> Wave 3: Kaiju Break
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> The plethora of monsterkin from rebellious dungeons could not fell FX-14752. 62.1% of the dungeons were dealt with before rupturing to the outside world, though the remaining 37.9% caused massive financial damages and loss of life. Remaining monsters will not be culled and shall remain as a reminder of this planet’s feebleness. Let the death of the weak serve as forewarning to all those who walk the path of cultivation. Become stronger or die.
>
> Two groups participated in the Grand Dungeon, Symphony of Skills, Alistair Tan and George Moulin and party. George Moulin received the First Through bonus for being the first on the world to complete Symphony of Skills, which included an interfief competition for those under level 60. George Moulin placed 13th and Alistair Tan placed 98th out of all participants in the Disputed Shard fief, an impressive placing for both Prime Initiates.
>
> For the third wave of [Armageddon], the theme of natural disasters continues. Or rather, creatures that may be described as natural disasters on account of their sheer power. One translation might be—kaiju.
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> Enormous genetically engineered beasts will ravage your world for the next month. This will start now, with the first kaiju. Each kaiju will be stronger than the last, appearing at random every week, until the last week, in which the five kaijus will appear at once.
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> In additional to the normal ways you can add to your Contribution Score as delineated in the text of [Armageddon], in Kaiju Break, you can earn them by stopping the contributing to stopping the Kaijus along with impeding their rampaging.
>
> Let Kaiju Break begin!
Speaking of Contribution Score, Alistair hadn’t checked his in some time. He ranked #2 with 1,496 behind George, who was all the way at 2,631. Everyone else on the list was negligible in comparison. It was a two-horse race, as it always was.
Alistair rolled his hands through his hair. While he felt physically perfect, there was a tension from the stress of things that still persisted. The deck felt stacked. Contribution Score, subregion count, and preserving the lives of his citizens. He had to juggle all three things.
Alistair spent 10k Gold drachma on a direct message through the Soulnet to Alexandra. She would receive it as an unavoidable notification.
Alexandra, it’s me. I’m back, sorry for leaving once again. How are things going on your end? I’ve managed to snag 1,000 subregions, but I worry about this Kaiju wave. We’re going to need you and Pharaoh and Whimsy and the Woods. I would try looking for Lucius but I have so little time. We all do.
— Alistair.
That would have to do for now. Alistair prayed with all his soul for a reprieve. As if the multiverse was listening, he got his lucky break.
When he examined the Soulnet news, the event was obvious. The first kaiju had appeared deep within Devil King territory.
A reply came from Alexandra.
It’s about time you came back, Alistair. I was beginning to think you just don’t like Earth very much. It’s a warzone out here. So many people dead. For some reason, the Devil Kings seem to be reluctant to attacking us, compared to the average person. Makes me even angrier, seeing that cowardice. They have more manpower than us, sadly. Let’s set up a Soulnet talk with all of the players, coordinates -123.5, 1,803.0. Meet me in ten minutes.
Some intrepid individual had invented a coordinate system for the Soulnet, making it much easier to set up meetings. Still, as Alistair checked -123.5, 1803.0 in his Soulnet map, that was a long way away from where he entered the net. You think too highly of me, Alexandra.
His body would automatically respond to any incoming threats, so he casually slipped into the Soulnet. His vision faded to pink, and he found himself in the European ballroom that seemed to be the starting point for every Soulnet user. Like always, his outfit was transformed, this time into a partially diaphanous toga that made him feel like a scandalous Roman socialite.
The moment he loaded in fully, he started looking for the direction of the coordinates. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a familiar figure.
“Drauku?” Alistair asked tentatively. “Is that you? They moved you here?”
“Ah, what a delight to see you, Alistair,” Drauku replied, a wide smile engulfing his face. “My consciousness is split up over a wide array of locations.”
“I’d love to chat, but I have urgent business,” Alistair said, looking behind at the wizened homunculus as he ran off according to the coordinates.
