"Good," I said. "Anyone else?"
A second engineer and an architect soon followed, probably because I didn't kill the first guy. I called their little unit city planners. Then came the scouts, and everything fell into place.
I ordered the city planners to decide on where to build a village. They were to focus on building a wall wide enough first. We would start worrying about buildings only tomorrow.
As for the scouts, I ordered them to explore the surroundings, looking for food and water. They returned with the expected news of a large river to the northeast. The city planners went to check the area, protected by two warriors. Our village would need access to water, both to drink and wash ourselves.
Since people were thirsty, I soon moved everyone else to the riverside. I forbid them from getting inside for now and told the warriors to watch for anyone trying to drown others. It might sound like overkill to a civilized person, but I had seen worse. Some people would kill just because they could do it without consequences.
The scouts also found apple trees, bountiful enough to feed everyone. I moved everyone there when they had sated their thirst and organized a line, watched over by my warriors, so each person would get one fruit. More than that and we wouldn't have enough for everyone.
Two hours had already passed, and it made people comfortable in their stupidity. More and more of them complained as time passed. I ignored it because I didn't care if they complained, as long as they kept in line.
That said, it was only a matter of time until one of them confounded my composure with weakness and acted on it. Sometimes, humans were just like sharks smelling blood on water. I would need to make an example of whoever did so.
It happened in the form of three young people, a man and two women.
They were part of the most vocal people and they had been getting bolder the more I ignored them. When they approached and saw the apple trees and the size of the line to receive a fruit, they decided they had had enough of following orders.
Instead of falling in line, they went straight for the trees. I intercepted them, crossed my arms, and stared them down.
One woman had saggy breasts, evidence of the removed implants. The Tower had removed anything artificial from humans, be it internal, like implants and pacemakers, or external, like glasses and earnings. Together with equalizing everyone's attributes, it didn't do much to endear most of the rich and powerful.
On the other hand, one way the Tower unlocked humanity's potential was by making us immune to physical disease and slow to age. That would endear many people to the Tower, enough that a faction would rise to argue for not fighting for freedom. At least until they realized they weren't immune to poison or human evilness.
Anyway, the three of them were about twenty-five years old and had an air of entitlement to them. When they looked at me, their noses were pointing above my eye line. Contrary to popular belief, it was rare to see people like them when they were out of their depth like now, but it was just my poor luck that I had attracted three of them.
Their familiarity with each other was clear, so they had been close before being kidnapped.
It was more common for friends to come together to the Tower than families. It was about feeling connected to people, not about having the same blood. That said, many also realized they weren't as connected as to their friends as they thought when they ended up surrounded by complete strangers.
They were blonde, all of them, with tanned skin. The male had brown eyes and a short hair, military style. A woman had green eyes, and her hair ended a little below her neck. The other woman had blue eyes and her hair went all the way to her bottom.
Their approach was quite affected by my stare, but in their own individual ways.
Blue Eyes cowered. Her shoulders dropped, and her head lowered. She looked a mix of shy for being noticed by me, aroused by my physical perfection, and intimidated by my discontent.
Green Eyes kept a little behind the male and lowered her nose a little, but that was all.
And the male tried to look down on me.
"Fuck off," he said.
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Do not confound my generosity with sufferance, lenity or permissiveness. I am in charge. Everything here belongs to me. I give you my fruits out of compassion, but I expect obedience and gratitude in return. And I order you to go back in line to wait for your turn. This is your first warning."
Aroused Girl stepped back at those words, her head bowed. Green Eyes gulped but held her position. The man snickered and started speaking with arrogance, "This tree is not yours, it belongs-"
I interrupted him with a sound slap.
Although I held back, I made sure it was strong enough for him to understand I meant business. Even his neck snapped, so fast his head was forced to turn. He didn't fall on the ground but had to move his foot to keep her balance and take a few seconds to recover from dizziness.
The crowd let out gasps of shock. Aroused Girl's eyes almost popped out, so wide she opened them. She whispered, "Sorry," to her friends and hurried away to the line with the head bowed so low that her chin was almost piercing her neck.
Green Eyes stepped further back. The man just stood in place with his face turned.
"This is your second warning," I said with an icy voice. "Rebellion will be dealt with swiftly and lethally."
That seemed to make him even more upset at me. He looked at my eyes with a fury that burned so strong it made me surprised. I expected he attack me, but he was much more cunning than he appeared.
"Are you going to beat me for some apples?" he asked loudly for everyone to hear. He wanted to put everyone against me.
"No. I'm going to kill you for acting like a spoiled child who is disrupting the order among my populace because you can't wait in line like the others. And because the apples are mine and I hate thieves."
"Kill me? Really? Can't have people talk back to you, can you? Fucking fascist."
"No, I can't," I replied in stride, much to his surprise. "This is your third and final warning. Get back in line or die."
