The group of Northeast Freeholders and allies appeared in a scarlet flash right outside the Devil Kings’ territory.
Jesse wasn’t taking any chances, however. The moment they materialized, he [Scarlet Shifted] again, a recent upgrade to the Skill allowing him to have two charges active at any given time. They landed near a Teleportation Circle, which then allowed them to return home.
Some of them to return home, anyway. Even the non-Northeast Freeholders, which made up the majority of the group, wanted to get as far away from the xuanwu and the Devil Kings as possible.
The great beast was heating up the moment they left. Alistair didn’t envy George’s position in dealing with the Beast Ruler.
The Leading Domes welcomed the brave adventurers home. Even if George were to somehow betray their pact without dying, which Alistair considered impossible, attacking the Leading Domes was suicide. It had to be one of the most protected places on Earth, at least part run by initiates.
After convincing the others of his plan on short notice, he had agreed to a meeting between all the remaining great powers. They sat down at the command table beside their global projection in the war room, which was large enough to sit the three dozen men and women Sally Ryder incorporated into her fusion. However, they didn’t have a high enough clearance to sit in and were politely asked to wait outside.
The ones who didn’t stay behind had to pass through the Karmic Gel, which Alistair found funny, since those who hadn’t been through it before were apprehensive to get messy.
That left Alexandra, Pharaoh, Whimsy, Jesse, President Ryder and her bodyguard/second-in-command Marzhan, Bartholomew, Brigid, and William in the war room. Ten people, including Alistair.
The first to make clear their displeasure with his idea was none other than President Ryder. Alistair still liked to call her that out of respect, but it was kind of weird since the United States had utterly collapsed, as did every other government on Earth.
“I must ask again, why?” she stood up from her glass slab, which levitated in place like the other seating and table. “Fucking why?”
She must have been really incensed to drop her presidential decorum. “We’re winning! Compare our numbers! They’ve lost six out of their thirteen, including their second, third, and fourth most powerful fighters. In recent times, we’ve lost, what, two out of the top ten human rankers? A truce just lets them gather their strength. Didn’t you tell me they’re all connected by weird Fate stuff? Who knows if they have some hidden capabilities that only work when they’re together?”
Alistair let the older woman run out of steam before speaking. While there wasn’t much love lost between the two of them, he was dismayed to hear about Chameleon’s attempt on her and Marzhan’s life. While they participated in the mission out of lack of stronger partners, he could tell their spiritual pathways were still damaged.
“As long as George survives, the Devil Kings are at their peak,” Alistair stated. “And I suspect Morgana is far more powerful than her rank suggests. If we tried to make our play then, we would have failed.”
“You cannot know that,” President Ryder said. “You gave his weakness right back to him.”
“It’s not your call to make.” He put it simply. “It’s my call. I’m the one who will face him in single combat, since no one else is strong enough.”
Alistair didn’t say that out of arrogance, but out of truth. Any interlopers in their battle would only be hurting themselves, not affecting the tides, unless he had to go out of his way to protect them.
“And it’s not because I’m afraid for my life. In a few months, the situation will be the same in that regard. I’ll have to face George no matter what. Making a play on the Devil Kings in their own territory was bound to fail. If you look at our trajectories, I’m growing at a faster pace than him.”
Alistair stood up from his seat at the front of the table, his blood pumping. The Dao permeated his words, as much as a Foundation realm could draw on that. “I promise all of you, your faith in me is not misplaced. Give me the time, give me these three months of training and preparation, and I will give you victory. Give our lands time to heal. Give our people time to rest and recover. We shall emerge stronger and brighter than ever before. Fate has given us Armageddon. What we do with that is up to us. Shall we be Icarus who falls from the heavens, or the shooting star that rises above the fray?”
At the end, Alistair wasn’t even mentioning anything specific about the Devil Kings, but a more absolute speech of inspiration. Even Sally Ryder was silent, taken up in the energies.
Alexandra was the first to speak. “I’m with Alistair.”
“So am I,” Pharaoh said.
“That much was never in question,” Jesse said. “Who else is there?”
Bartholomew nodded, and Brigid gave a knowing look.
Sally said nothing, but Alistair didn’t sense any rebellion from her. Rather, reluctant acceptance.
