Wrath told Nick where he had to go, and finally, Nick found out where he was.
He was in the western part of the Grand Continent. More specifically, he was between two very big bodies of water, which were around the same size. If he walked a couple hundred kilometers to the southwest, he would be entering the northeastern parts of the War Continent.
Nick knew the continents and what the world looked like, and with this information, he could finally go back to Aegis.
He just needed to fly towards the west for a couple thousand kilometers.
Even more, Nick wouldn't even need to be afraid of Wrath.
On his way to his mission, Nick could just fly to the west, and he would arrive at Aegis' headquarters before Wrath even realized that Nick had betrayed him.
His path home was open.
However, Nick decided against returning to Aegis for now.
The opportunity he had received by being "forced" into servitude was too good to pass up.
If Nick could keep working under Wrath for a couple of years, he could help humanity a lot.
His job was to get rid of the influence of other Corruptors in cities and give control over to Wrath's servants.
Of course, in the short term, this just meant exchanging one monster for another.
If Nick did a good job, Wrath's territory would expand greatly.
And then, as soon as Nick returned to Aegis, everything would crumble in an instant, freeing all the cities Nick had given Wrath.
'I can do a lot of good by working under Wrath,' Nick thought. 'I can help thousands of people. Maybe even tens of thousands.'
Before Nick left for his first task, the CZE of the Priesthood gave Nick some basic information that he should know.
After all, Nick was now part of Wrath's side.
The Seven Corruptors, except for Greed, had their own territories.
The reason why Greed didn't have any territories was that having a territory would mean being bound to a place, which would make it easier for some of the Adversaries to track him down and kill him.
When Nick heard that essentially the entire world was already divided between the Corruptors, he grew surprised.
He knew that their influence reached far, but he hadn't thought that the entire world was already divided among them.
When Nick asked about the other Fallen, the CZE just said that they didn't matter.
After some talking, Nick found out that the Corruptors' territories could essentially be viewed as empires and the Fallen territories as city states.
Fallen generally didn't mess with any of the servants of the Corruptors.
While the Corruptors were not immediately dangerous, most of the time, their superiors, the Trio of Destruction, were.
Messing with the Corruptors meant messing with the Trio of Destruction.
Only very few Fallen, like Greed, could get away with doing something like that.
While the Specters seemed to be united under Death's banner, things were obviously not that peaceful beneath the surface.
The Corruptors constantly fought each other as they tried to expand their territories.
It was also impossible to note that controlling a territory did not mean that the Corruptor had absolute reign over this territory.
This was just where they were most active.
After all, Aegis was still officially the one in control of all of the cities.
As for the territories…
Wrath controlled the entire War Continent and was currently expanding towards the Grand Continent.
Wrath had already taken control over the big peninsula between the War Continent and the Grand Continent, and it was currently trying to expand towards the north and the west of the Grand Continent.
The long western part of the Grand Continent, which was north of the War Continent, was under the control of Gluttony.
This was Wrath's main target.
The majority of the Grand Continent was controlled by Sloth and Lust, which didn't fight each other since both of them were working under Pestilence.
Sloth controlled the northern parts of the Grand Continent, while Lust controlled the southern parts.
The places where Gluttony's, Wrath's, Lust's, and Sloth's territories intersected were considered contested territory. This was where Nick would work from now on.
The contested territory within the Grand Continent was the biggest territory of Specter-on-Specter conflict in the world.
Pride and Envy were not involved in this war. They had their own war going on in the other two continents.
Pride controlled the Great Triangle, and it expanded towards the Long Continent, which was where Envy ruled.
However, these territories were not evenly divided.
Even though Pride had to contest with the heaviest Aegis presence, due to Aegis' headquarters being there, it managed to expand quite a bit into Envy's territory.
Pride had already conquered the thin strip of land between the two continents, and it had also already conquered the northernmost third of the Long Continent.
The reason for this incredible success was due to Envy's personal situation.
After all, it was currently suppressed by Aegis in the Desolate Continent and couldn't use its own power as a bargaining chip.
That made it much more difficult to get new servants and to keep the servants, it already had, loyal.
Because of its significant losses in the Long Continent, Envy moved a big part of its forces further to the west, towards the group of islands north of the Desolate Continent.
Envy managed to get a foothold there since Lust had to contest with Gluttony and Wrath in the west and since the islands were not as important as the middle of the continent.
Because of that, Envy controlled the southeastern half of the group of islands while Lust controlled the northwestern half of the islands as well as the huge territory in the south of the Grand Continent.
If things continued this way, Pride would eventually conquer the Long Continent, gaining the biggest territory in the world without a good place to attack it from, while Envy would have to make do with the group of islands north of the Desolate Continent.
That would give Envy the smallest territory by far.
This was how the Corruptors divided their territories.
By the looks of things, Wrath and Pride were expanding.
Gluttony and Envy were barely holding it together or shrinking.
And Sloth and Lust were stable.
It seemed like War was launching an attack on Famine while Pestilence just watched.
Of course, the actual Trio of Destruction were not actively fighting each other since Death didn't allow them to.
It was just their servants doing the fighting, and the Trio was simply not stopping them from fighting.
After Nick had received his target, he left Cross Mark City and traveled towards the north.
He flew past a couple of cities and reached the mountain range between the two big seas again.
This time, he flew past the mountain range towards the northwest.
Nick followed along the northern border of the big sea until he arrived at a peninsula.
This was where Nick's target was.
The southern border of the peninsula, which bordered the big sea, was covered with tall mountains.
The peninsula itself was around 100 kilometers across, and there was one city controlling this peninsula.
The middle of the island was quite hot due to the magma vein beneath it, and humans couldn't possibly live there.
The name of the peninsula was Black Cradle due to the magma vein beneath its surface.
However, some incredible ruins were in the south of the Black Cradle.
One of the mountains had been practically hollowed out.
Aegis believed that the hollowed-out mountain was made during the era of the Suffering Ones, which meant that it had been made relatively recently since the era of the Suffering Ones was the era preceding the current one.
The Suffering Ones were known for being very isolated from each other, and almost half of the underground ruins were made in their era.
The city that controlled the Black Cradle was inside this ruin, and it was called Black Mine City.
The entirety of Black Mine City was inside the mountain, and it distributed the sunlight via expensive materials that could transfer and distribute sunlight.
Big parts of the outside of the mountain were covered in silver plates, which absorbed the sunlight and funneled it into the mountain.
When Nick arrived at the Black Cradle, he could tell that the ground was very different from the usual, beige piles of dirt he could see everywhere else.
Of course, due to his extensive knowledge of human history, Nick knew why.
After looking at the Black Cradle for a while, he turned towards the south, towards one of the biggest mountains.
'This is where my target is.'
'Black Mine City.'
Nick could see the silver sheets of metal all over the mountain, and he saw a couple of big gates at its base.
Black Mine City was one of the most secure cities when it came to defending against Specters.
After all, one needed to enter through one of the entrances to get inside.
At least, normal Specters needed to do that.
Nick just turned into mist and flew towards the mountain.