I knew what he was doing, trying to make me even more of an evil guy than I was already making myself to be. But he didn't realize that in face of absolute power, public opinion simply didn't matter. I didn't have to care about it when there was nothing anyone could do to hold me accountable for my actions.
Politicians feared the armed hand of Justice physically putting them in jail. The common human dictators feared someone putting a bullet through their heads. But powerful enough [Awakened] couldn't be stopped by common folk.
The populace could could argue, cry, scream, but they couldn't stop me. Their only options were to either submit or die.
Such was the new reality brought by the Tower.
"I don't think he's joking," Green Eyes whispered, holding his arm. "Let's go." She pulled a little.
He freed himself from her grasp. "Don't be a coward!" He turned to everyone. "Can't you see? This is how he wins! If we back down now, it'll be impossible to overthrow him later! We were kidnapped by this shitty Tower of Destiny against our will, taken away from our comfort, our homes, but this is also an opportunity! We can fix all of humanity's past mistakes! We can build a better society! Don't let this fascist intimidate you into submission! Trust me, and I'll lead you towards a better future!"
He was good, maybe had even unlocked a skill. Some people stood straighter and nodded at those words. I smiled slightly, amused. He would be more useful to me than I had thought.
"Most of that is true," I conceded. "However, I will be the one leading humankind. And you will be intimidated into submission. Or you'll pay with your life."
He turned to me, his face showing the clear mark of my hand. It was as clear as his defiance. "I will eat at my convenience. And no one will stop me."
He took one step forward.
That was as far as he went.
There was something profoundly horrible in seeing a human's head exploding. Said horror was accentuated when the cause of such an explosion was a human fist. It was even worse when the owner of such fist had been smiling and arguing somewhat civilly an instant before.
I used all my strength when I punched his head. It popped like a balloon, flesh, bone, eyeballs, cartilage, blood and brain matter blowing outwards in a gory horror. His body fell like a puppet with its strings cut.
People screamed and increased the distance from me, even though I was already relatively distant from them. Some puked, others ran in panic. I shook my hand to clear it and turned to my warriors. Most avoided my eyes.
"We can dabble in laws and milder punishment later. For now, this is how you are to deal with troublemakers," I told them. "Councilors," I said, turning to Adam and Eve. They had pestered me earlier about what they were supposed to do only to be promptly ignored. "Your immediate job is calming the populace and making them realize they must obey if they want to live. You're also to listen to their complaints and deliver them to me." I turned to everyone else. "People, do not rebel. Voice your dissatisfaction to the councilors and they'll forward it to me. But never cross me, or I will reap your lives. I am the Black Reaper. Remember that."
"Continue the food distribution," I ordered.
For a while, I just let the corpse there as a reminder of the consequences of challenging me. Not everyone had seen me beating Iron Bull. Maybe some believed my act with the pebble to be a ruse, or my chopping of wood to be a trick.
There was no doubting that corpse though.
After about half an hour, the air was heavy enough that I believed I had made my point. I took the corpse over my shoulder but left the head bits behind. I wanted to cleanse the air, but not too much.
"I'll dispose of the body," I said and left, walking at first, then running when I was out of sight.
The territories the Tower had teleported us to were limited in their area. The more people in a territory, the larger it was. I estimated my own "village," which had four hundred people, to be ten miles by ten. We had arrived in the center. I ran all five miles to the edge in a few minutes.
Reaching the limits of a village was an uncomfortable experience. There was no physical or even visible barrier. One moment I was running, the next moment, I found myself standing still. There was no forewarning, and the uncanny experience made me motion sick. I took a few seconds to recover.
Once I did, I threw the corpse beyond the invisible barrier and looked at it with mixed feelings.
There had been resets in which humanity found peace and achieved greatness without my meddling. A good humankind was possible. But they were too few for me to trust it might happen again.
I'd rather trust cold numbers than hope for good. In five resets, humankind had delivered wholesomeness. In twenty others, it had fallen so low that even desensitized to death and suffering as I was, I couldn't stomach remembering it. All other resets had brought bloodbaths of different proportions.
I believed wholeheartedly my plans were the best for humankind. I would bring peace and prosperity before humanity fell in ways even absolute power couldn't change. The blood of innocents would pave the road to the future, but it was for the greater good.
So said every dictator ever.
I didn't consider myself any better.
In fact, my mixed feelings died quickly, replaced by the thought of how his death was perfect for me. He had said herself that he would spearhead the revolution and I had killed him swiftly after that. It was a dominant image of the consequences of rebellion. He had brought people's hope of a different world with him, and I had crushed it.
That would help me ascertain my dominance even more than if he had backed down.
'I just hope it last until tomorrow,' I thought.
For I had real work to do. Predators would come at midnight, and those walls wouldn't build themselves.
Thanks for the chapter
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Blob Neutral
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