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He might've needed to thin the herd a bit, but once he was back at his favorite workshop and able to use the Clown Pit again, he wanted to have plenty of test subjects at his disposal.

When was the last time he'd tried throwing a living person into the Pit? Decades, at least. Eheheh. Hadn't ended so well before, but practice made perfect, after all.

For here and now, though, the generals who'd performed the worst in his obstacle course would make for the best candidates. If they died--which, honestly, there wasn't really much "if" about it--then it would be no great loss.

And to his mind, those individuals were Captain Generals Melinda and Meris. While they technically hadn't had the worst times out of everyone, Morgunov also had to weigh their scores against their ranks. Lieutenant Generals Wes and Kehl, for example, had done the best within their tier, so even though they didn't outperform Melinda and Meris, it seemed a bit unfair to punish them for it.

And Morgunov was all about fairness. When he felt like it, anyway.

He told the corresponding reapers to begin regrowing their servants. He'd learned their names, but he couldn't be bothered to actually summon them into his mind. They were just reapers. Interchangeable, for the most part.

He did feel a teeny-weeny bit bad about having to kill them, though. While it was largely true that reapers had stopped piquing his interest a few centuries ago, he could still appreciate their rarity and utility.

At the end of the day, there were only a few hundred thousand reapers left in the world. And that number was dwindling all the time. Such as right now.

At this pace, how many of the little buggers would be left in another hundred years? Or two hundred?