“Oh, that is not an issue.” Drauku suddenly shifted into a brilliant, luminescent ball, soaring after Alistair at exactly his pace. “I can take this form if it helps.”
Alistair raised an eyebrow at the homunculus’s ability. “What have you been up to recently?”
Drauku’s voice sounded almost robotic, coming from the sphere of light. “Helping young cultivators such as yourself as they follow their paths of destiny. It’s not much, but it’s honest work. It’s the least I owe.”
“What do you mean?”
A wistful tone entered the aged homunculus’s voice. “The Akata Corporation built my line of homunculi as war slaves. In my prime, I was the equivalent of a mid-realm Visionary. They discontinued us after a few thousand years because of the cost, and then they sold us to the Pathfinder as we aged. Those were many lifetimes ago to the average citizen, you must understand. Though the world of cultivation seems constant, so much has changed since then. As an artificial lifeform, my lifespan exceeds that of a typical Visionary, though my prime was much shorter.”
Stolen novel; please report.
Alistair veered sharply to the left, drifting along the ground like a racecar. “Wars? What wars is the Final Frontier Empire fighting? I thought they owned the universe.”
“That is the common conception near the core territories,” Drauku began, “but it is not entirely true. They claim the entire universe as theirs, but in practice control less than half the area. Though, the outskirts are sparsely populated. The barbarians’ ‘civilization’ can hardly be called such. I might add, however, my conscription was not against the barbarians, but another frontier polity. The Zarbax Collective.”
While Drauku was a ball of light, Alistair could see the spittle flying out of the homunculus’s mouth in that last statement. The venom he had toward the Zarbax Collective was almost unnerving.
“But I should not bog you down with irrelevant concerns. It deeply pains me to see the strife your planet has been through. I pray that you shall find success and peace for all.”
“Thank you, Drauku,” Alistair said. “You know, that Pallox Semper drink you gave me might have made the difference in my standing today. If I hadn’t had that slight edge on understanding the Dao, I might not be number one.”
“Nonsense,” Drauku retorted. “Your rise was inevitable. Your talent is top class, and if I may say so myself, I predicted your rise the moment I met you.”
Alistair ran by a forest with trees made of glass as he continued his winding journey through the Soulnet. As he found himself in an enormous plains, he picked up the pace since there weren’t any turns.
“There’s no way you could help me out, is there?” Alistair asked hopefully.
Drauku shook his metaphorical head. “Sadly, there is not. Anything more than giving you that elixir would result in my dismissal. The Grand Imperator shall arrive in four months and do an impropriety audit.”
Ah, there was another stressor Alistair had forgotten about—the goddamn spoiled Porotlon scion who had challenged him to a duel with the fate of the planet on the line. So even if he managed to pull Earth through against the Devil Kings, one wrong step and it was goodbye for everyone else.
“But I have faith in you,” Drauku said. “I have a feeling this shall only be one small step on your journey. Take this.”
A pristine jade pendant dropped into Alistair’s hands. “Wait,” Alistair said. “I thought it was against the rules?”
“I see nothing,” Drauku said. “Perhaps in a few hours I will find my defensive charm mysteriously missing. I will then conclude I must have dropped it earlier, but I would have no idea when.”
Alistair nodded, clutching the jade pendant tight. It was cool to the touch, fitting around his neck nicely. The necklace portion was silver chainlinks, connected to a rectangular cut of jade with the face of what appeared to be a female naga. Alistair wanted to ask who the portrait displayed, but he refrained out of respect for Drauku’s privacy. Risking everything to give Alistair a slight edge went above and beyond.
“I won’t let you down,” Alistair replied. “How strong is this?”
“Appearances have to be kept up,” Drauku said. “An item of one’s own level does not arouse suspicion as much. Do you understand?”
Alistair nodded again, doing another auto racing-style drift as he turned into the final straight in the Soulnet. “After this is all over, maybe you can retire from your position.”
