SIS Book 4 Chapter 57: The Emperor's Decision and Rebuilding Begins

Daz quickly stored all of the corpses in his Industrial Item Box. He had considered just burying them then and there in his Grave of The Mammals but decided against it.

'They attacked me with intent to kill, true, but they are still fellow survivors of Earth. The least I can do is give them respect in death and give them proper graves,' Daz thought as he controlled their souls and pushed them into one of Earth's many circles of reincarnation.

'One of these days I need to take a good look at all of the places a soul can go here on Earth and curate it. Since I cut-off the chance for non-Earthians to fuck with our souls, I should really try my best to make that seem like a good thing for us and not like a prison. Well, that's a far-reaching issue since it will be a very long time before someone reincarnates and actually recovers memories of their past life if that's possible. I assume that would need some system-aided set-up if it is,' Daz thought.

Before long, he had returned to Guishan Island and found Hsiao-han sat in front of the teleportation portal just staring at it.

She turned around upon hearing the heavy footsteps of Rimmy. "Impressive summon up close."

She said nothing else and resumed looking at the teleporter. Clearly, she wasn't in the mood for an exchange of information today which Daz was fine with.

"I'll unsummon you now, Rimmy," Daz stated.

"Rimmy," the towering giant of crystal replied.

A moment later, Rimmy vanished. Daz casually walked through the teleporter and perhaps 5 or 6-minutes later he returned with a much smaller crystal man stood by his side.

Hsiao-han cocked her head to the side in confusion. "You didn't return him?"

Daz smiled wryly. "He wanted to help me here, and since he only needs his main body to heal stuff and considering Fort Home hasn't been attacked in a while, he thought he could be helpful here," he explained.

Hsiao-han nodded. "I see. My preparations are almost complete," she said in exchange for the information Daz had given her.

He nodded. "Good."

Daz and Rimmy's core then left the island and returned to Yilan City. The former was waiting for Beta's swift return from his scouting mission while the latter was happily taking in the new sights as it floated by Daz's side.

Not too soon after Daz felt some Death Energy return to him. He wasn't in an angered state like with the sniper situation, meaning he didn't bother resummoning Beta and asking what he knew. Instead, he sifted through the newly added memories his clone had delivered to him.

He nodded softly. "I see. They have an underground base right beneath the town that's recently developed in the heart of Taipei? That was going to be my second last city to take over today just before Keelung City but I suppose I can change my plans..."

He summoned Beta again and then said, "Tell Crusher to meet me at the outskirts of Taipei just before 10PM. Once you've done that you can return to Fort Home. I'll unsummon and resummon you again if I need you."

The clone nodded. "Of course, Original."

The clone then repeatedly used Crystallisation on his boots until they finally turned into diamonds. He then used Astral Crystal Control to fly away.

Daz didn't waste any time and immediately went on a rampage of sorts, though not a violent one. He moved from city to city purchasing the mostly abandoned ones and 'convincing' the owners of the occupied ones to hand them over.

It wasn't very long before a message from the system popped up in front of his eyes, one that he was expecting.

[Congratulations! The host has successfully become the sole ruler of 52% of [Taiwan]'s citizens, making the host the majority ruler. In the next 24-hours, all remaining rulers in [Taiwan] shall be given the chance to dispute your greater rule. Disputes can be handled either with political or military means. Once all disputes are resolved or if the 24-hour time-period expires, then the host shall become the uncontested ruler of all of [Taiwan].

Dispute list:
Empty]

Daz frowned. 'I have been the majority ruler for a while now, haven't I? I have a feeling that for this prompt to show up you need to control over 50% of the citizens. Also, what constitutes a land being big enough to have this message show up?' 

He stroked his jaw in thought. 'It can't be citizens since this place has a little under 10,000 as opposed to the hundreds of thousands California had. On the other hand, it can't be determined by being a country since California was only a state. Maybe it has something to do with autonomy? That would make some sense since California was locally governed most of the time, not federally. Hmm...'

Right now, this didn't really matter so Daz stopped thinking about it and continued his mission.

***

Daz was surprised when he met up with Crusher to find her standing atop her warhammer's pommel as the base of the meaty weapon lay flat on the ground.

"Impressive balance. Training to be a trapeze artist?" he asked.

Crusher spun on her tip-toes and answered, "Just keeping myself entertained. So, silent and sneaky or loud and hard? I have a preference, by the way."

'Your head is about 6-feet above me with you standing on that... How am I meant to talk to you like this?' In the end, he chose to just look at Taipei and not at Crusher. "Loud and hard. A message needs to be sent. Emperor Bei will know it was us anyway so we may as well make a show of it while we do it, huh?"

"Hahaha! Man, I really do love this side of ya," Crusher belted. "Platonically, of course. You're far too tiny for my liking."

'Everyone is, I'm sure,' Daz answered in his thoughts with a roll of the eyes.

He cracked his neck and moved Hamson to enter his palm. Gripping the powerfully sharp tool, he said, "Let's go crush some wannabe regicides, shall we, Crusher?"

