In the time that Alistair was gone in the Grand Dungeon, the Northeast Order’s percent of uncontrolled subregion skyrocketed up toward 43.2%. Considering that the period coincided with the start of the Devil King attacks, he wasn’t surprised.
With the kaiju deep within the Cursed Lands, as George had named his freehold, and their truce, it left them free to deal with all the trash that had built up over the months. To cleanse the land.
Those were Alistair’s orders. Passed down his organizational system, any individual level 40 or above was mandated to take part in the cleansing. The top recruits of the academy were all around level 50 at this point, and he gave them the title of colonel. People like John, Alexandra, or Oliver were generals.
By level, the colonels weren’t that far behind the generals, but levels were less impactful than things like the Dao, special lineages and inheritances, earned Upgrade Points, and Skills.
Each colonel would command captains who had to be level 45 or above, who were the lowest level in his four pronged chain of command system. Anyone below level 40 was deemed a liability more than an asset in dealing with the issues at hand.
Of the approximate 520 million population of the Northeast Order, there were only fifty colonels and two thousand captains, and then another hundred thousand above level 40. Though, only around half the level 40+ would be participating since the rest had non-combat Classes. Combat Classes took up less than half the population, but were more likely to be above level thresholds.
They were an efficient unit. The moment Alistair issued the order for total mobilization, it only took three hours to gather everyone in their platoons. Each platoon consisted of twenty-five soldiers under one captain. There were forty captains per battalion under one colonel, and fifty battalions total under one corp, led by Alistair.
Nominally speaking, that was. Alistair worked best as a solo unit using his speed and reactions, so in practice, John Desmond took the reins. He was glad to see the Flamesmith thriving. People like him who lost their entire families were at the biggest risk of burning out, taking on too much responsibility at once. He and Donna had dinners together often, and the little Tamia approved of the man.
The generals didn’t actually perform much leadership work, as like Alistair, they worked better unimpeded by lower leveled cultivators. That meant there were three prongs of the army—Alistair himself, the fifty-thousand strong corp he called the People’s Legion, and the various generals. Alexandra, Oliver, and Jesse formed one three-man group, but there were many others now that the variegated groups had aligned with the Northeast Order.
Pharaoh and Whimsy, Marzhan and the United Polities elite, Bartholomew and the Wood crew. Phoebe, the woman known as Medea inside of the [The Game of Life], was a strong asset to the freehold, able to deal with most humanoid monsters without bloodshed.
Alistair could already see the start of a terrifying war machine. According to the Sublimed Machine Faction’s metrics, they were the beginning embers of a Grade-7 polity, the weakest that had a name, where the strongest was an Adept. Unlike most of the multiverse that used Foundation, Adept, Profound, Visionary, Exalted, Ascendant, Divine, and Truthseeker as the eight realms of cultivation, they preferred a numerical system going from Grade-8 to Grade-1. There was a certain simplicity in referring to a Visionary as Grade-5 or a Truthseeker as Grade-1.
If Fate shone on the Northeast Order, they would eventually rise to become a Grade-5 polity under the Final Frontier Empire. Alistair would become a Baron and then a Count. Those without noble blood could rise no higher than that, but there were always other opportunities. The multiverse was vast.
There was an ineffable sadness to it all. Their path was inexorably placed under Heaven’s purview of conflict. That was what Alistair had become and what he had adapted to.
But doubt was not within Alistair’s heart. He knew what he had to do, and he did not regret his actions. To say that cleansing the land of monsters was bad was sophistry. They had no mercy for the creations of the Pathfinder AI.
Though the monsters seemed to have souls, they were no ordinary beings. Not homunculi whose soul was made from the Dao of a living creature, nor an artificial intelligence, but something else.
Alistair’s people had attempted to convert them, free them of their restrictions, or otherwise mess with their programming that enticed them to kill all humans, but to no avail. All they wanted to do was smash human heads in, despite otherwise being intelligent.
He remembered a conversation he had with the half-orc Kalak at the very beginning of the organization. The monster called humans blessed with untold bounties from the Heavens. Alistair wasn’t sure if that referred the Pathfinder AI or the true Heavens that the Pathfinder sometimes interceded on behalf of, like for his soulcore tribulation.
Blessed with untold bounties or not, humanity united made quick work of the escaped monsters. Even at the beginning, the monsters relied on disunity, in-fighting, and panic. With the Devil Kings and kaiju temporarily out of the picture, they could focus all their efforts on one thing.
The escaped monsters dropped like flies. Alistair was at the epicenter, slaughtering orcs and zombies and living crystals. He targeted the oldest monsters, the ones that had enough time to percolate in the outside world. They were nothing to him.
The remaining Beast Lords had almost all fled to join with the Pride Lord and Vritra. What mindless leviathans and hidden monstrosities remained were rooted out right away.