“Ah, that is unlikely. The contract with the Akata Corporation and the Pathfinder AI is quite precise, and ends with my scheduled death. Goodbye.” Drauku’s ball of light vanished into thin air and Alistair was alone. But not for long, as he arrived at one of the starting locations in a vastly disparate area of his freehold.
Alistair opened the door to the ballroom, where he found Alexandra, Pharaoh, Alfred, and Marzhan having a heated discussion. On a closer inspection, it was really just Alexandra and Alfred talking—Pharaoh and the top 10 ranker from the United Polities weren’t saying a word.
“Now is the best time,” Alexandra said, barely quieter than a shout. “That kaiju or whatever is fucking massive. It’s way stronger than the Beast Ruler fireworm that we held off before. This is by far our best opportunity to do some real damage.”
Alfred shook his head. “It’s too risky,” he said. “Who’s to say they can’t just ignore the beast? They have no regard for the safety of human lives, obviously. Without intelligence and the ability to target specific enemies, the kaiju will rampage without distinction.”
“They can’t ignore it completely,” Alexandra said. “If their lands are completely devastated, they won’t be able to accrue Contribution Score. Back me up here, Pharaoh.”
Pharaoh, like always, remained reticent. Alexandra was about to saying something else, but then she noticed Alistair’s presence.
“Alexandra is correct,” Alistair said, walking up to the rest of them as he fidgeted his new defensive pendant into place. “But we have to do this in a special way.”
Alfred turned around, frowning. “Explain, please.” There were no introductions or formalities. They were long past things like that, in a moment that required full concentration.
“There’s a severe power differential right now,” Alistair said. “I don’t want to presume, but I think it extends to even you, now, Pharaoh.”
Pharaoh grunted in assent. If Alistair was looking closely, his facial muscles flexed ever so briefly in an expression of disgruntlement. Giving up the #1 spot wasn’t so easy, after all.
“The types of upgrades I’ve been getting recently, especially including and since returning from the Holy Ravine, I’m pretty sure I could beat all eight Devil Kings besides George by myself. And George could do the same to you guys, most likely. With such a gap in power, we run into risks. Both sides, really. I think they’ll think of this same scenario. If we both go at each other, me and George will try to eliminate the other side’s subordinates as quickly as possible, to put the numbers gap in our favor.”
Alfred scratched his chin. “Ah… as the fastest cultivator on the Earth, you sit at a unique advantage for, let’s call these, ‘pick-offs.’”
“Precisely,” Alistair said. “Which is why I think we need to attack. That puts me in the best possible scenario. Plus, I have another goal.”
Ideally, he only wanted Pharaoh, Alexandra, and Alfred to hear his next idea. But he supposed he could trust Marzhan. Lesser Samatha revealed unspoken truths, and nothing indicated that she wanted anything but the victory of humankind.
“I think we can offer a deal to them,” Alistair said. “I haven’t got all the details worked out yet. But anything we can do to stop the deaths, we have to. It’s a nightmare out there. I don’t think we at the top understand that, fully.”
A sullen look came over the other four cultivators. As five of the most powerful people on the planet, all their friends and family would be in the most well-protected places. The places that would be last to fall. They were insulated against the tragedies that were happening to the average joe.
Tragedy is too weak a word. Estimates indicated that 20% of the pre-[Armageddon] population of the world had died in the two months of the final Quest. Twenty percent, two zero. It was such an incomprehensible number to Alistair. There had been even worse numbers absolutely at the start of the initiation, but that was before he had any responsibility.
He could never feel the individual pain of each death. One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. The emotional impact of knowing that 20% of the world had died, the mothers, the children, the elderly. All that life snuffed out, whether by an orc’s claws, or the debris of a tornado, or the rampaging of an enormous kaiju.
This weighed heavy on Alistair’s conscience. If he could find a way to mitigate that suffering, he would take that path.
“This world is cruel,” Marzhan said as she shook her head. “But what do you mean, a deal?”
“It’s still in development,” Alistair replied. “Just trust me on this one. We need to get everyone of note assembled for this one. Everyone. If this works, this will be the second most important moment of the Quest.”