Yes, and after they rejoined all life, they intend to sacrifice the non-Amaurotine life to Zodiark to bring back the rest of the Amaurotines. Hence my assertion that the Amaurotines see non-Amaurotine life as being inferior and lesser, since they believe it to be a fair trade to bring the other 3/4 of their population back.
My point about Azem's characterization in the short stories, as well as the conversation with Hythlodaeus in 5.3, is that they consider the non-Amaurotine population of the Ancient world to be just as worthy, unlike the Convocation, who reportedly see them as abstract populations rather than people. According to Hythlodaeus, Azem preferred to work with the locals to solve whatever problems they face, rather than call on the Convocation for assistance. This is in contrast to Emet-Selch, who sees us as a shard of Azem working with the "local" soul shards, and goes ballistic with ranting about how Nobody Is Worthy.
We have no evidence that Hythlodaeus is incorrect, and indeed I had been convinced by people on this forum that Hythlodaeus does know what he's talking about, back when we were discussing revelations from 5.0. He seems to know things that Emet-Selch would not have let him know (or impart the knowledge of) if Emet-Selch had been paying attention, like Hythlodaeus's account of the summoning of Hydaelyn, contradicting Emet-Selch's own account that Hydaelyn was summoned due entirely to "fear" of Zodiark's "magnificence" (Emet-Selch's words). Emet-Selch even tries to poison the rhetorical well by pre-emptively saying Hydaelyn's own hypothetical account of her summoning will be different and thus false, but Hythlodaeus's account is different, despite his being a creation of Emet-Selch.
Notably Emet-Selch also didn't mention anything about the Anyder group's stated motivations, which contradict what he said about the summoning of Hydaelyn, but does not contradict Hythlodaeus's version. As mentioned, I think it adds to Hythlodaeus's version by giving additional context that builds upon it in a natural way.
I didn't say Emet-Selch should have scoured the Empty to look for Mitron and Loghrif. I said he should have scoured the Empty to find Eden, meaning that he should have practiced due diligence to find out what went wrong and caused the Flood of Light. And if Emet-Selch had laid eyes upon Eden, then given what we're told (many times) about Emet-Selch's soul-sight, he should have recognized Mitron in there. We know he won't be "blinded" by the Light or such, because he also instantly recognized Ryne's nature.