The only disaster left from Earth Asunder was the Wasteland. All the reptiles were gone, only the Mana Storms remaining. The colorless miasma expanded even further than from the last time Alistair saw it.
Alistair sent six of his generals to deal with the Wasteland, including Alexandra and Pharaoh. The Devonic Purebreeds weren’t a laughing matter. He remembered taming the storms before, and they were stronger now.
They accomplished this task within a week. One week’s time. Operation Cleanse the Land finished within one week. It was hard to believe at first, that they retook the uncontrolled subregions, which made up almost half of the total.
It was a testament to their organizational capacity, but also because of the storm that was Alistair. He was everywhere at once, using his speed and the Teleportation Circles to shore up any weaknesses in the People’s Legion.
So many outside factors prevented Alistair from being able to give his all to his freehold, and now that he was back for good, he worked double time.
The xuanwu that plagued the Devil Kings never got into Northeast Freehold territory, though it was a close call. George and his minions continuously pushed the tortoise-snake south, though reports indicated it was reticent to give up position to pesky humans. After five days, it ran out of steam and lost its vital spark, but not before inflicting massive damage on the Cursed Lands.
Millions of people perished from the cyclical volcanic eruptions, which covered the sky even from Alistair’s lands. The sun was hidden from view, and the temperature dropped.
The enormous corpse of the xuanwu could be viewed from Alistair’s side. Thousands of Devil King soldiers swarmed the body, which could be considered a Legendary rarity item. Consuming the flesh of such a Beast Ruler, even if it wasn’t actually a slain beast but a defunct one, could raise the Dao affinity of lava cultivators and possibly fire or earth.
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According to Dev’rox, while the categories of the Dao were endless, the most commonly accepted framework was that of a Nexus. A Dao Nexus was an association of Daos, common ones, including the Nexus of War or the Nexus of Magic. The most common Nexus, however, was the Nexus of Elements, the Daos based on the twelve primary affinities.
Thirteen, if you counted void, the anti-Mana, but scholars were divided on whether it was included in the Nexus of Elements or not. Alistair found it strange that the foundations of reality were so malleable.
With the People’s Legion having completed its task, for the first time in forever, there was relative peace. Actually, Alistair considered, there was probably more peace than even before the initiation, since there were no wars between countries and no slums with sky high crime rates. The internal security of the Northeast Order Freehold was better than first world nations.
Not to say that it was a paradise as there were many problems, but safety from other cultivators wasn’t a big one. When many people had superpowers, the outcome of society was heavily determined by what the strongest decreed. In Anthony Ricci’s empire, there was lawlessness and constant violence, where the strongest ruled.
Alistair was the strongest. Therefore, he decided that there would be rule of law and equal protection. Corruption was rife initially, but he stamped it out with Lesser Vipassanā. With a hundred percent clearance rate, after throwing hundreds of embezzlers and blackmailers into prison, the prevalence of corruption went down to near zero. It wasn’t worth a few extra drachma in your pocket if your chance of being caught was certain.
Society was still recovering from all the damage. In the former uncontrolled subregions, the infrastructure was a mess, and the population was near zero. The cities were where everyone congregated. There was safety in numbers and Alistair could protect New Boston, for example, far better than the borderlands, considering there weren’t even set borders until the truce.
Alistair had Land Store Credit harvesters installed in some of the far-off regions. Because of the Teleportation Circle network, they weren’t actually that far off, and he could protect them to a reasonable degree. Workers were required for the harvesters, so it was a way he could naturally encourage a more spread out population.
He never forced anyone to move, unless there was overcrowding, as he understood people just wanted to be safe. By having great job opportunities working on the harvesters, some intrepid workers chose a more dangerous environment in exchange for higher pay and cultivation opportunities.
One of the reasons why the Sublimed Machine Faction even cared to license the Pathfinder AI off to the frontier was the Chaos-touched Mana that he was harvesting for them. It was far above his paygrade, but there was something special about Chaos that even a core polity like the Sublimed Machine found useful.
The week of cleansing lined up almost exactly with the coming of the next kaiju. Along with the most powerful cultivators in his freehold, he waited in the war room one week after the appearance of the xuanwu.
The Pathfinder AI was precise about its timing. If the text of Kaiju Break said one week, it would be one week. It was only a matter of where.
Alistair looked up expectingly at the Global Map. William counted down as he played with a toy he purchased in the System Store. It looked like a solid metal block when inert, but if you messed around with it, you could get it to form strange shapes and patterns. William had gotten really good at forcing the patterns he wanted. Alistair tried it out too, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of the thing, despite St. James insisting that it was all quite logical when you really broke it down.
“Five, four, three, two, one, New Years!” William announced.
Alistair watched the map in apprehension. Would they be twice lucky? Where was the new kaiju going to appear?