“Let’s get moving,” Alistair said once he felt like everyone was finished. “The longer we wait to move, the less we’ll be prepared. We have to rid the land of the escaped monsters, the hostile beasts, and the remaining natural disasters. Build up your subregions as much as possible. The coming times will be rough.”
With that, he concluded the meeting. President Ryder and her second-in-command left right away, along with Pharaoh and Whimsy. Before the latter group left, Pharaoh came up to him and exchanged a terrifying handshake.
At first, Alistair feared a surprise attack. Had Pharaoh been replaced by Chameleon? The tall man clasped him by the elbow, which Alistair instinctively returned, since that was the traditional greeting of the people of the Holy Ravine. A surge of Dao energy passed through him, one that was very familiar. The Dao of Lost Sands.
The ancestral Dao Node flowed through Alistair, which is what caused him to go on the defensive for a second, but he realized it was a harmless maneuver. Pharaoh matched the flow of Alistair’s own meridians, harmlessly passing the Dao energy through him. In fact, it felt like the former #1 ranker was eliciting him to the same, so he obliged.
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The Dao of the Fist, the Ghost, and Justice flowed through Pharaoh’s meridians in perfect harmony, mirrored by the Dao of the Lost Sands flowing through Alistair.
“My sponsor told me this is how brothers-in-arms greet one another,” Pharaoh explained. “To let someone else’s Dao flow within your body is both a risk and a reward.”
“I’m glad you consider me your brother,” Alistair said.
“Of course,” Pharaoh replied. “We’ll see this through to the end. Good luck.”
Pharaoh collapsed into a pile of sand. Whimsy face-palmed, taking off after him. With good reason—the Leading Domes, and even their specific upper region, was heavily warded against teleportation Skills.
“You’re larger than me, now,” Bartholomew noted, pointing at Alistair’s physique. It was something he was also getting used to, looking like a comic book superhero. He wasn’t skinny at all before, either, but the Holy Ravine’s foundational changes affected his body more than anything since the beginning of the initiation. At least it didn’t slow him down more than a few percent, while coming with appreciable increases everywhere else.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” Alistair said. “How goes your brother? I’m sorry to hear about your father. I know what it’s like.”
“We hold hope that he still lives,” Bartholomew said, his robotic countenance giving off no emotion. “His Skills were quite unusual, as you know. If he needed a lifeline against George, then it’s possible he sacrificed everything to escape.”
“I pray he survives as well,” Alistair put his hand on Bartholomew’s shoulder. They were of equal height now, which was funny since the elder Wood sibling had also gone through a growth spurt. If he remembered correctly, Alfred used to be the taller one. “In the meantime, I trust you will uphold his legacy.”
Bartholomew left as well as Brigid, who seemed shy about talking to Alistair. Finally, it was only the core members of the Northeast Order Freehold left.
Alistair propped his feet onto the war room table, letting out a sigh of relief. “I hate public speaking.”
Alexandra snorted. “You ‘hate’ heights, spiders, and driving over bridges. Wouldn’t the word ‘have a phobia of’ be more appropriate?”
“That’s four words, doesn’t count.”
Though he was relaxing, Alistair was also watching the projection of the globe. The kaiju stood out like a sore thumb. They represented it with a brown star that pulsed red. It was on the move, rampaging through Devil King territory.
In the meeting with his sponsor, he confirmed a suspicion—their goal wasn’t to kill the kaijus. As Beast Rulers, they were way beyond current humanity’s capabilities to vanquish outright. While they lacked sophonce, the reason for that was because they were a higher grade species than the Earth animals that had turned.
Indeed, the text of the third wave did not mention anything about slaying the kaijus. There was only note of “stopping” them or “impeding their rampaging.”
It turned out that the kaijus would eventually exhaust their energy reserves, which could be hastened by engaging them in battle. Forcing them into those massive explosions like when the xuanwu erupted was the fastest way to do that, but also required a way to survive the outburst and limit the collateral damage.
“This will be interesting,” Alistair said. “Seeing how long it takes the Devil Kings to outlast the kaiju will inform our approach.”
“You think it’s possible they run it into our lands?” Alexandra asked.
William chimed in. “Thankfully, it’s literally on the very opposite end of the world to us. It would be tough to do it for this one, though we can’t say it’s impossible for other kaiju.”
