“Tested?” Mouven exchanged gazes with the others, but when I took out my compass, their faces clenched. “You recognise it already,” I said while stating the obvious.

“We have been tested before by our messiahs,” Mouven admitted.

“You have more than one messiah? Impressive,” I said in a tone filled with mockery, “alright then, consider me your new messiah. Or else… you’ll have to answer to your messiahs in the afterlife.”

My threat wasn’t groundless or light. I was the one having the upper hand here. If they wanted to live to tell their tale, then they had to lower themselves to me.

Humans… they were such an interesting race. If given an inch out of respect or kindness, they’d work to get a mile back from you.

But in fact of a stronger fist, they had nothing else to do but to comply.

“We agree,” as expected, Mouven was well aware of how dangerous this situation here was.

“Mouven…”

“You…”

“We can’t just agree without getting back to our messiahs!”

“Shut up!” He shouted in clear frustration. He didn’t have a choice in such matters. After all they’d either follow me or follow the god of death route.

Well… Thinking about that, wasn’t I already being sponsored by the god of death, Sith? Doesn’t that make me a god of death emissary or messiah? Lol!

“We will comply,” Mouven said, before he took a step forward, knelt on one knee, and lowered his head as he added, “I greet the messiah.”

“It’s enough to call me lord,” I took out five contracts, threw each to each one as I signed them with my name, “and we don’t have such greetings here. But it’s ok to show your respect to me from time to time.”

My words weren’t directed to him, but to the other four standing half a metre behind him. I didn’t know if they’d survive the test or not, and I didn’t care.

Even if only Mouven was the only one standing here in the end, he was enough to make others follow my orders.

“It’s better to make everyone sign a contract,” yet as Mouven and others were reading the content of the contract, Hilary said these words in a loud tone.

She didn’t even try to hide such advice from them, as if she was trying to pay back an old debt. Of course I was interested to know what went wrong between her and them, but it was a story to be told in another time.

“I’ll do that,” I said, before turning to Mouven who was looking all shocked at me, “how many do you have here?”

“Are you planning to get all of them?” he asked before adding in a hurry and fake humbleness, “lord.”

“It’s none of your business,” I shrugged, “from now on, I ask questions and you only answer.”

I still needed to know more about these cults. How many of these were here in the world? Were they like gamers, connected to each other or something like that?

Also did they have more forces around? If so then it would be great. As I could tell, such forces didn’t need any training at all.

These cults did a marvellous job in preparing their forces for such a day, even to the limit of training them seriously over the apocalypse events. So it would be great to have them inside my forces. They’d be a nice addition indeed.

“Well…” Mouven seemed to be all scared and hesitant to tell me such an answer.

“They deal with such info as their life secrets,” Hilary explained from the side, “but with the contract, nothing bad will happen to them.”

I realised that they were also bound with another contract. It was great that mine was of a high grade, one that wasn’t easily acquired by anyone at this stage from humans.

“My lady seems to know a lot about us,” Mouven said in a helpless tone while the other four had dark expressions on their faces.

“Hurry up,” I shouted at them, “I don’t have all day to waste here with you.”

‘I… will sign,” Mouven followed his instincts, loudly separating himself from the other four.

“Traitor!”

“You won’t live in paradise after death!”

“You are such a low cousin! You aren’t one of my family from now on!”

The other three spoke in such meaningless threatening words while the fourth one simply cut the contract into two halves, declaring her refusal in such a bold way.

*Snap!*

And with a snap of my fingers and a flashing movement from one of my many soulers, this girl was left dead behind.

“I don’t tolerate such rudeness,” I coldly said, while the thudding sound of her body echoing in the background, “sign or die, there is no other way around.”

Mouven took a few steps away. His eyes were red, seemingly silently mourning the death of his cousin or something. Yet he was firm enough to declare his current situation, distancing himself away from the remaining three of them.

I respected his decision. I didn’t care what he was feeling at the moment. With the contract between the two of us, he wouldn’t pose any threat to me at all.

He read the contract, just like the other four. The main reason behind what that dead girl did was the contract’s strict conditions.

Even thinking about doing mean and evil things to me would end up being punished and killed by the system and contract.

So that girl seemed dead fixed on taking her revenge against me. Unlike her, Mouven was more controllable over his emotions and knew what was best for him.

And now it came to these three to decide what they should do now.

“We… agree,” in front of such a threat of death, they couldn’t follow the desire of their dead cousin. When faced with death, humans wouldn’t try anything funny.

Fear was the most true thing humans would agree on no matter what. Regardless of their backgrounds, their beliefs, their lives, or even their financial state, they all would lower their heads when things reach such a point.