Celeste Mendoza’s eyes glazed over as she used her Class abilities to scan the Soulnet, similar to Alfred. Her eyes projected waveforms of data only a computational Class could make sense of. Those same eyes were the ones to project the video of his mother dying. Alistair found it hard to not imagine that when looking at her.
“Nothing yet, sir,” she said. “I’ll keep you updated as more information comes in.”
“No need,” Alistair said, sniffing the air. “It’s here.”
With his nose, he sensed the kaiju before everyone else. Everyone turned to him, but they started feeling it soon after. A presence that weighed down one’s soul. If the xuanwu’s aura was that of sweltering heat, this new kaiju felt like a spiritual weight. The pressure tried squashing Alistair like a bug, but his constitution was too sturdy.
An eardrum-shattering roar reverberated through the Leading Domes. There was no nue within the sound but Alistair could tell that it was only because it had dispersed over several miles.
That’s too fast… Alistair’s aura sense detected something in the distance, but surely it couldn’t be.
The world shook. A shockwave that could have come from an entire arsenal of bombs rocked the building even more than the roar. It was a miracle that the Leading Domes didn’t collapse altogether, a testament to the strength of ambrosic glass and further enchantments.
But that didn’t mean it was unbreakable. Already there were tiny cracks in the glass, and the foundation seemed most unsteady. If the kaiju broke down the whole foundation, even the ambrosic glass building would fall into the earth.
The automatic defenses fired. Laser beams, whirling axes, and metal golems emerged to deal with the threat. Alistair shook his head. Those were appropriate against an army, but this was no army. He could already tell this newest kaiju was a different kind of enemy than the xuanwu.
More importantly, they couldn’t afford the financial and organizational blow of losing the Leading Domes. The kaiju was targeting the people inside, not the building.
“Everyone!” he ordered. “Get out!”
Alistair didn’t need to speak twice. They scurried down the latter, though not before another slam staggered everyone in their tracks. He was the first one down through the Karmic Gel, darting around the panicking people on the first floor as fast as he could without slamming into everyone. The translucent protective energies washed over him as he exited, coming to screeching halt as he saw the beast that was attacking his headquarters.
It was ugly.
The kaiju was a humanoid beast only twice his height. The closest analog that Alistair had was a humongous chimpanzee with black fur. Its limbs, especially the arms, were far too long for its body, while its trunk was over-inflated. Those features were enhanced by a bestial maw that screamed predator, with slit-like red eyes and fangs large enough to pierce a human through.
The fur was the most off-putting aspect, even more than its misshapen features. The onyx fur shifted in the light, giving off an eerie aura like it wasn’t supposed to be seen by mortal eyes.
While it had not the size nor the overwhelmingly strong aura that the xuanwu had, there was a cunning intellect in its eyes that gave Alistair pause. Indeed, when he performed a calculation using the origin of the roar to its current position, he found that the beast had to be at least as fast as his [Dash].
Alistair couldn’t wait for his allies to catch up. The danger the kaiju was exuding was off the charts. An [Eyes of Truth] showed its level to be in excess of a hundred, as he was expecting.
> Name: N/A
>
> Species: Daystalker Ape (Corrupted Ancestry - Lower Descent)
>
> Class: N/A
>
> Level: 115
[Monk Motionless] fluttered with danger. Unlike [Fighter’s Instinct], which created a danger sense that buzzed and waxed with anxiety, [Monk Motionless] felt like a gentle breeze. Yet despite the superficial lack of urgency, it still effected the same amount of action.
The flutters of his new danger sense were so strong they took over his body. He moved autonomously, flexing all the muscles of his core. The [Steel Body] Skill and Steel Body technique of the Holy Ravine worked as one to reduce physical damage.
A black, furry fist slammed into his abdomen. Never once his life had Alistair been hit with such a blow. The impact sent him flying for almost a mile, crashing through New Bostonian skyscrapers. His journey sent him skidding through a familiar meadow field, the same one near his bunker that had a Natural Inheritance from the life affinity.
Alistair stood up, feeling nauseous from the blow. The Daystalker Ape moved faster than anything he’d seen on Earth. His guess was right—in that strike, it was faster than his [Dash] by a slight amount. Troublesome as well was its mysterious fur that obscured his future sight.
A pang of worry went down Alistair’s spine as he realized that his people were facing the kaiju. Could they really deal with such a dangerous beast?
That feeling was soon accompanied by a doubleheaded sense of relief as he sensed a large creature moving rapidly towards him in leaps like the Incredible Hulk.
Alistair took on the third form of the Silver Comet Sect’s Zebra Stance. While they never taught him any of the forms directly, he picked up on things. Now that he was back, his memories informed a perfect replica.
Tranquil Mind became his fortress. The Zebra Stance became one with the earth. Alistair breathed in deep as prepared to receive the Daywalker Ape. It would be fist against fist, human against beast. A proper match for two polar opposites, and a good test of his martial skills, since facing himself was a special case.
But why were there two kaijus leaping toward him?