Alistair nodded. “Which is why we need to use this time wisely.”
“There’s been a huge breakthrough in agriculture,” William said. “James Foster’s progressed enough to recreate some of the large-scale food production we had back pre-initiation.”
That was huge. While clean water was much easier to provide, surprisingly, food was one of the most difficult. Most of the monster and beast corpses were too toxic or powerful for the average person, and their body cultivation wasn’t strong enough to avoid the pangs of hunger.
Despite the extreme culling of Earth’s population, there were still hundreds of millions of mouths to feed. Prior to what Alistair was learning now, the agricultural cultivators hadn’t progressed far enough to maintain a stable food supply. People starved to death in appreciable numbers whenever there were sudden shocks.
It was a sad irony that despite having people like Alistair able to replicate the feats of myth, farmers could barely imitate modern technology. They poured into them a lot of resources like leveling pills and build manuals, but it wasn’t enough. Cultivation favored war and blood over peace.
At least the Final Frontier Empire’s version of it. Alistair held out hope of a better future, thinking of the Sage of Eternal Mercy. It comforted him to think that other cultivators of great statue shared similar goals.
“That’s great news,” Alistair said. “Prioritize the distribution on the Teleportation Circle network. I’m authorizing apurchase of at least a dozen more Teleportation Circles. Use your [Hypercalculative Induction] to gauge the best course of action. I’ll give you the drachma now. You, Caren, and John have been coordinating well?”
“I wasn’t sure at first, but our Classes mesh well,” William said. “Caren and I, that is. His eidetic memory is amazing.”
Alistair took all the money in his personal coffers that he had accumulated during his absence and sent it to William and Caren, along with most of the Platinum drachma that came from recent rewards.
“No embezzling,” Alistair warned, half-jokingly.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, boss,” William chuckled. “You’ve got those scary eyes, after all.”
William hurried off with his drachma infusion in tow. That left two people in the room—him and Alexandra.
Alistair sighed and closed his eyes. He consciously paid attention to the cycling of ambient Mana that he performed as a routine. In and out, from breath to breath, empty to full and fully to empty. Such was the cycle of the soulcore and the meridians, and such was the cycle of life and the cycle of Samsara.
His mind drifted so inward, he didn’t realize that someone had moved over next to his chair. Soft but strong hands caressed his shoulders. Alexandra massaged him for what felt like was aeons, but his careful internal clock only measured around ten minutes.
“You’re good at this. A Skill?”
“I used to give my father massages every time he’d come back from a business trip. Guess I got pretty good.”
“Do you miss him?” Alistair asked.
“Of course,” Alexandra said. “I don’t think I’ll ever understand how he could do it. You’re lucky that your mom—I didn’t mean it like that, I’m so—”
Alistair put up a hand. “Don’t worry about it. How are you dealing with the demon blood effects?”
“It’s hard for me to say.” Alexandra looked over her body. “I don’t feel that different, but I’ve also been going over every action I do, like I have OCD, making sure that I’m still me.”
“You’ll always be you,” Alistair said. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Looks like you’ve leapfrogged us yet again,” she said. “I’ll stop bothering you now.”
Alexandra was the last to leave. There was no one there, and the room was more silent than anywhere in the world, the protections leaving no room for sound. But he didn’t let himself get bogged down by wayward thoughts. Now was the time for action.
After facing off against the Devil Kings, he only needed a tiny amount of Upgrade Points to bring his Tier 1 Legendary Badge “Devil May Cry” to Tier 2. The text of the Badge didn’t change. Perhaps Dev’rox’s presence stood out a little more. He hoped that the Holy Will condition that gave him a second wind on the verge of death was more powerful.
With the rest of his points, he allocated them to the Blood of the Devil Talent Tree. The fourth-level leaf cost 100 Upgrade Points, which the level up plus two Devil King kills had given him.
{Blood Debt} Blood essence absorbed from demonic entities can be repurposed in Skills using blood affinity Mana. Since it came from their body to start with, the blood will have an easier time penetrating said entity.
Anything specific that could be used against the Devil Kings was his salvation, so Alistair gleefully put his points into the leaf.
There was no rest for the wicked. Now that he had bartered for the truce, there was only one next step—cleansing the land.