"We shall," Crusher answered as she moved one of her legs and crouched before kicking the tip of her hammer's shaft, sending it spinning and her falling.

Agilely landing and grabbing the devastatingly intimidating weapon, she grinned like a devil. "It's been too long since I last cracked some human skulls."

***

Emperor Bei Jiang of China wore an indiscernible look on his face after he had heard the news of the failed attack on Daz.

He shook his head lightly as he sat atop his imperial throne. "Letting my anger and impatience get the better of me like that cost us over 40% of Imperial Dragon's strength..."

A young man by his side who was dressed in the garb of a traditional Chinese Taoist frowned. "It's not entirely bad. We learned more of his personal capabilities and while the bridge has been burned it hasn't been completely destroyed. We can repair it and turn this into a favourable situation."

Nodding slowly, the emperor spoke, "You're right, Hao'er... This world isn't the same one it was only a few short months ago... I trust that Imperial Dragon still succeeded in their primary mission?"

The Taoist nodded firmly. "Yes, I made sure of that myself. It required some sacrifices to divert attention away from that Adya woman but everything went as planned."

Emperor Bei Jiang smiled softly. "Good, good... Prepare a delegation to visit King Daz's New Earth. Let's strike an alliance with him. I gave him Taiwan without a fight and I won't pursue the matter of him killing so many valued soldiers even if we were the ones to instigate it... Hmm, yes, that'll do. Make a peace offering. I need time to stabilise my rule of our empire even further."

A distant and tired look entered the old man's eyes. "Too many factions are being born with the intent of overthrowing my rule. Too many think themselves to be fit to rule just because the system has given them power and knowledge."

"An excellent idea, Fùqin," the young Taoist praised.

"Haha, you don't need to be so formal with me, Hao'er... You can just call me 'Dad' like you did when you were little," the emperor said as he held his chin and laughed faintly.

This traditionally-clothed young man was the older brother of Bei Fan, or, as he now went, Shen Mu!

He shook his head subtly and said, "I can't. A certain order must be maintained for all things. You know this."

Emperor Bei Jiang wore a mildly saddened look as he answered, "Yes, I suppose I do."

***

"I thought this was possible but I really didn't expect it," Daz muttered as he picked up some loose documents in the otherwise empty underground base he and Crusher had just broken into.

"Did they, what, pack up and flee or something?" Crusher asked.

Daz nodded slowly. "It would seem so..." He grabbed the back of his neck and sighed deeply. "How disappointing."

"You're tellin' me. Just when I thought I could make a show out of some idiots, the idiots turn out to not be idiots," Crusher said in defeat. "Well, I assume ya don't really need me here if there's not gonna be any fightin', right?"

Daz nodded once again. "Yeah. Thank you for coming with me Crusher."

"No worries," the Titan replied. "So what now? All of Taiwan is yours now, right? We stayin' here for a while or we movin' on elsewhere?"

"You can do what you wish, Crusher. I need to stay here at least for another week to settle everything down, establish my kingdom's laws here and make sure everyone is aware of them, perform a census, assign lords to cities in decent shape, make new teams out of Taiwan's survivor's like a construction team to rebuild infrastructure and a governmental team to manage the lords. That kind of thing," Daz answered.

"Hmm..." Crusher puckered her lips in thought for a bit before she grinned. "Lemme help. Sounds... different. I need different to evolve."

"If you think it will help you and you'll make an effort to be useful then I'd be more than happy to receive your help with these boring yet necessary tasks, Crusher," Daz answered with a kind smile.

"Haha, I'll try," Crusher responded.

***

In no time at all Daz gained control of Taipei, Taiwan's last free city and he became the country's sole owner, properly bringing it under the influence of New Earth.

Days passed as efforts to rebuild begun. Daz personally went around the whole island with Crusher and Yaoguai to negotiate with the intelligent leader-class monsters while wiping out the ones that had no leaders.

Dorian, Freddy and Dalton were hard at work supervising and training new teams of willing Taiwanese soldiers whose task it would be to protect their cities from new leaderless monster groups showing up.

Master Merit had a liaison set up to exchange information with Fort Home's NCIA - the New Central Intelligence Agency - to conduct and complete the nationwide census of Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Sandy had sent over his apprentice, Carl, to build up and lead a new team of construction workers who got to work on the monumental task of rebuilding the infrastructure and main cites as well as new homes for Taiwan and her people.

Before long, a week had passed and a large shadow was suddenly cast over the entirety of Yilan City.

Looking out the window of the city's newly constructed city hall, Daz smiled. "You've finally arrived, Grid. It seems investing all of Fort Sky's city points into making you larger helped increase your base speed as well as the daily limit for moving a mile a second. You got here right on time."

Daz nodded with a sly grin on his lips. "With Grid and Avulaway's people here, I can safely leave Taiwan in the hands of the local heroes and go get my next Star of Eternity."

El Dorado was Daz's next destination.