Dark Fate, Chapter 209

Chapter 209 – Aftermath

(Oval Office, White House, Washington, DC)

“Mister President, there’s been a development in Panama.”

President Harris groaned as he tried valiantly to not smack his head. “That damn King of Ceres just got down there, didn’t he? Like, it hasn’t even been a full day! What in the hell happened now?”

Evie Walsh, his Secretary of State, just shook her head. “From the statements we’ve received, King Greene was meeting with officials and adventurers in Panama, to iron out the final details of Panama joining this new Ceresan Empire. Unfortunately, the meeting was interrupted by the report of a Tier 3 monster, a Giant Kraken, heading for the Canal. Container ship managed to call it in before the thing wrapped its tentacles around the whole ship and crushed it.”

“Tier 3!” Harris gasped. “King Greene is high Tier 2, but a lot of that came from the actions he’s been taking with his fleets. There shouldn’t be any way for a monster to be Tier 3 yet. Unless it was born as a Tier 3?”

“Not naturally, no sir,” Evie said. “Unfortunately, the statement says that they believe the creature to be artificially advanced. In other words, someone ‘boosted’ this creature to Tier 3, and set it loose.”

“Oh, hell,” Sal Landry muttered. Harris raised an eyebrow at his Chief of Staff, and Sal sighed. “I’ve had people looking through the System Shop’s catalogue, looking for things that might prove problematic as time goes on, so we can get a jump on recognizing them, ahead of time. [Mystic Monster Maker] is basically magical steroids on crack. Inject it into a creature, and they go up a whole Tier, but their life is on countdown timer, since they aren’t able to handle the change. But, since it increases aggression, the best way to use it is to just inject a creature, point them at the target, and let them rampage until they’re either destroyed or burn themselves out.”

Isabel Davies, his Secretary of Defense, sighed. “Sal’s shared that information with me. While the so-called M3 supplement is available to purchase in the System Shop, it is not something that most people could easily get a hold of. More importantly, the supplement is something that needs to be injected directly into a creature, which means that you would need to subdue a Tier 2 Kraken in order to make that happen. That is not something any random civilian, or even most adventurers, could handle.”

“You’re thinking military, then?” Harris stated as much as asked.

“Special forces, more likely,” Isabel nodded. “Full military deployments would have been noticed. Special forces could be more easily hidden. Doesn’t change the fact that someone out there not only decided it was a good idea to capture a Tier 2 creature and turn it into a weapon, but had the ability to actually pull it off, though.”

“Please tell me this wasn’t us.”

“If it was,” Isabel said, “then it is an operation so black that the Joint Chiefs haven’t heard about it.”

“Well, that’s something, at least. When we inevitably get questions about it, we can honestly say that we have no knowledge of such a project. Because whoever is behind this has probably put themselves square in Greene’s sights,” Harris sighed. “So, how bad was the damage? I assume they nuked the thing before it got too close to the canal?”

Evie shifted uncomfortably. Not a good sign. “Ceres sent a video, along with the information about the Giant Kraken. They didn’t send Renegades after this thing. The King went himself, with a shuttle and two of his slaves.”

“Show me.”

The video was a quick watch, but Harris said nothing as he watched it again. On the third watch, Isabel spoke up. “Looks like the shuttle’s weapons were mostly used to keep the beast from diving under the surface, where it could more easily escape. I don’t think those blasts did any damage to it. As for the King’s attacks, they hurt the Giant Kraken, but I don’t think they actually did any real damage. They just kept the thing focused on him.”

Sal nodded. “All the while, his two helpers charged up that super-attack. Looked like the angel was firing all her spells into that magic circle the succubus made in the air. Probably has some kind of additive or multiplicative effect. But it takes time to charge.”

Isabel nodded. “Which is why he needed to play distraction while they got it ready. That ability the succubus used probably has a bunch of downsides. I doubt she could move very much while using it, and there’s the charge time. Best to think about it like artillery which has to be set up in a fixed position before being used.”

“My god,” Harris said. “That thing cut a hole all the way into the sea floor. Maybe down, through the crust to the mantle.”

“Well, one thing’s for certain,” Sal said. “Whoever decided it was a good idea to point that thing at Panama is probably shitting themselves.”

“Serves them right,” Evie stated flatly. “This reeks of someone trying to manufacture a crisis to get their foot in the door with the new reality in Panama. Probably hoping the Giant Kraken would cause enough damage that they could send troops in themselves to help stabilize things, or that Ceres would be forced to nuke their new ally to stop it. I don’t like someone playing games with people’s lives like that.”

Harris nodded. Sometimes, you had to get your hands dirty when dealing with global politics, but there was a difference between dealing with distasteful individuals and regimes, and manufacturing a crisis so you could swoop in and take advantage of it. Make a deal with nasty people because they are the ones on the ground and in charge of the area, and you can explain it away, or even ‘national security’ it into obscurity. Purposefully causing mass casualty events to get your way almost always ended up backfiring horribly, even if you were twisted enough to still be able to sleep at night after. “We know someone decided to use the beast like a gun, but how did they ‘aim’ it? And who pulled the trigger?”

Sal shook his head, and said, “If I was a betting man, I’d say that the question of ‘how’ is going to get answered about as quickly as the question of ‘why’. The real problem is going to be finding out who did it. By this point, everyone knows what Ceres is like when people try to attack them. Anyone with the resources to pull this off has to be connected enough that they know better than to assume they are too big for Ceres to target, so they’re going to hide their tracks as much as possible.”

