Theodora Greyman slammed her hands against her desk hard enough that she felt the wood crack. “They just… ignored our request? And passed through our lands like they owned the place?”

Douglas examined the report. “Yes, Madam President. Still, their journey was a brief one. They only spent two hours within Zone 1’s borders… but they did directly pass through the corner of our territory on their way North.”

“Fuck!” Theodora spat out. Then she rapidly forced herself to calm down. The stress of the looming threats swirling around the inaugural football game must really be getting to her if she was upset enough to audibly swear. She squeezed a stress ball ironically shaped like a football several times with her right hand. After twelve squeezes, her pounding heart slowed down.

Once Theodora was calm, she narrowed her eyes and looked at the map of Zone 1 that hung in her office. Perhaps this wasn’t as bad as she had thought. Strength came from unity, and one of the reasons why the New Earth remained so weak was because its factions were aligned only on the surface; the different Zones were jockeying for power behind the scenes. And the reason they freely competed with each other rather than accepting the lead of a single individual is that the single individual existed and had no desire to unite humanity.

Randidly Ghosthound abandoned his responsibilities, yet had continued to reap the benefits from his influential name. It was for that reason that Theodora Greyman utilized some methods that she found distasteful to suppress his influence in her Zone.

After all, would a few powerful individuals at the heads of disparate factions ever display the power that a united humanity would? Of course not. And due to Theodora’s struggle to compete with the Ghosthound, she was forced to rely on foolish individuals who wished to transform the current Earth to the same sort of heaven for the rich that the pre-System Earth was.

Even thinking about it now had Theodora gritting her teeth. If not for the benefits that sports would bring in regards to Paths and physical training… Theodora shook her head. But this blatant rejection of Zone 1’s request was an opening. She fully intended to take advantage of it.

“What about the damages? With those legs… I want some concrete proof so we can lodge a complaint-”

Again, Douglas checked the report with a dour expression. “They passed through areas of mostly bare ground. Drones have already scanned the aftermath. There are some small indentations, but all in areas that were effectively empty. No waterways or forests along its path either. It basically passed without leaving a mark.”

Theodora harrumphed in annoyance, but she hadn’t become President of Zone 1 by fixating. If she couldn’t use this against Randidly Ghosthound, so be it. “Well, at the very least they weren’t too over the top about it. It’s a clear display of disrespect to refuse to comply with our requests at the border, but… as long as this can be dismissed as a small event-”

“That is probably impossible as well,” Douglas was still flipping through the report. “The security checkpoint detected Kharon’s approach early, so the Western Military headquarters had eyes on the whole incident. Lost a whole squadron of drones investigating Kharon. But they must have told quite a few people about what they saw, and those people told other people… we expect as many as ten thousand people hurried North to catch a sight of the rumored “Moving City” while it was passing through Zone 1.”

Defeated, Theodora rested her forehead against the cool wood of the desk.

*****

After Kharon had lowered itself down to settle on the ground, Randidly hopped off of his floating island of doom and landed outside of the city of ogres. Honestly, Randidly was impressed. It had grown quite a bit since he had seen the place last. Most impressively, there were quite a few humans walking along the settlement’s streets. It seemed like Obyrn Myyr had been hard at work since last they spoke.

Waiting at the gates of the city were almost a dozen people. However, Randidly quickly picked out the four important ones and smiled at them. “Annie, Dozer, Sam… it’s really good to see you all.”

Sam snorted and folded his arms as he saw that Randidly had stopped wearing all of the equipment he made him but the but, but he still accepted Randidly’s handshake. Annie, who was clearly very far along in her pregnancy, walked up to Randidly and patted Randidly on the back. “Good to see you too. You look good. I like the new arm.”

“Thank you,” Randidly said with a twist at the corner of his mouth. Dozer simply nodded, so then Randidly turned to the fourth person of import waiting at the gates. “Obyrn, you are looking… ahem. Robust.”