(Gatun Lake, Panama)

Gatun Lake was an artificial lake, created as part of the Canal, back when it was first being built. Later, some idiot introduced a non-native fish called the peacock bass. While it was a popular fishing target, the invasive species pushed out a lot of the native fish, to the point where they still hadn’t reached the population levels they used to have. And now, it seemed that another idiot had done the same thing, only this time with malicious intent.

Keira Hyde frowned as she looked at the mucus-covered sack on the camera. “So, this is it, then?”

“Yes, Jefa,” Carlos, the underwater photographer who captured the shot said. “Just the one, and right where the diviners said it would be. Looks like they haven’t hatched, yet.”

“They? I thought there was only one egg.”

Carlos laughed. “You’d think so by looking at it, but no. I looked up giant squid on the Wikipedia before we came out here. Don’t know how close a Kraken is to giant squid, but a squid can lay up to thirty thousand eggs at a time, keeping them in a sack like that until they hatch. Most of the baby squid don’t survive to adulthood, obviously. Predators and all. But still, with that many? Some are sure to make it. Figure the same thing, here.”

“Fortunately, the situation isn’t quite so dire,” a voice came from behind them. Keira stiffened slightly. Even if she didn’t recognize the voice of her new ‘liege’, she recognized the way just his voice made certain areas all tingly. And the worst part was he wasn’t even trying; it was just part of him being a sex demon.

“Your Majesty,” she said, turning around. “Came to see what we found? And what do you mean by things not being so dire?”

“Because Kraken only have a hundred hatchings in a clutch, and the first thing a newly hatched Juvenile Kraken does is to attack and devour their clutchmates. In the end, only one to four percent of Juvenile Kraken survive their first few hours, but, after that point, their incredible regeneration means that at least one of those should survive long enough to reach Tier 2 and become a proper Kraken. Usually takes them about twenty or thirty years in the wild.”

“So, what would you suggest we do with them? We can’t just let them run wild in the canal!”

“No, that wouldn’t do at all. Really, there are only two choices. The first, and simplest, would be to destroy them. Away from their parent and here in shallow waters, instead of the crushing depths they are normally found at? Anyone with a few levels under their belt should be able to accomplish it. Won’t get much XP for it, but what do you expect from killing defenseless unborn children?”

Keira frowned at the Demon King. “I hate that you put it like that. Makes me question whether we should actually kill them.”

“Don’t fret too much over it, my dear. It is the same as cleaning out goblins or these ‘charming’ gilblin variants you have around here. You have to get to the nests, and kill them all, even the children, or they’ll simply come back like an infestation, again and again. And you do know what those little vermin do to women, no?”

“Uh, no. I know we’ve lost a few women to Gilblin raids, especially in the early days, but we never found them. Always thought that was weird, especially considering that we would find the remains of captured men from time to time, as ‘leftovers’ from the gilblin feasts, but we never found the corpses of the women, and there weren’t any signs of them in captivity when we raided their warrens.”

“Well, good news, bad news time. Good news, you don’t have to worry about trying to find or rescue them. Bad news, if you saw any female gilblins when you went through their homes, those were your missing women.”

Keira’s brain crashed, and struggled to restart. That would mean—Carlos was the first to break the silence, “So, the women got turned into gilblins? How?”

The Demon King sighed. “Goblinoids of all types are almost always born male. Like, one in fifty is female. Even with them birthing litters of five to eight at a time and their quick growth rate to adulthood, that’s not enough to be sustainable. Even if the System limits the possible negative effects of inbreeding in their race, and the goblin tribes basically keep their women constantly pregnant. So, they have a nasty little trait that most people don’t know about, if they do their research in the System Shop. And it works exactly like you two are probably thinking.”

Keira felt her insides go cold. “So, the gilblins, they… and then that changed the women, so that they were gilblins? Is there any way to stop that? Or reverse the process?”

“Some healing magic from level ten or so in Tier 1 will stop the spread of the ‘disease’, so long as it hasn’t gone too far. But that doesn’t cure it, or reverse the changes that have already happened. They just put it on hold. To actually reverse or remove it? You first need to break the curse carried in the goblin seed, and then cast the healing spells again. So, a priest in their twenties or thirties could do it, no problem.

“However,” he said, his voice going hard, “once the change has been completed, the only way to change them back is with the same kind of magic that could turn a human into a cat, and lock them in that form, or through extremely expensive tomes found on the System Shop. If you even recognize them to offer the change, or there is enough of the woman from before left in there to want to change. But the ‘disease’, for want of a better word, transforms the mind and spirit along with the body. And after everything the woman would have endured to that point, simply killing her would be the merciful thing to do.”

The Demon King shook his head. “So, this is my way of saying that there are times for the philosophical debates, and times to be pragmatic. Would I recommend you slaughter another group of humans down to the last child? Not if there are better options. Even when it is necessary, such an act cause more trouble than it is generally worth. But creatures like gilblins are different, because the System makes them that way. And if you don’t have the stomach to end them when you can, the blood of the ones they kill later is on your hands.”

Keira took a breath, and said, “You mentioned there were two options. One was to kill the baby krakens in the egg. What is the other?”

“Tell me, do you have any adventurers that you trust, and who have classes like Ranger or Druid? Or perhaps the Beast Tamer profession? Better yet, do any of them have aquatic races, or gear to properly work underwater?”