“You don’t need to be nice,” Obyrn rumbled wryly. He shook his massive head. “I don’t hold a grudge that you brought me to my knees when last we met. I was weak, you were strong. It was as simple as that. If I had been stronger than you, the opposite would have happened.”

“Ogres are great losers,” Annie chimed in with an extremely bright smile. She looked over fondly at the armored ogre guards standing behind Obyrn. Randidly felt a little bit of pity for the population of this city.

They moved back to a private room to discuss the recent happenings in the ogre settlement, specifically focusing on the interplay between the two races as tensions rose with the encampment of Nordawn’s army only a half day’s journey beyond the gate. Randidly did his best to keep a straight face as he cursed his decision to become a king, dooming himself to a seemingly endless slew of meetings that were on the surface about different things but ended up all passing in exactly the same manner.

People talked, he nodded. Finally, he could make a decision. And lately, the decisions had all felt like “let’s wait” or “I’ll go fight that person/monster/thing”.

The only one in the room more antsy than Randidly himself was Sam, who had been eyeing Randidly’s arm with such a hungry gaze that Randidly eventually produced a few leftover scraps from the forging of his arm and gave them to the man. Sam had been very pleased for all of a single minute before Dozer gave him a level look for repeatedly banging the metal with a small hammer to test its structural integrity.

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After Annie and Obyrn had finished relaying their reports, Dozer leaned forward from his spot standing by the door. “All that’s left… is to decide how to approach the group from Nordawn.”

“They haven’t said anything else since the letter?” Randidly frowned. But before he could continue to speak, a small movement had him send a piercing gaze toward the window.

Seeing his gaze, Annie waved her hand gently to catch Randidly’s attention then raised a finger to her lips. Then, in a normal voice, Annie answered him. “No. We replied once, asking for a delay until tomorrow… but other than that, we’ve heard nothing. We sorta think the fact that they haven’t attacked us after the initial date passed that they have accepted our adjustment.”

Randidly’s Grim Intuition focused on the figure hiding by the window, but very quickly he felt a pang of shock as he recognized who it must be. He glanced at Annie and Dozer and then tried to refocus back on the issue at hand. Raising his gaze, Randidly looked out in the direction of the Ogre Gorge. Even now, he could feel the dense image that must be the leader of the Ogres from Nordawn.

“...yes, he’s waiting,” Randidly said slowly. Then he frowned as he remembered Obyrn’s calm acceptance of his earlier loss to Randidly. Obviously it was something of a gamble to assume that the seemingly autocratic leader of Nordawn would be similarly accepting of another’s superiority just based on power, but it was possible that the reason this leader was so dominant was that he simply hadn’t ever met his match.

Besides, Randidly wasn’t about to complain if this meeting would simply require a show of strength in order to convince the other to roll over. Randidly began to rub his chin. The entrance to the Ogre Gorge is probably too small for Kharon to go through, unfortunately… maybe it will be enough if I take my new evil genius island through…?

Well, I’ll probably fight either way. But I might as well arrive in style…

The sight of a small face peeking in the window made Randidly want to twist around and glare, but he quickly suppressed that impulse. With an evil smile on her face, Annie rested one hand on her stomach and stepped backward into the shadows in the corner of the room, out of the window watcher’s sightlines. Then she took another step back and simply phased through the wall.

Randidly’s mouth twitched with amusement as Dozer coughed to bring the focus back to him. “Who will be a part of the delegation who will go?”

Even Sam, the pseudo-uncle that he was, had a sinister gleam in his eyes as he finally focused on the meeting and answered Dozer’s question. “From what we know, the army from Nordawn is almost five hundred thousand strong. There’s no way we can compete in terms of size of our delegation, so we should go with only elites. Quality over quantity.”

Feeling slightly surreal, Randidly nodded along and said, “I planned on using my… island as our vehicle. Everyone who comes will need to be strong because the environment there is a bit… extreme.”

The actual point that Randidly made caused everyone to frown for a few seconds, but they no longer needed to continue with their fake meeting because a scream of terror came from the window. Rather bemused, Randidly followed after the grinning group to find Annie standing outside on the grass and tickling her daughter ruthlessly. Her hands were blurs as they rapidly moved to strike at the places that the little girl wasn’t defending with her hands.

The child, who appeared to be about five, squirmed and shrieked, but definitely seemed to be enjoying the attention. After thoroughly punishing the child who could only be her daughter, Annie said reprovingly. “You know you are not allowed to spy on us while we were having a grownup talk.”

“I know, but mommy a city just walked up and sat down next to us!” Delilah, who Randidly hadn’t seen since she was just a baby, somehow made her expression look pitiable and misunderstood at the same time. “I have questions! And I figured you would be madder if I snuck out than if I spied, so-”

Annie shook her head. “Yes, yes, you can go to Kharon later, it shouldn’t be a problem. But first, I want to introduce you to someone; Delilah, this is Randidly Ghosthound.”

“Hello,” Delilah said, instantly shifting to a polite smile. The girl had Annie’s brown hair and sly smile, but her eyes had all the focused intensity of Dozer at his most determined. The combination was surprisingly cute. She even had two extremely small daggers hanging at each hip, and Randidly’s Grim Intuition told him that those weapons had tasted blood before.

He wondered whether he was supposed to be proud or worried.

It was only after she walked up to Randidly, gave him a perfunctory hug, and then turned away that Delilah froze. “Wait… Randidly Ghosthound?!?!”

She leapt a few meters away and pointed dramatically toward Randidly. “You are the strongest man in the world? Stronger even then daddy and uncle Obby?!?!”

Randidly glanced sideways at the people looking at him while hiding smiles and could only roll his eyes. “Yes, that’s me.”

“You seem too small to be so strong,” Delilah frowned. She walked and patted on Randidly’s side in a sympathetic manner. The pat was extremely similar to the one that Annie had given Randidly earlier. “It’s okay, a lot of people don’t believe how powerful I am either, all because I’m small. Say, how powerful really are you? If I’m a 1, what would that make you?”

Again, Randidly glanced sideways. This time he looked at Dozer and Annie with a frown on his face as he wondered how honest he should be with this little girl. They nodded encouragingly, and Annie even gleefully gave him a look that told Randidly to crush her daughter's pride, so he looked down at the bright eyes of the child in front of him curiously. Then Randidly pondered the question for a few seconds.

Based on her movements, she already has some Stats and Skills, despite her young age… but even so, she’s probably only got 50 in her highest Stat… which would make her… at least 50 times weaker than me… not considering the advantage in Skill Levels, Skill Rarities, Nether and Aether Control, variety of attack patterns, experience fighting, images, and equipment that I have…

Finally, Randidly arrived at a number. But feeling that truthful number was a bit high, he divided it by ten. Still finding it a bit high, he cut that result in half. Finally, Randidly cleared his throat and said. “Probably a 100.”

Delilah considered that. “How long did it take you to get that strong?”

Randidly had to think about that too. All the weird variations in time made it difficult for him to track exactly how much time had passed since he had first encountered the System. Even with high Intelligence, it was a hassle to go through all the memories in his mind. “...about six years.”

Grinning without an ounce of guile, Delilah said, “A year longer than me, eh? No wonder you are so long. But lookout, because I’ll catch up next year.”

And at that moment, seeing the bright confidence of the young girl’s face, Randidly felt his own expression soften. Now he could understand why even Sam would get on the games with this girl. She truly was the first child born after the System arrive. Her knives had tasted blood but her optimism was untainted. Plus, she had been raised by two of the most capable people that Randidly knew.

“For the sake of the Earth, I really hope that’s the case,” Randidly said softly. And when he patted Delilah’s head, he surreptitiously created an Aether connection with her. There was already one partially present due to her being Annie’s daughter, who Randidly also had a connection with. But Randidly believed that this youngster deserved a flow of Aether of her very own.

As long as she could keep that pure confidence, she might someday save the Earth. That sort of certainty could birth an image that even Randidly would need to be cautious of.